A little piece of advice to people who disagree with me about self voting
I don't care what you think, as obviously I am opposed to your viewpoint. But don't think I am stupid enough to not be able to see the difference between offering counterarguments and trying to cloak your trolling in pseudo-intellectualism.
I have a million things more important to do than convince clearly emotionally driven people who are attached so much to their self-vote power that they conflate it with being the reason for having voting at all.
Every justification boils down to "But I matter to me!", well, that's very nice and all, but if you didn't think your views were worth reading, you wouldn't publish them, and the other chestnut is "But people can just use alts". Bully for them if they want to go to that much effort to blow their own trumpets, but it should not be an easy thing for new users to do, because far to often that is simply because it's a new way to spam.
It's hard enough for the workers involved in SteemCleaners and others who don't appreciate spammy crap and plagiarism and bad behaviour, that the platform has defaults that suit such malicious actors so well.
PS
Also, this new account of mine, I could so easily spam it up with votes from my primary account to boost its voting power and reputation, I'd say if I were to vote every post and comment made under @elfspice my rep would go up to about 50 and I would have at least 20 dollars of rewards assigned to myself. Why am I not doing this? Because I think it's wrong, even if the game lets you do it.
That's why they have referees in team sports. Cheating is possible. You can spear tackle people in Rugby, you can throw the ball forward. In Basketball you could tackle people. Just because it is possible doesn't make it either good, or honorable. When I was a kid playing sport in the compulsory Physical Education classes, I had bullies who would break the rules to intimidate me, even attempting to injure me, and the teachers did nothing about it, in fact they were trolling even harder.
So for me it's not just about the benefits to the platform, it's a matter of honor and common decency. Same with harassing my comment threads with deceptive, fallacious arguments countering me. You can do it once, but keep it up, and I will gladly never see your comments or posts ever again.
Yes, I am resteeming my own posts. But that does not give me rewards, it only ensures my followers can continue to read my posts, if they want to.
I've recently stopped self-voting as I want to support the platform more. I have enough SP to get a few dollars each time, but I don't mind forgoing that. I'm happy enough to be making anything here
I have to bear with needing to use my old account to upvote comments that I like, because this new minnow account can't do jack, I have already used 2 of my 4 votes today...
I believe my own track record of building my account from minnow to over 15,000SP of power, before I started the power down that funded my current phase of activity, should tell you that engagement is the most important thing to make money writing for Steem. I intend to demonstrate this again also over the next 6 months with this new account.
I really value engagement here, which is why I vote up those who give me good comments. Good luck with your project
This is pretty much how I feel about buying votes. You can do it and it is accepted, but is it good for the platform? I don't think so. I think it is a slippery slope to the bottom. Anyone can post garbage and buy a nice vote for it. Is that what we want? A lot of garbage being upvoted by even more bots?
I was thinking about making a post, asking if I'm being foolish by denying myself those lucrative upvotes. As a Redfish, I'm having a heck of a time getting any serious action on my posts. However, I believe integrity is more important than making lots of money. Slow and steady; I'll get there eventually. At least I can be proud of my efforts in the end.
I can't add anything to that, very well said.
Thank-you. Its nice to have support and not be alone on these issues.
I don't agree with you, no biggie. I think you'll have a better time here if you lighten up a bit. my 2 cents.
I meant to make that comment with this account. It might take me a while to develop this habit :/
Here's my 5 cents on a sensible response. :) I have a deeply held conviction that games value is destroyed by violating the spirit of the game.
Yeah, well, maybe you shouldn't try to force it on everyone like some kind of statist government, against the white paper:
"Eliminating “abuse” is not possible and shouldn’t be the goal. Even those who are attempting
to “abuse” the system are still doing work. Any compensation they get for their successful
attempts at abuse or collusion is at least as valuable for the purpose of distributing the
currency as the make-work system employed by traditional Bitcoin mining or the collusive
mining done via mining pools. All that is necessary is to ensure that abuse isn’t so rampant
that it undermines the incentive to do real work in support of the community and its
currency."
"The goal of building a community currency is to get more “crabs in the bucket”. Going to
extreme measures to eliminate all abuse is like attempting to put a lid on the bucket to
prevent a few crabs from escaping and comes at the expense of making it harder to add new
crabs to the bucket. It is sufficient to make the walls slippery and give the other crabs
sufficient power to prevent others from escaping."
A classic example of your deceptive argumentation.
Like a statist government?
Are you saying that I have control of the media and there is even an incumbency in in the Witness schedule? Are you saying that I have the monetary resources to target my audience with propaganda, or, for that matter, to send extortionists around to their place to intimidate them.
What? you mean I don't even have any idea where these people are? That I don't have a fraction of the total pool of money?
Seriously dude. keep it up. I'll be back at 20kSP before you know it, and if you decide you want to make such outrageous accusations, I'll be able to punish you. Right now, I only have logic. Yes, logic.
I agree to an extent...I think self-voting comments is usually an obnoxious behavior, and I have only partaken in it a couple of times, in an attempt to get a lengthy, thoughtful comment farther up on a long thread that most people will not read through to the end.
That said, I just don't really care about it that much. When people gratuitously upvote themselves on my posts, I just ignore it. I haven't flagged or blocked anyone yet for doing it, but I might if it gets repetitive. I think the behavior is its own penalty, you know what I mean?
It is, but rather than wait for the very slow process of the masses learning, I want to help them come to the right strategy sooner so they get more benefit. Ultimately, every users success adds to everyone else's.
So, indeed, if you are not as civic minded as me, then it's not something that should take a lot of your time. I am campaigning to win the privilege to gain a sizeable reward from running a witness server, I have to consistently demonstrate a concern for the interests of the people whose posts I help replicate throughout the network. I want to earn that reward because it greatly increases my power to continue this process and the positive feedback loop it will create.
In many cases, the biggest causes of upset on the platform are from people simply exploiting things that are possible, but not beneficial to the platform or honorable. This fighting is also not good for the community or the fortunes of the tokens we all use here.
The upvoting is setting a bad example for many just coming in and yes I am guilty because it is what I was told is the norm, it has never felt right. Build the community, be the change you wish to see...
"civic minded"
Lol. Yep, you're as "civic minded" as today's average SJW, alright. You know what's best, and you'll make sure other people comply if it is in your power to do so.
Doing it for visibility is a legit reason, imagine you're in a thread with 50+ comments, upvote it and it immediately jumps to #5 from #51 , pretty useful
I don't like advertisments that intentionally are attention grabbing, why would I want to inflict that on people? Comments are not that long, usually, and the interface collapses the ones past 6 depth.