Be the change you want to see in the world - my voting explained (+ free bot)
A lot of new users keep thanking me for reading their post and supporting them. I feel like I have to set the record straight about that since a while now.
Many discussions revolve around the situation with whales and dolphins dominating the reward pool. As a steem user of the first hour and a whale myself I am of course aware of this, and since the beginning I have been thinking about ways how that could be fixed. I had my part in sometimes hefty discussions in the early days, and was proposing a change in the reward curve long before the last hard fork. But changes in the blockchain rules can only do that much. Equally, or even more important, is the behavior of the users.
I hate the trending page. I can rage on for hours how there's always the same people up there, posting just for the sake of getting another couple of hundreds of dollars of rewards. Attempting to spread the reward pool further I spent months curating manually, but with the growing number of posts that became impossible to do thoroughly. For a while I stopped voting completely, because I felt that my weight was too high and I just couldn't vote "fairly".
A couple of months ago I then came up with a solution. My own trail bot, following a diverse list of mostly manual curators. Over time I added features like a blacklist, avoiding self votes, avoiding votes on dual accounts, and some stats. It's running stable since weeks, and with a lot of nodes used by other bots and services going down yesterday this seems to be a good moment to release the code to the public. Here you go: https://github.com/pharesim/steem-trailbot
It uses the public node at ws://steemd.pevo.science:8090 but you can of course change that.
I hope it can help others to spread the love too. Steem has so much more to offer than the current trending posts - help to show that to the world!
Don't know how to put the bot into action but if you set up a curation trail on Streemian I can follow you there!
Don't follow my votes, it's way too many. Vote for content you like, manually. If the minnows only knew about their power...
Would you mind elaborating on that? I'm sure if YOU say it, it will mean a whole lot more than if I say it. Not very many listen to a small fry like me.
Just what the title of this post says basically...
As an example, see the current posts by sweetsssj and kingscrown. They have 1000 votes each. That's not just whales.
Every vote cast for a small user takes away a bit from the rewards of the trending authors. The common notion "I am to small to change anything" leads to apathy, same as in politics probably.
THANK-YOU! That is what I was hoping you meant. Instead of attempting to ride the gravy train (and probably not succeeding anyway) by voting only on whales, people could be voting on their fellow minnows and supporting each other. This is the original intention of the platform and by creating these 'communities' of mutual support, everyone rises up together!
ddeu i really get astonished by the post i see of minnows where people thank them and they do not upvote them ...( i was confused i thought thats how you show your love) i always upvote with love !!!!! all day !!!!!thanks for your words brosef!!
I feel like I just won a lottery! Wow! Thanks so very much! This brings me just a little bit closer to being able to reward the little community I'm trying to build with another 1 cent for each of my votes. Every cent counts because they do add up!
I @mammasitta just opened this new account to spread different kind of vibes and topics like my personal blog I really enjoy since June 2016 and also to see, how it must feel to be a minnow again [my kind of experiment :)]
Its tough!
I like your approach and advice because we all can make changes. I am quite curious how I will do with such new account starting August 2017, a very different dynamic these days.
Well, us minnows should make a habit of voting at least 5 posts we like each day, even if it doesn´t give anything to the author, just for the sake of supporting good content. I´ll spread the word about that. But a bigger problem is that I believe that on steemit content is way too disorganized for people to effectively find much fast. A lot of good posters become increasingly buried in the post tsunami(Postnami! can i make that word a thing?). Well, at least its that way for us minnows who don´t make it to the trending page. Also,some followers are generally lazy, since they only vote on post thay can skim in no more than 2 mins... That makes for some lazy reading habits.I have faith in the long run for both steemit and myself. Cheers!
@pharesim thanks for your advice.
In my opinion, people focus too much on voting. I want to vote on content that I like, but I also want to interact with people. Even though it's nice to get a vote, getting comments (not the fake spams) on a post that I make is worth just as much in my book.
I see it all too often that people just vote without reading/looking and really interacting unless it's on a post from a bigger guy on Steemit.
What I wanted to address was the voting for bigger guys without looking. Of course interaction is the most important thing, so voting should follow that, not the fame of the poster.
I don't even know anymore who is trending :) Superstars never impressed me unless they deliver something interesting to vote and comment. I also auto-vote occasionally for my favourite authors or people who interact with me the most. I pause it for some days to curate manually most of the time.
Hi @pharesim, thanks for the advice. I'm new on the Steemit (only 1 month) and tried to kickstart some debates with some posts ... but so far have not been able to figure out how to attract interest and spark the discussion. Do you have any suggestion?
Thanks!
I'm all about interaction. Followed you. enjoy actual discussion with real people. looking forward to your next post
Couldnt agree more. I think there may be a popularity issue, or barrier, rather, than actual social converstations regarsing topics that bring peiple together, and the exchange of thoughts and ideas.
i upvote because of interaction and i am starting to add to steem to my account so when people spark cool convo i can upvote forreal cause i appreciate it!!!
I agree, there are just a finite amount of people you can more or less intimately know. Some friends feed and circles would be nice.
Straight forward...i like d way u r going.......helpful content for me.....
hey, I am one of these minnows :-) If I only knew about my power :-)
Actually I have a lot of content to give... but for minnows its very difficult to get information and a deeper understanding... I am thankful for any source of information (so many questions)... by the way thank you for upvote (Susuki Girls)
try... i am learning to code on codecademy that offer some free some paid courses, github lessons are next for me so will use your bot after that learning
Well ..... mr @pharesim lol. If your religion is kindness, might I ask for a moment of your time to check out my witness offering and spare me one of your votes?
If you check out https://witstats.steemliberator.com you can see 2 of your witnesses havent even updated to 0.19.1 yet.
And I am in the process of getting a full RPC node with load balancing setup for the network so we can help take some of that load off steemit's node
Anyway. I know you have all 30 votes used so maybe at least keep me in mind. Thanks for supporting posts though, a lot of bigger users lack in that regard.
Could not agree with you more. I believe investing time and effort into solving this 'problem' is a crucial thing for the long term value of steem. If steemit is to be the next big thing in blogging and social media, then it needs to be a platform that people find fair, sensible and rewarding. It will be crucial for long-term steem investors to get this right.
I myself try to mostly reward fruitful relationships. I observe who is genuinely interested in my journey and who wants to tag along. Have therefore focused mainly on interacting with, and upvoting, those who comment constructively and thus play an important role in making this platform more positive to engage on for old and new users alike. Which I think is the long term formula for success.
That's perfect. More comment voting is a great way to speed up distribution.
Indeed. But I think it's not only a good way to distribute rewards, but also a better long-term strategy if all you want is profit.
Anyways, thank you for your effort to make steemit a more enjoyable platform. I hope I will be making positive contributions to the development of steemit as well.
I up comments when the author has no posts - its also a way to reward the author and let him drink in the cup of rewards
you hate the trending page?
solution : stop looking at it (just kidding)
I'm glad you wrote it out there! At least people could get an idea - not every huge SP account owners see eye to eye with how it is - - a chink of hope :)
for the essence of spreading love - resteemed!
@pharesim I'm about to implement, with the help of @jimitations, a comment-voting project to encourage more community involvement and engagement. It'll be small at first, but will hopefully grow into something that can help minnows reward their commenters.
completely agree with what you're saying, genuine comments and interactions are what deserve to be upvoted and rewarded.
Very much agree with your approach. When voting I try to reward @ 100% when someone obviously put a lot of time and effort into a post. If it is just a photo of a meal or a cup of coffee, or something churned out quickly, then I use the slider. For comments, I like to reward cleverness, thoughtfulness, and insight.
In addition I use tools like SteeMVP to make sure I pay special attention to the blogs of those who vote often for my contributions, or those sea mammals who have shown me generosity. I have also identified a few fellow newbies, newer than I am, who impress me and who I would very much like to see succeed on Steemit.
It would be extremely helpful to me if there were an option on Steemit that would allow a user to identify "favorites" and have a feed option which displayed them.
I most definitely go along with the idea of favourites. It would keep the posts you most wanted to see in your feed for longer
Since you've spoke about fair. It's not how little you get paid for your post, you still do. Where else you can you get that, but that's not the topic. That notion of fair/unfair. It is annoying when you see those totally bullshit/crappy post collecting money from the reward pool and you can't beet through the noise :) I could go out and do a photoshoot and make more than in a month or two on steemit. I could shoot a wedding and earn more than probably i will never make in a year of posting. Not at least now. But that lack of fieriness just like everywhere else... Why does greed has to poison everything. Damn human nature :)
You nailed it. It is human nature. Greed is good and every man for himself.....and aslong as you have the power and money to back that up, you win.
But that's not good.
I learned a long time ago that you actually do much better when your focus is on others, not just yourself. The whole 'pay it forward' idea does actually lift you up as well...
But damn the human nature. We will fight it till the day we die.
Take care friend!
Peace!!
✌
Not everybody has the capacity to see that far but you can't blame them. All men are created equal but are not the same. Peace to you too man.
Good post. Thanks for sharing for all of us
GOD DAMN RELIGIOUS NUTBAGS!!!!
My religion is science. Why don't you read some shit before writing something so intergalactically STUPID!
I second your last sentence xD
Well played. Well played.
I'm glad someone got what I was doing there - thank you @papa-pepper for having some depth.
I saw that, LOL
Powerful write and very insightful. Like you said kindness is who you are. I will support on that . Sometime people wants to be kind to you just because they are expecting something in return. But i will say it is better to kind to people without expecting anything in return because most times the person you are been kind to is not always the one that will pay you back .
In fact the payback might not even be extend to you . It might be to someone that is your relations or that you know. So don't always expect people to pay you back when you help them . The payback might just be with someone else.
Once again thanks for the write up .Is so inspiring and very real.
Just check out this write up on my page i titled '' ATTITUDE IS THE REAL THING'' @optimistdehinde. I am following you already because i like people that are very real. Good to be real.
Note : There is more to steemit than up vote , resteem and following.Thank you. One love.
And Steem is the perfect way to pay forward :)
https://steemit.com/steemit/@igster/steem-distribution-top-0-1-of-accounts-own-76-62-of-all-steem-or-1-16-86-or-dolphins-5-64-or-minnows-0-88-or-aug-01-2017 Seems like the distribution isn't happening, more like concentration of wealth. The trend has been on going for a while and I suspect it won't change with the current economic structure in place - eventually the place will implode I guess or I'm missing something badly.
Since I was talking of a trend, the earliest record I have is from 24 April. Here is the data for everyone to see:
April 24th:
Top 0.1%: 70.37%
1%: 21.64%
Dolphins: 6.97%
Minnows: 1.03%
And now
Aug 1th:
Top 0,1% : 76.62%
1% : 16.86%
Dolphins : 5.64%
Minnows : 0.88%
Source for data from April: https://steemit.com/steem/@igster/steem-distribution-and-various-stats-1-april-24-2017
Fascinating numbers revealing ongoing wealth concentration, also entirely expected. Thanks for sharing them!
No problem, this kind of data is very important to keep track of to see the big picture and the health of the system. The difference is quite drastic and this has happened in just over a 3 months of time!
And it concerns me that Ned, CEO of Steemit, is planning on introducing even more tokens to this system, rather than making the current one more fair for everyone. If this same trend continues, the 0.01% will be holding around 80% of all Steem at the end of 2017.
Do you have any ideas for change?
Well the problem is that those who hold most SP get huge gains for every action or inaction compared to everyone else. As an example @pfunk is getting around 1 Steem Power per each upvote! (source: https://steemdb.com/@pfunk/curation). I'm almost a dolphin myself and am getting around 0.03 SP per mine.
So just by taking into account curation, the wealth will slowly trickle up. Then you add the inflation, big rewards for voting on own posts and you end up with this trend that we have now.
To add to this, whales are starting to sell their votes! Instead of figuring out a way to reward good content, they just sell it to anyone who wishes to throw money at them.
The rest of their voting power will probably go towards close inner circle, too much of money to pass by.
And final issue, since wallets of whales keep growing at increasing rate compared to everyone else, they can keep powering down every once in a while and still stay ahead of everyone else.
Most of these big wallets were acquired in the "instamining" phase when the site itself was not out yet. If the distribution would had been fair, Steemit would look a lot different and it would had been adopted by the rest of cryptousers, now it is struggling to do so.
I might be wrong and I hope so, I really do - but the very bad distribution is a issue that will keep Steemit in its shadow for a long time. Even if Steem fails, due to these issues, someone will copy the idea and make it work and for that I'm glad.
And how to fix this issue?
Burn all the Steem earned in the early mining phase or majority of it. Voilà. This is just a rough idea I saw suggested by someone else, I'm sure people could come up with far more sophisticated ones. Of course the whales wouldn't like it...
But it speaks volumes that I'm still here, and I will continue to do so until something better comes along - maybe that never happens? It's up to us all.
The percentage doesn't say much alone. If you could exclude inactive users from the stats they would be more meaningful I think.
meep
I agree with your input there @ionlysaymeep
meep
Yes they should give you more power because minnows like me just won't budge through this hard system.
meep
I also wonder what will be done with the millions of Steem in @steem account, that were reserved for making new accounts when this whole platform were designed.
Thank you @pharesim!
I have received your vote some times, it really helps
I would like to start off by saying I Appreciate Your Kindness "Thank You" from the bottom of my Heart. It is truly an Honor to have your Support!! In return it was important for me to Vote for you!! I'm all about Supporting This Awesome Platform & Our Fellow Steemians This Community Rocks!!! And so do You @pharesim!!!!
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Great posts can be useful can be used as experience. Hope be a friend who can help me to be like you ..... to realize the dream and hope in reaching. Likes @yooraa need friend support. Greetings esteem.