Open letter to change voting patterns | A plea to give #NewSteem a chance
A few of the big accounts on Steem have been using these downvotes to encourage manual curation to the point where most of the ex-bidbots are now supporting high quality authors who deserve recognition, rewards and exposure.
These ex-bots are giving #NewSteem and manual curation a chance
And you know what? It is working. Most Steem users who put effort, time and quality into their posts are getting votes on a consistent basis, maybe not in all of them and probably not as much as they would hope so, but since the bots are now allocating more than 15 Million Steem Power into manual curation - instead of using it to sell votes -, the situation and circumstances of the Steem Community and its users are definitely better than how they were two months ago.
The community in general is healthier, the users are happy and reccommending Steem to their acquaintances and trying to onboard people on a daily basis, a lot of projects are thriving and getting organic support, new users are not getting completely ignored as they used to be, experienced users are not quitting after months of not getting recognition.
I bet you have noticed that, you must have. Your posts are getting more organic votes, you are getting more comments from new users and old users alike and most importantly, you don't see several posts a day from minnows complaining how the rewards pie is reserved for only a selected elite. In fact, the vast majority of posts talking about the reward pool are written with a positive attitude.
But there is still one thing that the community of #NewSteem would value enormously, perhaps as much as they value how the bid bots changed their voting behaviour...
That is the way the OGs, the experienced users who are here for a long time, vote on a daily basis.
There's this perception, from both small stakeholder and big whales alike, that some Steemians are ignoring other users and allocate a big chunk - if not most - of the voting power to a select group of people, you may call them friends or even family.
I get it. I have friends on the Steem Blockchain. Friends I've known for years now, people I've met in person in both Steem Fests, users who I speak with on a daily basis both about business and pleasure. I vote on them of course, if I say I don't I would be lying and insulting your intelligence.
But in order to make Steem a better place I try to spread my voting power to other users.
Let's not get into the economic and financial consequences of spreading my voting power outside of my inner circle.
I know my fair share of economy and finances and I bet you do, but talking about that would be a never ending story and discussing theories and how they apply to the microeconomic environment that is Steem and the possible outcomes of applying each of them on this Blockchain would lead to nothing.
Let's focus on the social aspects of changing our voting behaviour
We've seen that spreading our votes is benefical for the community. More people are staying (ie, not ragequitting) and a lot more Steemians are positive about Steem's future.
I might brought attention to this post by linking it on a post of yours. I hope you're still reading this, I trully do
I get that you want to support your friends. I understand that your family comes first when deciding who to vote with a 100% VP vote. It's clear that you want to protect your investment and you can do whatever the hell you want with your hard earned Steem.
It may have taken you years of posting high quality content to accummulate the Steem Power you have at the moment. You probably invested a large amount of Fiat to have me, a random minnow ask you to vote one way or another. Who knows, maybe you think the Steem price is never going to get to an ATH and you prefer to grow your stake and your acquaintance's stale instead of growing someone else's.
I get it, I truly do and I'm not someone to question your motives or your reasons. I'm sure you are convinced they are positive and they hold the most value for you.
But chances are, you've had this mindset for a while now. I could bet my small stake that you're still voting the same way you used to vote before the last Hardfork and before this #NewSteem jibber jabber began.
My question is, NO, actually my plea is, why don't you try giving a chance to NewSteem and manual curation by spreading your votes among other users?
Take a dive in #created. Check out other people's posts. Try widening your inner circle. You might be surprised at how many amazing authors are out there. I know I've seen them and I know they would be grateful to receive a vote from you.
You might earn less rewards on your posts. After all, if all of us stop voting so much on our friends and family well, they will do the same, since we are all adopting the New Steem attitude and giving manual curation a fair chance to work.
But take a leap of faith. Give manual curation and New Steem a chance and spread the love, give your votes to other people and wait and see.
Who knows, perhaps all these users realize that anyone, big or small, new or old, any user can get a nice vote from you if they post quality content.
I know I said I wouldn't mention economic factors on this post but I changed my mind...
Who knows, maybe your posts earn less, but your stake is worth a lot more if you spread the votes, since every user you support will bring in more people, and if these people get some support, they might buy some steem, and the negative snowball Steem had before the Hardfork becomes an incredibly positive domino effect where people see value in buying Steem.
There are many if, might, perhaps and may on this post... but I bet it's worth a try. I bet you will see the value on this idea.
Give it a try. Give NewSteem and manual curation a chance, try changing a bit your voting pattern.
I promise it will be worth the effort.
NewSteem was about getting outside of our own community.
It was about taking the changes we made. (way more than 1 element of EIP) and marketing them. The movement went viral because the community was hungry for a vision and some hope.
It was about not focusing all of our attention on our own bullshit and taking a mass of changes and turning them into Marketable Message.
You and the others involved can do what you want with your stake. (influence)
Personally I see no point in calling people names and group downvoting them if they are creating decent content, which creates engagement. It is a bit tempting to even try to protect them. (I have too much respect for the platform to enter into these games)
So the plea... You don't need approval.
It's getting better you say? I say my feed is really slow, many good users are were downvoted to nothing for weeks. Have you considered you might only being seeing what you want to see? Trending mostly is still whales and witnesses and announcements. (I don't mind that)
I'd like to see some data beyond just number of posts per day on who is posting (I bet the number of minnows to dolphins is down) but I could be wrong.
My confirmation bias is that I don't think it is better at all. Yours says it is...
How do we check?
I support you in using stake that is yours or that others have trusted to you however you like, but I do not think it is better at all. (also here is where I will get a lecture on getting the adsactly vote even though it was for 3 months of the 3.5 years I've been here making casual posts that very often were in the top 3 posts for engagement and one look at my voting would clearly show I am not vote trading with anyone.)
I respect that you are doing what you think is right and I already know any voice less than complete approval is going to get extreme push back... So, have at it. I'm just posting this response in case you are actually interested in some feedback and so we can discuss what would be a measurable way to determine if it is really helping... because it is clear that you truly think it is, but I have a different perspective. We both have legit reasons to see things from our own bias. How will we check?
I don't think newsteem was just about getting the word about Steem out there, I agree we need more of that and it has been really difficult to find people interested in onboarding even with good incentives behind it. I do think newsteem should be about honest curation and one reason I do believe posts have gone down is because there is a shift happening where those who posted just to farm their guaranteed ROI from buying votes are stopping and the authors who never bought votes and are now receiving curation are starting to realize what is going on and that may take some more time for those to either come back or new ones to join and notice that it might be worth it to stick around as there's a lot more eyes on their posts. Yes, that is also hard to measure since comments are down a lot but it just means we need to go out of our way to onboard more people. The majority don't know about Steem and its advantages outside of the rewards, many we have onboarded lately have been really surprised that there aren't more users here cause even their first weeks have been awesome and they loved the community.
While OCD will focus on onboarding and retention in the near future part of it is also making sure with OCDB that stake does not go back to be used in oldsteem ways.
Also I know you were one of the main people who started the "newsteem" movement and I'm not trying to tell you what it is, just the way how I saw it be considering the EIP changes and what it means for Steem and a working content discovery and stake distribution moving forward after two years of vote selling and only a little altruistic curation.
I'm for manual curation when possible, with both upvotes and downvotes and I think it is beneficial for the community. I do not think that group downvotes without thoughtful review of the content and engagement is meeting that criteria.
Also, I don't consider protecting and growing one's own investment to be altruistic in any sense of the word.
If you guys are going to continue this approach my suggestion would be to tone it down.
Personally, I think if the same amount of effort and coordination were focused on talking about Steem and spreading the word it would be a much better use of time.
Again, I am not suggesting that you have to listen to me, after all others have trusted you with their stake and maybe you should just quiet down and do your thing. :)
Vote trading is the same as self-voting, buying profitable votes is still the same thing that goes against the EIP. We have 1 user focusing on downvotes lately so it's not like we're giving it our all attention hence some times some votes get downvoted a bit too much or not enough.
Anyway, I agree we should put more effort into spreading the word about Steem and even better onboarding users and guiding them through the learning curve. Feel free to join our onboarding program to help out with that.
I self upvote once a day as I always have and have made many posts about it. I hold more stake than you do and have never had a large delegation. I earned and bought my stake and have manually curated nearly every day for 3.5 years. I've made casual yet popular posts most of those days too. Yeah, totally seems like I should be a target, I've been such a bad abuser of Steem. Huge eye roll and some cuss words here.
As if there was a concern someone couldn't have just messaged me.
I didn't throw any rocks at you guys... smh
Why are you writing this? lol, how do you know how much stake I have?
I just said that's what it seems like as you always come with the controversial comments that naturally cause a lot of heat.
Do you think you'll be a target of ocdb's downvotes?
I thought that is what you are implying above.
I don't personally see you as a vote-trader. Mainly those where outgoing and incoming votes are a majority from the same users in stake, while I personally also may vote on some people I value here on Steem and they value what I do when it goes over a certain threshold and there's no connection between the users beside the size of their wallets it is hard to not label it vote-trading which is the same as 10x self-voting daily or delegating to a bid bot for the same if not higher returns.
Looks like you´re the right person to read this:
https://steemit.com/steem/@alucian/thank-you-all-for-your-downvotes-on-our-cc-project-i-think-you-dont-know-what-you-do
Are you counting downvote trails as group downvotes or are you saying downvoting anything that vote-trades and buys votes as group downvoting? We have minded the content in the past with out downvotes even on vote-buys so it's curation as well even tho this one doesn't get you any returns and only wastes all of your time going down the rabbit hole of explaining to them why they were downvoted.
? Letting others earn 3x-4x more ROI than you do because they are risking their investment going to shit which it did while you try to keep users and retention going is not altruistic? Seemed to work well for donkeypong and those who could've made a lot more SP before they left after they realized it was all for nothing. What do you call those who didn't care about their investment and the currency at all throughout the years and just sold out turning Steem into a pile of proof of stake where content was just a placeholder piece of garbage?
Not to sound rude but sometimes it seems you just like to comment everywhere to seem important.
No, I meant that curating and downvoting is growing or protecting the investment.
Ait I'm done replying to your ninja edits
This is interesting. I’m guessing perspective comes into this. From my perspective and the interests I have, things have improved no end. Content quality has improved from people who were doing little more than half hearted updates before the HF and rewards for good content have shot up. There are newcomers who are getting decent rewards straight away because their content is now being found and sent to the curation accounts and tribes. It probably also helps that we have more tribes and support for different areas now.
So I’m wondering, is the approach to NewSteem now defining good and bad content with too narrow a field? Has what you're interested in been tarred as bad content? You say NewSteem was about getting outside of our own community, how would you define that, exactly?
Taken literally, we can step outside of our communities, but if the subject matter doesn't interest us, then we're still not going to vote on it. Does that mean we're now going to be classed as circle jerking if we choose to stick to the content we enjoy? Now that the bots have been more or less sorted, attention is being turned to farming and circle jerking, but you have to wonder at what point people will class you as circle jerking. Also, will we start to be penalised if we use an autovoter for some of our voting (guilty ☝️)? A lot of people are saying we should only be manually voting.
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When I said get out of the community I meant we spend a huge amount of time focusing on things that only matter to the few people who are already here. No one who is not here cares about 50/50 or if the content is decent, who votes for whom.
My view is absolutely about perspective and I am very glad they helped reduce the bot votes. I didn't hate all bots but there was no question something needed to be cleaned up.
I realize we are all going to have different standards, but I do not agree the content has improved. Several of my favorite authors were downvoted for weeks and some of them have quit posting all together.
Also I am and have always been an advocate of casual posts.
Well, I think it is unrealistic to expect everyone who holds SteemPower to manually curate (Although, I do think it is best) It is a very limiting model
Ah, gotcha. A lot of the things I look at are pertinent to the world outside Steem too, so I guess I didn't think of that. A couple of the communities are very much for extending outside of Steem. After all, we're not going to have a very useful currency in Steem if it can't be widely used. The blockchain is a good repository for information which can't just get deleted like it does on Facebook.
Are these the ones getting shot down? I've always enjoyed a post that gets a conversation going and those often are casual ones, so I get the need for them. This is the point where I say downvoting isn't needed. If you don't think the post deserves a vote, don't give it one, but if others have decided it was worth one, then that shouldn't be taken away from them.
There are always going to be opinions, though.
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Absolutely.
I would just like to see the conversation shift from internal issues and opinions to promotion and development of the chain.
It seems to be better for me, at least has been @whatsup.
@steem-ph got curation that it never would have gotten if the bidbots weren't downvoted.
Having said that, I might be jumping into the middle of the discussion.. I just wanted to share that from my perspective it is better after HF21 and HF22.
I am glad to hear it. Also, I agree there were too many bidbots voting up too much crap. :)
I see you ran into a bit of a wall with downvoters... Its unfortunate whats happening but its really not a good reason to go after OCD.
When has this ever happened?
What is it that you mind then? That is actually the biggest thing i personally mind. Lack of variety.
What is it you have a problem with? You cant say Newsteem sucks just because Haejin wont stop downvoting you.
I didn't go after them. I challenged the idea that what they are doing is better. Said we should find a way to measure. In fact I stated several times that I might have a bias.
:)
https://steemit.com/busy/@whatsup/new-steem-it-s-not-like-old-steem
OLD STEEM vs. NEW STEEM
NEW STEEM
New community funding -SPS
New Community Tools - Scot tokens and sites
New Scalability - Mira
New Economic Model - EIP
New Leadership in SteemIt Inc one of our funding and development companies
MOST IMPORTANT
New Attitude - Thriving
Better? You mean like @ocdb upvoting videos of people opening game card packs but downvoting anyone who spends a dollar on a bid bot? Before preaching to the little folks try getting your own house in order and save the condescending crap for your whale mates please.
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We've openly announced that we're curating #godsunchained posts to grow a community and onboard gamers onto Steem.
I know, but it doesn't make it right on my opinion! 40+ on posts about opening virtual game cards ? And then when this new community arrives en masse and discovers they're not going to earn a fortune for opening their packs of cards?
How about curating some of the tribes posts to encourage their communities? When did I last see a big ocdb upvote on a great sports post? Or a brilliant tasteem review or an AAA film review? Have you even seen how good and professional those latter two websites look?
How about encouraging people to share all their posts on traditional social media? How about encouraging people here who create articulate and intelligent posts, or personal high effort posts ?
Ok...you win. Let's aggressively promote another online card trading game .....cos it really worked out well for the previous two 'games' in respect of bringing new members to the wider community.
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you have not looked well then cause we've been curating a lot of those posts, lol. Our gods unchained curation is only a fraction of what we curate in general but I get that you like to point that out to make more noise about it, it's fine.
If this doesn't bear fruit in the long run we will attempt something else, what we need right now the most is new users to Steem.
PS the presale ended so there won't be much pack opening posts in the near future.
Absolutely fair comment, I just spent the last hour looking back over the votes you've issued and found some top quality posts to read from new and old alike.
Doesn't change the fact that I absolutely disagree with both content and tone on this particular post and the huge rewards on these game card posts.
On balance, you curate top quality stuff which is why its all the more annoying.
I will disagree however, as and when I see fit comments are a waste of time if no one ever dares to disagree through fear of losing a potential upvote or being called names.
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I agree with you here and I welcome critizising comments and it does not change the way I curate. I know for instance you were once curated by OCD hence your account is followed by OCDB and if I ever stumble upon a great post of yours I will naturally curate it. Doesn't matter if you accused me of sockpuppeting that one time or bringing forward these kind of comments as that would make me a pretty shitty curator.
My tone is due to me being overly tired of people either not getting why buying profitable bot votes is bad for Steem or why vote-trading is bad for Steem or when they continue to take the smallest reason or mistake we may do to shove it in our face and try to nullify everything else we do and have done on Steem.
I also am not a fan of being "nice" or "politically correct" in my approach to people just because I'm a top witness or have a big project I run, what matters should be what we do, not how we respond to people.
Well, the OCD cartel with its several witnesses supported rising the curation rewards at first, then curated quality content. This is nothing special by the way, of course the whale will support quality content since he gets the same rewards the creator gets. Since the creator reward went down from 75% to 45% the curation is not as cool as it looks like because the creator needs nearly twice as high upvotes than before to get the same reward though he invested time and work for his post, while the curators nearly get twice their rewards for just upvoting.
💥 what he said !
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What a lovely message...
What kind of numbers do you propose? At least 50% of Voting to real curation? Ie. No selfies no besties and no chronic/habitual supporting? I look at my CSI on steem world and it turns out all my autovoting leads me to vote for hundreds of people a week or 4x the amount I follow. However my curation efficiency is lower than sea level.
I guess things work cases by case and I know there are plenty of obvious cases. Includig some of the people curating this post.
I wonder how many of the OG people have a trail of confusion to do this secretly....thats when we should all be able to admit it's wrong, when they hide or cover up their shame.
Anyway keep doing what you do, I like this tonic and especially these debates.
Hi anomadsoul,
you´re a Part of the @ocdb Downvoting Trail. Please tell them, they should look a second view, before the Downvote a good non Profit Project like the @CommentCoin. It is Ok to Downvote. But we do not! vote ourselft with any kind of Service. Our last Post is absolutly legit growing and other People help us with a order for a higher Vote.
Newsteem looks like Oldsteem with other closes for me.
Thank you and have a nice day,
alucian
Yeah that's it, I think it's worth it, I've been pleading with some people who have SP lying around to play the Steem curation game, I think they'll fall in line, the chunk of the reward might make them to. You're doing well anyway thanks for championing newsteem
To be rewarded for who you are and what you have done instead of what you do is and will always be one of the issues with STEEM, in one way or another. We want high quality and we want people who puts in time and hard work. We want people to build their presence, their own brand and we want people to truly become influencers to some extent.
But, that is also the moment you're starting to be rewarded for who you are and what you have done, instead of what you are doing further on.
It would be fairly easy to post 2-4 times per day with rewards of 50-100 Steem(+SP) on each of the posts. That would boost confidence and it gives you tremendous motivation to grind. However, when you earn 5-10 Steem it's not easy to find that same level of motivation (at these low prices), which also makes it difficult to grind. Hence, less content being published.
I can easily say that my latest article is better than 50% of the content I've read during the last few hours, but the rewards doesn't seem to agree. Instead, I see the same authors earning 200-500% more rewards than me, just like it has always been. Regardless of the content they publish.
And here's the thing, I don't complain about my article being rewarded just above $5 at the moment I write this. In fact, I am satisfied, like I have always been. Earning $5 though, when you've spent an hour, two or three...
And you see others out there spending ~15 minutes only to get 500% more than you. Well, that doesn't really boost the confidence of any content creator. Especially not when you see that exact thing happen multiple times per day, 7 days per week.
Well, if it's any insight, I had a Steem account for two years before ever becoming active. I saw many posts about bid-bots and vote-selling, and so much underpaid good content, that I didn't want to waste my time on Steem thinking good content would go nowhere. Luckily for me HF21 happened not long after I threw my cares to the wind and started posting out of curiosity. I am glad to see more posts not about crypto or blockchain actually having some decent payouts.
There are some improvements, but we are seeing the same few people trending on a limited range of topics. Believe it or not crypto is a minority interest online. I see whales and orcas giving themselves a big self vote on each post when they are likely to make more on that post than most make in a week anyway. Let's get more votes to the musicians, artists, photographers and writers who have stuck with Steem for months or years whilst not making much. They belong to communities that could really benefit from this platform and word will spread fast if it can be seen as a worthwhile place to publish. It would help if Steemit would pick more diverse content to feature.
I won't be at Steemfest, but I hope these issues will be discussed there.
What do you think about promoters of newsteem voting with 70% of so only 15 people (including their own projects).
Especially when they are also witness and gaining a lot of steem for this?
Would be curious to know your thoughts about it.
@pharesim @curangel !
Steemians just look at the retaliation I am going to get now that I called them out !
Oh give centralization another chance? No thank you, we have Facebook, Twitter and YouTube already doing that. People need to think for themselves and not have YOU or ANYONE else here decide where flags should be placed.
It's a pity you won't even think of modifying your voting behaviour, especially when it comes as a building bridges kind of approach and not a burn relations one. Also, nothing on this post is centralized nor I'm asking to centralize anything. But thanks for voicing your opinion.
I already have modified it A LOT....but you guys still downvote. its all good cuz....im already a millionaire. play on. i manually curate so much its way more fair.
i'm not saying what your doing is wrong, im actually for about 85% of what you stand for here. as for me, i think your whole crew has taken it to a personal level that is dangerous for Steemit. I'm fine with it because its your right. I will be changing even more soon if this continues. My whole channel will change and you are gonna love it. I'm not going away and ill never think its wrong to vote my mom, friends who i brought here and invested, co-workers, ex-girlfriends, great content creators....this is who im gonna vote for and everyone here will vote the same way. I dont agree with upvote bots, shit content, posting more than 3 times a day, upvoting your own comments or delegating steem to a flagging bot like yours OR a curator bot. People need to think for thensevles, be independent, make their own decisions. This is what this platform is all about to me. I love steem and steemit just as much as you do pal....believe me. You and i have very fundamental differences on what deserves a flag. I LOVE ALL THE CONTENT I VOTE FOR>>>>ALL OF IT!!!! Can i be any more clear? I vote thousands of people a year who never voted once for me, i could care less i wanna see steem spread. I think my economic plan is better than yours and you think yours blows mine away. This type of debate has gone on since the beginning of mankind. Not one time have you EVER givin me a penny for a post or a comment or anything.....i however do not really like you BUT i do appreciate the time you spend on your comments and you blog and thats exactly the reason i vote for your stuff ANYWAY! So the question here is really who is a better Steemian? One who can vote something even though they dont like it but can still appreciate the authors view point or a group of people (OCDB & Cure) who all decide what gets downvoted. What if every single person i the group dosent agree? Do you know that a handful of your downvoters and delegates have contacted me on Discord to say they were sorry and didnt agree with everything you are doing? real talk man. So for now unless your group allows "circle jerking" for a small percentage of my steem power and the rest manually curating great content and new people....i guess the flag war will continue forever and the content i post here and the volume is about to radically change for me. I'm good with it....i kinda want to make videos only about this subject and the people involved, I think people here will watch it and i think i can get some heads spinning to see if you REALLY have the support you think you do. it could be fun and i got lots of good ideas for videos already. Come on man...its dumb....i have talked to others on the phone across the country who are with me as well. This will cause a massive mess here and it dosent need to be done. I'm reasonable but i do think what i am doing here is right and not harming steem. Again, I agree with what you originally set out to do, i could even make a delegation to a cause like yours but i personally think you have taken things way to far and there is not much more i can do about it unless i shift gears. My steem power is still here and its probably never getting powered down, i will be a player in the game here. For sure not the biggest player, but i'm not a non factor i will be able to make some of your delegates miserable....lets be honest.