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Aww, I guess I'll just have to buy another vote. On a side note you are the very first person to engage this post. You seem to have read all the way to the bottom and still couldn't manage a comment about the necessity of solutions for on-boarding. I spent sixteen whole dollars on votes and somehow managed to get nearly $50 in votes, $15 of which seemed to have been from engagement but I couldn't be sure since the only person who commented was you. Do you think my post would have gotten $15 of engagement with out bid-bots? I can answer that question for you by pointing to my last several posts. The answer is no. Thank you for valuing several hours of coding at the benefit to the network and over 1700 words trying to explain why I'm doing this at negative $8. No wonder people run from Steem faster than you can shake a downvote at them. It obvious that account creation isn't the only problem here, but it seems to be the only problem I can offer a solution for.

I saw smooth DV'd and was not going to because I felt you would respond better, but when I saw your comment of "ill just buy another vote" I felt the need to null that. You would be much better off setting 50% of your post beneficiary to null, then I don't think anyone would DV you. Advertising should not be free, and DVs will keep free advertising in check. FWIW I would have possibly given a 15$ upvote to you had I not seen paid stacked votes.

@theycallmedan Are these being sent to null?

https://steemit.com/threespeak/@threespeak/3speak-s-steem-burn-initiative-newsteem

https://steemit.com/buildteam/@buildteam/servicios-de-los-estados-de-buildteam-ahora-son-publicos

https://steemit.com/cannabis/@canna-collective/project-update-5-crazy-hardforks-new-steem-delays-and-updates

https://steemit.com/hardbork/@aggroed/low-cost-infrastructure-to-support-keychain-splinterlands-steem-engine-and-future-apps-compact-broadcast-node

I see your vote on a few of the above that also stacked votes to promote something. It seems unfair to lecture and downvote a small account for doing the same thing many of the above are also doing, who you upvoted.

Downvotes are important, but so is consistency.

We addressed the threespeak one, those were not paid votes but organic votes. But I would like to burn those funds and I will confirm with my team if they agree.
The aggroed post I will be honest, I caught it right when it popped up, read through it and realized how important it was (or at least I thought it was) and voted. I saw later he used stacked votes, and I saw smooth had countered him and I liked the way he responded to smooth. I have thought about removing my vote but I decided that I would just not vote his future post if he feels the need to stack bid bot votes without burning any Steem to counter the ROI.
I think the best approach I can take is to DV to reverse the damage to PoB and send liquid funds back to people I feel add value to Steem but wanted their post seen. I will only do this once however if people continue to feel the need to stack paid votes that dominate any chance of organic curation to thrive, I will use my stake accordingly.

Yes, thank you and I should have edited my comment here as I included the 3speak post. As I said elsewhere, that was sloppy work on my part as those votes were not paid for and I should have looked more closely before including it.

I believe in proof of brain and but also feel we should have ways for people who are not well known to have their projects seen. I hope that we have better tools in place soon to help with that in a way that is also good for the ecosystem, like integration of the “promoted” tab to trending. Until then we will have to work towards finding a balance and I appreciate you playing an active role in that.

I believe in proof of brain and but also feel we should have ways for people who are not well known to have their projects seen

These can't coexist if the solution the latter is rampant buying votes. It doesn't really matter if the person doing it is a small account or a large account, the issue is more about who is selling the votes, and those are predominantly large accounts anyway.

Yes, other ways of getting content out there may help but people also have to accept that sometimes their content may not be found or recognized, and everyone considering their own content so important or valuable that it needs to be promoted at the expense of destroying proof of brain is not the answer.

Plenty of great stuff gets posted to obscure corners of youtube, reddit, twitter or every other social platform every day that is largely lost in the noise. That is the just the nature of it. These systems still work because a lot of good content is visible, but not because all of it is, that is impossible.

Thanks for sending some steem my way. You’ve supported my project in the past as well. Believe it or not you and your media are one of the reasons I’m here. Do I put my foot in my mouth? Sure do. But sometimes you also have to stand your ground. I did not excessively use bid bots for this post initially. And the additional 23 steem for the 3rd vote was barely topped it to $20. $20 sure buys a lot of attention and animosity it seems.

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^^ once you understand this reply, you've passed the onboarding phase.

At least you are consistent in downvotes for paid up votes unlike @smooth who gave @booster a 10% upvote on a post with over $140 of rewards with several stacked votes. I want visibility. I want to be compensated for my work. You are barking up one of the only trees that has continually worked on Steem with a personal loss and I'm slowly gaining some sense and understanding that this is nothing but a massive circle jerk and may be taking my talents elsewhere. Carry on smartly or watch your investment here topple further down the coinmarketcap list. This represents more than double the code changes presented by @inertia for the SPS and so far the only consensus I can see is my work here is to be taunted and devalued. This isn't free advertising, as I've said I can't make money with the system I'm designing here. It is straight up needed. You know what else isn't free? Labor.

I rather send you donations for your work or even paid to promote your contribution to the top of trending using a declined payout. I don't mind doing these things. It's a slippery slope when everyone feels their work should be seen but no one wants to actually pay money to get it up there. Getting ROI on stacked paid votes is just bad for PoB and Steem. I hope you understand this is not personal, and I would gladly help fund initiatives that help Steem, but in a healthy way.

@theycallmedan you are seriously hurting steem and you are holding the trending page HOSTAGE. LEAVE DISREGARDFIAT ALONE dude.

i could bring up SO many cases where you have upvoted people using bid bots

Dont make me expose you on twitter. You ONLY upvote your tiny circlejerk of friends. Me and disregard have actually struggled for steem, while you sit on your Bitcoin perch

:D come on man your beinga dick,

. Youre supposed to be the good guy

You mean like I did with this post which I knew would always be shown on the proposals page of the front-ends? It got about 30 cents worth of visibility/votes by the way. It's a simple fact the only way to get noticed around here is to use bid bots... at least until you've established a following. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Fair enough. I believe this raises an issue we can solve as a community. A way to get a post that people feel bring value to Steem, get them in front of eyeballs that would be willing to give upvotes.
I can see the chicken and the egg here. You want exposure for a post you feel is quality and I want to upvote post that is quality. I know not everyone has funds to pay for promotion (burn post funds) But, I do not believe free ROI on paid votes is the answer. This will take a community effort to come up with solutions that are healthy to Steem.

Why dont you just remove the downvote then? Do you realize how much work hes done for steem ?

Do you think my post would have gotten $15 of engagement with out bid-bots? I can answer that question for you by pointing to my last several posts. The answer is no

In that case, unfortunately, the community of Steem stakeholders don't value your work for much.

I'm not endosing that view, but it is what it is.

On the matter of onboarding, I think we have to address retention more than onboarding. 50c/user is a reasonable cost for a blockchain-based solution which has more to offer than a cheap(er) pure web site. The problem is that very few users who get signed up on here actually stick with it so even 50c is just a waste of money in bulk. Fix the former and 50c becomes a reasonable and generally tiny portion of overall customer acquisition costs.

Hah, your bidbotting succeeded in getting some actual engagement by virtue of me showing up to downvote against the paid votes. Irony.

Don't mean to step in-between a convo but without dev's like @disregardfiat we might as well just pack up. Steem NEEDS more DEVS not less. The more people working on the blockchain the more value it has. Just my 2 cents.

I agree wholeheartedly, @steemitqa. This whole exchange is why I'm thinking seriously about ditching Steem as well. I've hung in for more than two years and watched this whole experiment circle the drain. I hoped @elipowell could make a difference, but I think the damage is done. My business partner and I are invested heavily in a real-world business based on the blockchain. We need credibility in the "real world" and something interesting to show potential investors. Right now, I'm not finding anything remotely inviting on the Steem blockchain. Instead, I find a consortium of messes like this one, which give Steem anything but credibility.

I'm not disagreeing with your perspective but this whole exchange could have been avoided by not buying a lot of votes on an unremarkable post with narrow interest, when we have just gone through months of both social and technical effort to try to revive organic curation, and then when the misstep was pointed out, responding by buying more votes.

There may are no doubt some painful adjustments going on in terms of the structure and culture behind voting and vote selling, but that does not mean devs and dev's contributions aren't good.

Thanks for the response @smooth I just hope we find some middle ground to let people get their work scene without to much drama.

There may are no doubt some painful adjustments going on in terms of the structure and culture behind voting and vote selling, but that does not mean devs and dev's contributions aren't good.

I get it. All growing pains.

Bidding $16 on a post should barely put it in to trending. If on boarding is a narrow interest than I really am in the wrong place / circle jerk. Seems the only thing you want is less bid bots... not a smart contract platform, not an alternative to app stores, not an alternative to DNS, not a VR creation and sharing platform, not AR point of sales systems, not honest gaming, and not little accounts with people as stubborn as you.

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not a smart contract platform, not an alternative to app stores, not an alternative to DNS, not a VR creation and sharing platform, not AR point of sales systems, not honest gaming

All that other stuff is great. Just stop buying votes regularly and all will be well. Or more to the point buy if you want, but if other people disagree and downvote, don't start a war over it. We're all entitled to upvote and downvote as we see fit.

Yes, my view is that vote selling, bidbots, etc. have been and to a lesser extent continue to be a major problem. They're not the only thing that matters, but other things mattering don't suddenly make them not a problem either.

Please contribute to the positive without contributing to the negative. It's really not that hard.

All that other stuff exists in some form... or is being actively worked on. I really have been dev’n a storm over here and the only people who notice are off platform. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Damn glad I bought some engagement. Wanna vote on my steem dao proposal so I can use the “correct” inflation source we strived so hard for? It’s never been my intent to mine the PoB which is probably why you don’t know who I am.

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That is an exceptionally accurate take on Steem stakeholders. My work here has landed me in consultancies with the IEEE for autonomous systems and we're about to release an app with a top ten university on Steem. But not a single person has attempted to use the VR tool set @dlux-io released before Decentraland release their community toolset. The stakeholders here are sitting on a goldmine and they can't collectively curate their way out of a paper bag. Blind down votes are part of the problem, attention has value. Too bad this is our first interaction instead of any of my other work.