Steemvoter News: Paid Services, New Features, Steemvoter Guild, Anonymous Attacker (Part 1)
Paid Services
We have quite a bit of news to disseminate this time, a lot has happened in the past few days. 2017 is definitely going to start off with many new aspects to Steemvoter.com.
The biggest change will be regarding the offering of paid premium services which commence on the 15th of January 2017, where users can opt to upgrade to 500 rules for only 3 SBD per 30 day cycle, instead of the current model which allocates the number of rules based on the size of your Steem Power holdings and requires users to give us permission to take a daily vote on our content for payment.
We will also be adding trails, which is a follow-my-leader style voting option where you can mimic the votes of other Steem accounts, we would like to provide the option to exclude comments from the trails so you only vote on the main posts.
Users who pay for the premium services will be removed from the daily payment post roster and your vote will no longer be used by us in that regard. We ask then that the community respects the wishes of the remaining accounts using the free services and to kindly not interrupt our payment model, thereby censoring the choice of our users to receive our services with their vote.
Larger accounts that already qualify for the maximum rules can also use the paid option purely to remove themselves from the daily payment post should they prefer, or they are welcome to remain on the daily payment post model instead if such users feel they would prefer to contribute more that way and also increase our posts' visibility in the process.
3 SBD will give you 30 days worth of services and may take 24 hours to activate, we will send out a notification 7 days before the end of the active service period as a reminder to top-up your services. If you prefer, you can also pay several months up-front for convenience and to hedge against any price increases, no increases are foreseen at this point, but depending on the adoption of the paid model and the viability of the balance of the free user payment posts in the face of future attacks we might have to revise pricing.
We urge users who wish to pay upfront, to please pay in multiples of 3 SBD, for example, 9 SBD if you want 3 months of premium features.
New Features
You may have noticed that the rules page has been enhanced, firstly by being expanded to a larger, more comfortable viewing size and secondly, an "Active Rule" checkbox has been added to allow users to temporarily suspend voting for certain authors without having to delete them entirely.
An "Edit" feature has also been added to allow you to change the "Vote Power" and "Vote Delay" values.
Also in case you didn't already know, the list of rules list is sortable by "Account Name" , "Author", "Active Rule", "Vote Power" and "Vote Delay", simply by clicking on the respective column name by which you wish to sort.
This has become a rather lengthy post, so Part 2 will be posted tomorrow with details of the upcoming Steemvoter curation guild and details about the "Anonymous" attacker.
Steemvoter is a public curation bot with an easy to use interface, it truly is a bot for the people, making automatic curation on Steemit easy with just a few clicks.
This is a payment post! Thank you for allowing us to use your accounts to upvote this post! Anyone not signed up for SteemVoter.com is welcome to do so or just vote this post to help the project.
You hopefully realize that
Anyway, I appreciate you taking the steps towards a premium paid model.
With respect, over 1000 votes says that the majority of the active community has given authority to vote on these posts with a portion of their entitled votes. It is disingenuous for a minority of whales who pre-mined themselves to a position with more weight to override the wishes of these not so privileged users (who actually outweigh in terms of sheer numbers if the fair one-man-one-vote approach was used), users who wish to direct their vote to give them value on the platform in the form of a free service, maybe they don't find value in some of the other content or don't like to read and this is value for them in a different way which they would like to use their vote towards and not to have it negated and that value taken away in future because of constant downvoting from a few, especially since a downvote has more weight than an upvote.
Why the hostility?
well, with you having control over >800 posting keys, It doesn't mean that the actual owners of the account agree with what you do. They merely let you do so.
If you are referring to my account, then I need to tell you that your assumptions are incorrect. This account never mined nor witnessed a single block. All the stake in this account has been bought through BTC (arguable very early) or earned through posts (also in the early days)
Steem doesn't work that way.
Where did you get that?
All in all, I am pretty disappointed you don't even care to understand the issues people are having with your business model. I haven't yet managed to have an actual discussion here but attacks. You lay out things as facts that haven't happened. Also, it should be in your best interest to resolve conflicts and not continue with things that you have seen result in disagreements. There are many ways to actually resolve this into a win-win.
No hostility, we are just pointing out that our customers all willingly upvote our payment posts to receive the service, they are welcome to cancel their service if they choose to if they feel so strongly about the rewards model, but since the last downvote we have actually had more signups than cancellations.
We were in no way referring to your account as being pre-mined, yours was mostly grown by post rewards and BTC purchases as you say which is great. We have no issue with people earning on Steem and actually are happy when we see high paying posts because that shows the outside world the potential of Steem. Your 46K post for Piston was a historically cheered event, it was awesome and inspiring as to what would be possible and maybe why some of the other developers are here today.
We have made peace with @clayop in chat but that is the account we were referring to, in addition to the threats of calling in the Korean community to back him up, which he eventually did with the advent of @abit and @adm downvoting thereafter, that was just gang stuff, I mean why call in other people to nuke a post, that's not showing your intent is only to re-distribute rewards, there is some additional fervour there, which is the danger of flagging.
If you really think about it, there are a handful of accounts flagging, some are anonymous and the impact is only from three whales, two of which are witnesses (and I think a secondary account of one of them), if one is worried about the voice of the people the we should look to the numbers who want to vote for the service (1000+ accounts) and who haven't pulled their votes vs the 15 who want to downvote, that is true democracy taking into consideration the wishes of crowd and not 15 accounts pretending to be the crowd simply because they rally behind a few whale accounts that have a large weight of voting power from a pre-mine.
You were very diplomatic and sorted out the issue with us in chat as well and pulled your downvote, this rant was not aimed at you but rather at the situation.
We will shortly be releasing the comment attack post and you will have more insight as to why we are not very impressed with what transpired.
It saddens me to hear people who are politely questioning a reward system, getting called an "attack". I can only speak for myself, but, I politely pointed out why I thought your daily posts were overpaid and I flagged them, to decrease the value by 4 cents, and to bring awareness to the issue. The transparent nature of our decentralized platform allows people to see how businesses on our platform are functioning.
If I understand your service correctly, people use your service to perform auto curation. Although I am not a fan of this, I know it won't stop.
You also crowd funded this account asking the community to purchase this business application for you. Now you make daily posts and use the votes of the community to pay yourself.
At this price the value of the posts are not that much, but the whole community pays out of the reward pool to fund your business with the votes. EVERY day. There were others who voted on his posts that did not sign up for the service. I don't believe he did ANYTHING wrong or stole keys, I think, someone who has a voting trail, voted on the post, and so those who do not use the service to vote, ended up on the trail, thus voting.
I am not at all jealous of your success, I would like the people who use your service to find a different way to pay you without utilizing the already small reward pool each day.
Again, I want to be very clear: I don't think they used anyone's vote with out permission.
I wish you success in the future, and I am sorry you see me posting my opinion and the stats as to who is viewing your posts as an attack. I saw it as educating the community. Happy New Year.
https://steemit.com/steemvoter/@thecryptodrive/steemvoter-com-business-rescue-crowdfund
Thanks guys for all your hard work on this project.
Hopefully 2017 will be a positive year for us all !!
Thanks! We hope so too :)
It seems that there is no TOS agreement check page about auto-upvoting for steemvoter's daily posts. It is only shown in FAQ page, but no formal agreement check is provided in the process.
You better stop your service because people lost all the respect they had for this program.
Illegal Money hunting
Abusing Votes
spamming Comments
and this 🤔
and stop commenting with your own acc on your own post 😂
Love , Peace and Chicken grease
~Anonymous
@miqdad account only Rep27 , need 5 accounts to down vote him?
What a shame @margodard!!! cmon
I don't know what you are talking about? You complaining that I down-voted this?? lol
@marcgodard
That's the Facts !!!
Doesn't bother me.
You guys must use the Guild in proper manner to gain my Respect and Trust.
The Men that Run the Guild are Good Fellow Men.
That's all I can say.
That wasn't a guild vote, that was one vote from marc using our company account.
I will continue using your service. It is worthful for me. Thanks a lot.
Glad we can serve :)
I am sad to see your posts being attacked, you deserve the rewards, but I guess those who don't use your service, and competitors don't like your success. At least you will have the guild and be able to use your amazing upvotes to support great authors. And voting trails sounds like something I will enjoy promoting my followers to follow my trail with your service.
People need to realise that this is an upvote downvote system.. A flag is not an attack, it's a downvote. The $90 cost of a steemvoter post isn't charged to the users of that service is charged to the community instead.
The users should be paying. I haven't flagged this post as I can see that they are moving in that direction with the "premium service" charge. That does not mean I won't downvote tomorrows post. We are gradually learning that this an unsustainable model.
If the pool is constantly funding projects that only a small group of the community benefit from, then anybody who doesn't benefit from the service can downvote the "funding posts" and this leads to the service not being funded. If they weren't downvoted due to the stigma arising from this false claim of
"attack" then eventually with more and more of these services seeking funding from the reward pool there would be no authors left to make use of the services.
The users need to be the ones paying for the service. Charges for premium services only will not be enough. Those who have downvoted this post are not attacking anybody. It is far more violent to shame somebody for how they vote.
Agreed.
In this case, downvoting is a strong disagreement on rewards, not an attack to the service. (Trolls also downvote but they do regardless of the level of reward)
Indirectly it is, because lower rewards means an unsustainable business model which will have to cost the users more in the long run or closes down the business, it's like a business receives money from customers and puts the money in the till, but before the end-of-day cashup, a bigger customer comes in and takes half of the cash away from the business. A lot of people don't agree with downvoting @gandlaf (@gtg) included; why not just upvote other stuff and shift the rewards to what you do like, instead of a direct "kick-in-the teeth" disagreement?
If Steem is ever to be mainstream friendly, the downvote method needs to be reviewed, ordinary users won't have a good feeling being on the platform, heck I've been here since April and I'm starting to get a bad feeling.
If you convince "investors"(who pays for your business) that your business creates more value than the rewards you obtain, no one downvotes. Before you insist a high reward that compensates your costs, I think you can optimize your business (that will your service more competitive), and make consensus with the community.
And I think downvoting is a stronger-level disagreement. People might just not vote for steemvoters posts and voted for other posts they like and that only decreased very small fraction of steemvoters reward. You missed this stage already, and I would like to recommend you not to miss the current stage again.
if business cannot convince people to pay for service directly, then in most cases business like this just do not bring much value to those users... or is not maintainable in the long run.
the authors who get votes from the steemvoter service is not a small group, it's a very large group, the last time steemvoter went offline for a few days the authors felt the pain more than the voters
Not all Authors did poorly, some authors did better, the entire reward pool was distributed anyway. It was just directed where the votes went, without the tool. If the business dies a new economy with new winners and losers takes over. Like any economy. Steemvoter does not create money, it just gives people a way to ensure they are "managing the rewards pool". Those who are auto-voting would be less likely to see new and interesting Authors, or improving work. It is just a way to say these are the people I want to vote for. sight unseen.
when whales are the only ones with bots, then steemit becomes less decentralized, I remember how it was before steemvoter, and it was not good for the average user who is not willing to suck up to whales, and beg for votes in private steemit chat channells
replying to the wrong comment, because we were out of space. I am happy the service works for you. You have heard the debate, and you feel you should continue using his service, there will soon be many, who will provide the same bot service without a fee. Anyway, the community can and should hear the issue discussed.
Everyone can still have bots. Several people have posted how to download and make your own bot. The whale votes are still going to a select few. Look at the trending page, it is slightly different than a couple of days ago, but the reward pool is not.
:) :) Agreed, it is not fair for the average user not to have a bot service and only whales allowed to have it.
The trending page will not look fair until there are curation guilds like the steemvoter guild being represented on the trending page. Without steemvoter my steempower becomes worthless, and would be better off powered down and converted to bitcoin. Making my own bot is work, and I don't work, I have fun with applications like steemvoter
Thanks for your positive perspective on our service, much appreciated.
The only bot service that can even come close to steemvoter would be a service built into the steemit web site. Steemvoter is way ahead of all other services in terms of development, and is pushing forward at a very fast pace, there is no and will be no competition to steemvoter, that is for sure
Lol. Xeroc's streemian service does not continuously charge the reward pool nor does @fyrstikkens open source auto vote bot. There is plenty of competition which does not cost the steemit community.
We have so many features planned and @marcgodard develops fast when he is not busy with his company's ICO. http://ico.equibit.org if anyone is interested. I @thecryptodrive have a bit of an idea generation disease whereby I can't stop thinking of new ways to do things so I have a huge list of improvements for the service for Marc to implement. The negative arguements however are making it difficult to focus and keep dreaming of cool stuff.
Thank you so much @craig-grant for being such a loyal and supportive customer and helping us stay motivated to innovate and provide a good service to the Steem public.
When you start doing the guild, if it earns me decent rewards I would be willing top give 10 votes per day to support 10 different authors, something to think about for the future features of the guild
I agree, it was very sad to see the attacks.
I feel like it was misunderstanding but I am unsure, it could well have just been New Years drunkenness. It sure looked that way to me..
I noticed the whiners didn't flag their own post for having more votes than views :)
We still don't know what "the attack" actually was all about. Looking forward to reading more about it.
Yeah, I get that... Was sad to see "attacks" anyway :)
I wasn't attempting to choose sides, but from what I have seen streemian trails appear to be in the headlights as well.
Steem On !
How so?
@majes:
Yhea, but that has nothing to do with streemian.com. We haven't used any of our customers voting power for anything else then what THEY have specifically setup (e.g. curation trail, scheduled posting, etc..).
If a client picked a curator and allows downvotes, and that curator chooses to downvote, Streemian merely executes the wishes of the trailers ..
There were loads of flags on post for having more votes than views, at least that was the reason given.
Great news, for an awesome service mate!.Thankyou
Thanks, our goal is to serve the community :)
I think this is a very healthy discussion and like a growth pain .
from one side voting bot drive steemit toward centralization witch will for sure harm the community in long run and discourage new people to enter steemit .
on the other side many people benefit from vetoing bot and using it wisely but it is for short time small gain but what you think will happened after a year , ( voting bot control most rewards ) , voting without reading the blog ?
What the fuck..
https://steemd.com/@fabledwisdom
Only ever used steemvoter with this one account, I've changed my keys and won't be using this service again.
That's most likely because the account only has 23 SP and you may not have noticed the company communication on our blogs nor logged into the site to see the changes, in an effort to create demand for Steem and SP, we amended the rules so an account's SP determines how many rules it can utilise, so the only vote that account did was for Steemvoter because it doesn't have enough SP to qualify for rules.
So this account was not using your service, so you didn't care to actually notify this user in a proper way, because you could still use his key.
Any change of Terms of Service should require acceptance from user. This is perfect reason to downvote all your posts until you will not notify and get acceptance of all users from whom you are using the keys
I'm confused, I went to the steemdb link and don't see anything that sticks out as strange? Please elaborate.
I think they are referring to the fact the their account has been only voting for steemvoter posts. They just need to login to their account on steemvoter and set-up rules and/or up-pause their account. Looks like they haven't logged in in a very long time.