Analysis Of Top 50 Posts In Terms Of Author Rewards For The Month Of March, 2018

I have come across many comments/posts/discussions on correcting the Trending page since most of the users who want to show their posts in this section now use voting bots to achieve this objective. The purpose of this analysis is to show a clear picture how this voting bot thing is affecting the reputation of Trending page and making almost impossible for a user to see his/her post in this section without the use of voting bots. This analysis doesn't not include my own personal opinion about the use of voting bots rather I will state all the facts and figures based on the data I extracted from Steem Database and a neutral/non-biased opinion to solve this dilemma.

Data Collection And SQL Query

All the data was extracted from Steem SQL Database (Paid subscription service held and managed by @arcange). The data was taken from March 1, 2018 to March 31, 2018. SQL query that was used to extract the data was

SELECT author, 
permlink, 
category, 
title, 
created, 
total_payout_value,
author_rewards
FROM comments
WHERE CONVERT(DATE,created) BETWEEN '2018-03-01' AND '2018-03-31' 
AND total_payout_value > 100

The main purpose was to get top posts in terms of author rewards in the month of March and to achieve this objective, I decided to extract only those posts whose author rewards were more than $100. Total 1586 posts came up after the query was executed and I selected top 1000 posts for this analysis.

General Analysis Of Top 50 Posts In Terms Of Author Rewards (Out Of Top 1000 Posts)

Total author rewards of top 1000 posts were $185,051.4 and $23,031.2 rewards were taken by the top 50 posts. It means that the top 50 posts received 12.45% share of total rewards when compared to top 1000 most rewarding posts for the month of March, 2018. Let's dive into some deep analysis and find how many posts were upvoted by voting bots (Analysis of Top 50 Posts)

Voting Bots Used On Top 50 Posts

Out of top 50 posts, 54% posts were upvoted by voting bots (By the Author himself/herself) whereas only 20% posts were able to come in the top 50 without using voting bots. 18% posts were also upvoted by voting bots but some other accounts actually used the bots to buy upvotes on those posts. 8% posts of the top 50 posts were actually of the voting bots themselves. So if we add 54% (Voting bots used by the author himself/herself) and 18% (Some other accounts used bots to buy upvotes), it makes 72%. In short, out of every 100 top posts in terms of author rewards, 72 posts are being upvoted by voting bots. Detailed facts and figures can be found in the table below.

To 50 Posts In Terms Of Author Rewards

Author	Category	Title	Author Rewards	Bot Used
@hitwill	travel	Pretty girls and fast cars in Melbourne's Formula 1	800.643	Yes
@busy.org	busy	Busy v2.4 Release: New features that will make you love Busy.org	726.814	No
@noisy	steemprojects	[ANN] Introducing SteemProjects.com - information about all Steem projects in one place!	710.28	No
@aggroed	art	Steem Visions: An Artist Discussion and Online Exhibit hosted with @stellabelle and @juliakponsford (Boston Meetup Saturday)	689.398	Yes
@jonny-clearwater	steemit	Hots or Shots Episode 4 with guest @richardcrill	676.112	Yes
@sweetsssj	dlive	Travel with me #105 : The ATV tour of Cappadocia!	664.873	No
@heimindanger	dtube	D.Tube 0.7: Welcome to the HD	562.188	No
@dineroconopcion	steemit	What Deserves To Be On Trending? What Is Trash and What Is Not?	555.133	Yes
@hitwill	blockchain	The blockchain revolution and the end of trust	549.306	Yes
@steem-plus	steemdev	SteemPlus 2.5 : Integration of Steemit More Info features	548.751	Yes (@devfund used voting bots for this post)
@steemnews.online	steem	STEEMNews.Online: Decentralized News Platform Powered by STEEM	534.75	Yes (Voting bots used by @trail)
@aggroed	music	Sounds of Steem Volume 2- A digitally hosted live music concert streaming on MSP-Waves this Saturday! (1100 AM EST // 1600 UTC)	520.526	Yes
@transisto	abuse	Open letter to @Ranchorelaxo and @Haejin.	518.98	Yes
@chbartist	spanish	Construyendo el Camino al Éxito - Capítulo 2.	490.495	Yes
@smartsteem	steem	Smartsteem.com - Empowering Quality Content	485.179	N/A (Itself a voting bot)
@upmewhale	steemit	Best Author Reward Project For steemians!	481.4	N/A (Itself a voting bot)
@utopian-io	utopian-io	Major Utopian.io Update - Wallet, Contribution Quality Scoring and More	478.812	Yes (@devfund used voting bots for this post)
@chbartist	success	Building the road to success - Chapter 1	473.867	Yes
@steem-bounty	bounty	How to create a bounty	468.719	Yes
@dineroconopcion	cryptocurrency	Staking & Masternodes And How To Participate In APR Private Sale! 300 APR Coins Giveaway! 😎💰	461.923	Yes
@hitwill	travel	Eating beetles and bugs in Chiang Mai, Oh My!	459.821	Yes
@berniesanders	steem	@dmania is BAD FOR STEEM - rewarding plagiarizers and thieves!	450.892	Yes (Voting bot used by @ngc)
@teamsteem	dlive	Sneak Peek Of Tomorrow's Montreal Meetup!	443.905	No
@abrockman	steem	SteemSummer Tickets Now Available for May 25 to 27 in Palm Beach, Florida!	436.732	Yes (Voting bots used by @budgets)
@yallapapi	blog	How To Stop Being Such A Loser	435.598	Yes
@smartsteem	steem	@smartsteem - the smartest bid-bot available	423.724	N/A (Itself a voting bot)
@haejin	haejin	Response to @transisto's Open Letter	416.344	Yes
@dineroconopcion	cyrptocurrency	The ABYSS | Next Generation Digital Distribution Platform	413.702	Yes
@jerrybanfield	busy	Tips to Survive the Steem Dip!	412.689	Yes
@suzi3d	life	Eye Candy and Being Julian Assange	401.546	Yes(Voting bot used by @promofund)
@adsactly	adsactly	ADSactly on ADSACTLY - Part #43 - XP Coin Club	399.305	No
@anoniam	steemleagues	Introducing Steem Leagues | Earn Steem By Participitating In Steem Based Cricket Leagues | Bidding Team Is Now Only 5 SBD	388.214	Yes
@yuriks2000	steemit	Community funded Mobile App is in Beta - You can test it NOW	385.344	Yes (Voting bots used by @devfund)
@sykochica	steem-help	? Answering Common Questions: What is the Steem Experience?	374.948	Yes (Voting bots used by @richardcrill)
@chbartist	philosophy	To achieve anything we must believe in ourselves	374.46	Yes
@chbartist	life	Building the road to success - Chapter 3	374.354	Yes
@cicbar	cryptocurrency	Crypto purification	372.069	Yes
@chbartist	life	Building the Road to Success Chapter 4	370.926	Yes
@yallapapi	steemit	Introducing #SharkSchool - How To Take Over The Trending Page By Being A Bloodthirsty Savage	369.95	Yes
@adsactly	travel	ADSactly Travels - Driving Through Europe (part #4)	365.662	No
@upmewhale	website	Official Website Updates Of @Upmewhale	365.01	N/A (Itself a voting bot)
@timoshey	writing	Say Hello To DBooks: A Book Publishing Platform On STEEM - Publish Your Books And Earn.	363.68	Yes
@ddangerwu	bitcoin	The "Keys" in Bitcoin that Everything Depends on + Insightful Comments get YOU 100SP~	363.086	Yes
@slowwalker	history	Small Earthen Statues in the Museum and It’s Meaning	362.468	No
@chronocrypto	ai	What happened last week full of crypto and AI knowledge Dropping on you right now.	356.275	Yes
@adsactly	fun	ADSactly Fun - Oh Brother	355.964	No
@chbartist	life	Achieving Balance	355.502	Yes
@aggroed	witness	Steem Witness Forum: @andrarchy, @roelandp, @clayop, @aggroed, @klye, @lukestokes, @drakos	350.344	Yes (Voting bots used by @tendershepard)
@adsactly	charity	ADSactly Initiatives - Underprivileged Children Access Education - Monthly Fundraiser Post	346.526	No
@chbartist	photography	Choosing your battles	344.008	Yes

@chbartist is on top when it comes to using upvoting bots on his posts. A total of $2783.61 author rewards were taken by him on his 7 posts and @hitwill is at number two with total author rewards of $1809.77 with using voting bots.

Conclusion

When I joined Steemit in June, 2017, most of the posts in the Trending section used to come organically, means without using any voting bots. But since most of the people here have adopted to some corporate strategies, that is maximizing their ROI, more and more upvoting bots are emerging on this platform which is making almost impossible for a post to come on the Trending section organically (Without using any voting bot). The more SBD's/Steem you have in your wallet, the more author rewards you will gain with the help of voting bots. I am not sharing my personal opinion about the usage of voting bots since it's up to the users, how they want to use this platform but my neutral opinion regarding this situation is that this abuse of using voting bots is affecting this community and Steemit Inc has to come up with some rules/regulations to regulate the usage of voting bots!

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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