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!
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors
Hi @ghulammujtaba, I have approved your contribution. I honestly wouldn't have been surprised if the number of posts with bot help were even higher. I guess you filtered the voter list by the most common bid bots from steembottracker?
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Thanks, @crokkon
Exactly, out of 1000 posts, I checked and analysed 50 of them, I guess I should increase the sample size, like up to 10%
Yup, in most of the cases, it was easy, I just went to the specific post and checked if the post was upvoted by a bot or not. But the posts where it's said no to upvotes, I actually double checked by going through authors transfers for the whole week, just to make sure that they didn't transfer any SBDs/Steem to any upvote.
Thank you for the analysis. It is useful.
It does include your editorial opinion about the use of voting bots...
Maintaining analytical objectivity is always a challenge and I admire the effort. What you are doing here is not limited to analysis and presentation though. By your own statement it is substantiation of an argument for a position.
It should not be presented as purely objective. Or alternatively the opinion can be carefully removed. For example, damage could be replaced with a more neutral term such as impact.
I agree and changed!
Thanks for this thoughtful comment, it will definitely help me in the future.
Hey @ghulammujtaba! Thank you for the great work you've done!
We're already looking forward to your next contribution!
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