@Iamthegray—I can't speak for everyone in the third group (I might just be permanently camped here), but I do not endorse what the first group does (let alone go begging for scraps), nor do I believe the second group "only strives to vote for good content only," unless you include in that flagging/downvoting what they consider to be trash/overvalued, while upvoting and receiving upvotes from their own people to keep the flagging/downvoting going.

Both sides are pulling rewards out of the pool, and while one may or may not be significantly larger than the other, the fact of the matter is, they're both benefiting from it. There's a pretty big principle being destroyed here, all for the sake of winning.

I've been here for just over two weeks. I don't know what the answer is. I don't even know if I fully understand the question. I do understand there's no rules governing self-upvotes or bots, so I'm not sure what people expect others to do? Live by some arbitrary code of conduct you like because you have the power and the will to enforce it?

Sounds like thuggery to me.

Believe me, I don't believe anything here is really worth anywhere near what some of it gets paid, but I also believe the market, when left to its own, will determine value. That's suppose to be an underlying tenet of Steemit, but it's being violated over and over and over again by those who would manipulate it for their own ends and by those who would defend it.

But I'm in the third group, and I'm also a Plankton, so what do I know?

At this point in time, I'm glad Steemit isn't that well known yet. We need to seriously get our act together first, and however that shakes out needs to happen calmly, maturely, and in a way that is fair to all.

Yeah, right. Good luck with that.

But maybe the defining moment for the Steemit community will be the way this actually gets handled, by us, rather than some hard fork solution, or someone else taking the power for themselves. If it doesn't, if the community doesn't ultimately come together to solve this, how's it going to resolve any other tests that come to bear, and how in the world is it going to do it with Steem "to the moon" and all the hundreds of thousands if not millions of new Steemit users that faster account approval is supposed to bring?

I just want to write. I just want to earn something for it. I just want to help others trying to do the same, because it's not happening anywhere else.

There's a lot of good people here, and many of them are found in all three groups. I have to believe that everyone can come together here not just for the greater good, but with a solution that will ultimately benefit everyone. A rising tide lifts all boats. A tsunami wipes them all out. Let the tide rise, and stop courting the tsunami.