ARE YOU FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT FOR THE COMMUNITY?
Most people do not even know what I'm even talking about with this post, but if you're reading this, you either want to know or already do. In either case, welcome aboard. What I am about to reveal to all of you is something that every Steemian should be in the know about and participate in supporting. It was brought to my attention by my friend @davemccoy that the very integrity of the Steemit platform as well as the growth of our new and semi-new users are at risk due to some lackluster activities. This in my opinion is something that should become everyone's concern. Through this conversation with Dave, I was also introduced to an initiative being used to support the battle against reward pool abuse. This initiative, called @friendsofgondor, is a way for us smaller members to do our part in a battle far too big for our britches. A way for us all to contribute to the large scale success of EVERYONE on this platform. A way for us to do our part.......
So what exactly is going on? What is this
I'm sure this is just about everyone's initial thought and question, so I'll be bringing forth everything I can in order to answer that. Firstly, everyone on here needs to understand how the Steemit platform works behind the scenes. You need to understand what the reward pool is. You need to understand how it is being taken advantage of and selfishly drained. You need to understand how that effects you and why you should care. Then you need to know how you, even as a minnow or plankton, can do your part to provide support in the battle to stop it from happening. Consider this post a form of recruitment, ready to enlist those Steemians who are ready and willing to fight for the betterment of this platform. Consider it a way to educate the community to what is happening and what is about to go down. If you are ready, then read on!
WHAT IS THE REWARDS POOL?
Steemit users are rewarded for their content, something each and every one of you already know. But, those rewards come from somewhere, they just aren't conjured up on a dream. These rewards originate from a pool of SBD, which is a very large amount of SBD, in place by the platform to properly reward each user for their content. This is the bread and butter of a great deal of users who have invested deeply into the platform. This is the beating heart of the Steemit platform itself. This is something VERY important to each and every one of us.
HOW IS THE REWARD POOL BEING ABUSED?
Being the pool is a place where everyone's future is contained, it is important to not allow individuals to steal or unfairly obtain from it. Unfortunately, not everyone feels that other members matter, and go at it solely out of greed and purposely drain this pool for their own one sided benefit. This, is called reward pool abuse or "reward pool rape". These individuals take what should be in place for us smaller members and abuse the system. Though not "illegal", it is morally wrong and will ultimately bleed the entire platform dry, making Steemit no more, if more people continue to join on reward pool abuse in substantial numbers. Sad as it may be, this is something done by some whales, which come on guys, are well off enough that they should know better.....seriously....
The reward pool is drained by larger members who upvote their own posts, giving substantial curation and authoring rewards. Their upvotes all come from the reward pool, the same place our votes come from, meaning less rewards for the members who need it and deserve it. These same members also use bots, alternate accounts and other means of securing numerous large scale votes, draining the pool even more. What does this mean? The reward pool gets smaller and smaller and these greedy individuals get larger and larger. Not quite right, is it? This means each and every one of us, get the short end of the stick.
With the reward pool draining, that means less rewards available for everyone. That means you, that means me and that means every single member on here posting quality work and content. Imagine, if the rewards pool had not been suckled off of by the people that abuse it, how much more there would be to go around. How much easier it would be for everyone to get ahead on here. How growth would be spiked within the Steemit platform. Imagine it the way it was intended to be before selfishness and the love of money plagued the platform.....
HOW IS THIS BEING FOUGHT?
There is one man, a very powerful man on Steemit, by the name of @fulltimegeek who is combating this unethical reward pool draining along with other powerful members of the Steemit community. This will involve them flagging the offending members, resulting in a flag war. There will be members crippled by this and some will be wounded. The result of the flag war will be serious damage to reputation, loss of rewards and loss of growth, rendering some accounts basically useless. This will go on until account holders abusing the system are no longer able to move forward, either causing them to surrender and comply, or be crippled and not able to use the platform. Unfortunately, that is the way it has to be. Though war is a wicked thing, in a world of abuse and turmoil, one must come to accept it as a necessary evil, especially when protecting what is ultimately right and good.
Most of you probably do not know who @fulltimegeek is, as I did not when I had initially joined. It wasn't long that I was on until I had heard of this man's acts of selflessness and began to follow him. Through several outlets including my friend @davemccoy, I was educated about @fulltimegeek and let me say, was astounded. Early on in the history of the Steemit platform, this man was one of the most powerful members of the community, if not the single most powerful. He had a power so great, he could make or break anything on here by himself, without question. That my friends, is a lot of power to keep watch over. To @fulltimegeek it was too much and he was not nearly comfortable having such power. So what did he do? He gave his power to others on the platform by delegating it to them. People he hand picked, people with good morals and dedicated to the betterment of Steemit, people he knew would see this platform grow and flourish. He gave his power to the community essentially, for the growth and betterment of us as a large scale group!
With this flag war, comes the need for power. In order to figuratively slay a whale, you will need quite a bit to say the least. So, this power that @fulltimegeek had given away for our growth and success, has now been called back to him. He is taking it back, to go on the front line and smash those who bleed this platform dry. Him, along with many other large members, are suited up on the field as we speak. Some are preparing. Some are wounded and recovering. Then there are us, the guys too small to go on the front lines. But how can we help?
HOW CAN WE HELP THIS BATTLE FOR WHAT IS RIGHT?
Facts are facts, most of you reading this are in no way, shape or form able to do combat in a flag war with a whale. We are almost like a fly to a sledgehammer....SPLAT. Being so small, considering account power that is, we are not able to compete, so it is left for the big guns to go out and do their thing. So where do we come into play? We are the support every great army needs. We are the support and voice that inform others of this honorable battle. We are the voice of good and the voice of what is right. We cheer on our heroes and we congratulate them for victories. We help heal out wounded. More importantly, we join together as a community and help these guys fight for us. We do our part, day in and day out until we win. Believe me, we will win and things will go back the way they were intended. Once this war is over, the platform will continue to grow and we all will see the changes at work.
So, the reason I'm even writing this aside from educating you all to what is going on, is to inform you of just how you can help and join in. Firstly, go ahead and follow @fulltimegeek and @stewardsofgondor. The second account right there is actually the group of individuals that @fulltimegeek delegated his power to, they are of legend as well, so to speak. This group is the head of this battle, and one of MANY participating in fighting for you and I. My friend @davemccoy brought it to my attention that he had created a support structure and group, called @friendsofgondor, which will utilize a curation trail to help heal and support members of the group who are damaged by this flag war. Go ahead and follow that one as well. We are also enlisted to use our voice for support and even to recruit others if we are so driven to. Our main task is to join the curation trail and offer our support to the wounded, as well as morale support to those out on the battlefield. This is how we as small members can do our part, in large numbers.
HOW CAN I JOIN THE CURATION TRAIL AND HELP?
Joining in and doing your part is simple. You will need to go to SteemAuto.com first and register your Steemit account. Then, you join the "friendsofgondor" curation trail. Once you have joined the curation trail, you will set your voting power to approximately 3%, though you can choose UP TO 10% if you so choose. This will make you able to function normally and not be crippling yourself to support this war effort. Full details can be found on the @friendsofgondor official post which can be found HERE.
HOW DOES THIS HELP?
Basically, this gives us the ability to help and do our part in large numbers. By combining our small voting power, we can actually provide larger scale support to these giants in the platform that are fighting for our well-being. Even with one of our votes being only 0.01 SBD, multiplied by 1000, that can be as little as 0.50SBD on a post upvote. Keep doing the numbers and you will see just how much of an effect we can have. So, each one of these guys and gals fighting for us, is a target in the curation trail. This means each post they drop, gets our automatic upvotes, helping them grow and recover. This makes them more able to do battle on our behalf. We are able, as minnows, to pool together and make a big impact. This not only provides support from upvote value, but provides great morale for those fighting for us. Imagine the feeling of having thousands of upvotes on your posts. Great, right?
@DAVEMCCOY IS THE MAN BEHIND @FRIENDSOFGONDOR AND CAN BEST ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS I AM NOT ABLE TO. YOU CAN SEE HIS ORIGINAL POST THAT INITIALLY ANNOUNCED THE FRIENDS OF GONDOR INITIATIVE BY CLICKING HERE. MAKE SURE YOU CHECK IT OUT AS WELL!
This is personally something that I am on board with and hoping to see others participate in. Not only will we be fighting the good fight, we are doing our part for the betterment of the Steemit platform. We are doing our part to see the next man grow. We are paving the way for future members. We are promoting ethical use of the system. We are protecting this platform, the community and every single member, whether they agree with this or not. We are doing what is right by providing our support. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them, I'll be more than happy to be of assistance. Remember, you have the chance to stand up for the community or the chance to sit idly and watch. The choice is yours at the end of the day. Just imagine what kind of world we would live in if everybody sat and watched.......
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Excellent job @terminallyill! You are doing a wonderful thing in getting our community to understand and be educated! That's how to spread the word and teach them. Awesome post!
The pleasure is all mine @friendsofgondor! This issue is something that desperately needs the attention of the community as a whole and I'll continue to do my best in educating my fellow community members about this. You can count on my support, from recruiting new members to continuing to spread awareness to promote ethical use of the Steemit platform. Thank you for having me come on board, it is an honor and an absolute pleasure working with you guys!
Thank you so much @terminallyill, and @friendsofgondor, you're both amazing individuals and you bring me much Hope!!
@lyndsaybowes there is no need to thank me, it is my duty as a member of the community to make people aware of such things. It is my duty to do my part in helping the community at large, so it is my absolute pleasure to have produced this article and brought it to the attention of many. Thank you actually, for taking the time from your life to take in on this pressing issue and for offering up your support. We need people like you, I cannot thank you enough!
Here's your newbie nickel @lyndsaybowes just for being an awesome person on the right side of this epic battle! Great to see you everywhere, you are wonderful and I love the encouragement! And @terminallyill has a pretty good grasp of this for a relative newbie huh? ;)
This newbie nickel is sponsored by @danielsaori (another awesome comment and engagement champion) :)
Thank you very much Dave!
awesome article @terminallyill! fantastic grasp of the issues!!!
Congratulations you have been upvoted and resteemed as part of #newbieresteemday's top 10 posts for the day! ...
We invite you to use our tag to connect with more of our members. To learn more: Come Join Us!!! (Newbie Resteem Initiative)
Thank you @newbieresteemday ! I'm proud to stand with all of you and do my part as a member of the minnow community!
Hi, your post has been very nice. I am ready to vote and comment on all of them and hope you vote and comment.My steem id link https://steemit.com/@zarzish
Absolutely friend, thank you! Make sure you check out the articles in my blog, I will return the favor!
I thought this (reward pool abuse) was one of the first things I discovered at steemit. At first I even thought that upvoting your own posts would not receive a reward. But I soon learned it really does.
One day I wrote like 3 messages to ask why people do this. Most don't get answered. We can guess why.
Then I became a bit more aggressive, telling people that steemit can't be meant to upvote your own shit. And also flagging the posts. But there doesn't seem to happen anything with their posts as I flag them. Probably because I'm a plankton for the whales 😥
Perhaps it would also help if I fully understand how flagging works. Despite asking this question several times it is still unanswered 😥
At this moment my conclusion is that it's almost impossible to solve this via flagging. I believe this can only be solved by a hard fork. But I really don't know how this works and if it would be possible?
And even if the stop rewarding own upvotes, I can think off a few other strategies for reward pool abuse 🙃
Btw I noticed that @fulltimegeek has all delegated most of his Sp. Is he still getting most of it back? Just a matter of time?
Hello @crypto-econom1st and thank you for joining in. It seems like you have a fair grasp on it already but I'l go ahead and share some info on it. Firstly, flagging is based upon the SP or Steem Power of the individual performing the flag. The flag, basically acts as an opposite to upvoting, causing a negative effect. In most cases, a powerful member of the community can essentially eliminate all of a smaller member's post rewards in their entirety. However, one small member can hardly scrape at the rewards of a larger member. This feature was created initially with good intentions aiming to eliminate spam and poor content, until the flag war became a thing, used mostly by people looking to aggravate other members and be aggressive in general. In some cases, like the one this post is about, it is a necessary evil on the platform to essentially disable the accounts of larger members looking to milk the rewards pool.
In your case, being a small member, downvoting or flagging an individual of higher SP is almost pointless. The effect will be null more or less and you will face backlash from the individual, who will likely destroy your rewards for several posts. Unfortunately, people use it as a means to flex muscle on here and not for it's intended purpose. People abusing the system should definitely be targeted, but individuals with lower power, at a rate within reason, should not be flagged for use. They are not the enemy, unless they reach a certain growth at which it becomes an unacceptable act due to it's effect on the community at large.
The curation trail spoken of here is a means to support those larger accounts who are going into the flag war for the small members like us. By us joining it, we can in numbers provide morale and voting support for these guys, helping them help the Steemit platform and every person on here. I encourage you to join in because this indeed is an effective solution to the problem. Our larger members who are flagging the folks out here abusing the system are removing their rewards and sending them back to the rewards pool, where we all need them to be. Eventually these accounts will not be able to grow or earn, making them useless to their owner and likely causing them to abandon ship. Being they are here out of sheer greed, once the money pot closes up, they will move on. This is when the platform can resume at the intended rate it was created to.
Yes, @fulltimegeek has delegated most of his power out to the community, which is a thing of admiration to be honest. To answer the question, he is having his delegated SP returned to him, so he can be back in a position of power and do his part to stop these accounts from destroying Steemit from the inside out. The time frame I have been told is very soon, but I suppose only time will tell. Let me know if you have any other questions and I'll do my best to answer. Thanks for commenting!
Thanks for your comprehensive answer!
My pleasure @crypto-econom1st . If you have any other questions, feel free to ask them. Also, check out my beginners guide to crypto on my blog, you may find some valuable information in them.
Thanks for your passionate article, @terminallyill!
After reading it, I started a shocking but interesting journey that thaught me more about the war that has been going on here on SteemIt. Now, 5 hours later, I finally arrived back at your post to express my gratitude for making me aware of this!
@simplymike
My pleasure @simplymike. I urge you to get on board and when I launch my end of the initiative, join in. I'm happy to spread awareness of issues that need to be addressed, thank you for taking the time to read this and research it!
An insightful post that tells newbies about some of the problems currently on the blockchain. Upvoted.
Thank you @spiritualmax :) Just doing everything in my power to help this cause succeed for the betterment of the entire platform. Thank you for reading and for your support!
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Keep it up!
All the best!
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I support @davemccoy
He has been a great help to me,and I am always interested in reading his posts. I have, as a newbie, been advices to go back in his blog and read all his posts that teach navigation and help newbies get used to the site and most use from it. I will, I am, and if I'm slow, know I'm on a phone, not cpu. 😇
Resteemed.
BTW #0294 for aid with a toothache.