Using Bid Bots, Self Upvoting, The old "'Circle Jerk" and now Posting on multiple platforms...
The three biggest pet hates, which are regularly discussed among our steemit community. What is the correct protocol all depends on who you ask. Yet it seems most commentators indulge in one or more themselves, even while despising the other/s usage.
"Practice what you preach, But so long as your not harming me or my family, this is your journey. I personally don't care what you choose to do, and it's not my place to tell you witch path to take"
With steemit promoting original content, even having bots like cheetah to alert and help prevent plagiarism, how will the new platforms like masdacs.io, a platform allowing users to post onto multiple sites instantaneously, make people within our community feel?
Will posting on mulitple platforms now join this list?
The circle jerking...
In my opinion, I mean that's sort of normal. Outside of social media you spend time with friends, people with common interests and the people you work with, which is no different from the steemit platform, you read peoples posts, chat with them, and after a while... like your friends, you just want to see what old @broncofan99, (or who ever it maybe), is up to this week. Or maybe your here collaborating with others on projects for, or within our community.
I know personally, before I go searching for topics (seems the old steem search engine is quite shitty) I will scroll through my own feed looking for articles of interest. I mean I added these people in the first place because I liked something about them or what they write, so why not start where I know what I am in for... Bearing in mind, I am also limited to the amount of votes I can cast.
As for bid bots, I've used them... and I probably will in the future, however I'll admit when I first found them, I may have went a little overboard... being new to the platform and seeing these shit posts worth hundreds of dollars and wanting to gain exposure, initially I thought it was a smart Idea... and isn't that how you learn, trial and error?
I realised it wasn't a great thing to be doing, plus with the cap put on the bots, and many people placing last minute bids, sometimes it would cause people to loose money anyway, so it was still a gamble...
Which brings me to the point of self upvoting...
I used to self upvote, and my votes aren't even worth two cents... I've since stopped, yet still find that with following my favorite curation trails, sometimes I have voted for myself anyway.
"Once my vote is worth $20, maybe I'll be singing a different tune, but for now..."
I get that its a lot of hard work and money invested into the platform and you have every right to upvote yourself, if you didn't... it wouldn't be an option.
It's takes a lot of time, dedication and belief within the blockchain to get to that point (Lucky for us, steem does have a great blockchain).
That's sort of why I think it would be smarter to reward others. In the long run your benefiting the entire community and allowing other steamians to offer higher votes. Which in turn will boost the entire steem community, including your own account value.
I mean, really think of it this way, to have a vote worth ($20 at 100%) you need about 100K Steem Power... but when your account is of that magnitude, for your account to gain an extra $20 the price of steem only has to rise by 0.0002 (based on steem being $1).... that's nothing!
I'm not trying to tell anyone what they should be doing. Just offering my current plans for future me, which may or not change as my steemit journey progresses.
It may even change after reading your comments, I'd love to hear what you guys think on the topic, as it seems like everyone has their own take on "Steemit Etiquette."
"To much of anything, is never a good thing!"
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To me, this one is dependent on how much you post... Kind of.
If you post 5 times a day, and you self upvote, I would call you selfish, but if you post no more than once a day, and you self upvote, I would call you practical. Here's my logic.
My upvote is already very small because I'm a minnow. Your vote value grows one way, and one way only, Steem Power, (of course you know this, but some reading may not). (Not to be confused with VP, but you already have an integral understanding of SP and VP). So you gain Steem Power from curation rewards, and post rewards.. Unless you buy Steem Power, this is the only way possible to increase stake, that being said, by maximizing the potential for your own growth, you are maximizing the potential ability to give others higher value votes.
This is my frame of thought at all times in regards to the rewards system. The question I ask myself is "What can I do to become as big as possible, so that I may help my friends more?" I've concluded that self upvote is part of the strategy for me, and accounts for 1-5% of my upvotes at any given time. As long as it doesn't exceed (at any given time) 5 % I'm happy.
As far as the bid bots are concerned, I used to use them, and decided to do so, no longer. It's actually quite a complex topic, and I go into it a little bit in one of my recent posts, so I won't touch on that much right now because my comment is gonna end up looking like a post lol.
At the end of the day, I don't judge others. Your freedom to do what ever you want here is (to me) what it's all about, and the fact that we have such a diverse range of opinions on the platform, I think, is a good thing.
Nice post bro, Thanks for covering an important topic :)
I agree with you, I think the bid bots can be put to good use at times. When we bought steem, to transfer it to steem power using them was great. instead of a 1:1 gain you got 1:1.1... now that the market is more volatile it would be a bit more of a gamble though.
Another example would be the recent steem monster post, they announced it would be getting heavily botted, which allowed for others to get curation, and the profits are going towards building a game that is benefiting the steem community... In my opinion that is another good use of the bots!
Thanks for your detailed response, good to hear from you again, seems we both took a break and came back around the same time... lol
@steemmonsters :
Strange that was the first thing that came to my mind when seeing this post. I completely agree, and I have to respect the fact that they openly state that they will bot to boost visibility, furthermore the project adds value to Steem, and requires work/time, so I see nothing wrong with it, but this is only my opinion. I'm sure some would disagree and call it a mockery slap in the face to proclaim use..
Likewise my friend! It's nice to talk to you again. I've been around, just not very active. Sometimes I need a break from the internet. See you in the tourney later!!
The truth of the matter is, I don't care what you do. Which isn't quite exactly true, I chased a pack of cheaters around for a while that all voted each others (plagiarized) comments. They didn't even vote the post.
I only care what I do. And I self upvote from time to time off a curation trail also. Sue me :)
I did receive my largest individual post payout earlier today. 2 7th day comment votes tipped about $5 out of the pool. And I'm even OK with that. Sorta. Kinda. I'll get over it. Ah hell. Dolphins that have 10x my SP needed it worse than I did. Obviously.
Thanks for a good post on a tough subject.
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
It's an interesting topic, I hope to hear a variety of people opinions... and yes good point, there are some scally-wags that do need monitoring.
I remember when circle jerks were an issue on 4chan many, many years ago. They really only became a problem when they started annoying the mods or didn't follow the board rules, and then they would get shut down.
What a lot of people miss with the circle jerk is that they're a really good way to build up a niche community. When you think about it, @opgaming kind of fits that mold. But is OPG part of the problem? I don't think so. They're using the process to help build up their members, one post at a time.
I suppose the biggest problem with circle jerks is when they start excluding other people. If anyone is welcome to join in and take part, there's really nothing to worry about. It's when they start adopting a "holier than thou" mentality that we really need to start getting concerned.
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