I Finally Converted To Steemvoter (Partially) – It's Quite A Relief, Actually
I broke down and set up Steemvoter. I resisted this for a long time, mostly on "principal", slightly on laziness.
For any who aren't aware, Steemvoter is a very user-friendly "curation bot" that allows you to setup simple rules to vote automatically on selected bloggers you support (up to 500). It's free if you give up a vote each day, or you can pay $3 SBD per month. They have live Discord support that is high-quality.
Unfortunately, I'm of the opinion automatic curation is done mostly to maximize curation rewards, and therefore contributes greatly to the "votes on, but doesn't read or even view the content" "problem". It's definitely related to the larger problem of the curation formula rewarding dog-piling popular authors regardless of quality, an issue I've written at length about.
I have drafts of unpublished posts on how auto-voting is bad for Steemit, but realized they were ultimately pointless to publish. You can't stop auto-voting anymore than you can stop all scripting/botting. Particularly with open-source software, it may not even be technically possible to stop auto-voting, relegating potential countermeasures to manual witch-hunting. Steemvoter is also clearly a popular service, and I don't like imposing values on others, generally speaking.
Perhaps more importantly, I think auto-voting, if it is a problem at all, may be the symptom rather than the cause.
Furthermore, I have been benefitting rather substantially from the support of a number of auto-voters, and it was difficult to reconcile the fact that my blog runs (mostly) on auto-voters most days with my inability to return that support manually. Ultimately, there are simply too many worthy bloggers and supporters of my blog for me to ever keep up with.
Doing so manually, though excruciating, was at one point at least feasible. I was able to do a D+ job at it in between my articles, replies, and the supplemental Steemit communities I try to help/participate in (MSP, SPL, SFT.)
Of course, that was before Steemit became a pile of goopy molasses. Now that consistent post/vote/comment deletion appears to be the temporary norm, it has become impossible to keep up. Busy's lack of a comment feed makes voting and replying to all comments a huge pain, and Steemit's non-stop transaction errors have done the same.
In other words, I give up trying to get to everyone manually. I can't keep up anymore.
I have 40-50 people that have graced me with their auto-vote. In looking at each and every blog of everyone who has voted for me recently, few if any are unworthy of some votes in return.
This task required creating a (color-coded) spreadsheet and looking at the posting frequency of all my voters and commenters - a task which I suggest everyone do if they are setting up Steemvoter themselves. Fro me, it took the better part of this last week, and even so, I will need to scale up my vote percentages over time as I see how accurately I calculated the average posts per day of each user, and how many users stick to their recent trends in that regard.
So, there you have it. That's my "excuse" for any 1-2% votes you might get from me in the near future. I had to add over 200 users to my rule-list just to try and get the best portion rewarded. I still have many more users to add, so if I missed you, my apologies. Hopefully it's coming. I will also monitor voting usage for over-allocations (overuse) and reassign those back to the group.
There is even one frequent commenter out there with a blog that is kicking butt, and they'll be seeing a 100% upvote, at least as long as my power and their post frequency makes possible. I will scale up everyone else, relative to their post quality, as my voting power allows.
Thanks to all my followers, and any troopers who made it through the last ~13 paragraphs!
Also, quick shout-out to the Steem Voter support team, who were very quick and helpful in resolving an issue with my account.
PS - I'd like to digress briefly here and state that I only slightly took curation rewards into account when setting up my autovoter (mostly in adjusting timings). I chose to setup auto-vote rules for those I want to support due to quality content or their previous support, not to increase my rewards earned. I actually gave larger rewards, relatively speaking, to those authors who were undervalued (which runs counter to maximizing curation reward, currently.)
If you have any additions or errata for this post, please let me know! I will see that they are voted to the top of the comments, and will make the appropriate edits (if possible).
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I've been in the same boat as well here lately so this helps greatly with my back and forth tug of war stance on this.
I can understand it in a way you enjoy reading the same authors posts over and over again and want to support them but then at some point I feel it all becomes automated and abused at some stage.
I guess that is on each one of us that use an auto voter to still provide valued comments, read posts and also upvote a few others we might not have each day since this program would be freeing up some of our time in order to do so.
"at some point I feel it all becomes automated and abused at some stage."
Much like most tools, it has the potential for forms of abuse. I agree with what eturnerx said below - I desperately needed to free time up from mundane tasks (such as wrestling with the Steemit server 3-4 times per vote cast) to try and continue networking and interacting with the community more.
"I guess that is on each one of us that use an auto voter to still provide"
If you set your autovotes low (1-5%), you can still unvote authors who post something great you read to give them a full power vote. Losing a few % here and there won't hurt much, and it does help writing motivation to get the reliable vote on all your posts.
I'm 100% with you on the tradeoff of using bots. I automate many of my "tasks" on steem, but that's to free up time for the task for which I believe need my humanness.
Well put.
I LOVE steemvoter, especially since I miss half the Aussie posts while I'm sleeping and by the time I wake up the dolphins/ whales/ bots have already voted and I benefit less from curation (although I still support them as authors). And you're right, it's a a lifesaver at the moment. However I recently got bumped up from 50 to 200 free spots and have added a bunch of people to mine, so I'm playing around with percentages at the moment since I keep dipping below 80% voting power, (I also do a lot of manual curation for myself and 3 other accounts so i'm constantly finding amazing undervalued content).
I want my voting power to be around 85% so I'm going through an adjustment phase right now. Hence, my votes on your posts (and everyone elses) are all over the place at the moment as I find out what works best. I might just have to bite the bullet and do a 12-24 hour voting hiatus to get it back up to a level that I'm happy with. Hmm... I should probably do that now while steemit is being a shit and there's less engagement with the site. 🤔
It's like a big math-adjustment game...It reminds me of my days scripting bots for my old Ebay business. Always trying to adjust the timings to be a little more efficient...
Nice. There are two "large" tasks I need to do here: go through the list of those I'm following, and do some weeding; and, what you just did.
Since my 100% upvote at 100% voting power is over $3, it does make perfect sense for me to pay them the 3 SBD per month -- because otherwise it's taking effectively more than 3 SBD per day from my voting potential, making that "expense" 30x bigger, currently!
Thanks for the analysis.
"go through the list of those I'm following, and do some weeding; and, what you just did."
I strongly recommend a spreadsheet. Also, I wouldn't even bother weeding anyone out unless you are trying to use your feed (I have finally given up.)
"otherwise it's taking effectively more than 3 SBD per day from my voting potential, making that "expense" 30x bigger, currently!"
Absolutely...what a sweet deal that would be for the Buildteam.
Thanks! I think the feed could be split into a number of different pages:
I agree wholeheartedly. However, there doesn't seem to be much willingness to make any of these changes before communities debut. We'll have to wait I guess.
@lexiconical I am not going to do Auto-Vote. I like to make my own decisions as to who I vote for and how much my vote is worth. I understand why people do it, but I am not going to change at this time. My Genuine Comment should be Worth more......Thank You
I don't blame you. I can only tell you I said the same thing months ago. I guess my blog growth outpaced my capacity to do 20 hour days.
"My Genuine Comment should be Worth more"
It always is. If they ever create "SteemCommenter", then I'll actually worry.
I have to admit, this is too much for my little brain. All that counting and negotiating about followers, bots... I came to make some friends, to contribute and learn. Not sure for how long I will stay here. It is so confusing sometimes.
There's nothing wrong with your approach.
These things I'm doing are as a serious content creator, who is trying to please (almost) everyone (almost) all the time. It's very easy for long-time supporters to feel left out, especially if they aren't regular commenters. It's humanly impossible to track all these relationships at once in our head, thanks to Dunbar's number (more than 150 = bad):
You simply will forget some people, and we're wired to take that personally.
You don't really need to do this sort of stuff if you aren't trying to make Steemit a full-time gig.
You're going about things in the right way. Keep connecting, making friends, contributing and learning. There a lot of confusing stuff on steem, but you don't have to learn it all right away.
The only two downsides to Steemvoter are that when you're just a lowly minnow with few SP, they will only let you auto-vote on a few accounts. And also, I think I read something about that they use one vote per day at full strength from your account as payment for their services.
I'm not using it, because I'm already chronically low on voting power from upvoting people who comment on my posts. I can't wait for the voting-slider so I can pace myself a bit and keep upvoting people longer... it kind of sucks to upvote people at 30%! But not upvoting them is sometimes even worse. Having an auto-vote bot drain my power daily wouldn't be smart for me.. Maybe once I become a dolphin!
Come to the Discord for MinnowSupportGroup and DM me in the chat. Let me know how much you need delegated to have a vote slider.
" I think I read something about that they use one vote per day at full strength from your account as payment for their services."
Correct, I noted that above, but you can also pay 3 SBD/month. A paltry amount for the time savings.
Success is hard work indeed!
I didn't know you were the co owner of Steemvoter. Cool to find out. I think steemvoter is a great business model and will continue to increase in its success. I and other close steemit friends also use it and it saves us time and helps us increase our $steem.
Keep up the good work, wish you great success!
Just to clarify here, I'm not affiliated with Steemvoter.
I only meant I set it up for my account.
Did you add me to your steemvoter with 100% upvotes? :)
Green means you were in the first wave. In the top 10%, too, given the size of the list.
I quadrupled your weight earlier, actually, but I'm still adding everyone in at 1-2% until I can gauge how much voting power it will use up. I still want to be able to give full power upvotes to the best comments I get, and my non-autovote authors.
It's too bad you lose your VP if you un-vote, since you can't upgrade vote weight from a lower autovote.
There's some excellent steemians on that there list you got there.
Woo! I see my name there. Thanks! As for @buggedout he is KILLING IT with curation rewards. I've asked him his secrets but he reckons he doesn't have any. Sure @buggedout, sure. (I know he'll read this) 😁
Are you referring to how much he makes in curation, or how much his voters do?
How much he makes. His curation rewards are super high for his account size.
Ah. You should be able to track every vote he makes on Steemd...
Oh, I've been looking at that don't worry.
I am too afraid to put my posting key anywhere. I am really afraid that I will wake up the next day and my wall will have resteemed and upvoted all kind of shit and spam :D
So it's all manual for me. I have around 10 people I check from memory every day and for the rest I check em up from a notepad file I have once every 3 days or something.
" I am really afraid that I will wake up the next day and my wall will have resteemed and upvoted all kind of shit and spam :D"
There is little motivation to do this, since votes can be un-voted. The posting key is pretty safe IMO.
You might want to consider coming over to the darkside...the time freed up by automation is like a drug to the productive.
yeah but resteems can't :(
True, but again, unless you have enemies who hate your blog...no motive.
well spammers who steal codes and stuff don't do it because they hate you. They do it for monetary reasons ;) But yeah, the chances are slim to none, maybe I will convert to the darker side if I find myself to be overwhelmed :D
"They do it for monetary reasons ;) "
Right, that's my point.
There are no monetary reasons to steal your posting key. You can unvote them if they vote, and you can't withdraw with it.
One thing I like about auto-voting is that you can vote for a Steemian at a specific number of minutes after they've posted. And if I like the author, I'll get around to reading them anyway!
Yep, that's a big advantage for curation, but perhaps more subtly for helping to motivate authors.
It's a bit of a relief each time my posts continue to get that auto-vote, I'm not gonna lie.
If you like the post and want to vote it more, you can always reward a top author comment.