Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 12/18/17> Shortie’s trip to Sea World to feed the penguins…

I am about to tell you a true story , not that the others have been lies, it just sounds better introducing it with those words, “true story”. Before I do though, how many of you are aware of the 30 minute rule? If you are thinking the question has to do with eating and swimming, that was an old wives tale about cramping up and drowning if you swam right after eating, no it is not that rule.

The 30 minute rule is a rule here on Steemit about upVoting, so; any of you here know what I am talking about? I only see a couple hands raised in the crowd(@moderndragon), so I will share with the rest of you the little knowledge I have about the “rule”. You can put your hands down now Dragon, I’ll call on you later.

I personally have never read this rule; I’m not sure where it is written. The rule as I have come to understand it through second and third hand knowledge has to do with people who click the little box on the page where we make our posts,” click here to upVote” or some verbiage like that. If you have been clicking that box you have been gaining because during the first 30 minutes, part of the curation reward goes to the author. Curation rewards are calculated and partially based on the “time stamp’ of when your upVote is placed. Hitting the upVote clicker on a post that just hit the platform is pretty much a worthless vote when it comes to gaining from a curation perspective. I’ve never upVoted my own postings so I guess that I have missed out on some dinero in that regard.

The optimum time to upVote a post is when the post is 30 minutes or older, any upVote sooner than 30 minutes is penalized to some degree. It works on a sliding scale, so if two people voted on a post and the only difference between the two people was the time stamp of their votes, the person voting at 4 minutes would get less in curation rewards than the person voting at 28 minutes. The explanations I have read liken it to a “reverse auction” which has never made any sense to me at all. I’ve seen work done on the “reverse auction” style with some government projects, those projects never seemed to turn out like the plans called for when it was all said and done. None the less, upVoting later rather than earlier in the first 30 minutes is the preferable spot for curators.

From what I was told the rule was put into place to help control those pesky bots. Primarily the bots that track the authors who are known to make posts that monetize real well. I believe that some of the bot overlords aren’t aware of this rule, at least the Czech bots that I had exposed earlier; they would show up in a matter of seconds popping that upVote clicker. Those bots, by the way, have left me alone of recently.

On a side note; I do have couple bots that can’t seem to make their mind on me. Hottopic and MrsWhale follow me and drop me, follow and drop me; it is like I am some kind of game with them. Neither one wants to get caught holding the Sultnpapper. I might very well be the “hot potato” of the steemit bot world. What are you laughing at? I could be.

So, now we get to the “true story”, last Wednesday morning CST time I was browsing the steemit frontier like I have been known to do. I also had the steemnow page open and noticed a PSA, public service announcement for those of you who are acronym challenged, that had to do with changes coming in HardFork 20. I clicked the link of the PSA and was taken to the post.

The post seemed to be being received pretty well by the community, it had several upVotes and earnings above $38 , it had only been up for a couple hours at the most at that point in time. I found the information to be very informative.

Have you ever seen a penguin get eaten alive by a whale? Well, I have, and it is not a pretty sight.

In the land of steemit; penguins, I guess, need to keep their carcasses on their icebergs and populate tables and spread sheets. This one particular penguin named Pablo, ventured a little too far from the comfort zone and a big old whale swallowed him whole. It happened right at the moment I clicked the upVote clicker, the whale made that $38 and my four cents disappear like a magician making his assistant disappear in a magic show. When the up arrow on my screen turned green the payout box showed $0.00. I guess that I am lucky I didn’t lose a finger or my whole hand in that attack, I was feeding the penguin when it was eaten alive, right there before my very own eyes. The experience left me soaking wet and shivering at the thought of what I had just witnessed.

Now I know some of you may not believe this story, and that’s OK, not OK as in Oklahoma, but OK as in okay. For you non believers I would offer up a witness because my witness was there also. On second thought, I’m not going to give you a witness; if you don’t believe me you sure as hell aren’t going to believe a fire breathing dragon from @moderndragon , but he was there and he saw the whole ordeal go down exactly as I described it right here.

Before we go any further let me make one thing clear here, nobody and I do mean nobody mentions this to my little girl, Shortie. She is a penguin lover, so much of a penguin lover that she talked her girl scout troop into doing an overnight excursion to Sea World in San Antonio, Texas where they got to sleep overnight in the penguin habitat with the live penguins. Any little girl who can convince ten other little girls and two adult leaders to go sleep in 30 degree temperatures doesn’t need to be hearing about whales eating penguins. They even got to hand feed them, luckily Sea World has it set up that the penguins and the whales don’t share the same space, otherwise she may have come home scarred for life.

Repeat after me, “I will never mention this to Shortie”. Good.

Alright, that post is four day old as of this writing, it has gained over 700 views, over 155 upVotes and remains on $0.00 for earnings, that one down vote is a powerful vote. I might be wrong, but I don’t believe the little penguin was the one who created the changes he was doing the reporting on, I think he was more of the “messenger”; in Texas we always say, “Don’t shoot the messenger” but I guess in the steemit world it might be shoot first and ask questions later.

The two changes that furry little creature pointed out were that the 30 minute time frame would be reduced to 15 minutes, I can’t see how that would cause an uproar with the whales, so it must be the second thing.

Curation rewards that had been going back to the author of the post from the first 30 minutes will now be returned back to the rewards pool when HardFork 20 takes place, except it will be 15 minutes not the current 30 minute time frame. That’s right; those whales that have their bots running about upVoting their own work won’t be getting their returns as previously done under the current system. So, it is pretty safe to say number two is the number “two” as far as some whales are concerned, if you know what I mean about the number 2.

The little penguin didn’t say when the change is going to take effect but I guess we’ll know when it happens; a HardFork isn’t something that can happen in secrecy. Those smaller folks who have upVoted their own post might want to take notice as well, if you value your vote you will save it at least for 16 minutes, before you pull the trigger on your own post’s after the HardFork 20 takes place.

I pretty much never have a predetermined “title” for my post; I usually let the finished product dictate how that comes together. So, as I am about to bring this true story to a close I am kicking around how to title this edition. This edition really is a PSA for my folks who read my daily dose and I damn near went with “PSA: Killer Whales Eating Penguins” but then it hit me; I might be totally wrong on why that whale ate the penguin. There could be a “trigger” so to speak, that can set certain whales off, if “PSA” is that trigger this old cowboy would be history. One thing I’ve learned in life is don’t pick a fight you know you can’t win, not if you want to live another day. There is no way I could survive a whale attack, so the title is what it is..

Until next time,
@sultnpapper
#unmentionables