What if we encouraged self-voting?
I think SteemIt would be a more interesting place if we all engaged with each other more. Myself included.
So, instead of telling people NOT to up vote their own comments, what if we encourage them to upvote their own comments. We should reward ourselves for good behavior. If you make a meaningful comment on my post, I will upvote it higher than usual if you also upvote your own comment.
What do you think? I think we have too many posts and not enough conversation. I will be upvoting my own meaningful comments as well!
Upvote, earn, grow your stake and be excited about it!
Self love is a good thing, as many of you know. :)
me <3 me 2 and always upvote my own posts!
It is fun to know you have some payouts pending. It is fun to grow your account. If we let everyone do it... Doesn't that just make the site more fun for those who are engaged?
It doesn't seem like my account has grown a lot, I don't write THAT often haha
Voting for yourself (and promoting voting for yourself) does not promote more engagement. If you want more engagement, be more engaged and attract more engaging followers.
The whole point of the vote is to signal to the blockchain how the rewards pool should be distributed. If everyone just votes for their own comments, there won't be enough voting power left over to meaningfully distinguish what the network thinks is "good" content and worth rewarding.
Check the level of engagement I get on most of my posts. It's amazing! I don't think we have an engagement problem as much as we have a follow back problem. Every social media platform is only as valuable as the people you choose to follow and who choose to follow you. If we just have bots or mindless "Great post!" commenters, engagement will always be terrible. If we then encourage those people to reward themselves from the rewards pool, it will only make the problem worse.
Sorry, I can't agree with voting up my own comments all the time. Maybe once in a while, but I prefer letting people vote themselves if they think the comment is worth voting on.
Agree. Engagement should not really be based on the number of people commenting. It's the quality of the conversation that counts.
I also agree. I didn't say we should try to get the highest number of comments. Thoughtful conversations get pretty hard to come by on smaller accounts. People have to choose where to put their time and effort and most of us are going to put our efforts where it pays off.
I keep finding myself heading back to Facebook when I actually want to discuss a topic. When I ask myself why.. It is just more interactive.
Steemit is more interactive for me, but I've worked hard to get over 4,000 followers over the past year and 8,000+ posts and comments. Was it that way in the beginning? Nope.
For many, it just takes time and patience. Many of the people I end up following consistently leave great comments on my posts and provide wonderful engagement. They do it consistently and so I check out their blogs and end up following them and voting up their content here and there. That's how I gained followers and that's how others do also. I don't think encouraging self-voting on comments will change that process.
I also see that you have worked hard and have a good following. I do agree that is the main part. I also think growing an account is still a difficult effort and I would like to see the site hold more value via relationships and if the smaller accounts upvote their stuff as they grow, I support it.
This takes nothing away from the fact you have worked hard and built a great following.
I see what you're getting at. Thanks for explaining. If it's a small account trying to build up enough Steem Power to have a vote that matters, then I can see the argument for helping them get there a little quicker.
I can also see the argument for them to put in some real money, buy some Steem, and power up their account. :)
Now I think we are in complete agreement. I should do a post about that as well.
Anyone who can - should put some money in if they want their investment to grow. Hear Hear. Even 20-100 bucks would make a huge difference during that early phase.
a YUUUUGE difference. :)
@lukestokes, I think something else that might be worth bringing into this discussion is the fact that a lot of people create great content... get lots of comments, but then they don't curate the comment section of their own posts.
On any given day, probably half the upvotes I cast are for other people's comments on my own posts. I strongly believe that's central to how (for example) you and I create engagement. But some write a great post, get 300 upvotes and 100+ comment and the O.P. barely has a presence "tending" the replies to their post.
That would be a case where I'd apply the "once in a while" self-upvote... I guess I lack the patience or state of Zen to put a lot of effort into a response, only to have it dwell, unread, near the bottom of a pile of "nice post" and "your gr8 pls upvote me" filler...
Yeah, that's a good example and I've done the same before (and been flagged for it by Bernie... hahah). I guess I wonder why people spend so much time on crowded threads like that only to be ignored? Where's the fun in that?
Some more popular authors don't have the time (or even voting power) ti curate all their comments. I get that. At some point it just becomes too much.
It was all about discussion. You don't have to agree with me, thank you for engaging in the conversation. You weren't really my target audience though.
Hi @lukestokes, I am so happy to read this. I am only a lowly one here on steemit but I really am not a supporter of self-upvoting and bots, bots, bots.
I prefer to go 'au naturel'. Although I have increasingly been feeling like a wierdy wierdo as everyone seems to be happily SUVing and licking the bots all around me.
I thought I had totally misunderstood the rules of the game.
It ain't worth much yet, but you have my witness vote. Thank you.
Thanks for your support. :)
I think we should encourage votes for quality content, whether it was self-authored or otherwise.
I typically don't vote my own comments, but since you asked, maybe I'll try it here - just once.
; -)
It kinda takes the sting out of voting for a post after just 5 minutes, too.
lol, exactly. I can't wait until 30 minutes or I never get back to it. That 30 min. thing doesn't make any sense at all. :)
It made sense on paper when I read the reasoning behind it, but that all sort-of falls apart when put into practice. I made this last year.
painfully true. :)
Well done! Bonus. Way to try new things.
Forgot to mention. I emphatically agree with this:
I definitely think self-love is a good thing.
But I also believe in "a fair reward for a job well-done." In other words, by all means let's self-upvote... using the same quality metric we would use to upvote anyone else's comment.
The self-upvoting I was against was someone writing "nice" as a comment on 20 random posts, and their ONLY voting action was to give themselves 20 100% upvotes. That's just laziness and DIS-engagement, from where I am sitting...
OK, so now this is has become a comment worth about a 30% upvote, so in the spirit of good sportmanship, I shall vote accordingly.
I really like what you said here, and I am really glad you upvoted your comment.
Personally, still find myself going back to Facebook to discuss important topics (small groups that have built over time) I just want people to put their time and energy into SteemIt in a way that allows them to enjoy the site and the community.
I would also add to this that before the whole self-upvoting controversy arose... I used to self-upvote my comments (especially on really "busy" posts with dozens/100's of comments) purely for visibility.
Selfish? Maybe. If I wrote a lengthy, engaging and relevant screed in response to an interesting post... I felt my comment deserved to be pulled above the ocean of "nice post" comments at the bottom of the page. And why not? Isn't the ultimate objective of "curation" to help quality content gain visibility?
Of course, that may be a whole different discussion...
I did quite a bit of self voting also, but it also encouraged me to go make more comments and remain active even when I was frustrated with the growth of my account.
YES i ALSO sometimes am FORCED tpo upvpte a comment out of VISIBILITY converns to get it to the top toop! and everyoen ELSE is doing it too so why NOT use the steempower we have??? I swear if money was not involved theer wiould be no fucking problem LOL but the SECOND money is involved people think they need to fucking chime in hah
This should be the proper perspective when it comes to self-upvoting comments.
Agreed. However, self voting is a mechanism that deters engagement from those who possess low SP such as minnows, myself included. It is the antithesis of decentralization and makes the platform more "pay to play" where visibility is determined on economic factors than merit of the content.
If we do that, we lose the advantage of curating the comments of others towards the platform. People are naturally biased towards their self and, even if we think our content is meaningful to us does not mean it is valuable to the community. This is why we ought to use curation as a sort of peer review process not a self-review process due to the obvious conflict of interest.
I think we disagree on a fundamental level. I do agree that there is merit towards discussion. I don't know how many times I have clicked to view the comments on a Reddit thread because quite often the comments are even better than the post. It's great!
I have no problem with this. I think we may go about it differently. If we subject our posts and comments to peer review like rather than self voting, I think overall quality of the most readily available content will be better. This, in turn, should have a positive impact towards market value in which we all benefit!
Disclaimer: When I just started on Steemit, I had upvoted my own posts but not necessarily comments. Over time, I had felt conflicted doing so and have refraines. Now, I am beginning to question upvote bots as well which have garnered their creators much profit I am sure. I may stop using them as well but I won't make a whole lot of difference. It is only if the consensus changes that I believe we will see real benefits of voting not for self but for others.
haha nice idea to try out :) let me first upvote you and then i'll upvote myself :)
Every social media platform is only as valuable as the people you choose to follow and who choose to follow you..
Agree
I really liked the post, Self-love is good and I also think so. For all you will not be good, there will always be someone who is unhappy, but the fact that you confirmed your comment, and why not if there is power.
I am not a fan of self-voting and I will upvote a comment only if the author has not upvoted himself. It's likely I'm not the only one who votes like this and thus, for new accounts to vote themselves a measly one cent for a comment, they could be missing out on a vote worth a bit more.
I fully agree, and up until a few months ago I upvoted all my own comments to bring them up the feed - not big votes, but about 10% power.
BUT - several influential Steemians who I highly respect, told me off about it so I stopped, even though I think what I was doing was encouraging discussion.
Dolphins are boss on Steemit and I am only a sardine :)
If you upvote this comment, I will too! :)
I think as long as any post is high quality, helpful and add values, it deserves a vote from anybody, including yourself.
Self-love indeed. Ain't nothing wrong with that! That's @whatsup! haha.
lol, you are either the only one who got it, or the only one who felt okay commenting on my self-love reference. :)
Cause I don't think most of us give ourselves enough love :)