Is there Value in Upvoting comments?
When I first started in Steemit I upvoted and resteemed all the posts the posts that I came into contact with. At that point, even with the meager SP that I had, I didn't worry about bandwidth issues and just kept upvoting and resteeming like there was no tomorrow. Bandwidth issues started happening after the December and January mad rush of new users.
I remember commenting on a post that I liked reading and was upvoting every content that I liked. This was on top of the 15-20 posts that I was required to upvote and so you imagine how low my voting power gets.
I remember that the author replied to me and patiently explained why having low SP and upvoting on a good post while my Voting power was low was doing a disservice to both the poster and to myself.
At this point, I did not know about https://steemd.com/@username yet and was coached on Voting Power and diminishing power of your upvote.
I did not know that each upvote used up 2% of my voting power because without the slider I was voting at 100% each time. I was also educated that your VP returned 20% every 24 hours and so the best thing I can do is space my votes to give it time to replenish so instead of 10 votes I could potentially vote up to 11 times a day.
So knowing that I was more careful of what I would upvote on and got promptly "kicked" out well I left but it depends on who is telling the story. Anyway, that is unimportant.
So keeping your voting power at 75-80% a day is valuable in making sure that you reward the person as well as getting curation rewards for yourself. Doesn't matter if you 15 SP or 20 thousand SP. I know the urge is strong to go past that especially if there is good content and I have gone past 60% at times now but most of the time I try to balance it.
This is what newbies don't realize that is important. They get to 20% or lower and the value of the vote is so tiny already. Some would argue that its the thought that counts. Well, it is a nice gesture but without value do you think it sits well with the author? Is that the behavior that we want to encourage?
What we want is to reward authors of good posts with an upvote with value so that the time and effort the person did is rewarded.
Upvoting Comments
So what has that got to do with upvoting comments? Well, we needed to lay down the foundation first. As this is something that is expected to be known by all Steemians but is hardly the case. Took me awhile to learn about it.
If you notice the comments in my posts I reply to almost all comments and if I have enough VP which I normally do because I leave about 2-4% allocated for comments alone. It is natural to upvote comments in your post to increase engagement with those that commented.
I have found that when you take the time and effort to reply and upvote comments there is a higher chance that they will return even if your upvote value is only 0.01 cent. That is still of value.
The next level here is upvoting comments of other people in other people's post. So am I crazy to even suggest such a thing? Don't we want that it is our comment that gets more visibility? Madness you say!
Depends on whether you have a scarcity mindset or one of abundance. The mere fact that our Voting powers replenish 20% a day should be an indication that we do not need to skimp on upvoting content but doesn't it run contrary to what I just said about maintaining it above 75%? I don't see it that way because we are maximizing our SP to better reward people.
So if we are in another person's post and we upvote it we are rewarding that person who took the time to read and provide a good comment as either to add to the discussion, strengthen or provide a different view of the topic. We are encouraging engagement.
Now if in the event that somebody else upvotes that comment you get curation rewards from that so it is a win-win.
You may say that it's easy for me to say that because of the SP that I have. Most of my SP is just delegation from very nice people that see value in me spreading that vote but if you don't have a slider yet you can use busy.org and use the settings in order to enable a slider. You can see it in the image below.
Mind you if you have 50 SP or lower it is not going to be very effective though. This is the main reason why the slider is by default available when you reach 500 SP but at around 200 SP you can make use of it already as it shows there value if you adjust your voting weight at that SP level.
So, in conclusion, upvoting in comments in both your posts and other people posts helps encourage people to leave comments that add value to a post.
We are encouraging behavior that engagement is something important in this platform. I find that the carrot always works better than the stick. Rewards make people feel good and threats are short termed.
So go out there and if you have the voting power engage and reward those comments.
Click here for your Mannabase Income
Click here for your Kryptonia access for Superior Coins
I just wish I had commenters to upvote on my posts.. xD
But yeah I get your point and I too believe it's important to hold your voting power above 80% to actually reward those post you deem worthy, and to also reward comments that actually has any substance.
It can however feel really pointless when you have less than 500 Sp to vote on anything cause you don't really feel like you do a difference. That's why I myself have rented SP from @blocktrades in order to at least have a little to play with, cause without I really felt voting was an unsatisfying and inadequate system.
hmm just too curious about how much you pay?
before 500 its the real test here to stay.
I've spend about 60 SBD.. and I know that's quite a lot but I was curious about how it would go down and while I was at it I wanted to try out the slider. All in all I'm not totally sure it was worth if you look at the pure value, but it really opened up a lot more curation possibilities and it greatly enhanced my steemit experience.
hmm...ye to get the slider is a game changes. how long do u have it?
a think it can be but only if u post a lot. a see the last post u did. its a nice one.
a think a lot of user are checking out Ur wallet before up voting etc. so u get way more traffic on more Sp
well there are some people who are that but I follow and upvote people who are interesting to me.
Before I got delegation I was able to make use of busy to give 20% upvotes so that it would still have some value. As I continue to get more SP I am able to have lower voting weight but still have value so that I can provide more upvotes.
This one is a constant struggle for me! You know the amount of commenting that I do (even if I'm crownless this week haha), but my problem is my ever diminishing voting power. I have been fortunate to have @hitmeasap and @abh12345 delegate to me, which then allows me to upvote even when my VP is low; which is a good thing, but I guess a bad thing too. At 68% for example, my upvote is still worth $0.05. So from your post, I'm assuming that I should really try to let that recharge to 75-80% to give full value to those that I do upvote?
I feel that I must upvote those who comment on my posts and on other's posts that I visit, because it's a common courtesy thing, but I do refrain from upvoting throughout the commenting threads. That's just a VP survival tactic though:)
Help me out here sugar red fish...what do you think? :)
Even I upvote all comments in my posts and selective upvote comments in other posts. I really try to make sure that I leave my VP at 75%-80% and it if it lower than that I leave a comment and then come back after a few hours or a day to upvote.
We need to stop ourselves from using our vp to the point that we have lower rewards that we can give.
Ok that's what I've been thinking. I've been commenting as usual for a few days, but no upvoting to keep myself at that 75-80% point.
That's a great way to put it, because I always felt "bad" not upvoting, but really I can feel"bad" only if I've let my VP get to low!
Thank you for that advice!!
am always up voting all my comments on my blog but rarely a up vote on replay on comments I write. its down to the power its tricky. to not go to low on the % power. and if a comment and dont get a vote back om more selective to comment. just on the facts
a always upvote a blog when a comment in the first place.
It is a difficult thing to do, it is not well advertised but like @maverickinvictus said busy has a slider, and if you have not tried it steemworld.org has a manual vote tool, take a little bit to get used to, but it works pretty good, and allows your pre 500SP votes to go a little bit further. There's a few other tools for early vote sliders, but I don't remember them all.
ahaha now a get it a did understand the 200 SP
sadly most of my Sp is delegated out. but a made so a have a stable 0,001 vote down to 50%
but am going to read up on it. Thanks
well not all people upvote comments and this is especially true for minnows and redfishes like me. I changed my behavior because I see value in comments.
I can't help but to upvote people that take time to comment on my post, and reply to them too! I don't have much SP so I struggle to 'save' the upvotes - as I want to upvote all the good posts I see :) I understand your point of view when you say it's better to give an upvote that will give some reward than an empty upvote, in case you dont have much VP. Regardless..My upvotes are not too strong anyways ha!
Another tool to expand your vote power if you do not want to use busy.org, is steemworld.org They have a manual vote slider that you can use it takes a little bit to learn and get used to, but it can really extend the reach of your votes. @steemchiller is always adding to and tweaking his program, and I have found it to be a very good tool for steemit. Along with the manual vote slider he recently implemented @ mentions, so that you get notified when someone tags your name in a post.
I'm just having a look... that's a nice dashboard. Thank you for the tip!! My VP is $0.00 even at 100% :( I guess I just need to work to power it up :)
If you need or want any help on using it let me know. I don't know if you use Discord chat, but a lot of the people in the newbieresteem room are familiar with it or I can drop a link I did a few months ago on the basic use of the manual slider.
Sure. I use Discord, I'm on the Steem Experience :) Thank you so much for your help!
well you just started I have the same beginning as well :) I was happy when my vote finally reached 5 cents!
At first we got to be strategic in what we upvote.
how to make trending post?
It is not not an easy thing to do. As you need to have a very exceptional post and get a major guild like curie or OCD to see it and a couple of Dolphin or whale votes in as well so that it can be seen in the trending page.
Your post has never happened to me. I just joined in steemit. I give a comment when someone posts and Upvote is good. so it comes out a colorful warning.
Well its still the choice of the person if they will upvote on a comment or not. Even if you post a very good comment but if the person doesn't upvote comments then we cannot do anything. The best we can hope is for the person to find you interesting and follow you.
I used to get VP headaches all the time until I discovered the slider on busy. It was a real lifesaver because I too love to encourage my readers and upvote their comments. I totally agree with you, there is value in upvoting them, financial as well as social 💚
Apparently we all start out the same way because I did exactly what you did, tried to vote on as much of the good content that I read as I could.
Then, it got to the point where I was feeling like my upvote, even at $0.01, wasn't worthwhile because if I had it, I would leave more.
Now, I've got much more SP than what we get at the start, and I still find myself wishing I could give more, because I am trying to reward more, too.
I believe in the same theory that you do, that the more we give here, the more we'll eventually see ourselves. It's not the short term solution. Not by a long shot. But it's the best solution.
And, then, there's the balance that needs to be struck, as you say. So find the place between undervoting and overvoting so you actually do everyone some good.
i also experience this when i was still starting and my VP easily dried up until i knew about how it works through Steemians who post helpful articles like this one. Thank you 😊
Yes, reserving some for comments is a good idea. I do the same. I remember one thing I don't do enough is to actually go to their blogs to take a look and support what I like there. A few times. The giving economy and all that jazz.
I try to do that as well when they leave a very interesting comment that I check what else they wrote.