Good Curators vs Bad Curators
I have just gone through every member of the VOTU community discord server to find and compare the curation charts of all those who have received at least 10 Mega vest in delegated SP. Though the identities of some of the better curators might be a little obvious, I do not wish to name any of the curators that might be considered selfish. I do not see the benefit in witch hunts, and I do not judge these people for voting this way if they paid for the delegation. It is up to the stakeholder delegating to decide if these are the right people to delegate to.
5 out of these 6 delegations (3 above 3 below) were free
One of these gets their delegation for free and the other pays for their delegation.
Same again with one being a little more colourful than the other this time.
Which one do you think paid for their delegation?
Which one got theirs for free?
Which one retains more users on the platform?
Delegators
I'd like the attention of @freedom @blocktrades @smooth @minnowbooster and any other stakeholders known for selling delegation.
Today I received 2 messages regarding 2 different accounts offering upvotes at a price of SBD or STEEM. This is a growing industry on the network and I think we need to consider what effect it is having and how we can turn that around.
Firstly, I do not blame any person who comes to steemit, looks at the few ways that people are making money here, and chooses to set up an upvote selling bot. If this is what we allow to make money, this is what people will continue to come to make money.
Secondly, we are in the early stages of a social network. Facebook started giving priority to business pages and advertising after they dominated the internet. Instagram also did not become the corporate product promoting platform it did until it had taken over the screens of the millenial generation. YouTube took a decade before they began forcing ads on almost all YouTube videos. The reason for this is there is a risk of losing the social networks most valuable asset - the users - if they haven't reached internet dominating territories. (This is a late night post so dont mind the bad attempts to grasp for words)
Finally, the people above and below, curating content for you manually, engaging with people, spreading their votes far and wide (but also carefully) are doing an important service for you. I don't want to make any demands, but I assure you people want to do this work for you, and not only do they deserve to get paid for it (via curation rewards) but they would do a much better job of it in order to try to keep those coming in.
Upvote buyers and delegation buyers who then go on to sell upvotes have zero incentive to maintain the value of this network.
But we the stake holders can give them the incentives.
A large stake holder of SP can do many things with their SP.
- They can curate manually earning curation rewards and rewarding valuable users for their contributions, encouraging them to keep going.
- They can set up automated voting, which is somewhat less encouraging as the rewards are there regardless of how much work was put in.
- They can delegate their power to 10 different people, so that they can work less, and the people who later become investors are kept 10 times more engaged with all the comments and valuable contributions by the active members of the community.
Free delegation is a game changer
Remember that the more people getting not just rewarded, but engaged with and interacted with, the more people are satisfied to keep going and one stake holder only has 2 eyes as well as a life and family to attend to. Every stake holder here who is not powering down has the power to employ 10 people to do their curation 10 times as well as they could have on their own. And it is you the stake holders who benefit from this engagement and that's WITHOUT the payment of SBD and STEEM.
Recently @stellabelle and @fulltimegeek generously delegated their SP out to reputable curators of the platform. You only have to look at the charts to know they are actively voting for many content creators and commenters and they were carefully selected. I want to ask all the stake holders selling delegation to reconsider. Are we not in this together? Everybody has a role here and we all have a means to reward each other for fulfilling our part in growing this network. The content creators who create the content that keeps people engaged. The curators who decide on the content that should be encouraged and retain the best content creators with their upvotes. And finally the investors......wait, who? Oh yeah,
That's us!
Hi there, nice to meet you. I know you've been wondering where are all the investors well
HI WE'RE RIGHT HERE.
Yep that's us. Look back at all the bull markets we had. Who was investing?? They were the users that were kept here getting rewarded for their contributions. People like @exyle , @craig-grant , @demotruk , even me (before a bad emotional trade). If you're looking for investors you've got to stop sending us away with systems that discourage us from working and start trusting us to build this network for you! Come on, we know you didn't come here to build a social network! But we did. So trust us to build this network with the use of your delegation power, so that everybody's voice is worth a little bit more and the best, most hard working curators get the best chance at growing here.
I promise you 10 people are a million times better than one bot.
Join us on discord
Whales curate and Minnows create but what happens when the whales are few and usually busy in otherwords little or no time is given to content curation anymore?
Someone once said the steempower belongs to who so ever bought it and him alone, in otherwords he has every right to use it the way he/she wants.
But I would like to believe that this platform steemit was created to one day become a great social platform were users come together and become one bringing different story, tech development and what have we to share with others and everyone.
So today I say why not give a chance to this little fishes called minnows and trust them to take this platform to where it was supposed to be and thesame time giving back your investment.
Together a community can be formed but alone one is left with nothing but to wander around.
Beautifully said
thanks just re-quoting what you already made clear
That's Mucho information for an old fool to sort through. It must have took a bunch of time and I appreciate the effort. I've toyed with a couple bots and always felt dis-satisfied with not having full control of my votes for the posts I enjoyed.
On the subject of leasing SP... I used to get a vote on occation from @blocktrades that made my whole week really. Now if all that Love has been leased out to people just upvoting their own content for profit, where is the Love there?
I've also noticed that some great content creators don't see a fraction of the coin they used to achieve even with hundreds of votes and I'm curious as to where all the daily allotment of steem/SBD is going?
I'm sure your charts explain many things, but I can't absorb your hard work. Or maybe if I did, would just leave me disappointed in the results.
Thanks Again for a fine post, Now following and will resteem and upvote for your effort.
Cheers
This is definitely good for this community. When more users will higher SP will understand these, community will be more humanly.
I wish we were talking about millions of users. I do not think we have more than 5-10K in people who are actively trying. I'm mostly a content creator but love curating and find so much good content even with such a small crowd.
I pay to lease my sp - I'm not sure what the difference would be if I pay for it or get it for free (!) Recently, I started posting more of my own posts and my self-voting makes my rewards decline because I am not popular compared to those I vote for!
I find this place exceedingly complicated. I'm here to get out my natural health messages but I find myself in a huge learning curve and spending more time learning what to do here than actually working on what I had planned.
Can you explain your point about who votes for what based on whether or not they pay for delegation? I have no idea which direction you are suggesting.
I'm in the curation league of @abh12345 and have learned a lot there. I'm trying my best to support others while learning myself - lots of juggling!
I notice that people who pay for their delegation are far more inclined to self upvote. Not that self upvotes are "bad" but too much of anything is a bad thing. Consider if everyone were voting for themselves at such high percentages. This would no longer be a social network but rather a cryptocurrency advertising website. Who wants to look at nothing but adverts?
So everything in moderation. Personally if I were delegating (and I am considering doing that very soon) I would ask that curators try to stay under 5% max on any one particular account, and would have already explained that if they go over 10% they may lose their delegation.
Most delegators don't appears to be setting any standards like this, however I was there when 3 people I knew were seeking delegation received it from @fulltimegeek and all three of them said to me that they better start voting more or they better manage their vote better and not vote selfishly. All three made this decision without any request from the delegator.
I have the idea of going by one hashtag and finding ### of people to support for a time with my voting and with advice to improve. So I would have maybe 5 (?) people who got a good part of my votes for a few weeks or however long it takes for them to do better or quit or turn out not to be a good fit for me.
But now - after working on my curating - I recently started posting more of my own posts, and I do self-upvote with my big 10 cents. So now my self-voting is detracting from how much I can vote for others. This means my advice needs to be better instead or I vote with a smaller percent or something.
I'm just trying to learn to curate, so thank you far all the information in this comment and the others. Lots to consider. But I know I help people if I vote for them for a while and talk to them too. Teach then how to format, for example.
I believe everyone has got at least one or two people whom they upvote the most ...you can say they are either ardent fan of them or have developed some bonding with their content or content creator themselves. Putting a limit of something like 5% can take a toll on someone's committed fan following. But perhaps that's what is intended!
Well this would just be a personal parameter that I would go by. Each stakeholder is entitled to their own standards of what they consider "good" curating. Even though I appreciate that many users may use the platform to see a specific content creator, I would still require them upvoting other content as well (such as the comments within their favourite authors post) in order to qualify as a curator of my delegated SP. Money is not the only thing content creators like. We also love and need engagement.
It sooo is! lol - And to be honest, I have little interest in the 'techy' side of things.
All I really want from the platform itself ( and presumably I am not alone in this), is to log on, post your content that you consider good, check out new posts, talk to friends, comment, and up vote quality content.
(and make a few dollars a day...?)
This all takes quite a lot of time. ( I have an obscenely large amount of free time, and still find it sucks waaay more than I bargained for).
The ( monetary) rewards for the work/time involved is dis incentivizing lots of people who come here, and stopping the platform from growing, especially when you see big up vote rewards for absolute brain dead posts, day after day, does nothing to help the situation.
In my 3 month(ish)I have been here, I have been lucky enough to get the attention of 2 BIG up votes/whales I think! wooohoo. - and what a rush.
The incentive to produce more quality content grew.
And quickly fell away again.
I want the money, sure, but I want it from people who appreciate my work, not an algorithm.
I see a diminishing future for original content makers on here unless things are addressed. (especially concerning bots)
That would be a crying shame for a place with such potential.
I'm stopping my whining now, as it interferes with my creativity!
( the reason I took a 10 day holiday from steemit, recently)
I hear everything you say. I decided to focus on earning money here until I could get a bit of power (5000 sp and then we'll see). There are ways for minnows to make money without a lot of support from whales.
I've got a whale bot of a fairly small amount, but also the bots of smaller people who add up to be more than the big guy. And for a bonus, the smaller ones actually visit my posts and comment. They just use the bots to catch the post and vote at the right time.
And yes, the time suck is outrageous for me too. I have a lot of social media balls in the air and I have dropped some while others are going crazy thanks to steemit.
I wrote this old post with about 15 ways to make money when you are new and I make money with these ideas. not a lot, but over time, it is increasing. Maybe some of these tips will help you too.
Make Money Blogging on Steemit Top Tips and Checklist for Better Results!!
if someone invested his time and money to the platform why he doesn't have to upvote himself ?
Because an investor gains more from growing the network that they do from upvoting themselves. And like I said, it's not that upvoting yourself is wrong, just that too much of anything can be a bad thing. And so we need balance and moderation to grow this network. Growing the network makes your STEEM more valuable.
but a simple fish like me can't change anything to the network, the real change have to be made by whales people that have 1000 steem power and more, I did my best to gain 250 steem power in 6 months without investing any thing, and I am helping people with resteem because I don't have that good upvote (2cents). Here is my group if you are interested : ↕ Resteem to post.
Fishies are really suffering, they do evething they can to get that good upvote, but whales are not supporting simple people, they support mostly themselfs.
I think the steemit team have to do something about that, I hope that the next hardfork will be much better and the upvote will not be related to the steem power that whales have, but to the quality of the post and to the activity of people there.
Do you have enough sbd to lease delegated sp? I have 1200 total, but about 1000 is delegated. This has made a huge difference in my results here.
no, I don''t have sdb at all, I withdraw all of them and turn them into bitcoin because steem price is going down in bitcoin and bitcoin is alwas going up, I hope I will find a way to earn that steem power without posting or commenting, it's too hard for me. Maybe there are some giveaway or contests of steem power you know ?
duplicate ergh
duplicate ergh
duplicate ergh
duplicate ergh
thanks for all those tips, those are amazing, what is ergh ?
That is the sound of me being annoyed. I kept getting an error and then it posted my comments all these times. I will know to open another window and check if this happens again so I don't keep posting the same comment.
Enjoy the tips! I know you can succeed here. You were one of my first connections when I got here and I know you have energy and drive. Focus on something that resonates here and you will be a hit!
I agree with a lot of this and I think the problem stems fro the fact that HF 19 made it more profitable to sell votes than to vote for other people. Personally I would like to see the platform shift post reward payouts to favor curation over author rewards and make it more profitable to vote for others, but it would probably be abused and turned into auto posting bots and self votes for that too. Greedy people are going to be greedy and it's a slow fight breaking that scarcity mindset in others. It's one of the reasons I try to promote other users so much. Hopefully things get better with more awareness.
A lot of people are suggesting increased curation rewards and I think they're forgetting why that was changed in the first place. Content is king so I don't believe it would solve anything. I believe it would further discourage good content creators.
I get that and my logic is probably a bit optimistic that quality content would be the only content that could really survive if we did like a 35% or 40% author reward, but the current situation we are in from a business standpoint is that it's simply more profitable to sell and rent voting power than it is to use it to help others. While I have a very giving mindset and want to help and empower others, not everyone is like that and I have to respect that some people simply look at this as an investment and want to maximize their holdings. So the only way I can really see that we do that is to make curation more profitable than selling votes/renting SP. Letting this situation get so out of control has basically created a situation where we have to compete with our own greed now. Because you are clearly aware of the numbers too, there's a lot of people that feel it's a good way to get ahead paying for upvotes. I've been saying they were bad for a long time, but people don't care, they just want to see big numbers on their post payouts. If quality content is what's going to save the platform and make us grow I'm willing to risk it at 35% author rewards and hope that those whales that are selling their votes then find it more profitable to promote quality content, but that's still just optimistic thinking and I accept I could be wrong that they'll ever give a fuck about that.
I think people do care. I'm talking to people all the time who say they don't feel the incentive to post when they have to compete with so much advertising. It is the people who weren't getting rewarded at all before these bots that don't care because they either their content wasn't good and content creation appears to be the only way to make money or because there just aren't enough curators manually voting to find them.
I think both scenarios (auto votes and increased curation rewards) would just discourage the better content creators in favour of worse. I think we could go very quickly from a bear market to a bull market if there was another way for people to make money here. Imagine for example being able to apply for delegation to become an employed curator of the steem blockchain. Fair enough that whale won't increase their stake that way, but their stake will be so much more valuable. And I believe it is sustainable too, as before delegation gets removed so that the delegator can power down, curators would have collected a certain amount of SP to continue curating with.
I agree that steemit inc (basically @ned for this discussion's sake) or some of the larger whales could use their funds to empower curators to use them to promote quality content and grow the platform. Even with like 80,000 SP or more behind @minnowsupport it's not like we can give out massive upvotes. I'm thinking putting 10,000 SP on 100 accounts would be a much better idea than putting a million SP delegation on 2 people and thinking they are going to be able to curate enough different people to matter. I will say that I think SurpassingGoogle has done a hell of a job using the delegation that Ned sent his way and worked his ass off to utilize it to better the platform, but it's one person. I'm just not sure the decisions from steemit Inc are the right ones in the long term. We'll have to see what happens, but discussing it and considering the different options is always good and I'm glad when I see posts like this that acknowledge there actually is a problem.
Exactly. I would much prefer more people with small amounts than a few people with large amounts. However there are 2 things to consider, firstly a delegator should (imo) only delegate to as many people as they can keep an eye on. The 2 main perks of delegating to people instead of curating yourself or using bots is being able to spend less time on the platform while you can trust that the curation is being used in an engaging way that brings value back to their investment. That's what bots do not do because of the amount of abuse they are prone to. But the delegator will still need to be able to check up on the people they've trusted in case they are doing anything that does not bring value. Secondly, since these people would be gaining SP from their curation rewards, it would be best to try to select the best curators. Out of the 5 curators @ned originally selected, there was only 1 @surpassinggoogle. But I agree with you, more would be better, I think it's about finding that magic number.
Glad to see we're on the same page. Hopefully things get fixed one way or the other, because it's clear as hell to me that we aren't ready to leave beta.
Agreed. I fear SMT's are taking way too much priority right now when we haven't yet established a sustainable network. Just had a eureka moment about how to encourage delegation, but since it would require a hard-fork I have my doubts that it would be validated. Will post about it soon nonetheless.
We support you in your ideology so that steemit, is a more human social network that feels the contact with people, so that they feel they can contribute with small things.
This world is just beginning, and I know that if we work a little more together we can achieve great things.
Yep those charts can show a lot!!
I was recently delegated some SP to help with my work as a community greater and custodian to help keep this place clean. I hope that I can do a good job to help uplift this platform!
Thanks @beanz
Good for you! You give the rest of us hope to have this happen. What is your plan for using this gift?
I welcome new members. If they have a good introduceyourself then I will upvote them 10c or more.
I upvoted 5 or so of these currated posts by 20c or more.
And I fight spam. I will flag accounts that do nothing but spam comments or put up posts that are 100% copy paste. IF they have been warned already, then I flag it 100%. IF it seems they are new and unknowing then I will explain it to them first.
Good on you to go for those new posts. That's a good use of effort. I have a lot of luck talking to spammers here. I usually try to engage them and help and get maybe a 20% good response. That's much better than on other platforms. Sp many times, the person is confused and thinks they are doing the right thing.
I haven't flagged anyone yet but there are definitely some who need it. I see them come and go, so I know people like you are on it. I really appreciate the help to keep this place nice.
Thank you! and a happy Thanksgiving to you too!
Thank you! I have a lot to be grateful for and glad to celebrate again. I hope you have a wonderful day as well.
People just trying to figure out the easiest way for them to earn a buck with the least amount of effort. Agreed though people with great steempower have a great responsibility of deciding the future of steemit.
Events over the past few days have blown my mind. Talk about a fast education. I definitely came to Steemit for a social media platform, and to survive and thrive, I'm having to take a painful crash course in investor logic. It is definitely different from ours.
I am willing, though, to make herculean effort to see this platform through their eyes. I think I have to, if I'm to enjoy any longevity or success here. But I shudder to think that this is what every user in the future will have to do to reap any benefit from Steemit. The more people game the system, the harder it will be to navigate.
I understand why a cash investor would look at a post with ten views and a $300 payout and decide the balance is borked. But why not encourage the author to GET MORE VIEWS rather than strip rewards? I also understand that non-investor views--people who read without contributing--are not desirable, either. But are they worthless? Methinks not. Curation in the manner you endorse would go far toward ameliorating this type of problem. I'm encouraged by all the discussion I see in the community right now. I just hope we're able to discover some kind of reasonable solution.
What the heck! You mention a new scam to me. I heard about a few other things this week but not this one. We have the readers looking in from google search thanks to alexa. Everyone ignores them - but those are the millions of people. If they come and see crap photos ranking, that's when there is a problem and they won't come to look if it's steemit. Yeah - 10 views for $300 sounds a bit off.