RE: The Curation and Engagement Leagues 🏆 - STEEM prizes & steem-bounty available! 🎁
Semi-related to this thread:
The whole feud going on right now has actually made me think more favorably toward self-rewarding. If someone (such as yourself) has invested their money into getting a stake in Steem, why should they not be allowed to maximize their investment? You wouldn't tell someone who bought a stock that they should only keep 30% of the profits from it.
I think that growing your stake through self-rewards could have a place along with growing the value of the stake through rewarding others and helping the platform grow. I think there should be a balance.
I haven't invested any money into Steem. I've invested many hours, but no money yet. So I can't say definitively what I would do, but it's something I've been thinking about. I figured I'd pass my thoughts along to you.
😬 Are you sure?
In truth, if the code allows, you can do it.
[Deep breath]
That particular feud is two-faced. Both are doing exactly the same thing, only in different ways, while not only calling each other out over it, but known to go after others too. "We don't care if you self-upvote, but for goodness sake, man, spread your vote around a little!"
Well, why? As you say, it's your stake. You can do whatever the heck you want with it. Why not build it? What obligations do you truly have to anyone else but yourself? Okay, there's some common decency and the very real desire to reciprocate and so forth, but what if no one ever upvoted you? No obligation then.
This self-upvoting, or circle voting or alt account voting or bot buying voting is all okay if it's done with moderation. Right. There's no limitations imposed by the code. Sure, the reward pool is finite on any given day, but that's the only thing that might prevent everyone from doing all of that all the time. In fact, it wouldn't take everyone. It would only take maybe 25% at most, if there were actually a problem in all of those folks doing it.
So, the argument that it's your stake is a valid one, and until there's code that prevents self-upvoting or limits it, what can I say? The feud though is majorly hypocritical and one of the reasons why I've been avoiding saying much about it. Both parties are wrong, and whatever good either of them used to do is now being matched in the case of the one, and in the other case, long since surpassed, by their activities now.
I've been staying out of it as well. I think it's a shame it has gotten this far, but I doubt they're going to listen to me. They don't really know me.
Yes, it's permissible, but as the Good Book says, not everything that is permissible is beneficial.
I think there could be a place for self-rewarding, but if that's all people do, we're just going to have more tokens that are worth less than they were before... because no one wants them. Therefore, there needs to be a balance.
I just feel bad for people like you who are trying to grow your stake, trying to show justification for why it's a good investment, and you're not getting any direct benefit from your stake. That's what I was trying to say.
I apologize if it felt like I unloaded. That was not my intent. Really, it's more about the social mores on STEEM that really cause more pain and anguish here than they do any good. I believe very much so that not everything you could do is beneficial. There's a live and let live clause in the Good Book too. And the Golden Rule is something else I like. :)
re: feel bad
I appreciate that. My stake suffers from many things, the greatest of which is low STEEM prices. I can't do much about that, so I do what I know how to do—read, write—and what I want to figure out—upvote.
After that, it's again out of my hands. I could self-upvote, but I don't want to affect my reputation (as meaningless as that may be to others, my reputation to me is important, because I know I'm earning it). I don't self-upvote, because it would take away a vote I could give to some other post or comment that I like. I don't self-upvote because I think those who actually see my work should be the judge of its worth. The fact that others can't regularly see it isn't enough justification to me to do it.
Those are basically the same reasons why I don't go laying links to my work at the feet of the curators in Discord. I think they know who I am now, and I didn't have to go off chain for that to happen. The problem is, they've more or less consolidated their efforts, so it's not really showing up in rewards. I probably need to branch out a little more and get techie, return to being creative, and maybe get a little sciency from time to time. And figure out what utopian is all about and then see how I might right something for that, too.
But in reality, commenting as much as I can on a wide range of users' comments and posts has been the best thing that's happened to me. I am proving that the platform works as it was intended to. It's not super fast paced, it's not 1000% ROI or whatever the ridiculousness people think they're missing out on. And I've put in money to try to keep from dusting my splinter votes.
I don't preach this. I don't bring it up unless it's brought up. I don't expect anyone else to do what I what I do. Everyone needs to feel comfortable doing things they're own way. Otherwise, it won't last, or they won't last. I don't need to be followed or mimicked or copied. It's not an original idea, anyway, and I'm obviously not the only one doing it. There are hundreds if not thousands of us doing it.
My wife isn't going to get it. She just can't. She never got the newspaper business. She just enjoyed the income it eventually generated. She doesn't get social media, or writing, or anything to do with computers. She's a throwback in many ways. Not dumb. She's intelligent and discerning. Hard working to a fault. She would just rather talk to you face to face if at all possible and work with her hands then sit down at a computer all day.
I didn't think you unloaded. It's all good. :)
Well, I'm proud of you for having an idea of how things should look, and then sticking to that. It isn't easy to be principled, but it's better than being disappointed in yourself for doing things you believed you shouldn't do.
RE your wife
Some people aren't going to get it. There are a lot of things nowadays that I don't get either. The world is moving very quickly and you have to move even ahead of the early adopters if you want to make huge gains. It's tough, but some can do it. Others who are more like me will get some gain, but nowhere near the astronomical gains of the first people in.
Hopefully your wife can tolerate Steem long enough that you don't have to sell at a loss. I think it will go back up eventually. And then you'll have even more stake weight to throw around!
A great thread to read through here, thanks guys!
Glad you enjoyed it! We had a lot of fun yacking about things. Funny how easily that can happen.