I have a question

on how best to reward good readers for their lovely comments, and a modest proposal to offer a wallet transfer, something like a dime vs a penny for your thoughts if you read and comment on my long posts, but first,

A shout-out to two of my favorite Steemians!

@quillfire and @crescendoofpeace

are stellar examples of what first led me to Steemit: a promise that here, people are more civil, and you won't see all the flame-war politics and trolling you see at Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms. I should have known better. People are people. The trolls and flamers find us wherever we may go. But no matter what, some bloggers remain civil and optimistic.

Scroll down for more on these great bloggers--

This post began with a quick question in mind, but hours later, I'm still constructing and expanding on it.

I wanted to address my frustration at not having the "power" to reward good content like theirs. Even if I were a member of a curation team (see @curie for a fantastic example of Steemians scouting quality content to reward), benevolently awarding the occasional curie would not satisfy my urge to reward dozens of kind comments from thoughtful readers on a daily basis.

How do we show other writers our support?

Steemit isn't like Twitter and Facebook, where I can hit "like" a thousand times a day without repercussions (that I've noticed, anyway). Here, we lose "power" when we upvote every comment or post we want to acknowledge with gratitude or camaraderie.

Joining a Discord channel

is another way to get to know fellow Steemians, engage in dialogue, and offer "likes" without losing power via the pesky upvote business.

Trouble is, I got into so many channels, I couldn't keep up. And the temptation to hang out chatting with fellow Steemians kept me from getting much of anything else done. But it is a great way to carry a discussion beyond the topics raised in a single Steemit post.

Auto upvote

is one way to reward our favorite bloggers. "It's easy," I'm told, but when I try signing up for it, I freeze every time when I get to this point: "If you don't know what you are doing, STOP NOW. This will reconfigure a bunch of your settings."

Well, sad to say, in the same way that I drive a car without knowing a serpentine belt from a multi-vee, poly-v, or multi-rib belt, I do not know what I'm doing at Steemit. All these rules, payouts, windows of opportunity, and formatting glitches still plague me 15 months into this gig.

(By the way, I googled it. "Serpentine belt" is another name for a multi-vee, poly-v, or multi-rib belt. All these terms refer to the same thing. Is it any wonder I'm chronically confused?)

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source

Readers,

if you take time to read my posts AND comment on them, I like to upvote your comments. It doesn't take long - an hour or two into the morning - before I 've used up my "power" for the day.

A penny for your thoughts? Is that all?

My upvote is only 2 cents SBD, so "a penny for your thoughts" is about all I have to offer.

A 10-cent upvote would be better,

and I'd do a wallet transfer to make that happen, but a hundred times a day doing that would be $10. Ten times a day, one dollar. My wallet just isn't that fat. I'm a "red fish," or something like that. A long way from whale wealth.

How to reward readers?

Surely somebody else is already on it, if I just get Steemit's search engine to work for me. I'm not schilling for comments and seeking to build my reputation; I just get frustrated at how quickly my voting "power" runs out.

Power! I want it!

I'm thinking of doing something like this: If you take time to read and comment on my blogs, and my voting power is perilously low (anything under 90% is said to be cause for concern), I'll transfer 0.1000 SBD (a dime for your thoughts!) to the most worthy comments of the day. Autupvote would be so much easier. But in my case, great writers would get not even a penny, but a fraction of a penny, for their thoughts.

I'd drain my wallet pretty fast if I adopted the mentality of tipping every commenter on my own posts like a restaurant server with 100% upvotes (my current policy). There's a #slider thing that allows 15% or 20% upvotes.

On the bright side, I don't attract all that many comments, so I just upvote until my power runs out.

Here's a great example of how someone creative and community-minded rewards Steemians:

@theluvbug

with @steemitbloggers and its founder @jaynie is a clever way to reward, resteem, and share good content.

❤ WANT SOME MORE LOVE AND ATTENTION FOR YOUR POSTS? ❤

In proud collaboration with @steemitbloggers and its founder @jaynie, @theluvbug regularly supports the Steemit community with upvotes and resteems of great content which is really adding value to this platform..you can help by spreading the word of #theluvbug...

Too late to resteem a post?

Use the "share" feature to share a Steemit post at Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or LinkedIn.

@kona, @dpet, @supernovastaffy, @juliank

and others offer rewards, upvotes, resteems, and ways to unite fellow photography buffs and animal lovers. Check out #dailypetphotography and #dogsofsteemit, #animalphotography, #photocircle, and more.

Too much for me to cram into one post. Maybe @quillfire can pack a post, but I'm a fan of brevity. As a writer of many years, I find most people don't read my stuff. My own mother told me why. Too many words. She only reads my short posts, and only if photos and family members are included. Sadly, the older I get, the more like her I become. Blocks of text set off "Skim" mode, and my attention level is more cursory than in-depth.

I love @crescendoofpeace and her post-length comments;

her replies are worthy of being actual blog posts. Follow @crescendoofpeace and you'll see nothing but good things. Like In Helping Others - Day 207 - Haiku - on helping others, accepting help graciously, and the eternal value of kindness.

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Notice her hashtags. E.g.

#payitforward #youarehope #poetsunited #homesteading

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Every post comes with a bonus packet of information in the most engaging and readable form a lesson could take. I learn so much from every post. Examples are too numerous to mention, and this post is supposed to be about my efforts to duly upvote and reward good content like @crescendoofpeace and @quillfire's, and I haven't even started with @mariannewest and all the crew of @freewritehouse. Here's her most recent post, another classic worthy of many upvotes: Keeping invasives off our place - Haiku - On finding a couple of awesome plants, and upon identifying them, finding they are among the worst offenders

Another Steemian who writes great posts AND great replies and who attracts such good content in return, his Reply section is as lively and informative and exhaustive as the original post, is

@quillfire.

Follow @quillfire and you'll be rewarded with guy-humor, edgy wit, and of course, compassion. When he pays tribute to a fellow Steemian, he does it in spades, as the old saying goes (with so many non-English-native speakers here, and, dare I say, Millennials, I fear a lot of our truisms and idioms are lost upon readers.)

This: @Girlbeforemirror: A Tribute to Astonishing Talent ... and a Heart that is Gallant is a post that sets @quillfire apart from the ocean of minnows, and if you say "Oh, lots of peope do tributes like that," check out the Reply section. I've never seen so many thoughtful replies, so consistently, as this guy's! I love his breezy style and his unapologetic vocabulary. Erudition. And, verbosity. And this--this is a classic:

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Be sure to read "Achilles or Hector?" ... Would this make a good Under Armour advertisement? for more of the community-mindedness I'm talking about here.

It would take all day

for me to keep talking about just these two Steemians. There are so, so, so many more, and I want to shower them with upvotes and appreciation.

But I don't want to do the Busy Work to build up the power to do this -- the political machinations, the chat rooms, the channels, the time it takes away from dog walks, housework, chores, and writing my own fiction -- been there, done that, and still don't have the upvote power to make a difference.

I can make a wallet transfer, though, and it seems like a waste of time to transfer pennies, but my wallet is filled with notifications from Steemians who do this as a way of getting attention. Thousands of automatic transfers a day of 0.000 SBD. I'm surprised this is allowed. E.g.,

One one-thousandth of one cent?

Routinely transferred? It may be legit, but I totally don't get it.

Prince and Bear, I'm coming!

Until next time,

Keangaroo

because Kean sounds like Kane (not keen, hint, hint)

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