Curation Trails

This post is about curation trails, what it is, what to use and how to follow ours.

What is it?

A curation trail is a voting system where members leave a trail of votes on a post. This is done automatically. You first setup an application like Steemauto to vote on content that someone else voted on.

The details

You can set STEEMAUTO to vote according to your specifications. Settings available to change are

1. Time to wait before voting (minutes)
   This is the time in minutes to wait after the curator has voted before placing your vote. It is helpful to know how long after posting the curator plans on voting.

   Voting at 0 minutes after posting results in 100% of the curator's reward going back to the author while voting at 30 minutes results in 0% going back to the author.
   The amount decreases linearly within this first 30 minutes.

2. Voting weight
   This is the amount of voting power each vote will use. You can choose to vote at 100% donating your full vote value or a smaller amount suited to you. This feature is available to you even if you don't have a vote slider to use regularly when voting on steemit posts.

   It's useful because it allows you to spread out your votes over a greater number of posts and possibly earn greater rewards.

3. Limit on voting power
   This sets a voting limit for your steemauto account so that you do not drain your voting power even if the curator votes a lot or if you are following many trails.

4. Scaled or Fixed voting
   This setting allows you follow the curator and vote based on how he is voting, this is referred to as scaled voting. If the curator voted at 50% you can scale your vote accordingly. If you used a scaled voting weight at 100%, you essentially vote at 50%. If you used a scaled voting weight at 50%, you essentially vote at 25% of your vote value.

   You can choose to discard the curator's voting actions and vote on the post at a fixed 100% or 50% and your vote would be worth 100% and 50% of your vote value respectfully.

   This may be useful depending on how much trust you have in the curator and the content he is voting on. If you are not sure and don't want to give all your vote, you may scale it based on the curator's voting weight. If you want to make a vote regardless of the curator's vote use the fixed voting weight at a percentage that suits you.

Where can I start trails?

STEEMAUTO is a great place to start following and creating your own curation trails on Steemit. You can also write your own software to vote automatically on someone else's post. There are no rules against that. :wink:

Why would people want to join trails?

Curation rewards are one of the advantages of joining a curation trail. If your vote comes in on a post before it is highly successful you will likely earn more rewards for your vote on that post.

Use up your voting power. If you are a dormant user on Steemit, following a curation trail is a good way to put your votes to use. Not using your voting power is essentially throwing your votes away because your votes can potentially earn you rewards.

Support causes and reputable curators
If you support causes here on Steemit such as @upvote4charity, you may trust their voting practices and use follow their curation trails to give back and support their vision.

How to join a trail

1. Create an account on STEEMAUTO by using Steemconnect to link your Steemit account
   

2. Click Curation Trail button
   

3. In the TRAIL NAME box, type Platforms, click search and then click Follow
   

4. In the settings change the values to suit the way you would like the follow the trail.
   We suggest these settings
   Voting Weight: 80%
   Scaled voting weight
   

5. Click Save to save all your settings.

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_{This content was written by @toni2oni, a member of the @platforms writing team.}