❓Answering Common Questions: Can I vote for Myself?
I see a lot of people asking if it's
acceptable to vote for themselves.
acceptable to vote for themselves.
In the end, this is your choice.
But here are my thoughts...
But here are my thoughts...
First I want you to understand that YOU are able to vote any way you want. I'm writing this to newer and smaller users. The rules don't change depending on how much Steem Power you have, but how it's viewed is a little differently. I'm not here to preach about what you should do with your votes, instead this is simply my take on the matter.
With all this said, this guide will be covering my personal answers when asked about voting for one's own posts, comment, etc. Please feel free to leave your own views on this in the comment section, since we all have our own opinions on the matter.
Q: Is it against the rules to vote for my own posts and comments?
NO! Absolutely not!
You are in fact free to vote however you want to...whether on your own stuff or others.
This is the only answer here that's not my opinion, but objectively true. (However people may choose to downvote/flag to counteract this.)
Q: SHOULD I vote on my own posts or comments?
(This answer is just my opinion!)
Personally, I vote on my posts, 100%. I honestly feel that what I publish is worthy and it's the benefit of having built up my Steem Power. However the other side of this is that I typically only post twice per day. So this means that I've only used 2 of my 10 daily (100%) votes on myself. I feel quite comfortable with this level of what I give myself versus what I give others. My personal judgement is based on the question, "Do I feel greedy?" When giving 80% of my votes to other people I'm quite comfortable.
The caveat of this is that:
- I don't post many times per day
- I have a drive to make what I do most more valuable
- I almost never vote on my own comments (only when I have some specific visibility reason)
You will find what works for you though. In the end it's your comfort level that determines if you should vote on your own stuff.
Q: But what about HUGE WHALE votes? I've seen all drama about taking too much of the reward pool.
(This is answer is my opinion!)
This essentially comes down to the same self (or collusion) voting question we discussed above. There rules still say we can do whatever we want with our votes, even if you hold a ton of Steem Power.
BUT...
this does have an effect on our actual community. Imagine if one person started taking 25% of the whole reward pool! This means that Everybody else has to share the rest. Regardless of the stated rules, I'd get many of you would see this as being greedy. Especially if it was done by upvoting a bunch of nonsense posts or comments. (There is a little more flexibility if it's on really good posts.) We each decide what we see as being too greedy or abuse.
It's assumed that the community will police itself in these matters, dealing with looks like abuse, even if not technically against the rules. In this sense...
We the community decide what is acceptable.
While I'm do not get directly involved in the comments, I do downvote things that I see as being "too far over the line." Even when the effect seems minimal. In the end, people with high Steem Power are going to do whatever they want to do. But I feel too much greed can cause major issues in our community...there are many that seem to agree with this statement and other's have a different concern.
All I ask of you here is state your opinion with your voting, but don't get sucked into the drama. In my opinion, it's really just a matter of whats seen as greedy or not.
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I tend to support all worthy steemians.
Self vote is personal matter. Same thing about up voting whoever your heart desire.
Keep on steemin’
@sykochica No worries about selfvote, after you give me a negative vote I'm giving you loads of positive ones.
You have a great point, especially in the last paragraph. (We the community decide what is acceptable) I honestly think that every person should choose what to do with his/her upvotes, and you are right, if you think your content is exceptional, why not give yourself an upvote. (It is deserved) And, as this case proves, people tend to exploit everything that can get them advantage in any way. (But that's life, we have to do our best to show that it isn't appropriate and that it won't be tolerated) While reading other posts here, I could hardly escape the fact that upvotes had become a taboo subject. Minnows are afraid to use the word flag or downvote in fear of retaliation of somekind and that's the problem. They need to be encouraged to do their best to make this even better community than it is. We, the community, are the only ones that matter here, nothing else does - we make Steemit the experience it is today! Have a nice day @sykochica, sorry for the long post. It's been a pleasure reading you, as always.
You have a good point! I honestly vote on all my posts too. Reason? Well it is extremely hard to get more than few cents on most of my posts over the past 6 months.
I became vert frustrated and lost most of my motivation when I see I spent some time writing valuable content for just few cents, while other users get hundreds of dollars for similar or worst content.
I am still struggling understanding what makes the difference, and believe me, I even thought of abandonning steemit once.
If I am allowed to upvote myself I will continue doing so, to at least recognize my own work myself.
Thanks for this post! I needed to speak up ! :)
I agree with you completely here. I vote myself on my posts as it isn't much and gives me more motivation/incentive. It also helps with giving my posts a bit of credibility as a smaller poster. When there is $0.00 on your post, it shys people away, when you don't have strong support from others daily.
Again with the comments I agree 100%.. I never vote my comments, only when it is worthy of value and needs more visibility.
In the end it is much more beneficial to push around your VP to others because you will build more influence and get many more people to vote on your stuff then you can offer yourself.
In my opinion though, people invest in the platform and should be able to do what they want with there votes. As mentioned is more beneficial for yourself to help others and then community as it will strengthen and so will your investment here.
I would love to also read what your take is on downvoting others, it has been a super negative thing so far, but I can also just see how important it is in order to teach others how to behave etc!!
One thing I think should be added, that when we are self-voting only, we forget that once we grow, we will get others to vote on us as well. (And it does increase your reach if you make other folks like you when you vote for them)
Thanks for this great opinion piece again @sykochica!
t.
Personally, I only tag for abuse...it's rare that I flag for disagreement on rewards and never simply because someone holds a different opinion than me.
Abuse in this case is defined for things like plagiarism, spam, tag spam, etc. Though I do tend to give an explicit warning to somebody first (though most people never heed that, or just respond with a big FU.)
The only time I've flagged outside of this was when somebody was saying that my trivia giveaway nights were just a ploy to get upvotes from minnows (which was all around ridiculous, and easily proven incorrect idea.) I work hard to keep my actual reputation of honesty (not just the rep # on here) intact...so when that person didn't update their slander, I threw out some flags.
Much like my 'mod powers' in general chat...I really prefer to not have to use flags.
I agree, I just had to downvote someone's post who just spammed that link underneath my recent post. Feels bad when people are just using the copy paste spam. :( I also think if folks are trying to without a reason attack you on a personal level (when it's not based on any truth) You should be able to defend your reputation like you said. And knowing you, I think you were right to do so.
You are helping so many people with a kind of energy I could never put forth.
t.
this totally represents me ^_^
specially :
I agree with you @sykochica,
Regards @arfah
Yeah....nice one @sykochica
It will really help the newbies
Yea, voting for your own Post has always been OK.
As long as you are not creating a copy and paste jobbie every hour.
Now that is just greedy.
Voting for your own comments is never cool. I totally disagree with that.
But Steemit is a bit of a Jungle where the Big Beasts decide who gets the Big Votes. Survival of the Fittest and all that Jazz.
I can only suggest everybody keeps on posting good content and ignore the rest and hope for a miracle. Maybe it will get better. But knowing human nature. I believe it will only get worse.
@sykochica My thoughts exactly! I vote on my own posts when they are undervalued or overlooked because I put in a lot of hard work and know that my efforts deserve more. I'm still a minnow but I provide quality material that often gets overlooked. Instead, I see nonsense comments get huge rewards and that's ironic and funny.