@ecotrain: Making voting bots great (again!?) with whitelisting and 11% ROI! Plus my opinions on why voting bots are a good thing for Steemit!

in #steem6 years ago (edited)


There is a lot of debate on Steemit about voting bots, and I would like to start this post with my opinions on why I think they are very needed on Steemit. Also, I would like to explain a little about the @ecotrain voting bot, why it is different, and how it deals with most of the criticisms made against voting bots.

Why We Need Voting Bots

Until a few short months ago voting bots were not an option for people to self promote their posts. Also people with a lot of Steem Power had few options as to how to use their voting power every day. Anyone who has a lot of Steem Power will know the challenge of curating! There are a lot of minnows who would like dolphins and whales to manually curate, but the thing is that is actually a very tall order! It is not really practical or feasible to ask people to spend their whole day reading and upvoting posts constantly. It is very hard work, and most people with a lot of Steem Power probably don't have the time!

There is of course the option of delegating to other users and let them do the job of curating, but standard delegation brings no rewards back to someone who has invested. Despite this there are several amazing whales such as @jamesc who have and continue to delegate massive amounts of Steem Power to others, but we cannot expect the majority of vested users to do the same. Most people either want or need a return on their investment, but don't want to spend all day having to curate. Because of this we used to see a lot more vote exchanging and self voting on Steemit, with the majority of upvotes going to the same people every day for posts that were often not even worth the kinds of rewards they received.

The Pro's of Voting Bots.

Voting bots have given us a way to distribute the rewards pool to way more people! They have also allowed individuals with very little voting power to gain support for themselves by using bots. Not only that but some people, including me, use voting bots to upvote other people with much larger votes than we could do ourselves. Voting bots have allowed me to create the Minnow Support Project, where I send several dollars to dozens of minnows each week to encourage them to keep writing and posting. This is a great thing because there are so many new comers to Steemit who post and get almost nothing back, and then give up. SO voting bots are an amazing tool for us to really share the wealth of Steemit and support the entire ecosystem.

Also, I have to be honest that when I look at the trending page of You Tube there is almost nothing of any interest to me on it, whereas Steemit's trending page is, in my opinion, much more interesting.. SO things are not a total disaster as far as boosting posts go. Also our protective whales spend time flagging those posts that are boosted too much and don't add value, which serves as a strong message for people not to boost low grade posts just to make money... and that seems to be working! I rarely see trash on Steemit's trending page!

The Con's of Voting Bots.

Now, I'm not saying things are perfect by any means! Voting bots are still relatively new to Steemit, and I believe will evolve quite soon to help deal with the problems that occur with them. My main criticism of nearly all voting bots is that they allow anyone to post anything they want, including really terrible or even copied posts, and get very large rewards for them. This is NOT what Steemit it about! Also it is a fair criticism that people with money can essentially buy a place on the trending page as well as boost their own reputation to artificially high numbers regardless of the quality of their posts. That is really not good and I do think that our reputation score should now be calculated in another way, such as by the number of upvotes we receive (not the value of them but the number of them 1:1).

The Solution!

We are now starting to see a shift in voting bots and how they operate. I am very proud that the @ecotrain voting bot that I run and manage is dealing with nearly all these problems! I have achieved this by enforcing whitelisting on my bot, which means that ONLY people who I approve are allowed to use it. The only other bot i know of doing this is @smartsteem. When someone asks to be whitelisted I check out their blogs and see what they post. If I am happy that they write posts with value, and don't copy or plagerise other people's work I add them to the whitelist so that they can send bids.

I also don't play games or try to be greedy. In my opinion Steemit should be a win-win-win for everyone, and we shouldn't allow for people to lose money when bidding! This is because it is quite technical and all too easy to use a bot that will allow you to lose 20-50% ROI and this leads to many people getting quite understandably upset. To prevent this, the @ecotrain bot has a fixed 11% ROI built in, so that anyone using it will always make a profit on it! This means that the whole system is fair to everyone, including delegators!

A message to delegators.

Now talking about delegators is a VERY important part of this post! As anyone who delegates knows, it is possible to delegate and receive 100% rewards of their share of the bids made on voting bots. The @ecotrain bot is NOT like that and only returns 65% back to delegators! I think this is very important, and would like to explain why. In the old days of Steemit, people voting with a lot of Steem Power would only receive curation rewards. These rewards were tiny in comparison to the kind of rewards you can make from delegating to voting bots.

Here's thing thing though... it is human nature that no matter how much we make we always desire more, and it is SO easy for people with a lot of Steem power to want as MUCH back as possible! I believe this is a short sighted attitude that is part of the capitalist model that has failed the world. I believe that it is our duty share our good fortune with others if we are to have an ecosystem that is fair for all, and allows others to benefit as well. If we want Steemit to grow and have a long and beautiful life we have to temper our desire for profit and keep sharing some of our ROI with others. That is why I offer delegators 65% return on their investment. So, what do I do with the rest? Let me explain!


Making Voting Bots Great (again?)!

I am running a pay it forward minnow support project that upvotes dozens of minnows every week with as much as I can using rewards from some of my posts as well as the @ecotrain voting bot. When people delegate to me they get a very nice return on their investment (sure, not quite as much as with most other bots these days). The rewards that I receive are partly given away to others who REALLY contribute to the value of Steemit but are simply not noticed. It takes a LOT of my time every day (at least 2 hours), and I am busy finding and supporting beautiful people who would otherwise get almost nothing and probably disappear before long! I also use my Steem Power to curate the @ecotrain passengers and spend hours every day reading and supporting them with my personal upvotes. The @ecotrain is the kind of community that I can only describe as amazing, and we add SO much value to Steemit just by the quality of our posts and constant engagement!

You can see my most recent minnow support post here: https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/pay-it-forward-minnow-support-project-week-3-41-minnows-supported

Let it be said that it is the people who post valuable content who drive Steemit, and without them there would be nothing to vote for and no way for delegators to make anything at all! I believe we MUST find ways to support those who do put a huge effort in, or else Steemit is just going to be a fully capitalistic model of self serving investors who basically reap all the rewards and leave the rest of the people feeling upset.

I am a person that believes VERY strongly in sharing and team playing. When I look at our world and see the inequality that we live in, it breaks my heart. When I see how many people live with almost nothing and are just victims of a terrible system of unrestrained savage capitalism it makes me very upset! That is why I am a part of Steemit, and why I spend SO much time on it, because it is a way out of that paradigm!

Do you agree? Then please delegate to the @ecotrain!

If you agree with me then I would like to ask you to delegate to the @ecotrain bot so that I can continue supporting people who really do make this world a better place. I am also working on a long term project of buying land in Europe and creating an entire off-grid community and am saving up some of my Steemit rewards to do this. Your delegation to the @ecotrain bot will help me manifest that goal much more quickly.

Also, right now I am quite limited as to how much I can give away to minnows because the @ecotrain voting bot doesn't yet have enough Steem Power to let me give to more than 5 people a day. With your delegation I can help many more minnows on Steemit, as well as return you a very fair and more than acceptable ROI.

Further Rewards to Delegators

If you are able to delegate a significant amount of Steem power (1,000 SP or more) and have a desire to one day live off-grid or self build then I will give you my consultation services for free! I will give you unlimited (within reason) advice and consultations on any eco building project that you are working on and do my best to support you and help your dreams come true. I have been eco building for 15 years and have a wealth of experience and knowledge about this, especially how to build something beautiful on a tiny budget!

If you would like to read more about my eco building projects and workshops please check out this compilation post.
https://steemit.com/earthship/@eco-alex/a-compilation-of-all-my-eco-building-and-workshop-posts-on-steemit

I hope I have inspired you to show your support and help make Steemit SHINE like a diamond in the rough. Together we can show everyone that this WORKS and that together we can start to make the real changes that we need to see in the world.

If you would like to delegate ANY amount of Steem power, you will receive 65% of your share of the rewards every day from the voting bot.

All you have to do is visit:
https://steembottracker.com/delegation.html

You can delegate any amount of Steem Power and you can withdraw your delegation at any time by setting the amount of Steem Power to ZERO and waiting a week.

IMPORTANT: Please keep at least 50 steem power for yourself as you need it to post and comment!


Thank you for being here. I would love to hear your view about what I have said!


The 8 Pillars of @TribeSteemUp

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First, I would like to thank you @eco-alex for what you are doing for the Steemit platform because without people like yourself, I don't think it can make it. I was one of those new people on Steemit a month ago wondering why terrible content was getting so much money while my good content made less than $2 and only had a couple comments. Not that I was expecting to make a lot of money but the comparison did not make sense to me. I was on the verge of giving up many times because as we all know, writing good content is very time consuming. I had very few real followers. It was starting to feel like I was wasting my time and efforts. Then a couple of amazing people on Steemit used voting bots to help me boost my posts (without my knowledge at the time) and I was encouraged again to keep going.

I have only learned about voting bots a few weeks ago. I used them on a few of my posts and realized I was not always getting my money back. I thought I might still gain some new followers from using the bots, but really the only followers I was gaining were bots anyways. How discouraging!

I like your projects and have used the EcoTrain voting bot a few times. Thank you for making it to only upvote whitelisted people and have a positive ROI. I think bots have value and are probably here to stay. Appreciate you starting a bot that can actually help the community.

From personally experience on Steemit, I can say the voting bots did not help me or make me want to stay, it was joining communities such as the EcoTrain community that really helped me see the potential and gained real followers. Thank you for all you do. I know it's VERY time consuming!

thank you for this comment.. you explain so well why i do what i do! much love!

Can I just ditto what you said? So articulate and well expressed. 💜

haha, you are funny. Thank you!

What you are doing with the Ecotrain bot is taking an active approach to combat all the negativity surrounding it. Whitelisting seems to be a great way to ensure that the bot doesn't become abused. Personally I love to use it to upvote other's posts. It's a great way for me to help since my account's vote value is so low.
Thank you for being an awesome being it is clear in all your missions that you really do contribute so much positive energy into making, not just steemit, but also the world a better place. Thanks again for everything you do. :-)

thank you so much, and for being so awesome yourself!!

Personally I love to use it to upvote other's posts. It's a great way for me to help since my account's vote value is so low.

Bots having a whitelist is the future of the success of bots in my opinion - although I wonder whether other bots will follow suit? Whitelisting and checking blogs takes time, and time = money. However for the longterm success of Steemit it is in everyones interest to ensure more quality control of what is being upvoted by bots.

Maybe there could even be random checks of posts that are being bidded on - if they are pagarised or not up to a certain standard then the upvote could be declined and no upvote given - this might be to subjective though, but it would make people think more about what they are trying to buy votes for!

glad u agree! thank you for your comment!

My feeling on what would be BEST for Steemit to take things forward in a positive way is:

People with high voting power can delegate to one or even better, several 'new age bots' that whitelist (as well as curate manually! .. read on).. Delegators can choose bots that promote niche content.. which would give bots much more meaning.. like the ecoTrain bot.. That would be much more intersting than all bots promoting more or less the same content.

Since bots make money its not hard to have someone either employed or rewarded to keep checking on the whitelist.. and I'm sure the community can self regulate plagiarism and bad posts organically.. SINCe that isn't a consideration or requirement right now no one does it..

So it is my GREAT vision right now that this approach could lead steemit in the right direction.. and would not require changing the rules of the game to try to fix the problems (and create new ones) that we have with them now..e.g. by increasing curation rewards to incentify manual curation!

Those with most Steem Power have WAY too much upvote strength to curate by themselves and NEED others to help them.. By using voting bots they can relieve the burden of that by delegating to people/bots that they respect and entrust to do the right thing.. which is what I am basically doing..

In my view we can have a win-win-win situation because

  1. People who Use the bots get guaranteed 11% ROI so they hare happy
  2. People who delegate get great ROI and support good posts because they delegate to whitelisted bots.
  3. People who can't afford to or don't want to use bid bots can get rewards organically from the profits of the bot.. as I do with my manual curation..

So in a sense it can be something like a hybrid of what Curie does combined with bid votes. That is why I offer 65% ROI to delegators so that a significant amount of the profits go right back in to curating organically. In fact this approach will IMPROVE organic manual voting as it puts a lot more voting power back into the hands of bot owners who will also be curators.

I realise many people who have read my post really DON'T understand all that I have said.. or the power and potential of whitelisting.. @smartsteem get it, and I get it and right now we are the ONLY people doing this as far as I know..

With all the negativity around voting bots I HOPE I am able to get this message out.. that there is a way to make this system work so much better, .. but in my opinion the responsibility of doing that rests with delegators and bot owners and NOT the Steemit developers (@ned) .. I really believe in minimal rules and changes, and letting the community take things forward.

I DO believe in Steemit because it's full of amazing people.. and we have to be patient also and let it evolve.. IT takes TIME, and we have to just stay positive and see the AMAZING potential! Evolution takes time and can be ugly, but in the end can end up to be quite glorious!

Love the idea! It does currently seem that bot owners dont take the responsibility that they should be and its having a pretty big affect - the way I see it that if they dont put the effort in and Steem falls down (if quality of posts being upvoted get worse, and thus people dont join invest) then bot owners are partly to blame.

I agree that whales have to much SP to manually curate properly and should be delegating to those that they trust can curte well - @curie does a fantastic job!

I wish there were more people on Steemit who thought like you! There needs to be a change in mindset where people are thinking about the longterm success of Steemit rather than just what profit they will make in the next week/month - with the whitelist content quality on trendint etc will go up - which will lead to more potential users and investors which will increase the price of Steem - Happy days for everyone :)

SO happy you agree ;-) thanks for inspiring me to write this comment!

I personally am not a huge fan of vote bots and I have never used them until you created the Ecotrain one, the reason I use it is because it is a community minded bot, it is was created with the idea to help the ecotrain community and also the global community at large as it will go towards helping to finance sustainable building projects and on top of all that you are now using it to help minnows get the recognition they deserve when they write good content, I will not be using another bot but I am very happy to using yours, I see it as a great way to support the steemit community. Thank you @eco-alex for being you and doing all you do xxx

thanks for the recognition and support! very happy that wonderful people like you use it to help us all .. <3

Yay, the advent of the new ethical bots have arrived.

I fully support what you are doing @eco-alex and being able to help and encourage minnows to stay the course, especially as the ones you pick have value to share and deserve to be seen by more people.

I think the whitelisting idea is awesome and solves a whole host of bot problems.

And I am careful not to upvote the few competition entries or low content posts I do, only the good stuff, so a little self-regulating still required.

Love the idea of whitelisting to prevent the voting bot being used to promote terrible posts. Kudos to you, @eco-alex, for fixing the very real problem of bot abuse.

I wish more bot creators would take that idea and run with it, as that would seriously curtail all the junk posts we have to wade through in order to find the gems. There is SO MUCH great content on Steemit, but it is time consuming trying to find content worth reading.

I really appreciate all your efforts on behalf of the Steemit platform, and particularly for helping newbies, as I have no doubt we regularly lose great people posting great content simply because they are being drowned out by the noise.

thank you .. happy you appreciate this endeavour! Im so happy to support amazing people on Steemit and make everyone smile ;-)

much love!

Great job addressing the negative aspects of bots and remedying them with ecotrain bot! Can’t beat a positive ROI and high quality posts from a group of people making the world a better place. That’s a sweet offer Alex to share your expertise. Thanks for thinking bigger than yourself. Your minnow support is very inspiring!! Well done; so glad you’re here!

Thank u so much mountainjewel!

Excellent post Alex, great project too. It seems as though bots are here to stay. Many bots are used to upvote low value posts - that cant be changed, but if there are enough whitelist bots, like ecotrain, upvoting and supporting quality posts, then they could help over shadow the low value bot upvoted posts. With all the quality original content posts upvoted by ecotrain, it is a tag and bot that I am proud to use. The 11% ROI makes it a win win. Many thanks to @eco-alex, the ecotrain delegators, and everyone on steemit supporting quality content.

thanks a lot for your kind words and support @jackdub!

Respectfully, I was with you until you mentioned limiting ROI and got a little anti-capitalistic. While I agree that wild, savage capitalism can do much harm and may eventually destroy the steemit economy if left unchecked, I disagree with your strategy. I would like to grow my account. So would others. The responsibility to help others does not rest solely on you, it rests on all of us who feel the same sadness you do. Wouldn't the entire system be better off if there were more people in position to help, instead of just a few benevolent bot accounts? I may not have all the answers, but please consider another approach. Perhaps your bot can provide 100% ROI up to a certain account value, then it drops? Why wouldn't that work? In any case, I do believe you have noble intentions and I wish you the very best outcome.

thanks for your respectful comments and question.
From my perspective it seems to be that I am doing just as you suggest. By limiting ROI to delegators I am able to take SOme of the rewards and pay them forward to other minnows, as well as support external projects that can be quite impactful in the world...

By giving some of these rewards to others who have no ability to grow since they don't have SBD or support.. I am able to help them grow their accounts and be in a position to upvote other people and spread the wealth a little bit more..

The way I see it that this is therefore putting more people in a position to help as otherwise they would not receive the upvotes and support that I am able to give them.. I am helping dozens if not 100s of minnows get more SP!

You can see in yesterdays post I was able to give significant upvotes to 41 minnows last week, and as a result they are empowered.. You can see that post here:

https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/pay-it-forward-minnow-support-project-week-3-41-minnows-supported

I am not anti capitalistic.. but I believe that 100% ROI is more than necessary and causes a lot more inequality on Steemit.. especially since many delegators who will receive those rewards may well not spread it out.. and indeed even remove those rewards from steemit.

Bare in mind that anyone investing their money in the normal fashion would be more than happy to receive 15-20% returns per year.. so even with a less ROI on delegation i feel that it is still an incredible return that will also give Steemit a much better reputation amongst none investors..

I hope I understood you right and that makes some sense!
very best to you @nofiat!

Thanks for the reply. I am happy to disagree on tactics and methods while agreeing on goals! I guess I'll come find you when I've grown my account sufficiently enough to feel I can make a meaningful impact on others. God Bless!

sure! i see you write some great posts! whilst i cant upvote them from my account (my vp is getting VERY LOW) if you tag ecotrain you could get some pay it forward upvotes from the @ecotrain bot and that will help your account to grow and get some more engagement..

<3

I will keep that in mind and I really appreciate the compliment!

Thanks!

what about us ??????
we dont have much steem power nor do we have dollars 😥 ...
would someone upvote us ????

Yes! That’s exactly what I do with rewards and the minnow support project!

Please see my latest post for more info

https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/pay-it-forward-minnow-support-project-week-3-41-minnows-supported

You xactly doing the same .... wow .... m stunned ......
Would Love to be among those who get your rewards and you would surely get my blessings .......
Go @ecoTrain Go
#peace #blessings

thanks!to get rewards you DO need to post.. i notice you havent posted anything yet.. perhaps consider writing a little?

very best of luck to yoU!

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