Gaming the system

[Image source wikipedia]

I have heard/read and understand that some believe you could game steem effectively .

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The only use case would be if you played in the favor of Steemians. The reason is simple the reward payout structure is designed to balloon trending content or posts. What is trending or is not trending is solely dependant on who voted for said post. And is in direct correlation with Steep Power or Vests. The reason is simplistic... The Higher your stake in the system the more power you have in the system and the more you stand to lose.

As for those who are suggesting a scenario, where a group of individuals could purposefully on selective cases, upvote one another's posts. In a very selective manner...

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This is my reply:

In the near future,when your prom queen and prom king, posts their prom photos on Steemit/Steem would you really not vote for them? So what if that post made 2K$ on your school's account? This is not bad or defeating the ends of good content! This is will not affect Steemit or Steem in a bad way. This act would probably increase awareness of steem as a whole.

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And for those whales who believe they could upvote "Bad quality Content" and live off the curation reward!
Please read carefully:

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Due to steem's ability to dilute and other users ability to flag posts:

1. I am fully convinced, that after a week or two community members will seldomly send you an "lucky packet" for your efforts. A single 0.001SBD per week.
2. It wouldn't be long before we simply "hire" an bot (cheeta) to downvote the relevant posts and find a way to make right with the Author. Through other means.
3. Luckily your account could only power down in 104 weekly installments....( You should be tired by then)
4. If you, by some miraculous means, upvote an deserving post we would simply let that post slide...
5. If this were to continue for too long I would, happily buy your account for $1 SBD
6. Everyone else could probably buy in and collectively alienate your behavior
7. Their is a ballooning effect for trending content. Your's would seldom be there...

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So now that, that is out of the way. Other methods, known to work include:

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Everything the media uses to draw attention

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Yea that one is still sticking and it's going to be a while before your Title is not the sole reason your post got noticed.
But then again Steem does have a good well founded community which does not always stop at the Title. There is a picture as well!

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I guess this is part of the reason, for curation rewards...
[Image Source Wikipedia]

How Do you Value Steem?

This is no small feet. What determines the value? How could the value be increased?

Well, as Steem is an open market token the price is solely dependant on how much you are willing to pay. Right?

No

And here is why. Although it is true that the price of steem is dependent on the market inflow. It does not affect your willingness to buy Steem. You don't need x amount of steem you need x amount valued at a fixed value. Relative to say BTC or Fiat as this amount is what you would like to send to an Author. Even the vests you are buying are "pegged" or "closely correlates' to the USD. This means that as the value goes up and down so will your SBD ,effect, on posts too.

So, how do we increase the the value( Inflow of BTC or FAIT) of Steem?

You Author posts akin to a Magazine article. Something worthy to make someone choose Steem to reward articles.

It's like boiling water. If the heat goes down, so does the steam.

Our question should be how could I attract users and give them value for their time? In the future, the trending page will seldom be used without a tag filter. "Food" and "Recipe" if you are looking the make dinner. "Scanned through top 10" finds a promising article(Recipe).
It works and Upvotes!

We could later on "Hide" the top 10 posts per category/tag and only if the person has signed-in allow all the articles to be seen or using some other method to keep users logged in.

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Now. Picture this. Your favorite news journalist is on Steem, your school posts on Steem and you follow them just like on Facebook etc. The only difference no-ads. And your vote does count! If your school has a fundraiser you could upvote the post and send Steem. It's your school/favorite journalist/Animal-care-center. Yes upvoting some post asking aid is not ideal... When you know who the account belongs to it makes a whole lot of a difference!

Who wouldn't buy Steem,then?