People's expectations from people with a lot of voting power on Steemit also known as Whales have always been high, but what most do seem to forget is that there are other normal people behind those Whale accounts as well. To paraphrase a popular quote that I'm sure you know from where:

"With great Voting Power comes great Responsibility"

The problem is that just like regular people Whales also get favorite authors, keep people in their feeds that they like to read from and they do vote for them... and they may not necessarily be good curators. Why am I saying that, well simply because I have been monitoring multiple authors that are in the list of curators that my project @robotev has for two months already and I just know what people tend to do and why not everyone is suitable for a good curator.

The problem with Whales is that people just expect them to use their voting power appropriately and the reason for that is, because the power distribution on Steemit is still far from even and if the people with most power do not use it properly and spread their votes there is also an inequality of rewards being distributed to authors. The way Steemit is designed if good authors do not get attention and some rewards for a while they may just give up as they may not be willing to work hard for months in order to get noticed and build a follower base.

The good thing is that power distribution is happening and there are more people and projects that are being formed to support different authors writing on different topics, but this is a slow process and will take months. The recent drop of the price of Steem tokens is a good thing for power distribution to happen if people are willing to invest into Steem and get voting power, but it is not just about investing, you also need to use that voting power properly. If you invest in significant amount of Steem and vest it into Steem Power you need to vote for content in order to give back to the community and get some curation rewards in return. If you are not doing that or you just vote for a few posts a day, then you are not doing much to help Steemit and the community on the long run, even if your long investment may start paying back by your power growing up. Precisely why I have started with the quote above...

Back to my observations about good curators and what I have seen with @robotev. It is really hard to be a good curator, unless you are willing to be such and have a lot of time to spend on Steemit. You also don't need to be motivated about any promised rewards, curation rewards are small even with decent voting power, let alone when you don't have much voting power. Precisely the lack of much voting power is skewing things with a lot of new users spending their votes for popular authors that are sure to get big reward, regardless of the users actually liking the post or even reading it. In the end they still don't get much of a reward, but they are also not helping themselves much or the Steemit community by doing so.

So being a good curator means that you should not care for rewards, you should spend a lot of time on Steemit and should be able to judge good content that you read and like, so some good knowledge in wider array of topics is also welcome. The problem here is that if you don't get any rewards or they are so small that they don't matter and you don't have much voting power so that your vote actually matters to the one you give it to then what is the point of actually being a good curator? This is precisely one of the reasons that I started the project @robotev two months ago - to help good curators by making their votes worth more as well as to help good authors with not yet established reputation.

In the end however, even if you begin as a good curator sooner or later either you start to settle down and not be as good or you may even leave Steemit. By starting to settle down for curators I mean that they start to vote more for the same people in their feed, people that they have followed from the start and are not so enthusiastic finding new authors and new good posts. The problem that still remains is with the motivation to continue what you are doing and I'm sure that the same goes for Whales as well. The current low value of Steem, although good for Power Redistribution, is also one of the main reasons for people not being so active on Steemit or even some leaving.

You may have noticed that I haven't been that active lately in posting or commenting as I was initially. No, I have not given up on Steemit or ran out of things to write about, just that other projects like @robotev and @crowdfundedwhale are taking some time every day as they do need some attention as well. I also have to work in my daily job to earn a living (and money to invest into Steemit), just like most people on Steemit I'm sure, as I haven't been getting much from Steemit other than more voting power that I'm trying to use wisely, especially now that even author rewards are not bringing Steem Dollar rewards anymore (side effect from the low price).

I'm here to stay however and I will continue trying to help the Steemit community as much as I can with projects like @robotev and my more recent one @crowdfundedwhale. They may take up a lot of time and effort and may not be progressing very fast, but they are and that is what is important. I'm always looking for good curators for @robotev and more people interested in what @crowdfundedwhale has as a goal that want to join...

If you have a question or want to add something, then please leave a comment below.

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