Wow.

What a morning! There's no doubt the whole "Whale Downvote Experiment" currently running on Steemit is causing a lot of buzz.

A lot of people are understandably upset, often because they are unaware of what's happening, aside from seeing a bunch of flags (aka "downvotes") on their posts, for no reason they can figure out.

And it's definitely a shitty feeling, to have something you worked hard on be sent downwards towards (what feels like) oblivion.

So tempers are flaring in parts of the community, while others take more of a "wait and see" approach. I'm more in the latter camp.

Want some useful information?

If you're interested enough in trying to actually understand what's going on, here are a few moments of clarity I have found, on this morning's rounds.

First @fyrstikken made a video that makes about as much sense as any explanation I have seen, so far. Giving up a few minutes of your life to watch it might alleviate some of your frustrations... it did for me. Somewhat, anyway. So have a look at Explaining the Whale Fasting Experiment. 

Meanwhile, some people are just angry and get very busy with the business of pointing fingers and assigning blame and expressing their disgust.

Some are engaging in "countermeasures" by only posting spoof content... or mildly relevant and/or inappropriate rebuttals.

Some are refusing to post at all, which is-- of course-- their business, especially in this "freedom" and "non-censorship" community.

As I see it, it's not all gloom and doom, anyway. In fact, this post was partly inspired by @meesterboom's more positive take on the whole thing, from earlier today. Also worth a read: The Excitement of the whale experiment-- why we should get on board. 

Also, for a little broader background, there's a new update post on @steemitblog with updates on the much discussed hardfork 17-- also worth a read: Update on Simplicity- cutting complexity with Steen 0.17.0. 

Now, I invite you to consider this, as you think about all this...

When you get all fired up, are you keeping in mind that (a) this is just an experiment and (b) it's not "personal." It's about developing a more equitable rewards system, and has nothing to do with the quality of your individual content.

As in, when you get these downvotes, it's not a statement about the quality of your content... it's a countermeasure to emulate what rewards would look like in an ocean without Whales. It's merely a whale upvote offset with a whale downvote... a zero-sum game. I realize that might be "cold comfort," but it helps me to keep that in mind.

Personally, I feel hopeful. 

I was getting a little tired of seeing a handful of "featured" posts-- of very MIXED QUALITY, I might add-- earning $200.00 worth of rewards, while the vast majority of really good and well presented content might be earning $0.10.

As @krnel very vocally pointed out for several weeks (among other things), such a rewards system makes contributing more of a "lottery" than a system that rewards quality content.

Above that, though... and most important to remember:

STEEMIT IS IN BETA!

I realize many of you know what that means, many of you think you know what that means (but don't really), and some of you don't know at all.

Short layman's version, though, it means that Steemit is in the "testing stage," where things are tried out and adopted (or not), bugs and kinks are worked out (removed), new features are considered and so on. It is a process (at least in software) that is done by a sampling of the intended end users.

It's a process that happens before a project is greenlighted for world wide release.

Also meaning that we're not "guaranteed" or "owed" anything... we're merely part of the early stages of the much GREATER "experiment" known as Steemit.

Of course we get to share our feedback (and hopefully it is heard), but we're not "entitled" to a damn thing, at the current state of development. Back in the dark ages (when I worked with some of this stuff in earlier incarnations of the IT industry) we also called it "User Acceptance Testing." 

Yeah... but I got DOWNVOTED, and it was a really good post!!!

Now consider this: You could be over on Reddit getting flamed and abused by some know-it-all Redditor and for WHAT reward, exactly? Or you could be posting all your images to Instagram, in return for which you get WHAT, precisely? Or maybe you could be writing excellent articles on Medium, in return for which Medium rewards you with... WHAT, again? Or maybe you could have some vacuous debates with Facebook bubbleheads, for which Zuckerberg will give you... WHAT? Certainly not the level of intelligence and insight you get here... but maybe a chance to pay $20 to get your post "seen more."

It's not like we're dealing with life and death here. Sure, many have substantial investments in Steem so it's depressing to see the value of Steem decline... but clearly "doing nothing" hasn't worked so well, so maybe giving "doing SOMEthing" a chance would be prudent.

But enough about that!

All Communities have Growing Pains

From where I am sitting, it seems Steemit is having some growing pains. As far as I can tell, all communities have growing pains, whether they are virtual ones like this, or simply villages trying to become towns, or towns trying to become cities.

I spent my college years-- and the next almost 20 years-- in Austin, Texas. When I arrived in 1981, it was a small sleepy college city of some 350,000 people. Today, it is the 11th largest city in the US and a sprawling metropolis of two million+, as a result of 35-odd years of being one of the fastest growing cities in the USA.

Growing pains? You bet! 

Constant battles of the city council over what to do to improve infrastructure. Changes of zoning laws. I actually lived two streets over from the most pothole-y street in the city, but there was "no money" to fix it. Environmental concerns. A plethora of citizens action committees fighting for this cause and that. Business interests vs. citizens' interests. Growth proponents battling no-growth proponents. 

My point being, growth is never a smooth and easy process.

And the basic human truth seems to this... people tend to want change, but they generally don't want to deal with the process (aka "price") of change.

Too bad, so sad-- one doesn't come without the other, unless you're living in some utopic fantasy that doesn't translate into functional reality.

How does this affect ME, right now?

Well, whereas I find this "experiment" annoying and disruptive, I am still committed to the potential of Steemit. I plan to use all the Steem I make this month to Power Up on March 31st.

But I find myself pausing and wondering what to do, while this experiment is running. 

Well, I'm not going to stop blogging. That makes no sense-- I have a sense of momentum, and feel like I am just getting back into the routine of writing. Stopping as some tangible statement of "protest" seems counterintuitive.

I'm not going to waste my time with "nonsense protest posts." I honor that some people want to do that, but I don't want that crap to become part of my timeline, in perpetuity. 

So, what does that leave? 

Well, I could "continue, as if nothing is happening." That's a sort of OK solution, although I'll echo what a number of other active bloggers and content creators have said "It's a bit demoralizing to spend two hours writing and choosing photos, only to have your work downvoted by robots." 

Which is what it is, by the way. These downvotes have NOTHING to do with the actual quality or worthiness of our posts... it's about shifting how rewards are distributed. Or not... time will tell.

So What's the Plan, Stan?

Anyway, the decision I finally arrived at is that this will be a good opportunity to simply write some "articles" and post them to the web, shifting to the mindset that-- for the time being-- Steemit is merely an "online hosting platform" where I can park content and send other people to read it.

Might not make any rewards for it, but then again, I wouldn't make any rewards by putting it on Medium, either. Here, at least, it becomes part of my current base of work.

So that's my plan, until further notice.

Heh... it'll be a little strange, to suddenly have posts where "number of views" outnumber "number of votes" by a factor of 5-to-1 or more... it's usually the other way around!

I guess I will be using this experiment time to conduct my OWN experiments in "web distribution" and social media effectiveness for promoting articles. The cool thing is, I'll still be posting "quality content," it'll just be formatted a little differently from my usual fare.

So, yeah, that's how I plan to "make lemonade" from the "lemons" that have been served to me by this little Steemit whale experiment.

By the Way, did you Notice?

Not saying there's a correlation, but has anyone noticed that the price of Steem is up over 20% in the last 24 hours, or basically since this little experiment broadly went into effect? And that the uptrend is on very heavy volume?

Could be a random coincidence, of course...

How about YOU? What-- if anything-- are you doing about the current "Whale Voting Experiments" going on? Posting normally? Withdrawing from the site? Buying Steem? Powering UP? Cashing out? Is it a good thing, a bad thing... or simply "a thing" that's to be expected in a projects that's being Beta tested? Leave a comment-- continue the discussion!

(As always, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)