RE: Bidbot Experiment: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
I found this post fascinating and I learned a great deal - thank you. I dabble, when I was mere plankton with a bot or 2 and have absolutely no idea of the return. I probably lost - I had so little to throw at them by way of Steem and was not going to actually pay. That was probably more than 18 monts ago: I will have been on the platform 2 years in July. Since then, I've not and I've had the same questions as so many have, and which you have tried - so eloquently - to answer. I think, in the main you have succeeded.
You have also articulated my (and many others') frustration at spending time on well-crafted posts which, as you, and on comments like this, for little return. Recognising that one needs to maintain a 'presence" to build up a reputation when time is "of the essence" with apologies to old Sherlock, I've resorted to superficial cooking, cats and posts of a similar nature. If I could make more from less frequent, longer posts, I would certainly invest the time.
I have read and understood the gist of @quillfire's comment and think that his concerns are not just valid, but should be heeded. What he suggests for those not paying attention, is terrifying - for them and for others on this (and other) blockchains. We seem to share the same value system and as I recall, it was on one of your posts that we "met". Anyhow, back to the bot thing: I have also dabbled with auto curate trails and stopped. The only dapp where I continue that is @share2steem where there is some transparency with the return). What also strikes me, talking of where value gets frittered away, is that folk don't realise that voting from dapps like Partiko also dilute the value of votes. They tempt one with points, but the value of the points when redeemed are not commensurate. That said, one could argue that if one has not paid, technically, one is paying for the convenience (of "steeming" from one's phone).
I sense that with Quill and people like @raj808 there is a groundswell for cleaning things up and as I have indicated to Quillington elsewhere, I'm in and all for it.
Thanks again for the very useful explanation and analysis.
Fiona
Thanks. I hadn't considered that. It does make sense, however. I make most of my posts from either @esteemapp or @steempress and the rewards, just for using those apps, are HUGE. But that's not why I do it. If Steemit would fix its user interface and make posting from its own website easier and more intuitive, that would be my preferred method. I got so frustrated the first month of being here that I figured there has to be easier ways to craft a post than trying to fight with the Steemit posting feature. That's when I found Busy, which was a little better. But then I came across eSteem, and that was A LOT better. SteemPress allows me to post to my website and see it on Steemit, so there's an added benefit there. What didn't occur to me is that these apps are diluting the rewards pool, just like the bidbots. If I did the math, I'm sure I'd discover that in a real sense. But I would claim that there is a difference, philosophically.
When I started this experiment, I operated on a few hypotheses. Only one of them turned out to be wrong. I thought that curators would get more rewards because the bidbots made the rewards pool for individual posts larger. I was wrong, as I (hopefully) clearly illustrated.
As the bidbots grow stronger and more people who post quality content discover other platforms and migrate to those, Steemit will, more and more, become a pay-to-play scheme. You'll HAVE TO PAY for bidbot votes if you want to stick around. And you better know what you're doing or you'll lose. In that case, it will become nothing more than a fancy investment scheme for which the SEC, FINRA, and CFTC will have ogling eyes (as if they don't already).
After one year I have to say that I not only feel cheated for the the rewards a good post should get but doesn't get due to the above mentioned.. actually the fact that high quality posts are buried under a mountain of garbage and nobody that does not yet follow you will ever read it, is even worse for me..
in this perspective even FB could be better..
.. add to this flag and spam wars.. and its just a wonder the steem ship has not sunk yet...
something has to change!
I remember the days when you'd conduct a search for information on Google and get a results page full of useless content because website owners could just pay content providers to write them keyword-based content that got them respectable search engine rankings. I was fortunate, and unfortunate, to be in the content marketing business at the time. I tried to sell useful content services where people would pay me to actually write decent content for decent money, but I got so many requests for cheap SEO articles. Eventually, Google changed its search algorithms and got rid of the trash pages, aka spam. Really good SEO writers can still push a page to the top of the search rankings, but it is harder, and it's even harder to stay there.
Where there is money involved, people are going to figure out how to game the system and tilt the odds in their favor. The reason we have government regulators is to reel those people in when they get out of control. We can bitch about regulation, and sometimes I do, but it does discourage bad behavior and cleans it up when it gets too out of hand. I don't think Steem Inc. has figured out yet that being in control of the governance mechanism means they can influence the outcome. Or maybe they have figured it out and just don't have the will.