A whale story ... my story ! [The whale experiment, its downvotes and ugly face]
What is a whale?
First of all, we should establish what is a whale in Steemit. It seems a user qualify if he has more than 250 MV or around 120,000 SP. This is around 20,000$ at the time of this article.
The misunderstood whale situation
There is a feeling that whales shouldn't get rewards from Steemit.
Yes, there is a global feeling from minnows that a whale should a benevolent guy, voting on articles just for the sake of promoting high content blogs and not thinking about which one will give the more ROV (return on votes). Also, a whale shouldn't post blogs and receive money from them because they are already whales.
First thing, 20,000 $ is a great sum of money but in any case in allows you to stop working and have a great time the rest of your life! If you live in Europe as I do, you rent a small apartment and drive a small and cheap car you can even live 1 year with these 20,000$.
Even a bigger whale, with 100,000$ still have to find a way to win money for living. The only difference with 100,000$ is that you can stop working for reward! years ... not a lifetime solution.
Any minnow that own its house (even if part of it belongs to the bank), in a global way, is much more a whale than I am. If I am still renting a small apartment is because the money I had for my house end up in crypto currencies a few years ago. I decided I would use this money to invest in my future and try to end up one day being able to live a life working in the cryptocurrency world. This is still a work in progress and thanks to steemit it seems to accelerate. That's why I took most of my belongings in crypto and invest them in Steem. It's the best shot I have to work for a great crypto project, benefitting me, this community and the world.
In brief, I'm not the kind of whale that have a shitload of money everywhere in crypto, don't really care about Steemit and shouldn't deserve extracting money from it. I'm very invested in Steemit and wish the best for the platform. The only way I could use all my energy to push this platform forward is by being first able to live (modestly) from it.
What happened to me? Boohoo poor whale!
I decided to stop working on my regular job and give myself a time to see if I would be able to create a basic salary from Steemit. This would be the first step. Once I would be able to do it, I would simply dedicate the remaining time I have to promote the platform across the online and physical world. This would again benefit me (my investment), this community and the world.
I posted my 2 first article after a while without posting. I was very decided to create several high content blogs weekly.
My second article went to Nº1 in trending and get 130$.
https://steemit.com/peerplays/@glitterfart/peerplays-the-new-graphene-chain-and-its-ico-dilemma
The blog was interesting, it has 224 votes and 48 messages. I took great care of stimulate and coordinate the debate.
That was just the motivation I needed to go through this process, I was super happy and highly incentivised to keep it going.
After a while, 3 whales suddenly decided to downvote me.
No reason, no explanation ... nothing. Just a cold blood downvote. I start looking at other top 10 trending blogs and nothing happen to them. The reward of the blog went down to 20$. It's still a cool reward but I partly lost the motivation I had first due to this injustice. I'm not whining for the 100 bucks but for the principle.
I'm still unemployed, still wanting/needing to try to make a living out of Steemit, I shouldn't be punished by abusive downvotes. My intentions in this platform are pure, I only have in mind a win-win-win situation, I benefit, so does the community and the whole world (by discovering Steem and start using cryptocurrency).
There are other ways to win money in the crypto world with the capital I have. I could sell 80% of my Steems, don't care anymore for this platform and use the rest of the money in other ways. This is not what I want but a toxic atmosphere created by big whales downvoting good content blogs without even giving an explanation is not the place people want to have their money. I'm not speaking about me, I'm trying to extend my experience to other people that may be experiencing the same situation.
The Whale experiment
I understand the principle of this experiment. We lower the whale actions so minnows have more power. It kind of make sense from a narrow perspective.
Minnows
A minnow is a minnow because he didn't invest money nor time in steem ... why should we try to give them more power ???
If you don't have money, there is a great system in Steemit allowing your to invest time to create good content, create a followers base and build a good SP capital. This is what we should reward!
A minnow is the same person I was when I first enter the cryptocurrency world and decide to invest the few money I had to try to grow it. There is nothing bad about being a minnow, it's just the beginning of an adventure.
My thoughts
We shouldn't handicap whale to give more power to minnows but simply cultivate a better atmosphere and behaviours in the platform. Whales should votes as much as they can on original and high content blogs to help minnows to grow their power. This is THE way Steemit is designed, let's cultivate this mentality.
We shouldn't handicap dolphins, small and big whales to vote and create content. The day these persons are able to live from Steemit, they will become the best full time Steemit commercials.
So ... what should I do ?
I could create low-quality content, create a lot of them, pollute Steemit with empty shit blogs and never get downvotes because I would be under the downvotes radar but still earning money. This would be a logical conclusion if I keep being downvoted on my big blogs.
This is what I wanted to highlight, this is not good! These are not the conclusions we want people to have in their mind.
I recommend reading this blog from @hilarski, it explains the problematic much better that I could do with my current English writing skills.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@hilarski/how-to-promote-steemit-without-attracting-freeloaders
I invite you to give your opinion on the matter. I hope we can have a constructive debate. I'm not offended by the downvotes, I understand it wasn't a personal attack. I want, just as you all want, the best for Steemit. I'm genuinely interested in have more opinions on this experiment and the possible bad side effects.
gave you support with me and my trail votes :)
Thanks King, I apreciate your support ! I felt it also :'D
Haha, glad to hear! Enjoy my whale buddy! :)
Hi @glitterfart, thanks for your post, I agree with you. I think people who invest money into the platform is great for the platform, and should be able to get a return on their investment, this would encourage more people to invest. I am one of the people who did not invest any money in Steem, but just power up everything I earn through my posts, now I have grown to be a dolphin. I also promote Steemit as far as I go, to encourage others to start participating.
Thanks for the good work.
You are probably the very representative user of what Steemit is about, people blogging about what they like and know and earning money. People believing in the future of the platform and powering up the maximum possible.
Yes, I believe in the platform and its future, steem on!!
Sorry to hear this story.
I checked that post and found it's not downvoted by me or @smooth due to the "experiment", but by another individual due to his own taste (it seems he doesn't like BitShares and Peerplays and probably Steem/Steemit related contents), unfortunately @smooth's bot was broken so didn't automatically counter the downvotes as expected. I was checking manually, but missed your post.
I think I need to setup my own bot.
I know it wasn't you nor Smooth.
I had a look when it happend. I didn't want to point finger in the blog itself to avoid animosity.
These are the downvoters :
It's sad to dislike graphene related content. It's bleeding edge blockchain technology. The world has to know. ^^
I was quite disapointed by the downvote but my blog purpose was mainly to highlight the bad effect (dismotivation) downvotes can have on ppl written good content blogs.
Glad you came by say hello and give me a feedback on what happened ;)
Cheers
Just a update: My bot is now up, so hopefully future whale down-votes will be countered.
Good to know that you take care of the system ;)
Thanks.
Iam not the best bloger in steemit but In one of my old posts i admit the problem with whales lusing intrest in this platform due the bad athmosphere here . Wen i propose the power of whale to bi limited until some level every one ataked me , and a week after start THE WHALE EXPERIMENT no votes at all . Its frastrating to get downvote with no explenation ( for original content ) . For me even more frastrating is to get a big payment wit les views . Latley this platfor become not a bloging but a bot and ignorance place . The dolphins are not any better than the whales before just thay benefit even more now . Wen was the last time you see a minnow on trending page ? Was when @bloctrades was voting . Instead of change the sistem on direction to benefit every one the change now benefit the dolphins . Its not a fear and uncensured bloging eny longer .
Agree! :)
Well, that's kind of obvious as I AM the best blogger in steemit ;p
Compleetely with you on that, that is not good !
I guess that will change as funds in Steem level themselves. That is something that will happen as "whales" power down and allow other players to buy in.
You quess but it wont change , even if a whale like a minnow content and upvote it other whale will downvote . And dolphins power now is to concentrate just 2 curations bots nothing much . Why we see 400 upvotes and 48 vews ? Are you happy this way ? You say you are the best bloger what if you get your 400 upvotes but just 15 people look at your post and maybe ... i say maybe 2 of them comment ?
There is bad atmosphere? Where? I have not catched it yet. :o
The bad atmosphere comes from people writing good content blogs being downvoted without any good reason. This is unfair and abusive. This is something you could be experimenting on your next good quality blog. How would you feel if it goes up to 100$ and suddenly down to 10$ ?
You are right, I would be very sad but oh well. It happens when some people have more power than others.
It's not a problem of having more or less power, it's a problem of acting in a harmful way with the power you have.
Well, with great power comes great responsibility. :)
I've also been flagged by bigger whales which hampered my desire to blog.
I'm a "whale" and I don't even have electricity at my house (purposely). A lot of people seem to think us "whales" magically became rich by scratching our ass or something.
Before I joined the crypto scene, via bitcoin 4 years back, I was a FullTimeTruther. I invested my time and money into STEEM because I believe it is the best tool to circumvent the fiat money manipulators. I have tried to spread bitcoin mass adoption but it's just too complicated for the layman.
BUCKING THE SYSTEM -- PROOF
It hurts when there is no good reason !
Besides the glitter, I couldn't obtain money scratching there either.
That's a great system and I fear the kind of experiment like the "whale" one could spread a bad reputation on this community.
Before the experiment 99% of users were not able to give even 1 cents with their upvotes. You had to have $8000 worth of SP to be able to give 1 cents. This means that 99% of steemians will never understand the purpose of steempower and the whole value proposition of it is undermined. If steem power has no utility for 99% of users then steem is worthless.
Downvoting is an integral part of the system, everyone can do what they want with their steem power. Some people think that spreading rewards more among everyone and giving more power to the 99% is good for steemit, it's their choice. If you are unhappy with this, buy more steem power to try to outpower them that's how it works.
If you want a steady income why would you want to rely on whales upvotes instead of votes from your followers?
Before the experiment followers had no weight, authors would either get upvoted by a whale and earn $20 per post or not upvoted by a whale and earn just a few cents and whales could stop upvoting anyone's content at any time and users would be back to earning pennies, this is extremely unstable. It makes no sense that you would want to go back to such system if you want a regular income from steemit.
Are you sure of these numbers? I had this impression that some friends of mine could produce cents on voting with 1000$.
I understand the system and respect the fact the everybody is free to do whatever he wants with his power. With that said, I'm not complaining about the downvotes on MY blog but mainly wanted to highlight the fact that if good content blogs get downvoted, nobody will keep producing them. We will have much more quick written empty blogs with catchy titles. I think this result would be a terrible outcome for Steemit.
I have whales in my followers, when they vote my content, they get downvoted ...
I agree with you that the difference between low and high blog rewards seems to be much better now. Maybe the code should just cap the maximum voting power.
I mean the maximum a whale could vote a post wouldn't be 100% of its power but an inferior number. The whale could still earn the same but should have to votes on more blogs.
In other words, on a fresh new blog without votes, the maximum money you could produce with one vote would be 2$ (only an example). Whale would start to vote much more blogs and the earnings will level themselves.
I thought about it yesterday night and was thinking about writing a blog today to explain it in greater details. Is this something that has been discuss already ?
A cap, a better exponential formula, lots of things could work. I just don't know why it hasn't changed yet after 9 months of being an issue.
Possibly if you vote on a post that has already been voted on but if you want to give 1 cent to a comment/post with no votes you need $8000 worth of SP. ( now you only need $800 or something)
Good content is subjective, what gets upvoted is content that people like and want. If people want quick written empty blogs with catchy titles then that's going to be 'good content' for them.
The only way to give power to all your followers is to restrict influence to the few whales that follows you, that's why I am asking if you prefer all your followers to have influence or only a few whales, you can't have both.
It's been discussed a lot. If posts are capped and whales vote more on blogs it would spread reward more but it wouldn't solve the power concentration issues because whales would still use all their influence but in a different way.
Like I said above the only way to give power to the 99% is if whales abstain from voting.
Which is why a lot of proposals have been made to incentivize them not to vote.
This was my initial proposal https://steemit.com/steem/@snowflake/guardian-of-the-steem-universe-a-different-perspective-on-the-role-of-whales-within-steem-ecosystem-part-2
A lot of other proposals came out of this idea, basically the idea is to have an investors/moderators class that wil be rewarded extra steem but can only upvote with a certain amount of SP.
Great post showing understanding of all level! Much appreciated - upvoted! I won @htooms's contest and I am voting with power now. #takemyvotes
Enjoy your new power man, have a great time !
I try my best Man - not easy as i can not give away to everyone! Take care buddy! Tomorrow i am a minnow again
If the experiment continues this will be the end result here on steemit.
Why would I spend hours/days making good post, if it will be downvoted for sure and will eventually earn the same money as some meme?
That's my point. It wasn't a bad idea at first view but I've reached the conclusion that whoever decided to conduct this experiment didn't think about bad side effects of these abusive downvoting. It has to stop before it's too late.
I think we need to split voting power and curation awards. Give the masses the power to vote but give the higher curation rewards to those who invest. That will encourage a growth of new users and will also encourage people to invest.
I feel like the system is already incentivising ppl to buy more steem or if they can't afford it, invest time to gain steem with the rewards.
Someone who don't want to invest money nor time shouldn't be rewarded. The system is ok.
To become a whale is as easy as posting good content blogs, grow a followers base, cash in everything in SP, keep doing it until your SP multiply by 10 with the growth of Steem and that's it .... you are a whale. Anyone here while a couple of hours a day can potentially be a whale before the end of this year. As I see it, the system is pretty cool !
Oh I agree the system is cool. I'm one the people posting, working his way to become a whale. I just thing most people, in general, will not buy steem or they will buy a small amount and the success of the site will come from it being used by millions. Once that happens the price will go up and you can also bring in ad revenue. So I think if new users see quicker results to their work it would lead to a faster influx. Ya it might hurt the chance of people investing at the start but once you have the numbers, the sky is the limit.
The goal posts keep getting moved. At the time @abit began the experiment it was 384,000 SP to be a whale.
It's obviously subjective. The limit dolphin / whale doesn't really matter. The problem is that high-quality content gets downvoted without good reasons. That will hurt the steemit reputation badly !
The reason is to give more power to ppl who didn't invest time nor money in Steem. I just don't see how it's going to help us.