Smaller accounts should get the voting slide bar too!
Accounts that don't get the voting slide bar are stuck having to be very stingy with their votes if they don't want to run out of voting power. This means that the current setup of Steemit after hardfork 19 significantly restricts minnow engagement and activity.
Before the change to the way voting power gets spent by accounts, everybody had roughly 40 votes per 24 hours to spread around, curating content and interacting with the community. 40 votes per day are enough to vote on a number of posts by other people while also voting for some useful comments and people that have taken the time to answer your questions and so on. Now after HF19, each of our votes spends 4 times more voting power by default, which reduces the votes we can sustainably spend per day to just 10. For accounts that have more than a little under 500 Steem Power, that is not a big problem, because they can use the voting slide bar and if they slide it down to 25%, they get the things back to the way they were before the change. So for them, this change only increases freedom as they are now allowed to make votes that are 4 times more powerful, but can also use the platform as they did before.
But people who have less Steem Power than that don't get access to that feature here on Steemit. This means they are stuck giving out just 10 100% per day. This is by no means enough for normal daily engagement with the community and I see only one good solution.
I really think more accounts, if not everybody should now get access to this feature so we can go back to using the platform in the way we were before HF19. If we decide that some restrictions should still apply in order for votes not to get too diluted and therefore worthless, the slider for smaller accounts can be limited to the 25%-100% range or similar. In this way the change introduced with the latest hardfork would not limit smaller accounts while only affording additional freedom to the larger ones.
The current setup has detrimental implications
Keep in mind that this problem only affects smaller accounts which tend to be the new ones. This means that this is disproportionately limiting the exact type of user that should be stimulated and onboarded. New users should be encouraged to spend more time and to be more active here on Steemit, so the platform becomes a habit for them. In this way the whole ecosystem can keep growing. If we are discouraging them from using the platform actively, we are making it less likely for them to stick around. If we want the platform to grow, there should not be unneeded restrictions imposed on the exact type of accounts that growth should come from.
On a more personal note, I'm currently experiencing that exact phenomenon myself. I want to interact with other steemians and I do a lot of commenting and when somebody provides me with a thoughtful reply, I want to be able to give them an upvote. But when I'm left with just 10 upvotes to give, I end up being less active, reading fewer posts and participating in fewer discussions because I don't want to be in a situation where I see something that I think deserves my vote, but I feel I have to be stingy, so my voting power remains at efficient levels. Last week, I basically left steemit for a few days because my voting power had fallen to less than 30%. If I had more votes to give around, even if they were of lower value, I wouldn't be facing this unpleasant predicament. Also keep in mind that even with my measly 100SP, my vote would still be worth something and would actually be worth more compared to when my voting power had deteriorated to extremely low levels.
One solution I see right now, is to use other interfaces like eSteem for voting where that restriction does not apply, but I would still prefer to be able to use Steemit like I did before HR19 and from any device I feel like using. I tend to write long comments and I wouldn't want to have to do that from an Android app or something. Anytime people are forced to deal with a workaround, they start doing the thing less and it really takes away from the experience.
I think this is something that should be changed and it should be changed sooner rather than later as it's surely hurting the growth of the platform. It's confusing enough for newcomers as it is for us to be placing so such tight and in my opinion restrictions on their behavior on the platform.
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Good post, thank you! I joined a week before HF19 and was upvoting everything I found valuable (a lot!) but it wasn't worth 0.01 anyway. After HF19 suddenly the values went up after I voted, so that was even more awesome. Then they stopped going up as I lost voting power, and -of course- I stopped upvoting as much.
Then I found beta.chainbb.com where you do have a slider (replace steemit.com with beta.chainbb in any steemit link and you can comment, and upvote (with a slider) e.g. this post on chainbb would have this url: https://beta.chainbb.com/steemit/@rocking-dave/smaller-accounts-should-get-the-voting-slide-bar-too
Now I have been funneling my sbd to Steem, powering up, as well as getting delegated SP from @minnowbooster. You can send steem and get delegated SP back (65 times the steem to SP for one week, or 100 times the steem to SP over the span of four weeks. E.g.: transfer one steem, get 65 SP for a week. Or send 4 steem, get 100 SP for four weeks (any amount goes, of course)
It got me over the 500 SP within a few weeks and I have to say not only is that slider very useful, it also feels good to see my upvote being worth more and more :)
May be a bit late to your post, but hope it's useful for soe minows out there!
(and following back with pleasure, btw, not because of follow-for-follow ;)
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your two cents ;)
@xyzashu actually pointed me to this post by @timcliff which points out that if we vote 40 times a day, our voting power will drop to 25% and balance out there, so we would be effectively getting the same experience as with the voting slider permanently set there. And if you vote a bit less, your voting power will manage to climb a bit higher. The only difference is that we wouldn't really be able to give more valuable votes, so we still have less freedom than the accounts with more steem power around here. Still, the difference between a 1 cent upvote and 3 or 4 cent one is not that big though large percentagewise.
I read that post and understand the maths - I just find it, in a way, more satisfying to see my upvotes being worth something to somebody. The difference is big enough I think, when you come from actually not seeing a post rise in value after your upvote, to actually gaining, 1, 2, 3 or more cents. And I still have that feeling, and hope to see my upvote being worth more and more. That's why I power up and get delegated SP, it's just too much fun! :)
But I guess the point was to find either ways of getting around the slider, or to find a balance in upvoting/voting power. And i think everybody on here will have to find a balance for him/herself: grind it out getting your SP to 500, using esteem or chainbb (a bit annoying but effective), or getting delegated SP
Very well put! I remember when my upvote was worth zero cents, it was really frustrating and it felt like my upvote was useless. Now when it varies between one and four, it's more satisfying, but I would surely like to get my numbers up.
WOW! I didn't know that eSteem doesn't come under this restriction 😇. How come? And why this bias?🤔 It's already unfair with minnows 'coz of discriminating them from the ones who has got higher SP by providing them a versatile voting-weight controller. Now this another discrimination on the basis of interface 🙄 🤔!!! Are we minnows being discouraged to use desktops? I dunno what to say or expect here!🙆
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Steemit and eSteem are independent interfaces developed by different developers for the same blockchaing which is kind of the database they both run on and interact with including recording all transactions. The limit with the slider is something that seems to have been coded into the Steemit as an interface, but is not a restriction on the blockchain level and the eSteem developers have not included such a restriction in their app. The difference doesn't come to intentionally encourage or discourage anything, it's just that the developers have made different decisions about the interfaces they have decided to build.
There actually might be other web interfaces available that don't come with this restriction, but I personally don't know about them and as Steemit is the most popular one, I would much rather they decide to remedy the situation instead of me or us trying to find a less popular alternative that might come with other caveats. But that's an option I'm still willing to evaluate, I guess I have to look into it.
WOW! This is a lot of information to digest for me. So there are plenty of interfaces with different rules set by their developers! Is Busy too one of them? I see the same posts there too.
I came across one article from a witness which says that minnows can still vote 40 times a day:
https://steemit.com/minnowsupportproject/@timcliff/minnow-voting-it-is-still-ok-to-vote-40-times-a-day
What's your take on this? I'd appreciate your views on @timcliff's analysis.
Oh, that's a great shoutout! It actually makes sense. We can basically drain our voting power to 25% and then act as if the slider was there set at that percentage. The math seems to add up.
Of course, I still think that not giving every account access to the feature is not the best way to encourage people and to make people feel welcome on the platform, but it seems to be less of a big deal now when you pointed out this post.
Btw, it's really different rules between the interfaces and more like different features. The voting slider is a feature, not a rule. The rules that govern the actual blockchain are the same on each interface. But yeah, having multiple interfaces is kind of weird. But it also encourages freedom, innovation and lack of censorship.
True, a slider would be very helpful in allocating the vote weight as per our own judgement of the merits of the post. Without a slider, we have to treat all our voting at par. We can't differentiate a 5 star content with 1 or 3 stars. And that's very sad. 😢 By any chance do you know of a slider for minnows in any other interface? It may come in handy at times.
When our votes are worth a cent or two, a change in the percentage would be such a big deal, so I think I'm OK with that, I just didn't want to run my voting power into the ground, but now that I realize I can't, I don't mind that much.
I'm sorry but the only interface I know about that has a slider for minnows is the eSteam app. I think they have a desktop application too, you can take a look through the posts by @good-karma and check for info on that.
Had checked up the eSteem site a few days back but didn't find any desktop version yet. So the better strategy to get the slider would be to work persistently here for a few more months and earn the required vests for the sliding scale 😊 Until then ...click, click click ...no sliding 😉
Yep, being active is surely more important than the slider itself :P
I dug out the post about the desktop app, I don't know what's the status of if the packages still work, but here it is! I personally haven't tried it and I don't think I will as it might have been abandoned and I'd rather be using the most popular interface.