The Poor, Poor Minnows
Like peasants of medieval England, slaving away to bring treasures to the Kings, only to be denied time and time again, or worse - beheaded.
I wonder where the whales and dolphins are. I see them appear on the hot, trending or high-rep posts but rarely ever in the new section. It seems like that's our job, my fellow minnows.
Picture content as a piece of bait. The more that you and I surround it, the more attention it will gain from a dolphin. The more dolphins that surround it, the better the chance it'll have of attracting a whale and so on. This is similar to an ant colony, in a way. The worker ant finds a piece of food and sends a pheromone out that attracts other workers and soon soldiers. The queen sits upon her throne, waiting for her slaves to bring the tasty morsels of food home.
Now, I don't know how decentralised or anarchic you can get here if you've rigged the system to give yourself a bigger gun or money machine from the start, as I've seen a lot of rampant circle-jerks breaking out between high-rep players here. Meanwhile, I've been spending my time in the new post section, sharing my one cent love around to new minnows for their good contributions and to help them get more excited about the platform.
Whales and dolphins don't really come up to this depth though, but if they do I think they'd gain a lot of respect and love from the lower class community. I understand that votes have a better chance of a higher pay-out from hanging around the 'hot' topics once you're on that level, but I see a lot of great posts go ignored in the new section simply because there aren't enough dolphins or whales coming up to the shallows to look around.
Queen Ant (Img Cred)
Thanks for reading
- @shredlord
the problem is that the capital of the company is in fact the steem power, so for the company owners it's essential to maintain their own steem power to maintain their position, but ... that also skews the whole voting system!
I do think it's a problem, especially because so many people are getting frustrated and lose interest, but I do think they can fix this
the founding whales need to work together to find a couple of thousand minnows that not only post, but even more so do a good job curating and give them more steem power by upvoting those minnows introduction page
in other words; right now it looks like the whole voting system got so skewed from in the very beginning that it really does need an intervention
maybe it will sort itself out over the next few months, it could be, as in, that's the idea ... but that's not a given, it could go the wrong way just as well
I'm not complaining about my own rewards, I don't get much, but that's because I didn't do much either, I'm mostly reading stuff, so it's not about fairness or anything like that to me ...
it's about the results; you don't have to go that deep to see the problem; lots of good content that's going to waste ... I usually check the active tab to find good posts and I do, but when I check the votes; plenty, no problem, but then I check the reward and the post got like $0.08, it's ridiculous
and again, it's not about fairness, it's about the system not working; the way it's sorted now doesn't reflect the quality, it reflects how closely the author is connected to the whales ... and sure enough, the whales do their best to upvote good authors, but most of them are not very active curators; they don't upvote that much themselves; it's not spreading!
Whoot!!! 41 votes and you are up to a dollar!!! Keep Steeming
I'm a baby dolphin and always scanning the new feed ... there are definitely some gems coming through. Many do well enough.
Still plenty of room to grow. It's a grind, but you can obviously write. Keep hustling. Followed and upvoted!
@shedlord You are getting noticed. Just keep hitting the chats and hustlin! Fight the urge to quit like the minnow skeletons before you! We aren't that far ahead of you. Only a couple of weeks.
I have a similar observation. I agree with you
or not. But
#logotherapy joke
It's a game.
Very well put @shredlord! The ant analogy seems very apt. I hope more minnows do realize that once we band together, we can all succeed together.
Personally, I've been on the same boat as you. I've been sharing my one cent love to minnows for the past weeks, and I've been commenting on posts to give them more traction.
The way Steemit is structured right now, it takes tremendous luck to have a chance at elevating to a higher level. The combined crab mentality and "look at me!" mindset that's permeating in the community is a bit disheartening. Hopefully, future improvements give everyone a fairer shot. I know my own posts don't get automatic votes. If I weren't heavily promoting them, I just end up getting 3 votes at most haha
You, sir, have my upvote.
I also suggest that you check the Payout Time page and not only the New, been doing that for some time and found some more interesting things that generally went unnoticed. For a lot of people even the difference between 0.00 and 0.01 on a post makes huge difference in not letting them easily give up along with the extra vote they get. So there is nothing wrong in encouraging them when they have made something that is worth at least 1 cent here on steemit... sadly not many are doing even that.
It's like most things, persistence pays. Those who stay the course and keep working on not only growing but contributing will grow here. No system is perfect and rarely are they perceived as fair to all. Sometimes you just work with what you have and make the lemonade.
If whales voted on the new content first, there wouldnt be much payout left for those vites that followed. Its a good thing that whales let the minions vote early. This gives those early voters a bigger payout whicj helps make more dolphins and whales.
The whales & dolphins should join in on that work more often. If they're just clicking cause it's got a lot of votes and a bit of a pay-out from minnows already that shows that they're not really focused on the actual content. There needs to be a balance, somehow.
new little minnow at your service sire. i have a newbie question, if i could afford to buy some form of crypto currency, is there a way to add more @steemit power to my account to attract more of you dolphins and possibly bag a whale or two?