The problem is not bots, the problem is it's easy to make (imaginary) money by upvoting everything quickly, if bots don't do it, people will do it manually. This is such an obvious flaw that completely destroys the stated purpose of this site that the only conclusion I can draw is we are being scammed into parting with money and the people running this site know full well it ain't ever going to work in the interests of anyone but themselves.
That's why we have the blockchain, so it links up all connections of energy. positive or negative http://www.steemshare.com/lists/27
I stop listening when people use the word 'energy' in the incorrect manner, it messes with my chakras man.
Believe it or not that is not the actual problem. You upvote a post before 30 mins you don't get the money, the author does. What is actually going on is that there is a tutorial that was posted before that rule went into effect and that tutorial code is being copied and pasted and run by every script kiddie on the planet because they don't actually realize this isn't making them money.
Better solution is to give them tools to make better bots and incentive those bots more than the spammy bots.
OK, so we now know to set robots to upvote every post when it reaches 30 mins old, or just scroll down the list of new posts until you find posts old enough to upvote, jeez it's hardly any more difficult. As I've stated elsewhere the major flaw is the only source of revenue is people trying to make money and like any classic Ponzi scheme it will fall over pretty quick once people realize there is no real money to be made by the vast majority of people and pretty much everybody tries to cash out, problem is it will take two years for us to get back whatever's left of our investment and the chances of this site surviving that long are pretty minimal.
I am in total awe of your want to instead of cut off those who are hindering us, due to their inability and lack of knowledge, you wish to help them and make them grow.
You are coming from the right place, and I am behind you on this decision.
As for therealnivok, I believe this is an investment opportunity. It's not a make money quick scheme and people are unable to realise that. It works around the support of others, and the community that we build here. When we bring negativity into that, like assuming it won't work before we try - and remember, it's an investment opportunity, you need to be patient and trust in chance - it will fail to work before we begin.
These bots, being run by real people, are not earning themselves anything bar the agitated state of those they're effecting. They're bringing negativity here, by being annoying and spamming others.
We need to remember that this is in the beginning stages, we can't knock it before we try it. We need to invest in it, support our community and have steemit's back to make it somewhere in the future. And I know full well, I am investing in this, as the future I see in steemit is rather bright.
I'm afraid I do not see a bright future, as an investment opportunity it seems a very poor choice. Ask anybody with a little knowledge of finance to invest in something whose sole source of income is the investors and they will scream 'Ponzi' and run out the door.
As a platform for content sharing it shares the same 'wisdom of the crowds', 'what's popular must be best' thinking that is not actually true. Somewhere in the site docs (such as they are) it states 'users are rewarded for voting correctly' what that means is you get paid for voting for popular content not for content you actually feel is quality. This sets up a positive feedback loop that ensures that a few creators will always get votes because they are good earners and everybody else gets left out.
Where would democracy be if we got a financial reward for voting the winning party?
`When the community becomes larger this won't be the case, I believe there isn't enough patience from users. It's not a quick cash fix, and a lot of people seem to think it is.
The problem s1ennaaa is that, surprising as it may seem, the vast majority of people here are acting out of self interest and as the community grows this will not reduce but become much, much worse. I agree that this place is not a quick cash fix, it's impossible for everyone to make money, there is no income apart from investment in steem power and a huge amount of income is soaked up in 'running costs' so what's left over is all that's available for rewards. Put very simply, the average amount paid in by users must vastly exceed the average rewards paid out. So, for a few people to make a lot of money a lot of people have to lose money. This hardly seems like an equitable social contract to me but it's what you get when you allow people to buy voting power.