"Great Post, I Really Liked It My Friend." (No Up-Vote Though, Curiously Enough)
At first my feelings were hurt, that someone would try to milk me like a cow. Such a gentle hand on my udder, I believed that I'd found a new friend, and that my arts and my writing was appreciated by a stranger.
"Great Post, I Really Liked It, Good Job."
As it turns out, a true friend that we should all get to know is https://steemstats.com which is an app that allows us to see who has up-voted our posts and comments, and with steemstats I discovered that some of my new 'friends' were just putting balm on my sore udder so that they could squeeze an up-vote from me in the comments section. I fell for it, but last night I went around and removed my votes from those deceptive comments, then I left a new reply on a few of them, then I even flagged some of them.
I Felt better Afterwards!
My feelings were hurt, I'll admit, and after removing my up-vote from a few of them, I got drunk on the sensation and even went as far as to up-vote my own scolding replies, rewarding myself instead of blindly paying someone to paste their blather onto my page for the rewards.
I have been up-voting comments on my page for a while as a way to attract comments and activity on my posts, and at first it was a good formula for me; to reward comments on my page would give incentive for quality comments, and an active page is a good thing in the fast-paced world of Steemit. When I noticed that some of these commenters were not really reading my posts I began flagging those spam entries, but when it seemed that they had read the post and commented accordingly, I up-voted without question. Those days are over, and now I'll take the time to: check to see if they up-voted, check to see their last 10 comments on other pages, and then I decide if I'll be up-voting the comment, flagging it, or replying with venom.
steemstats.com is Your Friend
If you don't like those grubby fingers stroking your udder, I would recommend checking https://steemstats.com to see if this scam is being used on you. I've found it to be empowering, and if enough people are aware of this milking scheme then it will become less lucrative for these dishonest commenters to show up and get paid to paste "good job my friend and great posting" or some similar balm, designed to flatter the author of the post, but really just mining the author's efforts for free money.
Up-vote if You Like It!
This is how Steemit works, members up-vote the content that they like, giving the author the incentive to keep producing quality work. Steemit is always changing, and this spam/vote-mining business won't last, but lately I've seen my own posts being milked for money in this way, and if more of us are aware of the abuse then together we can curtail it.
Steem on then, comment below if you dare, UP-VOTE if you like, and if "nice post" is the best reply that you can imagine, then paste it freely below my content, but if there's no up-vote on the post to accompany the simple comment, it will look like spam, and will be treated as such.
I have few upvotes in my posts so it is easy to see who liked it or not. I just click near the "# vote" arrow and read the names. I saw a person doing this to me as well, and thought that was a curious behaviour. I mean curious because I can't see any justification to it considering how steemit works. Most people are now with their vote power at 100% since last hardfork, and they might be a little too conscious about their diminishing power every upvote they make, but this power regenerate in 24 hours, and won't get any better them their SP can let them. Even if it is just spam, an upvote wouldn't make a difference for the, but a lot for us the OP. So maybe they're just thinking too much and not getting the incentives of the game. Anyway, great post and here's my upvote!
Yes I can usually check to see who voted that way, clicking 'votes', but at some point that drop-down window gets full. I've commented on posts before and then realized that I forgot to upvote, and that happens, but some of the comments are suspect right away if they have a generic quality, and then I see that they paste similar stuff everywhere, I feel used!
Thanks for commenting, and the upvotes are often just appreciated in principle, and not so much of a financial boost on a post. A penny up-vote is nothing to get excited about, but it's the thought that counts!
I either ignore them, or sometimes I visit their profile and look at their comment history. If I find that their comment history is full of similar comments, it's not unusual for me to mute them.
That's what I do as well, and it's worth the extra time to investigate I think.
I've never even used the mute button, but maybe I will start using it too.
I see you are also being affected by the 'new reality' here. You got my (literally) 2 cents worth for the article. Yes, it is actually pretty easy to confirm those, "Voted and resteemed" copy - paste or even automated replies. And its a good thing they are being dealt with beyond being ignored. Simply ignoring them means they are tolerated and eventually they will get rewarded from doing it. Some will always slip by and succeed in their mission. However, by flagging these comments, they will soon stop when the risk becomes greater than the reward. Thanks for helping to clean house!
Yes I see it the same way, as much as I wanted to ignore the spam, I knew that a bot doing such posting could actually be getting rewards for spamming Steemit, and I care too much to ignore such abuse. I think I was a little mad at myself for falling for it, replying to the comments and up-voting the spam thinking I had a new friend to interact with. I'm happy to bring the issue to the front until it is dealt with voluntarily by the community. Thanks for the input!
What I write to you, whenever I commented on post, I read it throughly,without it I myself don't know what to communicate. I didn't Upvoted you as my voting power is too low. So replied me like that but now I understand, so please don't take me like others.I am not milking you. Thanks happy steeming.
I'm not sure if this is something I want to investigate on my own posts. :)
Congratulations on the anniversary buddy! Hope you are busy! :)
I was reluctant to check, but I felt so used when I noticed it from one, and then several commenters. One of them responded to me by up-voting all the posts that they'd neglected and then told me that they'd done so, and that was cool.
I saw that 1-year badge, I wondered how close it was to being a year. I'm writing a post all about how I've decided not to write a post about the anniversary, I'll probably throw it up tomorrow. ("...throw it up..." doesn't sound right does it? We'll see if it's an appropriate term tomorrow!)
My upvote is worth almost nothing so it is always more of an indication of me having liked a post (emotional patronage rather than financial) and I pretty much upvote every entry for my contest but I havent been very regular the past week or so so my voting power has been recharged a little and now its about 4 cents. Ive started being more conscious of it and of the fact that to a newbie, a 4cent upvote on a good post that has made zero after a few hours of being posted is encouraging. I'm still trying to find a balance with everything here.
That sounds exactly like the kind of post I would expect from @therealpaul! :)
I look forward to reading it but only so that I have context when I come to write the post about how I'm not going to read the post that you are not going to write. :)
I can remember getting 4 cent upvotes and thinking "oh who's the big spender here?" That was back when most of our votes were worth less than a cent though, so it was like treasure to a starved minnow. It was enough to encourage me along anyway. Oh I should save all of this for that post, that epic post about how I won't bother to write an anniversary post.
I'll have to start paying attention to your comment section, I've been helping @meesterboom with this shitty behavior, we tag team the sorry sacks lol.
Thanks for the site, I was wondering how I could find out the same thing without sorting through the stuff on steemd, now I'll have to be checking my own comment section as well :)
I saw that tag team in action. and it was partly what led me to check one of my own page's comments, which led to checking more, and that brought me to feeling like I was livestock-- a plump cow. I hosed the place down pretty well, but damn. I felt so used!
On a more pleasant note, one commenter returned and up-voted the violated posts, so it's not all bad!
Good! Ha, did you see the one that wrote me like ten times to take away my flag? I'm guessing that person (female in the picture, but I don't know why I feel like the pic is a fraud and it's a guy) will think twice before doing that again.
I did see that, looked annoying! I have just removed another of the flags I jabbed in last night, they were waiting for vote power to get back up before voting apparently. I'll be more careful too, give more time at least I suppose, but I hope they all know it hurt me more than them when I felt so used.
I've actually done that before, right after I realized what exactly had happened with the hardfork and my power was sunk for a couple days, however I told the people that I was commenting on that I would be returning to vote. I wouldn't have been able to leave the comment without saying something like that.
Perhaps do what meester is doing, something like "If you liked the post so much, why didn't you vote?" Then if they correct it, good, if not, flag. lol.
Oh yeah, and I wondered if you noticed that Jed resteemed one of your posts recently :)
I did notice that! :)
Thank you so much for this. Upvoted, my friend.
Because I really did haha! I used to go on steemstats every time, but I found out that it's easier to take a look in steemd. Just change "steemit" to "steemd" in the URL and you're all good. It's good for recent ones, but steemstats is great for getting the real amount of the votes.
Anyway, it's easy to spot those cheats now. It's great because we don't have to waste our time reading and commenting on their posts. You could just reply to their comment and move on with your life. In the past, I replied to them instructing them how they could improve, but it's getting a bit tiresome. I just wish those people get weeded out sooner rather than later.
haha well you had me at "upvoted", saved me from another flagging fit! No seriously I threw those flags too soon, and apologized to the recipients. I just saw others having the 'vote fishing' problem on posts, and when I checked one of mine, and then found a couple more without much searching, I was feeling injured I guess. It's all good now I feel.
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i never do like this coz it make the author of post irritated
Yeah I've forgotten to upvote things before, for whatever reason, and now I've removed the flags that I'd jabbed on some comments, we worked it all out. Yes though, I was irritated for a minute obviously!
Thank you so much my dear friend @therealpaul
For it understood my previous situation and you remove your downvote my comment..
Yes..I'm 100% agree with you..
Upvoted and resteemed
Cheers!..
I appreciate it, and thanks for commenting here- now I have removed all of the downvotes that I cast, and I won't be so quick to make decisions like that now.