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Those of you who have been following me for a while will know I like to support the new people on our lovely platform where possible.
I used to do this by running my adopt a minnow for a month comp.
While I love supporting minnows, to be completely honest I was not enjoying doing the comps. By running the comp I would spend many hours combing through entries and reading blogs to find a couple of winners to draw from a hat. It quickly got to the point where I was spending a lot of time doing this for no reward at all, if fact the comps were costing me money and this is disheartening as you can imaging.

I was happy to persevere because I'm a good bloke n all, but I started to notice a couple of my minnows I adopted weren't really posting much. After seeing @father2b post again for the first time in a while I noticed he hasn't been around due to life which is understandable.
This got me thinking that there is no guarantee that my minnows will even stick around in the long term, which is just the nature of the beast. Sometimes people have to walk away due to other commitments or maybe they thought they would try their hand at blogging but just weren't enjoying it.

So I had a good long think about the factors I mentioned above, along with other factors like the retention rate, how fast people fall of the steemit bandwagon and others. I came to the conclusion that it would probably be better to spread that love to as many new people as possible. So...

☠️ Introducing Villans Minnow Pat on the Back Bot ☠️

 
My minnow pat on the back bot does just as it sounds like it would. It will reward minnows by giving them a little pat on the back.
The bot is still in beta but testing has gone really well and I will be releasing it into the wild in a few days for it's first run.

Through this bot I hope to support minnows much more that I was with my comps, as with my comp if a minnow I adopted hasn't posted in a week then I'm not supporting anyone for a week.
However this bot will run each night and up vote someone, so there will be much more supporting of minnows.

How it will work

 
As mentioned the minnow pat on the back bot will run each night.
It will go through my followers list and pick 2 people at random, based on a few selection criteria.
☣️ You must be above reputation level 25 and also below reputation level 55.
☣️ Your post must not be classified as nsfw, we would like to keep it clean thanks :)
☣️ A post length of 1000 characters or more.
☣️ Your post must be less than 5 days old.
☣️ I haven't already voted for your post.
☣️ Also you post must not be identified as possible plagiarism by @cheetah

If your post passes all of these checks, it will be up voted by my bot at 50%. However if it doesn't pass all these checks it will look for another post you have created which is eligible.
If the bot can't find a valid post in your blog the bot will go and pick another follower.

What else will the bot do

 
Well along with up voting your post, bot bot will create a blog post on my feed and showcase the 2 selected minnows in that post.
The post will have some information about the 2 minnows and some information about the post you had selected.

Other plans for the bot

 
I do have other ideas for the bot so it will be interesting to see this progress into the future :)

Remember this bot is in it's beta stage, so there will be updates to the bot as we progress.

Recap

 
So just to recap, the bot will pick followers from my followers list. So make sure your following me.
The bot will have some selection criteria:
☣️ Minnows picked must be above reputation level 25 and below reputation level 55.
☣️ Your post must not be nsfw.
☣️ A post length of 1000 characters or more.
☣️ Post picked will be less than 5 days old.
☣️ The bot won't pick a post I have already voted for.
☣️ Post must not be identified as possible plagiarism by @cheetah

Also a post will be created to try and get these minnows a bit more exposure through my followers.

So I hope you enjoy my new shiny bot and I will be giving it the first run most likely Friday night, as we have our monthly steemit meetup this week :)

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