The TRAIL Scheme
I just flagged this post:
https://steemit.com/gaming/@gaming-trail/best-of-gaming-for-the-23rd-of-june
expected payout ( in 2 hours ):
204 $
They mention a bunch of posts by other authors.
One example is this post:
https://steemit.com/gaming/@andrewade/lies-about-gamers-that-people-still-believe
Got 4 votes and:
0.77 $
Or this post:
https://steemit.com/top5/@king-crypto/the-top-5-most-anticipated-games-for-2018-e3-edition
0.70 $ and 3 votes
I call on all people, who follow this trail with their votes to please reconsider their choice. It's a scheme and it doesn't support newbies or authors -like they claim- but only the people, who run this trail.
Please stop supporting this scheme !
Sorry, this isn't a well thought out post, but a rant.
I've really had it with the trail.
I doubt there is any thing wrong with enlisting authors posts and linking to them. It is similar to what was done in this post. It just like saying curators or upvoters shouldn't get 25 percent from payout because they simply upvoted. Curation in itself is a talent and adds value.
I think the rewards on steemit is mostly about adding value and the trails do add value, same as i will not question any author on steemit and measure them solely by the payout on their posts because we don't know what each one does behind the scenes because most of the value on steemit is done behind the scenes.
To understand steemit is very simple really. No one can blame @instructor2121 for spending long periods building a community that is not hidden. that is not an easy job and if everyone can do it, they will go that route but ofcourse that in itself is talent and really hard.
Moreoever, it is impossible to measure this value. Niche-based accounts are very helpful. Yes, they do serve as a hub that people look up to and have incited many authors to posts on niche-topics, there are also many contests, which incite authors to post more, like story ones and literature and art contests and the gaming one like you mentioned; it is not easy to build communities from the scratch.
Months back, there were just a few gaming posts on steemit and the gaming-trail does help. It is not easy to write posts in another language either. I have had many chats with steemians and many find it difficult to compose posts even in their languages and i do see what spanish-trail is doing. No individual can do it, else they would have tried and ofcourse niche-based posts that are trending is good for the search engines.
Yes, it is possible to look at the payouts and transactions but you can't say and we don't know, how many people have joined steemit, solely because they found a community/niche-based post on the home page of steemit.com and decide to join steemit solely because they found their interest.
Yes, if i was from germany, i am more likely to join steemit, if i got on steemit.com and saw a german-trail post compared to if i saw an individual that i don't know, write in german and we all know, the huge amounts on trending posts are there to aid organic marketing for steemit. So i see nothing wrong with trail accounts earning big, as the votes are not stolen and are from people who see the vision of steemtrail and have voluntary added their votes to it on streemian.
Yes, i follow steemtrail on streemian does not mean i have to earn a vote from the trail everytime. I did that voluntary because i believe in the impact of their vision, now more than ever. If anything i commend them because i do it now and it is draining. Since the influx of newbies, i have so many chats daily.
i have a discord server with almost 200 people and you only need to see how disorganized it is and how i tend to particular steemians individually, this is hard and a talent because not everyone has the ability to do it. Yes, many steemians will turn off their chats or block others.
Last time, i was in chat and someone told me his friend needs money raising money for treatment and he needs help to create awareness and i sent a donation and did a post to donate from; this is unseen value that goes on behind the scenes. So i don't see my posts and its payout a measure of the value, i offer to steem because -called value is priceless and if i want to put a price on it, why will i be penalized. It is like Mark Zuckerberg saying Facebook is now 2$ for entry, why should i penalize him, for putting a price on his creation or why should say, booster or randowhale or whaleshares is charging for their votes, i mean, they created a concept and should have the right to say how much they want to take for their genius.
It took me long to understand this things but now i do more than ever and nobody taught me. i am not techy or crypto-novice but i started to look at the steem blockchain more and look away from steemit.com and things become obvious. And people are seeing the same things and we dont know anyone's real intentions but i wont question it either.
You found the posts that were not voted on but there are a ton of posts that have been voted on and i have experienced this many times and especially when it was difficult to earn.
What did i know about steemit, when i first got on here. It was all so rough and i found a home on steemtrail because they vote for me, gave me trail which i still have and answered all my questions and on steemit with all the wars everywhere, it is obvious now more than ever, that people need homes and that is why more communities are suddenly popping up with different designs.
i mean steemtrail have existed since i got here and i really give them credit because it is not easy to run a community, when i got on here, there was steemprentice and steemvenue, steempub etc and they aren't running because the reality is, it is hard, if steemtrail have been here this long, then i do give them credit because they have really put in hardwork and yes, i do believe in the old communities even better than the new ones just coming up because the past, where the hard times of steemit and this steemians that stayed on here like @jacobts etc are the base of the beauty we have now.
Last time, i saw a steemfest dream initiative open to minnows but there was a condition stating that the minnow should have below 500 followers and i laughed inside becasue i know so many veteran steemians who are still minnows and have only amassed more than 500 followers because of how long they have spent here and what did i do, i try to start up the fund of an old steemian and supported him with a case to go contest in the contest because i do believe in the steemians who were here and stayed in the hard times.
Overall, no one can measure value. because we don't know really how much value each one is putting in. I spend 15 hours in chat daily speaking to steemians, this is extreme value. Last person, told me how i inspired him to carry out action in his country advertising steem. I have propelled many people to do charity work in their country and attribute it to steemit.com but you won't know this by looking at my blogpost, so in my opinion, i can't measure value that steemians add to steem, solely/only by their posts and payout and ofcourse, i can never go to people's wallets and monitor their transactions and question them on where their money goes to, because we don't know where it actually goes to and we don't know if it goes back into adding value.
i can never think of asking you where your money goes to or what you do with it because i see you send money to poloniex because i wont even go to look at your wallet.
Ofcourse, you can send money out to poloniex inorder to send it back to steem or reinvest it in some developments or steem meetup that we don't know of.
I will never question the intentions of anyone whether randowhale or booster or minnowsupport or steemtrail or steemvoter etc or the developers who build apps and get percentages because while others where busy only blogging, others where brainstorming and doing sleepless nights that we don't do.
Many things are very obvious, whether it is a comment or upvote or a simple feature, steemians need a encouragement and rewards is not only in the form of upvotes, even the chats in the background that we don't see is value.
I won't even start reading this.
To me it's clear: authors get 0.70 $, the trail gets 200 $.
I don't care what you do behind the scenes, as I can see the outcome here on Steemit.
The only people defending this scheme seem to be involved in it.
This is almost like a cult.
Just checking in on this. So doth thou feel Randowhale and Bitshares which are Pay to Play / Buying Votes / ala Facebook and Twitter ads are ok? And personally I have been trying so very hard to talk to improvisers on facebook, in person, and gmail. I have been talking about community and suggesting that maybe we might get some help from a thing called @Steemtrail which is building communities for when Steemit, according to @Ned, begins to empower communities. I appreciated the forward thinking of the team. I have put in several hours in sharing posts that i discover with the specific communities. I have personally upvoted and commented on discoveries I would other wise not have seen. It is kind of like steemit.chat only more organized. Then the specific pages started coming up. I have not even begun to curate a page, although they were kind enough to offer getting one up for the improv community. Improv by the way is devoted to live comedy for entertainment, as well as empowering any organization that wants to grow from communication and creativity. Improv is a 500 year old tradition that has always struggled to provide a decent living for it's artists, but we have seen the joy it brings to live audiences. I can go on and on about improv, and it has not been easy to get support from steemit cause people are so concerned with other cool interests but also because of some things like competing and division and fighting. Improv is here to help bring people together. There is one smart guy who even took the account name, @improv. He is such a good dude. Look at how much he puts out there. I know him from LA Comedy Sportz. He is so generous out there in person hosting bar b q's and doing great shows. There is my old buddy @locoestaban who busts his ass to take care of his mother in law with Alzheimers using lil ol Improv's gift of Joy. He and his lady Katie are two of the best improvisers I've worked with, Steve also makes cigar banjos, and they are doing their best to bring improv to Twin Falls Idaho. I have one of my best friends @ShermanEdwards in Chicago who is gonna help me with the Improv on Steemtrail. He and I used to sit in his house, put on a movie while we would be online for hours promoting the local Chicago Improv shows at Annoyance, ComedySportz, Second City, iO Chicago and Playground and bars and we never made any money. We did it cause we loved our friends, loved our community, loved the art, loved seeing an audience of 200 or even 20 just enjoy a night of live improv comedy. Everybody is still addicted to Facebook. I thought, maybe just maybe they could come here. Maybe just maybe I could help get the ball rolling, learn the ins and outs, and then explain things to them and help them along the way. We are not coders. We are not investors. The Steemtrail team has gone above and beyond to reach out to us to help. The awesome @MinnowSupport project uses a similar model I think. We all just donate a little voting power to the trail on Streemian. That's about it. It's no different than the designating power that I think occurs with RandoWhale. I think. I don't know. And not only that, the steemtrail team recognizes that we are giving them our vote to help empower many different people, they give us a little Trail. I know it isn't worth much, but it is a nice gesture. It just sits there on OpenLedger. I don't know what to do with it. I'm a terrible trader. I lost 300 dollars this past week and that is a lot of money to me. I lost 300 dollars the weeks before. Because I'm not making money on steemit. Because I tried hard to make money to pay for a trip to Lisbon. (Side note, you going? It's gonna be fun. I'm hoping they let me share some improv talks at some point. Maybe even a free workshop. I offered to teach a free improv workshop to everyone. You are invited.) Look, I know this is a wall of text. But I am writing from the heart. I will check back here to see what your response is yes. But I do hope you heard a little bit about the humanitarian aspects that I see in Steemtrail. I had class with Tim Robbins an Cynthia Ettinger in Culver City at The Actors Gang and they said something to me that has always stayed with me, They said our society is being torn apart, but the living arts give us an opportunity to remember and reflect on our humanity. I hope at the end of the day you are getting to witness some living arts, some live music, some theater, some dance, and best of all, some live improv comedy. If not, then I hope you will give me a chance to empower a positive beginning of bringing improv to steemit. I know some guilds have gamed the system. Some rich guys have multiple rich accounts that upvote each other.
People talk about how the trending page is all the same people. Steemtrail accounts are never on that page. People being helped by Steemtrail are not making $1,000 dollar posts, and individuals are not making $500 dollar posts. Hell, look at my page, I'm lucky to touch $10 a post. I do so much behind the scenes in chats, emails, facebook messenger and even phone calls. I got a crazy busy life taking care of my grandmother who has dimensia. I bike hours round trip to teach improv workshops that only pay me $10 an hour. I work a dayjob for $9 an hour. Steemtrail at least was giving me some light of hope that I don't have to spend all my time on Steemit doing challenges, and fighting in competitions, or having to pay for votes. Steemtrail was at least empowering hope and community. As my old man says, all a guy needs in this world is a fair shake, give a guy a chance. Steemtrail , and many other guilds and groups are trying to give a guy chance. Will you give a fella a fair shake and give it a chance? Will you come to discord and talk to all the curators, meet the individuals, listen to their stories? Will you share your posts with us? Will you ask questions? And at the end of the day, will you give me, Jake Schneider of iO West's 17 year old Improv Team, The Reckoning, a chance to bring Improvisers to Steemit, and bring Steemit to the rest of the Improv World. I would appreciate it. I welcome your comment and will check back later today. I gotta check on an elderly loved one now. I am wishing you a prosperous and peaceful Holiday weekend.
What is this ?
Do you expect me to read all this ?
What does your hourly wage and your grandma have to do with people being scammed into thinking the trail supports communities, while it doesn't even upvote the authors it features ?
Interesting how it worked fine for this comment tho.
Everyone on this long-ass list of upvoters should reconsider their support for trail.
Happy to discuss this over coffee or a beer. Your choice. I live in St Louis. I am a human being with a human story. My guess is so are you, and I am willing to listen to your journey. My hope is you can see your positives and not just the things that upset you. But if your focus is on destroying instead of creating, then interesting indeed, because I suppose the universe needs both sides. Your argument in spaced out ad hominems and my words do not mingle on this page. At the top of the message, I asked what you thought of the services here that charge for votes, and the circuitous voting by the trending page, are those scams too? You did not address the very first thing I mentioned. Interesting, i wondered if you also thought them scams. The invitation is here to meet in person, discuss as people, whether here in St Louis or if you care, we can discuss our differences in Lisbon at Steemfest. Be well, if you want to, feel whatever you wish.
I'm looking forward to Steemfest.
Sorry for trying to ruin your scheme here.
Wonderful. Happy to hear. I hope you will attend the improv workshop. My scheme, is your scheme. We are both trying to get the most out of steem. You are a 66 I see. Congratulations. You did not get there through destruction. You built from some means. I don't know how, only you do. I humbly suggest you continue to build on your strengths, the talents that helped you achieve a 66. There is only one you, and only you can do what you know you are awesome at. The next cool thing is staying in touch with those that appreciate you. I trust you know who they are. It is focusing on your positives that will make you a 67, 70, 77 sooner than you'll realize than if you waste your energy on worrying about newbies who don't want to pay for votes but instead have found an opportunity to grow from community. You can call it what you want. But don't forget to spend more time on your inevitable success. If that sounds crazy, then again I hope to see you at the Improv Talk in Lisbon. Peace.
I got a good part of my rep and connections here for being critical, being helpful and actually supporting newbies and other members alike.
And I did this without the help of the guild, the trail or other schemes and abuses.
Respect Felixx. I too have sometimes attempted to use Satire to shed a skeptic's view on things. In the past, those posts got zero attention. To be perfectly blunt: free speech is awesome, and I hope you continue to share your views. I am interested in learning more of the ways you have empowered newbies. That is also awesome to hear. It's a challenge trying to balance helping others and taking care of myself. I am gonna be curating a Trail soon for Improvisers. I honestly do not expect much rewards for myself from it. But I do hope it helps my newbie friends simply connect. Something missing on steemit are "hubs" or like "facebook groups" for like minded people to huddle up at and then go back to meeting new people. I keep hearing Ned plans for communities, so we'll see what that means.
.
You do your thing man. I look forward discovering your continued contributions to steemit. I appreciate counterpoints, it helps to temper FOMO and hype that misleads friends. So seeing your views, I appreciate. So please never hesitate to begin a conversation with me. All the best to you.
So let me join the flagging party ;) - downvoting someone feels weird but it probably should be used more to prevent stuff like that.
By trail do you mean people are autovoting on it?
I saw a similar thing yesterday - one person put masses of work into an excellent video and got $0.20 - someone else reposted the youtube video and got $17.43:
https://steemit.com/ethereum/@edzynda/create-your-own-cryptcurrency-on-ethereum-part-1
Your case above is a pretty sad example too and unfortunate.
It's only a single case, though.
The TRAIL community has made this thing their business and do this every single day for a long time now.
The business and goal of SteemTrail is to build communities on our awesome platform. We have been doing this for almost a year and have gotten huge support from the community. We have several hundred supporters in our discord channel...you should come check us out sometime. We have weekly SteemTrail updates and its the best source to get accurate information. Thank you
Honest question: Why do you think trails are needed to build communities?
In my eyes all it takes to "build communities" is to put the right TAG in your post, thats all...
Explain what else you do for the community...
People are putting so much time in writing really good posts and you guys just copy the links to those Posts and get 300x more $ than the original authors?!?
But what is bothering me the most is that you dont even share anything of your rewards with the community!!
Again, please tell me EXACTLY what the benefit of your trails is and dont just say
"The community supports us"...
Join us on our hangouts each Thursday. We discuss all the exciting things happening in SteemTrail and the innovative plans ahead. Thank you
That does not explain how you can get away with Posts making 300+$ while the original authors dont even get a trail upvote... disgusting...
Its explained atleast 3 times here.
Back to building STEEM communities...Have a great day!
Hello @steemtrail can I get in contact with you via discord or how can I reach you? We would love to have a conversatino about supporting the Mexican community. We are not much but so far in the last 2 weeks we were able to gather more than 130 members. We support their content and try to do it as best as we can. We would like some tips and recommedations. Also we would be happy to join in the building of the Mexican STEEM community in case you have a project about that...
Steemit Communities are releasing soon, and community building will be pretty organic henceforth. Thanks for your services up to this point though. I'd recommend getting out of the community building business and diversify into something else at this point.
We are building STEEM communities, with their very own websites. We have been doing this for a year now and really love doing it! We will enjoy building STEEM communities for another year, assisting in expanding our STEEM ecosystem. Fun times ahead!!
I see, so it's a competitor to Steemit Communities? Great, all the best!
We have been building our STEEM communities well before steemit announced steemit communities. Not sure what you mean by "competitor"... we are all on the same blockchain. I think synergy is the word you were looking for.
Also, looking forward to the STEEM features and Community UIA's planned. Exciting times ahead!
By trail I mean the @steemtrail run by Rick the @instructor2121 and the countless other trails like @gaming-trail, @art-trail, @food-trail etc etc etc
Your dislike of community building is noted. You should try communicating to get correct information.
After HF 19 we disabled voting on streemian to adjust our voting..we have been gradually enabling community accounts to return back to voting pre HF 19.
Thank you
seriously? well if that's not a "why do you hate america" response.
you still never answered the question about where the money you make goes.
you do nothing but deflect - you've programmed yourself not to respond with a straight answer.
you know who else does that? POLITICIANS.
and im sure you understand that people dont trust the behavior of politicians
WE. DO. NOT. TRUST. YOU.
The correct information is on the blockchain.
Your account got the votes, the authors didn't.
I see gaming-trail did vote. like i pointed out, we have to adjust to HF 19 so the gaming-trail did not have our votes following.
Again, this is something you should have asked us. we would have been more than happy to give you correct information. Have a nice day.
You still haven't answered @berniesanders questions.
No point in asking somebody as evasive as you.
who? was trying to find his question, but his post seemed to be greyed/hidden.
I don't understand. Are they copying material, or just linking to it?
If it's just linking, I don't see the problem, even it they are making money from it.
They are making money, because they told users here to follow their @steemtrail on streemian.com so they could support authors and the community here on steemit.
Now @steemtrail is one of the highest paid authors on steemit and they even forget to upvote the posts they claim to support.
Now I understand.
"and they even forget to upvote the posts they claim to support."
You are being very charitable with your choice of words. Instead of "forget", I would say, "can't even be bothered".
Anyway, I doubt that the readers actually visit the links, but you are correct in challenging their ethics, "they told users here to follow their @steemtrail on streemian.com so they could support authors and the community here on steemit."
Will resteem, not that it will make a difference. :(
They don't visit the links, because they think the trail has taken care of it and voted for it.
Turns out, voting by hand is more effective.
Misinformation. We disabled all voting for the community accounts to test voting after HF 19. we have been gradually enabling the voting.
Best to ask, and not assume. Thank you
This isn't misinformation.
Your followers assume that you vote for these authors and you don't.
It's also not transparent who is actually involved and what their role is.
I sure as hell will not join your chat server.
Yes. It is misinformation. All you had to do was ask and we would have explained the reason our trail stopped following gaming-trail votes.
Again, more misinformation. Steemtrail post like once per week. All of the communities are independently ran and Steemtrail supports each community and also delegates our voting power to the community accounts.
So. your issue is with each community building itself? Well, that will happen on this platform. Its part of growing the STEEM platform and engaging more users.
The German-Trail has been very successful and has gained a lot of support. Maybe you can offer the community some support, I know they would love to have you! Thank you
You would be building a community, if you powered up the authors of the post.
Like before, you shift the argument over to 'communities'.
The transfer history clearly shows who benefits.
Its all about the communities, that is what we help build with SteemTrail. Have a great day and keep on steemin'!
I very much appreciate your commitment for the community.
You can support me as a witness, so I get more influence :)
Done!
Bonan Tagon !
Multan dankon!
Good find! I'm pretty sure a duplicate content bot could be created of some sorts to at least flag this to a human and get them moderated.
I was in the old school early SEO days of watching Google go through these kind of issues and it really does all apply here.
Unfortunately I just found this and missed the payout deadline :(
There is pretty much no way to flag this down without a huge stake.
I've sent it to the steem cleaners. See what they say.
Does thi effect all trails? Perhaps they only have to change the rules. The SBD of the trail reward could be paid fairly to the authors.
Given the transfer history, the SBD of the trail gets send to the curator and @instructor2121 and from there straight to poloniex.
Misinformation. SteemTrail has its own token, TRAIL which we provide liquidity for. Pretty cool eh.
Also, we have development cost for our website rollout. Will be a few to start, but overall we will have hundreds of websites powered by STEEM.
Fun times ahead!
This isn't misinformation.
https://steemit.com/@steemtrail/transfers
https://steemit.com/@instructor2121/transfers
You are lying.
harsh word there felixx. and yes, you are very misinformed. i have tried to educate you in regard t SteemTrail, however you cant handle the truth when explained to you.
Need to get back to building communites...have a great day!
I said you were transfering to polo, you said that was misinformation. That's a lie.
Last time I checked, Steemit Inc. was building communities as a feature.
I will continue to talk about your scheme and try to bring those rewards back to the actual authors, thus building strong independent communities here on Steemit.
Yes, we have development costs. Are you going to question the trending page on their withdrawals? We are running the LARGEST project on STEEM. A project that has hundreds of participants, all dedicated to building communities on STEEM.
SteemTrail has been building communities for a year now. Well before steemit inc announced features for communities and UIA's.
You are free to do as you please on our wonderful platform. Have a great day!
"Given the transfer history, the SBD of the trail gets send to the curator and @instructor2121 and from there straight to poloniex."
Saying @instructor2121 gets anything is a straight out lie..thats not even misinformation.
Correction:
Gets send to the same poloniex adress (memo) as @intructor2121's