Voting 101 -- An Itty Bitty Fishy Guide To Voting Well (if over 1,000 SP -- this is not for you)
Steemit 101 Lesson one Voting
Dear Steemians I come to you today to address a very serious issue voting. Too many young minnows (that means you newbies) don’t understand how voting works, they also don’t seem to know they only get so many votes a day worth anything and that is also tied to your Steem Power on how much it is worth. So a few of us from Yunk are making a series of how to use your vote. There are clearly wrong ways to use it and good ways to use it. You will see in the series different methods of using your vote. There is not one way to do it to it right but there are wrong ways.
The first topic we will be covering in today’s lesson is how voting works. There is a limit on voting power per day. If everyone could upvote unlimited the value would cease to exist. So every one is allowed 10 votes per day at full monetary strength. You can find where your Voting Power is at by checking at this site www.steemd.com/@yourusername keep any eye on your Voting Power, if you vote too much your vote is worth 0. So only vote on content you think is the best and deserves it, and you don’t have to vote on every single friends post every time they post, you can spread the love, if they are a good steemian they won’t mind at all. Many steemians don’t like to go past 80% I try to stay about that myself. Sometimes I get lower than that, but it takes a full 24 hours to gain 20% power back so if you drain to 0 it will take 5 days of not voting to get back to 100%.
The second topic Don’t vote more than 10 times per day. If you see something you really want to vote on and you are down under 80% there is a way you can vote without draining your power and give the author a boost. There are a few out there but I am going to mention the ones I use frequently here. @minnowbooster you can send .500 SBD and the link to the post you want to upvote and they will send the content and upvote normally worth way more than the .500 SBD for instance I sent one to my son earlier and he was given .980 SBD for it. So that is why we consider minnowbooster a good bot. @randowhale is also another good bot. Last one I send was worth $2.38 and I sent randowhale $1 SBD randowhale does cost a little more but the pay out is better.
The third topic we are going to talk about is bad bots that drain your voting power. Though the creators of these bots I am sure had good intentions okay I am not 100% sure if their intentions are good or not but STAY AWAY FROM AUTO EXCHANGE BOTS. They are bad, they drain your voting power and before you know it you will be at 0 and your vote won’t matter.
The fourth topic we are going to discuss is self voting, by default when you post till you uncheck it, every time you make a post you will auto vote it up. Don’t do this this costs some of your power and you will get more than you give if you give away that vote to someone else. Don’t autovote for yourself it is seen as tacky and greedy. And though yes everyone wants to make some money, we make more when we give more of ourselves and our votes to others.
And the last topic I am going to cover is the downvote. You don’t want one and you need to watch giving other people one because you can cause a flag war and if your rep isn’t high enough you can be destroyed on the platform. But you also want to avoid getting one too. How do you avoid getting a flag or a downvote? First create your own original content, don’t rip off other peoples work and designs it is plagiarism also known as theft of content and it will get caught and you won’t do well here. And when you make a comment on another persons post make sure it is relevant to the topic, don’t spam saying upvote for upvote or follow for follow that will not gain you many friends or votes.
Yes asking for follows and votes or resteem on other people’s content is SPAM don’t do it.
If you are confused I understand it is a lot to take in but if you need help please come visit us in Steemit.chat (signing up with the same user name as you use here is recommended) in the general chat room. You can get clarification on topics and watch the Yunk Tag for more steemit class room tips. And remember “Steemit Social Media, Done Right”
Edit*** Please keep in mind this is the opinion of a few of us and opinions do differ on how you should vote. I didn't include that I vote for just as many comments as I do for posts each day and sometimes more and I think as you grow the more you should do.
Edited part 2 *** Check out @yassine post here https://steemit.com/steemit/@yassine/the-yunk-phenomena-the-10-commandments-for-responsible-upvoting
I don't agree that you should not vote more than 10 votes per day. I consider it very stingy (if not greedy). It is free to upvote and does not cost anyone anything.Especially someone who has Steem Power lower than 5000 in their wallet. You can easily vote up to 40 times if your votes are 20-25%.
I do not really understand that attitude of trying to hold on sharing with others which is very common between whales - it seems that the more powerful someone is the more greedy the person becomes.
You can also upvote every single comment with 1% on top of that.
With that approach, you can easily cover all your friends posts (each gets at least 1 vote per day) plus loads of support for minnows.
What is important is not to post more than 4-5 times a day. More than that is frowned upon by old users and seen as post spam exploitation to milk the rewards. Sadly many users do it.
Agree and disagree. People should be voting way more than 10x/day. @logic, minnows don't get the sliding scale till they hit $500SP. As a small fish it doesn't matter where your vote power is, it's not worth much either way. All small fish should be voting 30-40x/day in my opinion. Ever since HF19 this phenomena of not upvoting has occurred and the engagement rate has dropped off the cliff.
Obviously, the red fish don't need to drain themselves so low that they can't recover their vote power, the lower one goes, the slower the recovery, it works on percentages. I implore the noobs to feel free to vote a bit more than 10x a day, I'd much prefer your upvote and your comment, than the 3 cents your 100% upvote would've brought.
Small fish should not get caught up in flagging content, it would be a waste of time and can only get their account destroyed. Don't bother.
I have to disagree with the self-upvote advice too. It's almost universally appropriate to upvote your own original content. Give your post a lift. You wrote it, you must believe in what you said. But, upvoting your comments on other people's posts is frowned on by all steemians. Occasionally upvoting your comment a penny, to get above the spam, is permissible, but you should likely write that. To upvote your comment on someone else's post and not upvote their post is lower than low. Don't do that.
Thank you @tecnosgirl for keeping the debate going, regarding appropriate behavior on steemit.
I like your points @wakeupsheeps. I have some posts that I put some serious time into, If I want to reward myself with my own upvote, I see no qualms with that. And I also agree with your last line, to not upvote someone else's post and upvote their own comment is pretty low.
They don't get the sliding scale till 500 but also their vote is worth 1-5 cent until then so by not voting others but only themsleves they don't gain anything.
IMO, if soemone is greedy holding their power over 80% or not voting more than 10 votes a day, then they should not expect other to be altruistic towards themselves and reciprocate on their posts.
Yes, self post voting is a must. Self comment voting is a no-no.
Totally agreed.
Sometimes I'll step into the replies of a great post and add a reply that is well thought out and a good conversation starter. It is 100 replies down though, and a lot of times the author will not even see it. In the past I would upvote the post then my reply. I guess I'll stop doing that. My goal was not to make myself money. It was to get past all the near empty replies of "Great post!" Is that really that bad?
I've noticed on here that people do what people do on Zerohedge too. They will reply to the top comment, and then people reply to that reply and down the list all to keep their replies at the time. It isn't as bad here. I will not reply to the top comment either unless it is a real reply with valuable content to add. :)
This really pertains to new folks -- anyone under 500 SP (no slider and does not understand other platforms). Their vote is "worthless" after 10 votes and it does not help them as it takes 24 hours just to regain that 20% loss.
Now this is not the same of high value accounts. So can we concentrate on teaching the new folks how to be better at voting as to actually be able to share the little -- PENNY POWER
I am not that powerful and the issue with it yes it doesn't cost anything but it also doesn't give anyone anything either when you drain your power and you are a minnow. I am still a minnow working on becoming larger and for minnows your vote isn't worth anything if vote too much. My husband also use the platform and his account is not worth much at all and if he goes below 80% he vote is worth 0 because his vote is only worth a cent or two right now, that is why a minnow shouldn't excessively vote, not till they gain some power, like the title states this is just the first of many tips for newbies, there will be another post by me or another of the Yunk team that tackles the topic of voting as you grow and how it should change.
I also don't always practice what I preach and go below 80% more than I would like, I just got back up there after being drained down to 0 VP
It took me a month+ for my vote to be worth a penny. Even when it's not worth a penny, it might be worth 3/4 of a penny. I was so proud when my vote made the rewards value change, by a penny. HF19 changed that and my vote went from a penny to .20$, then everything got weird. People stopped voting.
We are always going to depend on dolphin and whale votes to have a truly successful post, it doesn't mean that we should stop voting when we are near or below a penny. People like upvotes, no matter the value. To not vote is to slow your own growth.
To go along with your logic, I shouldn't have upvoted once in the first month+ that I was on the platform. I don't recommend the noobs ruin their voting power south of 60-70%, but they don't need to be near a 100% either, votes don't much matter when they are at .01.
I don't want to screw up your university, so I will slink away now.
I didn't mean to come off as not to vote at all, and if this came off that way I hope to clear it up in lesson two.
It's only my two cents, digest it with all the other comments you receive. I am very wary of the 10 vote advice to new fish, they will hold onto that thought for a long time.
I made an edit so anyone new seeing this knows I believe as you grow you should vote more, and that there are differing opinions on it. I just know I made some of the mistakes like not fully understanding things like good and bad bots. I got drained where my vote was worth 0 in two days. And didn't understand so I started researching and I still voted but it took me over a month to get back up to 80% or higher, I still haven't made it back to 100% yet. Got close because I was busy for two days and was hardly on, but I will never be 100% powered up because I can't help but vote for the great content on the site. I read so much crap too though and see so much stolen content. We will be address that issue in an upcoming lesson too.
More power to Yunk University. I've made the mistake of automating my vote and being drained to nothing. It really sucks because you get repowered on a percentage basis, so the lower you go, the slower it returns. Peace.
I'm around 1500 SP now, and I do have questions about the scaler. Would someone please discuss that at some point too? I'd greatly appreciate it. Being a newb and not understanding it well, I've been trying to keep it at 20% for my current SP level as you suggest above. Every once in a while for posts or replies I really believe are worth it, I'll go to 100%. What is the best strategy for me then based on your far better experience? Should I stick to doing what I've been doing, and do 20% votes about 40 times a day?
P.S. Is there a way to tell what scale power someone upvoted you? Does the steemdb or steemd sites give that information for example? For example, can @Tecnosgirl tell that I gave her 100% instead of 20% for this authored post?
I would keep doing like your have been doing. Simple game theory. You give me, I give back. Yu stop giving me I stp giving back. We both have 1000 SP but you give me pathetic 1% upvote on my post, then I will stop giving you my 20% and shift to 1%, etc.
For me the best way to check how much power someone used on your post upvotes is via steemstats.
Everything is clear there. You can also clearly see there who is greedy and who is an altruist :-)
Yeah, I give so little even for a 100% that giving less than 20% would be absurd. I was thinking 20% for the reason you said though, and it lets me give a lot more votes before dropping really lower in total SP % power left. Thank you!
Good advice @tecnosgirl, and interesting input from @logic and @wakeupsheeps. Voting is a bit of a complicated subject because there are so many opinions on how it should be done. I think you address the facts about voting percentages pretty well (worth less the lower the percentage). You also covered the spammy comments, which I think are mostly done out of lack of understanding.
Here is my take: If you enjoy a post, upvote it/reply. If you find a comment particularly relevant or useful, upvote and reply. Generally, I will vote between 10-20 times in a 24 hour period, depending on the content. However, if you're reading and responding to a post, you most likely won't have time to read many more than that.
Regarding flags... I won't mess with them until I understand the impact better, though it seems they are just detrimental if a post/comment is not blatant spam. I had an early post hidden completely from a flag bot because it had a referral link in it. That just confused me.
I am going to address saving some upvoting comments and using part of your voting power each day for them. I frequently get down to less than 80% because I upvote for at least 10 pieces I like and 10 comments each day and if an article is really good I upvote it no matter where I am at. But when I am really drained and it is good stuff that deserves more than a few cents I use Randowhale or Minnowbooster because that gives more to the content than my upvote does. And I guess I am encouraging users to use those when their voting power is down. It is frustrating for a new user to see 9 upvotes but 0 on the post. Because all the voters power was down to 0. That is mainly why I say keep a watch on it, spread out the voting. A few of use are working on a series of posts and I think it will clarify some of this when we finish with all of them. I should maybe put a disclaimer on here that as your SteemPower increases so should your voting. Because it is about sharing the wealth. That is why I like using Radowhale and Minnowbooster to boost other people's great content. And though I think what I post is good, I won't upvote my own stuff. I would rather give that .5 cents to someone else.
That is a great idea, using randowhale and minnowbooster on comments. Didn't think about having a 0 cent vote for really good content. My votes won't really be worth much yet anyway, but as long as they are over a penny for now, I'll be watching my VP.
Definitely think people should start with a common sense approach to the whole platform, then read posts like this to get a better understanding of how it all works.
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I look forward to part 2 as folks do not understand that SP is really determines how and when you vote.
thank you very much I am honor to accept.
Very interesting great greetings from venezuela here I will leave a link for those who can help me thanks! https://steemit.com/help/@gr3g0r/hi-i-m-from-venezuela
Please edit and remove your link, it is considered spam to leave links in other peoples posts unless invited to.
Nice job outlying some of the things I think new users don't know and that aren't explained.
The draining of voting power I think is a big one as well as down votes.
Most people as new users do not understand how flags can have adverse effects on their blog.
This was a really good idea to get started and can't wait to see more of your educational posts.
Up-Yunked.
it is a collaboration with other yunksters, I love the collaboration that happens here it is second to none.
Thanks. As a noob I had no idea how voting worked.
We have seen that many don't that is why we are doing this series so Steemit gets better for everyone.
I've only been active for a month and am still a newb. This voting stuff is definitely a bit confusing at first!
excellent post
Are you a bot? You reply to lots of posts with the exact same thing. haha ;-)
He might lack ideas. lol lest give him the benefit of the doubt
excellent post
Sorry, I couldn't resist. Meep, maybe?
thx for the info, greetings from Belgium
Great overview, short concise and to the point. New users will benefit from reading this. Resteemed
i have been a little confused but this post brought some clarity, i still keep removing my own old upvotes that ive made before i knew on my own posts cause i dont want people to ignore me, im just a minnow after all, cant afford being marked as tacky before i have even started. in the beginning upvote was marked automaticly when posting so i didnt know that it could be bad..
Don't remove your votes that is just as bad that is down voting and you don't want to down vote yourself just don't upvote yourself anymore, but some people think you should. I personally have found the more I give to the community the more I get back, that is why I don't self vote.
Oops, I've removed my upvote a few times, and I had no idea that was harming me. That's a whole other thing to discuss perhaps? Does that actually hurt my reputation or something? It says something about resetting the rewards, but I didn't care since I was not concerned about my rewards (I was removing upvotes from my posts and replies, not other people's)
thanks for the input :)