You are spot on again my friend.
As a beginner of this platform I made some mistakes and my recent one was when I made a post regarding beefing up security for steemit wallet then went knocking on the whales and dolphins door (developers and witnesses) to see if they can shine a light to our questions.
My big mistake was I just went and posted it without thinking of changing the reward, I should have picked decline pay out so that whales and dolphins will upvote it to raise more awareness.
Despite that, some whales were kind enough to give us feed back like @gtg and @dan.
How is this connected to the main post you may ask. I guess if you go on knocking on whales' and dolphin's doors you need to make sure you will not look like a fool and make sure you have interesting to say which will get them respond to you.
I made myself looked like a fool because they thought I was knocking on doors just to get upvotes but in reality I was just trying to raise awareness regarding security. But I had a very good article or question that is why they at least replied.
I don't know about other's but I am not the kind of person begging for upvotes.
Nicely said my man. I agree. It's all about our approach.
Look, I wouldn't say it's really required to make the post a declined payout.
If you post is great, then you should be rewarded for that.
You have a great point though. You need to have something that you provide, and you need to show it. Otherwise it'll just seem spammy :)