So, Minnows: how are you liking the increased influence given to you by HardFork 19?
Isn't it cool that your vote went from being worth $0.00 to $0.09?
Look...
I know that with this change you feel like your vote is very precious now.
And it's true -- your vote is precious. But here's the thing: your vote was always important.
When a content creator such as myself posts something on Steemit and it makes a good amount of money, that's one way to know that my content is liked and well-recieved. However, the better and more consistent way to know if I'm making good stuff is by the number of votes, even if the dollar amount isn't very high.
I've noticed that the average number of people voting on my posts has gone down. And as much as I'd like to think that it might just be the content I'm blogging about is less interesting to you than it was, say, a month ago -- it simply doesn't make sense with the amount of real followers that I have.
This, along with other trends I've seen on Steemit, lead me to believe that the Minnows are voting less.
We've been given a great gift (I'm a minnow, too), and we are not using it.
Use it or LOSE it
HF19 was intended to level the playing field.
Many users were complaining that whales had too much influence and too much power. People would look at a post that had over 100 votes but made $5 and think to themselves:
If minnows had more influence, my $5 post would be worth $500.
And that's true.
When HF19 launched, I had dozens of pending posts with a hundred votes or more on them that were originally worth maybe $10-20 and suddenly jumped to over $100.
Everyone was celebrating, drunk with their own power!
Then they woke up the next morning with a hangover and suddenly didn't know what to do with themselves lol
Minnows, listen: Steemit is still in beta.
This HardFork is a test.
It's a test to see if you can actually handle having more influence. It's a test to see if you the general user-base is responsible enough to be a potential whale.
And right now, you are failing the test -- you're failing it HARD.
HF20 will give power back to the whales
At this rate, anyway.
And that only makes sense.
If minnows are coveting their vote power, the site is not going to survive. The developers know that. I mean -- do you think the developers don't know that?
What we are seeing now is that minnows cannot be trusted with more influence.
Basically, you've been given the opportunity to have more influence with less investment, and by not using your influence -- by coveting your vote power -- you are telling the developers that you don't actually want that influence.
By not voting like you used to, you are telling Steemit that the free-market approach is better -- that it really is true that those with more skin in the game (meaning: more Steem Power) are the ones to trust with the influence.
Want to retain your power? START VOTING!
If you don't start voting, you're going to lose it all.
If you don't start voting, HF20 is going to give all of that power you are coveting back to the whales, and this whole experiment will have taught us that minnows cannot be trusted with power.
This is a warning to all the minnows out there: HF19 is an experiment to see if you can handle having more influence, and when you don't use that influence you are telling Steemit that you don't actually want it.
So start voting like you actually want influence.
If you use it, Steemit will look beautiful!
If you, the minnows, start voting again, then Steemit will be such a lucrative place.
It WILL be like it was the day of HF19.
It WILL be true that accounts with fewer followers and hardly any SP will be able to make decent money.
We COULD have a Steemit where the least among us have the power to make a difference.
But we will only have that if you start voting!
So start using your power.
Start voting up your friends. Go search the "hot" and "trending" and "new" tabs and upvote as much as you can.
Because if you don't start using your power... YOU WILL LOSE IT.
Well said @shayne. People are not voting as they did before HF19. I think it's because of 2 reasons.
One solution would be to reduce the %age by which voting power goes down or just decrease the time it takes to recover. Even a 25% change would make a difference I guess.
You're correct here in your reasons I think, nail on the head.
I'm look at a project to stigmatize self voting now with @l0k1, might be of interest
Indeed. Myself, as a so called "Red Fish", have just today decided to only upvote 1 of my 4 posts per day, reserving the other 9-10 upvotes to benefit those I follow or find interesting/honest/creative/etc.
The patterns make it so obvious if one pays attention to patterns.
And part of the issue is simply the user interface, and the limited technical understanding of the majority of new users. This is also bad UX design, by the way, to make bad defaults. Anyone who tells you 'oh, the steemit.com interface is wonderful' I want to meet these unicorns.
Under 482 SP, or so, users do not have the ability to reduce their vote weight, in the steemit.com interface.
Yea, that is a challenge. Ability to reduce vote weight should be made even lower.
Enable vote slider for small SP accounts post HF19:
https://github.com/steemit/condenser/issues/1544
Of course, this is a 'feature request' and there is a practical problem at this point, minnow accounts have a much more limited bandwidth. Actually, that makes me think about how the account fee should actually be raised because this would also get around this problem (bandwidth allocation is completely controlled by the amount of SP in an account, as well as the block size).
Time to do a witness report. I wonder if @timcliff will post a link to it on his regular update :S
Thanks for posting! I've been wondering what people were talking about with voting percentages since I couldn't see a way to change mine.
I am campaigning to finish the process of leveling the playing field :) Vote 1, l0k1 for Witness!
That and perhaps remove the self upvoting option?
I had to reduce my voting power to 50% so that I would be able to vote more often. I also disabled the auto-upvote feature. I only have a 2 cent upvote, maybe I got to 3 cents, but still putting it out there for the community.
From what I read, the recovery is actually quite fast. I do not remember where I read it, but before HF19; I thought you could vote 40 times every day for a week and gain your power back within around 72 hours?
Glad there isn't a downvote because I am probably wrong, but I thought the time it took to recover was pretty short?
And I like the ideal of reducing the %age by which voting power goes down more. I remember the article expressing to vote not just for any random thing, but if you find 10 good posts and/or threads (does it matter AT ALL if it is a comment or a thread? You make less with comments right or?) then vote those, but if the next day you find 40 good comments and/or threads, then vote on them. Basically it said not to let the algorithm control you.
But let's be real with ourselves guys, we do study the algorithm and make threads (popular ones too) debating on such topics because this because every day we spend gaining STEEM Power that increases the value of our votes, that isn't why we are voting. Most people are like myself and don't just randomly going around upvoting but only upvotes when they see a comment or thread that they feel deserves more attention. Just like on Reddit, upvote for visbility.
Except with Steemit, it's upvote for visibility (or pay) and for money.
Thoughts?
#Word
Hi @shayne. This is very intresting post and i a good advice to us all little ones here.
I dont get it, people will litraly beg for followers,and when they follow and are followed,they find it hard to upvote and drop a good comment. Every one is looking out for his/her own post,but forgetting that as you mant yoirs to dp well,so dose others.
But i have a problem with voting sometimes..voting ought to be saying that "i like " your post but in a situation whereby the writer dose not connect with you,should you just vote...would that be fair.?
Nice one, will deffinately resteem.
@arizonawise
I have only tried to vote content that interested me, but I do vote a lot of comments (sometimes to just be polite which I shouldn't do).
okay...#gottohelpout
Boom!! #letthehelpflowthrough-youfeelmyvotepower?
lol..
#IDO
Hello @shayne
Along with the Upvotes, the number of comments on posts also reduced.
The general feel of community was affected by this behaviour.
There is a project i am working on now that i feel will bring Humanity back to Steemit. It will be out in some days time.
I will send you the details on steemit chat.
@ogochukwu
Well @shayne, really you raised an important issue to discuss so thank you
I am a minnow (less than5k SP) and my experience with HF19 is:
1 - since the HF19 implemented I invited 13 new users to steemit, those are my colleagues and friends. It is easy to invite people to steemit but it is hard to keep and let them see the potential here and what is steemit really about as a community. I was able to do that effectively because my vote relevant, I check their blogs and upvote good content and this makes them keep blogging.
3 - I did 7 videos fully explain steemit in Arabic, and it help many to enter steemit, people impressed by how they can really reach a level when their vote matter and some planning to buy STEEM
4 - Already did a steemit Arabic support website
5 - I decided to go to steemfest2 because I felt that I have influence on this platform.
From my perspective HF19 is the best thing happened to steemit so far and gradual decentralization of power on steemit will make this platform really scale. I think people need time to ajust.
I will upvote this comment for the seek of good discussion
Do you know that most of the minnows does not have a voting slider?
And they can give only 100% upvotes. So after 10-15 full upvotes they have 70-80% Voting Power and must take a break till next day. 10 upvotes only for the best friends...
It's easy to ask minnows vote more but if every minnow will vote more today, tomorrow will be no upvotes from minnows.
yeah.... i dont have a slider haha, i was like....what are they talking about !
eSteem gives voting slider for everyone, you can check it.
Exactly what I was going to say, but when do I get a slider on the desktop site? Is there a certain milestone that gives me the vote power slider? (sorry, just read it in the comment below, lol)
This is a massive point that I did not think of. Remind me what the minimal amounnt of SP you need to see the slider was again? is it 1000SP? I haven't used an account with less than 1000 since I had only 1000.
This is another example of how UX is biased against new users. The underlying platform provides vote percentage adjustment, but steemit.com does not. I am making an issue at the github: https://github.com/steemit/condenser/issues/1544
5 month here and only 350 SP and of course no voting slider. Get 1000 SP without donating is very long and hard process.
I wrote about this curation problem the next day after HF19 https://steemit.com/steemit/@erikaflynn/new-opportunities-for-minnows-after-hf19-about-voting-slider-esteem-and-minnowsupport-eng-ru
For myself I found the problem solution in using eSteem (it has slider for everyone). But not every minnow have a smartphone, so solution must be found here on Steemit.
@felixxx also told me that even if you were delegated SP, it is not factored into the calculation. I didn't get clarification from him about whether this was the steemit.com interface or on the blockchain.
HF19 was just the first step towards properly balancing the mechanics of Steem. We still have more changes required before this platform is 100%
That's steemit.com UI ... the blockchain accepts weighted votes from any account.
With little SP comes little bandwidth ... so small votes might not make a lot of sense, if you can only vote a few times/day due to bandwidth limitations.
I am glad I bumped your name and you replied to clarify that for me :) thanks.
Right, so this also is something to consider in implementing a way for the smaller accounts, perhaps even by relaxing the bias on bandwidth towards minnows, and making interface elements that explain the limitation on bandwidth.
As far as I understand the bandwidth limitations will change with the blocksize.
That's why I decided to signal bigger blocks, too.
I doubt that interface elements about bandwidth would be any good. Most users just want to use this thing and don't care much for the technology (at least the beginning)
Can you tell me, guys, how you know about mentions? Steemit hasn't such option and this is a problem for me.
I got it at about 400+ something. I don't know the exact amount of Steem, but it is somewhere in the 400 area when the slider shows up.
I've had the slider since somewhere around 850 SP I think, currently 990
Really nice article and well crafted. When ever i look at a minnows voting power, its filled up. It makes me wonder whether they read whats being posted or they are here to observe and not comment or vote. If we dont stop that attitude, the power shoiluld be restored back to the right
I can only speak for myself, but I have been voting less in order get my voting power back up. Immediately after HF19 I was happily voting my newfound power, then saw the value of my vote sink as my voting power drained away. I have been conservative trying to give it a chance to restore.
I have decided now not to pay any attention to my voting power. Why should I worry about the difference between $.05 and $.02? I'm just going to go back to voting whatever I like and not worry about the value rewarded. What do you think?
If you don't have enough steem for the voting power slider to show up (shows at 400+ something steem), then you can only vote 10-11 times/day in order for your voting power to get back to 100% the next 24h.
Put you are right here. You can just ignore that and cast your upvotes as often as you want. Noone will complain, I guess :)
That is going to be my approach from here on out. I don't think it matters to you it my vote for your comment is $.02 or $.03, does it ?
No, it doesn't
You are in luck! You got both a $.02 vote and a $.03 vote!
Great post! Exactly what I was thinking the other day. I understand that people think now with HF19 their vote is precious and they want to keep it for themselves. There is nothing bad about that, but if everyone thinks that way, we will only see votes on our own content or comments.
Dont' you minnows love it when some guy votes on your post or comment? Well darling, then you should give some too!
Why don't spread the votes? If you like a post (like this one) I give it 100% Power Vote. If I think content is good, but not worth a 100%, I give it a little less voting power.
Yes, I also Vote on my own comments. For one reason it's because of the reward and the second reason is that my comment will appear higher in section. But that does not mean that one should cast all his votes on his own comments or posts. Give and take. Give and take.
Keep voting just for yourselfs and I guarantee you, this Hardfork won't las long. Cheers!
Oh, BTW: 100% Upvote from me for this post!
i agree with your pov @askaran i vote my own comments too and i enjoy giving votes to those that deserve it becuause you know teamwork makes the dream work, also forgive my lack of knowledge but how does one control how much % a vote has?
Thanks, jcleef. A vote for you my friend :)
Sorry, I didn't mention that the percentage slider only appers for people with over 400+ something steem. If you have lesser steem, you can't adjust your steem power. Its always a 100% vote in that case.
Every 100% vote drains your voting power by 2% of the Power you have the moment you cast it. Every hour about 0.84% Power regenerates. This means you can 10-11 votes/day and your voting Power would regenerate to 100% the next day.
no need to apologize, this was really helpful and now i have an idea for how long i have to wait to charge and also how many votes i can do a day. You've simplified this a bunch @askaran much appreciated :)
It's not that I don't want to, I'm still recovering my percentage. Remember we don't have the sliders so it goes away real fast. I don't think it's mostly people voting for themselves, I think most are like me, waiting for the percentage to regenerate by not voting.
Well, that could be one of the problems too. Your are right here.
Before the hardfork one without a slider could cast more votes. Not it drains your voting power by 2% (based on the power you have the moment you upvote). This means you can only upvote 10-11 times/day if you want your power to regenerate to 100% the next day.
Upvoted and Resteemed by the xx_Votes_Plus curation trail! Want more earnings? Follow @dropahead in Streemian https://streemian.com/profile/curationtrail/trailing/396 and/or fund @dropahead with more STEEM POWER! Keep steeming!
Look, our votes apparently become drained with very few upvotes now. We are using our votes but what good does it do to cast a vote when you have exhausted your voting power? May as well comment and leave it at that.
"by coveting your vote power -- you are telling the developers that you don't actually want that influence."
You do not understand. We ARE voting but we are choosing more carefully what we vote for. I myself favor content that is extensive and original. Gone are the days where people upvoted everything.
I myself posted a similar article like this yesterday. I was fortunate to have some people point out to me what I am telling you now. I was being naive in assuming I was posting content worthy of precious votes. In truth, I now feel I must step up my game to compete for these votes. In that regard I think what content that gets posted will improve.
I do not think it will kill Steem. It just may be the end of easy Steem. Maybe, just maybe people will actually write now instead of getting $30 for a meme.
About a week ago there was a lot of chatter on blogs encouraging people not to drain their voting power by voting. I think that "advice" is responsible for what we're seeing. The way I look at my voting influence, even when my voting power is at 20%, it gives content creators the same if more than the same vote did at 100% before the hardfork. So I didn't care so much about keeping my power at 100% and just kept voting as usual. There's no real good reason to concentrate your vote and just upvote your circle of friends because spreading it between more unique users is better at increasing your following (and upvotes from those followers)
Thanks for posting! Upvoted.
Well said!! Following
Well there is so much irrelevant "Crap Content" here, it takes time to find good posts and its now taking longer to do so. Unlike most Whales, I don't use bots to reward my friends or favorites and my time is valuable and my votes hardly counts at 3 cents per up-vote.
Its just great that bikini girls on their vacation are making $1,000 - $2,000 a post for taking pictures of their food. Its good work if you can get it, I salute you, but I will never be you.
YouTube has Pewdiepie and Stupid Cat videos that make tons of cash, I get it Vox Populi. Votes are a popularity contest.
The problem is I am seeing there is just too much content to evaluate each day and as far as I know, there is no way to filter it all, so I see at least most of what I want.
The Whales own Steemit and can and will do what they want. This platform will never be user controlled in the sense of regular people having real power over the direction of the platform. So who cares what the Whales think, want and do. I have no control over them. Threatening me, makes me care less, not more.
Newsflash, most of us, have a life outside of Steemit.
The more I participate, the more I think this was a really good idea, but the implementation, with its own separate currency was misguided. Hopefully the free market will look back at Steemit as a pioneering idea, that just missed the mark and was superseded by other platforms that paid its authors for their quality content and wasn't controlled by a small group of financial elites.
Eyes Wide Open
100% agree. Someone will take a photo of a vegetable soup in restaurant and get 100$ and someone will cook same soup at home, spend time, money, input effort and post a nice blog for 0.10$ and then he will be disappointed. That 0.10 will become 0.05 when is time to be paid, and because he has power to give some 0.05$ votes he will be also threaten after some time that if he doesnt start to vote he will lose that "power"
There are elites here and nothing is in control by people or users, everything is in control by whales. If you really want Steemit to success in a long run, then think how to make it more fair, where the quality and the effort is paid and not the connections, friends and publicity will play the most important role.
You could always become the H3H3 of Steemit and make parody posts. I'd totally upvote you doing some "Redneck Riviera" vacation blogs with pics of you in a bikini!
My larger point here is that Ethan (H3H3) isn't the most attractive dude by American standards, and he's had the added challenge of being an internet content creator with Tourette's. People like him because he's authentic and hilarious, not because he's easy on the eyes.
Thanks, just checked out his videos. He is hilarious :p
I have been experimenting. I can vote more if I reduce the percentage, but I like to give more to the newer members to encourage them. This, in turn, reduces voting power faster with subsequent longer recovery times. I have been trying to keep my power higher so I can give more.
I will try now to reduce the percentage and give to more posts. This will "spread the love". Of course, I will still give 100 percent to some.
On commenting, I never give 100 percent to myself in comments. That defeats the purpose of the comment, to me. I will sometimes give myself a small percentage to move my comment up the list to give it a chance to be seen.
I like HF 19. I hope it won't change back.
I wonder if some of it has to do with minnows being discouraged with the falling post values. I assume a lot of that is from the falling Steem price but I'm not really savvy about it. I do know that I was sooooo excited to see my highest potential payout ever the other day (almost $170) and that's now dropped like a stone to around 100 with three days of potential decline to go lol.
I've been voting and I'm on both of the minnow support curation trails as well, I agree we need to stay engaged, but for someone with usual payouts in the single digits, losing $70 can be disheartening. Just spitballing that others may be dropping their participation for that reason ☹️
Yup, I have seen the same thing. Posts that were going to pay me around $50, suddenly dropped to $25. How demoralizing.
If you buy a sandwich, eat and like it, the person who make that sandwich shouldn't have money taken from them days later, just because you decided to buy a sandwich at another store.
Once you make a purchase (up-vote), you should "own it" and the amount paid out to the author should never go down.
Wouldn't it be great if we allmake Steemit a better place through sharing. @shayne good job creating this "heads-up", I hope it would probably make some people use thier steem power like ther are supposed to. Upvoted
Minnows.... Your vote will go further if you use chainbb.com and change your voting percentage. Only log in using your posting key!!!
And it is extremely important to stop self voting. AND don't vote yourself below 80% voting power!!
You can always resteem!
This was a well needed public service announcement.
The community has gotten quite stingy as of late.
I haven't been on Steemit the last few days as much as I have before the HF simply because I've had a lot of studying to do, but when I am on I vote the same way I did previous to the HF (except not everything is 100% power). But it seems like so many people are scared of their increased power and are actually not voting. That's just your way of telling Steemit that you can't handle the power you've been given. It's kind of sad, but I guess it's for the best in the end lol
Hopefully HF20 will not be like that!
I'm telling you: IT WILL BE.
That is, it will be IF minnows don't start voting.
If we keep up what we've been doing this last week, we are telling Steemit that we don't actually want this power -- that we can't handle it. And it will all be taken away.
So on that not I suggest that everyone share this post or write one of your own on this topic to spread awareness.
@shayne I hear what you are saying but there maybe other factors to consider. Prior to HF 19 I was using bots to do the majority of my voting and would let my VP get down to 50%. Since HF 19 I stopped all of the bots auto voting. Now I'm only doing manual voting.
Even thou I am voting less and not letting my VP get below 80% ( I have no idea if I'm a minnow or what I am) I am actually reading many more post and commenting more. I believe this new change in my approach is contributing positively to STEEMIT.
Thank you for this great post. Resteeming it.
I'm quite new on steemit, but I think some people are abusing of their own votes. They try to benefit of their own vote and they try not to waste their votes. I think steemit devs can find better options than to simply remove the weight of the minnows votes. For example they can add some limits for new accounts in the same way forums are doing. Or they can put more power in flagging...
I think minnows votes should carry some weight, but in the same time steemit community to be able to promote quality and quality creators and to prevent spam. And the steemit devs have to provide the means for that...
so nice topic but I wanna ask when ??
I feel some minnows can't be trusted with that much power because they're heavily abusing the reward system. Spamming comments only to upvote themselves, then pulling massive payouts that should go to someone who actually puts value into the network.
Well said!
The voting payout has been greatly reduced since 2-3 days. I didn't know about the whale no vote experiment. It seems that the experiment is over and that whales are now voting and draining out the reward pool. The high payout was temporary and artificially created by a group of whales. I don't know whether I am too happy with the experiment, they misled many users into believing that they had a lot of voting power. I was misled for sure.
Hmm, I did wonder about present voting habits. You're saying that you have stats t back it up too? Are minnows really not using the 10 votes a day they have? Are they really holding onto those votes so tightly? doesn't seem to make sense.
Good post and
Well said !!!!
vote, vote and vote
I know me and the other minnows I know have always been using our voting to a healthy level. Draining our voting power is something to easily do without a slider. I totally agree that this is a very interesting hard fork and am not sure what will be the ends of this test. I know minnows just voting on "hot" or "trending" votes would not be a smart use unless it is a post they really enjoyed. I do know that with the %400 percent upvote value compared to the weight of pre-hf19 has made everyone value their votes more. Which has meant less spreading of the minnow votes. I used to be able to vote on more votes than I could easily count without dropping a large amount in voting power. Now I have been using a different UI other than steemit.com to spread more lower value upvotes to the mass of posts that I do like. Saving the %100 upvotes for those that I truly feel deserve it. I think a little more advise than upvoting more would greatly help. Just due to the fact if I or other minnows I know vote more we will be drained to almost no voting power. On another note thank you for Blobfish!!! I upped this %100 i like the discussion this post brings up.
I don't understand something, if a minnow can go from 0 to 9 cents after hard fork 19, I have 53 and my vote is only worth 3 cents. Also when I get 14 votes and I only have 60 cents on a post I can't comprehend how that all adds up. I post good solid content, and still my posts are making less then $20 with lots of comments and votes. It is starting to be frustrating. I am engaging with my followers, and I comment on alot of their content as well. I have found it worse since hard fork. I only have 430 some followers, could that be the reason? Thanks
With so many postings flashing by at mach speed, and the titles talking about how to be stingy with your votes,, and to only use the voting for the best of the best and the power of the vote dropping below 80% and you have to wait to get back to 100% or such, I am wondering if folks are just getting so many mixed signals? Resteemit!
Very much agree, Luckily I have a slider so it helps me spread the votes around more to try and be useful upvoting usefull content.
Thanks for the smack upside the head...this minnow needed it.
I'm going to test a theory, though, with this post. I turned off ALL the Steemvoter rules I had set up, and I haven't voted on anything since last night. Thus, I'm at 91% voting power...
So this should - hopefully - pay off a bit.
But one thing I've noticed: a comment on a whale's post that was upvoted by the whale does so much more for my Steemit wallet than my own posts. Which is odd, sad, and a little disconcerting. But I'll keep on keeping on.
Voting for this...NOW.
Threats so soon? I haven't even recovered. Haha I came right before the HF and had no clue what happened to the voting power percentage. And I think A TON of newbies came then also. No idea about the percentage dropping. Unfortunately, Steemit's not the most intuitive about that part.
I'm only at 70% and that's after basically not voting hardly at all for three days. It hurts not to vote but I'd like to get up to 100% so I can vote better.
I really don't think, or at least I hope not, people are just voting for themselves. I hope they're like me and trying to get their percentage back.
But maybe you're not talking about newbs as newbie as I am. Cause my VP went only to two cents after HF. Haha
Same here @farmstead. At full power my VP is three cents and rapidly drops to two cents after a couple votes.
I do have to agree with you @shayne ! I try to vote everyday 'till I reach about 30-40% voting power, so it has time to go back over 50% over night. I have steemvoter as well at full power for my favorite content creators. And as soon as I reach 500+ SP I will go ahead and buy VIP for steemvoter and add more creators. We actually need to start promoting steemvoter I think, and have more people adding each other on there (obviously when they're quality content creators not "here's a picture of the sky today")
I agree, we are in a hard spot though without the slider. Have to wait for the percentage to build back. Kinda darned if you do, darned if you don't. Yeah I can see how Hard fork 20 will go the other way if this doesn't work out.
This is good and needs to be out there for everyone to see! I hope they pay attention to it! Up voted and re-steemed. Thank you!
Don't know if this is really helpful...
Steemit is a hugely complex system and it is impossible to design right from the get go.
So it is important to experiment how incentives work to shape behaviour.
I think it will take a while to get to the right formula.
Telling people how to behave simply does not work!
People react to incentives, real or perceived.
This is where psychology is so important. You can't program it.
From other comments ion this post it seems that people are afraid to lose "voting power".
Fear of losing something (voting power, however little it is)
is a much stronger psychological driver than the hope to win something (curation benefits) So that is one potential explanation.
Solutions?
The self voting issue is easily fixed. Just change it so that you can't upvote yourself! I can hear the howls of protest now... not in the least from the whales...
I think tweaking the upvoting system is besides the point.
The whole upvoting is too easy to manipulate and automate. To really incentivize constructive content and engaging behaviour, the comments should be weighted a lot more.
If the purported goal of steemit is to let "good content" rise to the top, a comment should be a much better signal than an upvote if something is worthwhile.
I don't think upvotes should go away entirely but there should be some modifier effect because of comments.
Of course that can be gamed too. So to be considered "good comments" they should have a few upvotes and sub-comments too.
I have posts with great comments, 22 of them, (half are mine of course and those should not be counted) but 7or so people found it worth their while to contribute (some multiple times )a sensible opinion and left sizeable comments.
Post earned 6 SBD. Is that good or bad ?
Dunno.
But from the steemit platform perspective, that should be a better indicator that the post is "quality" rather than a cat video with 50 upvotes and no substantial comments.
Good post @shayne! I can tell you this. The first 100% upvote I had after HF19 was worth $1.84. Now this same upvote is worth $.72. I have been voting like crazy and not for myself. I need to rest and let it regenerate. I have a busy weekend ahead, so maybe this will help.
a bit confused...
is the vote only worth 0.09 with 100% vote power?
thanks in advance
Man I am one of those minnows. I will begin to use THE POWER!
Upvoted and followed, and I just want to point something out that I figured out reading through the comments, after I was reminded also not just about the default self-vote on a post, but also the lack of a slider for accounts under some specific SP size, that the user interface is a factor in why minnows are not voting.
THEY CAN ONLY VOTE 100%, PEOPLE.
good attention @shayne :D
2 thoughts
Will be solved.
Unfortunately HF19 is now being gamed with perpetual self-voting, it's attracting profit-seekers who have no interest in STEEM's long-term future. I speculate the flat reward curve will not last, unless the whales start flagging and punishing blatant system abusers.
Superb point! The power of the dollar to corrupt decisions is incredible.
The power of knowledge is the only thing that can trump it.
The HFs are supposed to improve the results of the system, not affect the decisions you make when it comes to what you should vote for.
Just keep adding quality to the system, become a High Value Steemian and we'll all have an excellent system to use, enjoy, and profit from.
Thanks for posting this @shayne!
I am a minnow and I upvote anything and everything that I think deserves it. I have been on Steemit for three weeks to the day, and have a meagre 80.725 SP.
I have to admit I have held back from voting on a few occasions when my vote power has been down to about 54%, so 100% votes have definitely prevented me from upvoting content that I really would have liked to vote for in the past.
For that reason giving the slider at a lower vest level would certainly be helpful.
Great point, Shayne. You can get big benefits from curating even now. Hop to it guys.
I guess I can't say much more than what has already been said. I always check my feed first then other posts out there. By the time I'm done with my feed my power has taken a decent hit.
This post has been ranked within the top 10 most undervalued posts in the second half of Jun 30. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $87.74 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Jun 30 - Part II. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
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Thank you for the "heads up" and the opportunity. I am one minnow who does appreciate the opportunity for "more power" as you put it. But I am still in the learning curve... though my record shows me initiating my account a few months ago, I only posted a few items then, and had to take a hiatus due to life situations. But I came back recently with the plan to do more postings - which do take some time as I try to select quality rather than quantity. I do upvote and follow when I see something worthwhile, but until your post here, did not grasp the importance of voting (relative to posting). Sooo - thank you for this, and will try your described strategy.
Mine are way down, feel people are just saving it now for big ones. Also noticed the consistant pekple voteing, ive since their voteing value go down by the day.
Voted and resteemed. We can't hoard and survive.