A lot of new users keep thanking me for reading their post and supporting them. I feel like I have to set the record straight about that since a while now.
Many discussions revolve around the situation with whales and dolphins dominating the reward pool. As a steem user of the first hour and a whale myself I am of course aware of this, and since the beginning I have been thinking about ways how that could be fixed. I had my part in sometimes hefty discussions in the early days, and was proposing a change in the reward curve long before the last hard fork. But changes in the blockchain rules can only do that much. Equally, or even more important, is the behavior of the users.
I hate the trending page. I can rage on for hours how there's always the same people up there, posting just for the sake of getting another couple of hundreds of dollars of rewards. Attempting to spread the reward pool further I spent months curating manually, but with the growing number of posts that became impossible to do thoroughly. For a while I stopped voting completely, because I felt that my weight was too high and I just couldn't vote "fairly".
A couple of months ago I then came up with a solution. My own trail bot, following a diverse list of mostly manual curators. Over time I added features like a blacklist, avoiding self votes, avoiding votes on dual accounts, and some stats. It's running stable since weeks, and with a lot of nodes used by other bots and services going down yesterday this seems to be a good moment to release the code to the public. Here you go: https://github.com/pharesim/steem-trailbot
It uses the public node at ws://steemd.pevo.science:8090 but you can of course change that.
I hope it can help others to spread the love too. Steem has so much more to offer than the current trending posts - help to show that to the world!
Don't know how to put the bot into action but if you set up a curation trail on Streemian I can follow you there!
Don't follow my votes, it's way too many. Vote for content you like, manually. If the minnows only knew about their power...
Would you mind elaborating on that? I'm sure if YOU say it, it will mean a whole lot more than if I say it. Not very many listen to a small fry like me.
Just what the title of this post says basically...
As an example, see the current posts by sweetsssj and kingscrown. They have 1000 votes each. That's not just whales.
Every vote cast for a small user takes away a bit from the rewards of the trending authors. The common notion "I am to small to change anything" leads to apathy, same as in politics probably.
THANK-YOU! That is what I was hoping you meant. Instead of attempting to ride the gravy train (and probably not succeeding anyway) by voting only on whales, people could be voting on their fellow minnows and supporting each other. This is the original intention of the platform and by creating these 'communities' of mutual support, everyone rises up together!
ddeu i really get astonished by the post i see of minnows where people thank them and they do not upvote them ...( i was confused i thought thats how you show your love) i always upvote with love !!!!! all day !!!!!thanks for your words brosef!!
I feel like I just won a lottery! Wow! Thanks so very much! This brings me just a little bit closer to being able to reward the little community I'm trying to build with another 1 cent for each of my votes. Every cent counts because they do add up!
I @mammasitta just opened this new account to spread different kind of vibes and topics like my personal blog I really enjoy since June 2016 and also to see, how it must feel to be a minnow again [my kind of experiment :)]
Its tough!
I like your approach and advice because we all can make changes. I am quite curious how I will do with such new account starting August 2017, a very different dynamic these days.
Well, us minnows should make a habit of voting at least 5 posts we like each day, even if it doesn´t give anything to the author, just for the sake of supporting good content. I´ll spread the word about that. But a bigger problem is that I believe that on steemit content is way too disorganized for people to effectively find much fast. A lot of good posters become increasingly buried in the post tsunami(Postnami! can i make that word a thing?). Well, at least its that way for us minnows who don´t make it to the trending page. Also,some followers are generally lazy, since they only vote on post thay can skim in no more than 2 mins... That makes for some lazy reading habits.I have faith in the long run for both steemit and myself. Cheers!
@pharesim thanks for your advice.
In my opinion, people focus too much on voting. I want to vote on content that I like, but I also want to interact with people. Even though it's nice to get a vote, getting comments (not the fake spams) on a post that I make is worth just as much in my book.
I see it all too often that people just vote without reading/looking and really interacting unless it's on a post from a bigger guy on Steemit.
What I wanted to address was the voting for bigger guys without looking. Of course interaction is the most important thing, so voting should follow that, not the fame of the poster.
I don't even know anymore who is trending :) Superstars never impressed me unless they deliver something interesting to vote and comment. I also auto-vote occasionally for my favourite authors or people who interact with me the most. I pause it for some days to curate manually most of the time.
Hi @pharesim, thanks for the advice. I'm new on the Steemit (only 1 month) and tried to kickstart some debates with some posts ... but so far have not been able to figure out how to attract interest and spark the discussion. Do you have any suggestion?
Thanks!
I'm all about interaction. Followed you. enjoy actual discussion with real people. looking forward to your next post
Couldnt agree more. I think there may be a popularity issue, or barrier, rather, than actual social converstations regarsing topics that bring peiple together, and the exchange of thoughts and ideas.
i upvote because of interaction and i am starting to add to steem to my account so when people spark cool convo i can upvote forreal cause i appreciate it!!!
I agree, there are just a finite amount of people you can more or less intimately know. Some friends feed and circles would be nice.
Straight forward...i like d way u r going.......helpful content for me.....
hey, I am one of these minnows :-) If I only knew about my power :-)
Actually I have a lot of content to give... but for minnows its very difficult to get information and a deeper understanding... I am thankful for any source of information (so many questions)... by the way thank you for upvote (Susuki Girls)
try... i am learning to code on codecademy that offer some free some paid courses, github lessons are next for me so will use your bot after that learning
Well ..... mr @pharesim lol. If your religion is kindness, might I ask for a moment of your time to check out my witness offering and spare me one of your votes?
If you check out https://witstats.steemliberator.com you can see 2 of your witnesses havent even updated to 0.19.1 yet.
And I am in the process of getting a full RPC node with load balancing setup for the network so we can help take some of that load off steemit's node
Anyway. I know you have all 30 votes used so maybe at least keep me in mind. Thanks for supporting posts though, a lot of bigger users lack in that regard.
Could not agree with you more. I believe investing time and effort into solving this 'problem' is a crucial thing for the long term value of steem. If steemit is to be the next big thing in blogging and social media, then it needs to be a platform that people find fair, sensible and rewarding. It will be crucial for long-term steem investors to get this right.
I myself try to mostly reward fruitful relationships. I observe who is genuinely interested in my journey and who wants to tag along. Have therefore focused mainly on interacting with, and upvoting, those who comment constructively and thus play an important role in making this platform more positive to engage on for old and new users alike. Which I think is the long term formula for success.
That's perfect. More comment voting is a great way to speed up distribution.
Indeed. But I think it's not only a good way to distribute rewards, but also a better long-term strategy if all you want is profit.
Anyways, thank you for your effort to make steemit a more enjoyable platform. I hope I will be making positive contributions to the development of steemit as well.
I up comments when the author has no posts - its also a way to reward the author and let him drink in the cup of rewards
you hate the trending page?
solution : stop looking at it (just kidding)
I'm glad you wrote it out there! At least people could get an idea - not every huge SP account owners see eye to eye with how it is - - a chink of hope :)
for the essence of spreading love - resteemed!
@pharesim I'm about to implement, with the help of @jimitations, a comment-voting project to encourage more community involvement and engagement. It'll be small at first, but will hopefully grow into something that can help minnows reward their commenters.
completely agree with what you're saying, genuine comments and interactions are what deserve to be upvoted and rewarded.
Very much agree with your approach. When voting I try to reward @ 100% when someone obviously put a lot of time and effort into a post. If it is just a photo of a meal or a cup of coffee, or something churned out quickly, then I use the slider. For comments, I like to reward cleverness, thoughtfulness, and insight.
In addition I use tools like SteeMVP to make sure I pay special attention to the blogs of those who vote often for my contributions, or those sea mammals who have shown me generosity. I have also identified a few fellow newbies, newer than I am, who impress me and who I would very much like to see succeed on Steemit.
It would be extremely helpful to me if there were an option on Steemit that would allow a user to identify "favorites" and have a feed option which displayed them.
I most definitely go along with the idea of favourites. It would keep the posts you most wanted to see in your feed for longer
Since you've spoke about fair. It's not how little you get paid for your post, you still do. Where else you can you get that, but that's not the topic. That notion of fair/unfair. It is annoying when you see those totally bullshit/crappy post collecting money from the reward pool and you can't beet through the noise :) I could go out and do a photoshoot and make more than in a month or two on steemit. I could shoot a wedding and earn more than probably i will never make in a year of posting. Not at least now. But that lack of fieriness just like everywhere else... Why does greed has to poison everything. Damn human nature :)
You nailed it. It is human nature. Greed is good and every man for himself.....and aslong as you have the power and money to back that up, you win.
But that's not good.
I learned a long time ago that you actually do much better when your focus is on others, not just yourself. The whole 'pay it forward' idea does actually lift you up as well...
But damn the human nature. We will fight it till the day we die.
Take care friend!
Peace!!
✌
Not everybody has the capacity to see that far but you can't blame them. All men are created equal but are not the same. Peace to you too man.
Good post. Thanks for sharing for all of us
GOD DAMN RELIGIOUS NUTBAGS!!!!
My religion is science. Why don't you read some shit before writing something so intergalactically STUPID!
I second your last sentence xD
Well played. Well played.
I'm glad someone got what I was doing there - thank you @papa-pepper for having some depth.
I saw that, LOL
Powerful write and very insightful. Like you said kindness is who you are. I will support on that . Sometime people wants to be kind to you just because they are expecting something in return. But i will say it is better to kind to people without expecting anything in return because most times the person you are been kind to is not always the one that will pay you back .
In fact the payback might not even be extend to you . It might be to someone that is your relations or that you know. So don't always expect people to pay you back when you help them . The payback might just be with someone else.
Once again thanks for the write up .Is so inspiring and very real.
Just check out this write up on my page i titled '' ATTITUDE IS THE REAL THING'' @optimistdehinde. I am following you already because i like people that are very real. Good to be real.
Note : There is more to steemit than up vote , resteem and following.Thank you. One love.
And Steem is the perfect way to pay forward :)
https://steemit.com/steemit/@igster/steem-distribution-top-0-1-of-accounts-own-76-62-of-all-steem-or-1-16-86-or-dolphins-5-64-or-minnows-0-88-or-aug-01-2017 Seems like the distribution isn't happening, more like concentration of wealth. The trend has been on going for a while and I suspect it won't change with the current economic structure in place - eventually the place will implode I guess or I'm missing something badly.
Since I was talking of a trend, the earliest record I have is from 24 April. Here is the data for everyone to see:
April 24th:
Top 0.1%: 70.37%
1%: 21.64%
Dolphins: 6.97%
Minnows: 1.03%
And now
Aug 1th:
Top 0,1% : 76.62%
1% : 16.86%
Dolphins : 5.64%
Minnows : 0.88%
Source for data from April: https://steemit.com/steem/@igster/steem-distribution-and-various-stats-1-april-24-2017
Fascinating numbers revealing ongoing wealth concentration, also entirely expected. Thanks for sharing them!
No problem, this kind of data is very important to keep track of to see the big picture and the health of the system. The difference is quite drastic and this has happened in just over a 3 months of time!
And it concerns me that Ned, CEO of Steemit, is planning on introducing even more tokens to this system, rather than making the current one more fair for everyone. If this same trend continues, the 0.01% will be holding around 80% of all Steem at the end of 2017.
Do you have any ideas for change?
Well the problem is that those who hold most SP get huge gains for every action or inaction compared to everyone else. As an example @pfunk is getting around 1 Steem Power per each upvote! (source: https://steemdb.com/@pfunk/curation). I'm almost a dolphin myself and am getting around 0.03 SP per mine.
So just by taking into account curation, the wealth will slowly trickle up. Then you add the inflation, big rewards for voting on own posts and you end up with this trend that we have now.
To add to this, whales are starting to sell their votes! Instead of figuring out a way to reward good content, they just sell it to anyone who wishes to throw money at them.
The rest of their voting power will probably go towards close inner circle, too much of money to pass by.
And final issue, since wallets of whales keep growing at increasing rate compared to everyone else, they can keep powering down every once in a while and still stay ahead of everyone else.
Most of these big wallets were acquired in the "instamining" phase when the site itself was not out yet. If the distribution would had been fair, Steemit would look a lot different and it would had been adopted by the rest of cryptousers, now it is struggling to do so.
I might be wrong and I hope so, I really do - but the very bad distribution is a issue that will keep Steemit in its shadow for a long time. Even if Steem fails, due to these issues, someone will copy the idea and make it work and for that I'm glad.
And how to fix this issue?
Burn all the Steem earned in the early mining phase or majority of it. Voilà. This is just a rough idea I saw suggested by someone else, I'm sure people could come up with far more sophisticated ones. Of course the whales wouldn't like it...
But it speaks volumes that I'm still here, and I will continue to do so until something better comes along - maybe that never happens? It's up to us all.
The percentage doesn't say much alone. If you could exclude inactive users from the stats they would be more meaningful I think.
meep
I agree with your input there @ionlysaymeep
meep
Yes they should give you more power because minnows like me just won't budge through this hard system.
meep
I also wonder what will be done with the millions of Steem in @steem account, that were reserved for making new accounts when this whole platform were designed.
Thank you @pharesim!
I have received your vote some times, it really helps
I would like to start off by saying I Appreciate Your Kindness "Thank You" from the bottom of my Heart. It is truly an Honor to have your Support!! In return it was important for me to Vote for you!! I'm all about Supporting This Awesome Platform & Our Fellow Steemians This Community Rocks!!! And so do You @pharesim!!!!
Share Gif:
Great posts can be useful can be used as experience. Hope be a friend who can help me to be like you ..... to realize the dream and hope in reaching. Likes @yooraa need friend support. Greetings esteem.
I don't know enough yet to know how to go about using your bot, but it sounds helpful.
As for reward pool reform, as I described in my introduceyourself post, I'd personally love to see the adoption of a netizen dividend here, where all active users of Steemit receive a flat dividend of total Steem as a way of better recognizing unrecognized value contribution, and also as a way of decreasing inequality which seems only likely to continue as that's simply a feature of free markets constructed without a redistribution mechanism.
Just something to think about. Cheers!
Thank you for your upvote and support for the Steemit community. Upvoted and follow.
Thanks for the release! Looks comprehensive enough. Hoping to learn how to use it well..
PM me with questions. Or if you could keep a log of the steps for a tutorial...
try.. i am learning to code on codecademy that offer some free some paid courses, github lessons are next for me so will use your bot after that learning
O wow thank you for this info. I know when I first started on Steemit you were one of the first big upvotes I received and it really help get my mindset in the right place. And look at me know :) so thank you again for all you do really appreciate it
I have appreciated your efforts in this platform for over a year now. If it were not for the encouragement that your support gave me early on I do not think that I would have persevered past my first month here.
Your concerns here are legitimate and I appreciate you working so hard and thinking so much about how to truly make steemit the community that it could be. Keep it up!
Thanks @pharesim!
Raising an important point there, people need support here, especially those not fortunate enough to buy their way in with SP. With my 2 months here I see a lot of potential but the user base has to grow up... i feel like to much people are way up their ass and disregard others opinion or action... To much of folks spend time digging into others business and the flagging wars take a very personal note, I realize some battles having been going on my months, that has to change if this platform has to move forward
I think over time steem will evolve and change until it works well for everyone, not just the people who started first.
It has to really or a large percentage of new members will abandon their account within a month.
When a whale upvotes your post
I vote for the articles and posts that I like and what they represent to me. Some has good advice, good receipts, beautiful photos and sceneries that I enjoy.
I do not follow anyone or everyone, as I choose to follow content and stories I like as you can see from my blog. I am interested to share my stories and what I believed people will enjoy. I am sure those that make the effects to write and post, should be given the respect to be read by others. I have at times have comment that does not even relate to my post and I was told that was because a robot reply automatically. I do not reply as it is a waste of my time. Would like constructive comment or information that I can learn.
I am very new to Steemit even though I signed up a year ago (inactive). How do I block off robots that reply automatically? Would like to learn more from others who has the experience.
Thank you
@jackpot
follow me please.
I need a free server
That's what I would definitely suggest. If you want to have a healthy platplatform and are a whale, then just look for the top manual curators in every huge 'tag-group' and delegate some sp (if you're greedy, then demand some form of repayment)
This way the steempower and its distribution can scale way easier then you curating manually and you have another layer (the manual curators) doing this. The only ticky part is to find the great curators and I thing someone should start building an intelligent stats-tracker to achieve that.
Kind regards Mister Witness! (:
:)
Very good post, I agree with you. I posted about the issue of dwonvoting on myblog post and hope that it get resolved. You are doing a great job with your steem power and thus will get more blessings. Keep steeming and more success to you.
I know about manual curation! It is slow but cumulative and, most importantly, connects people who are often oblivious to each other's existence on Steemit.
Never mind F4F, what about H2H :-)
Hi friend I am pretty new to this world, only want to offer you my heart full thanks for the valuable supports. You had already casted your most valuable upvote to my post yesterday. I only want to tell you that you are so powerful and busy enough, so if you don't mind please give a visit on my post too. Your presence pleasant my heart,which will be my inspiration to my future works. Wish you all the best and good health.
Love is the only way...My re-steem mean more than my vote, cheers!
Everyone's religion should be kindness and the world would be a better place. My religion is sincerity and kindness.
YES! I totally agree and I stay away from looking at the trending page because it just creates a negative energy for me because I cannot change it.
I am very fortunate in that I have hours most days I can spend reading and commenting on posts. I really enjoy the interaction. Yet I see so many Steemers that are really trying for months for just pennies per post and I wonder how long they will last before they just quit.
Maybe there is no answer to the trending/rewards pool abuse. I have posted a possible idea in a max earnings cap per post, but it has not gotten any traction.
Anyways I found you from a resteem by a small account I follow @m31 :)
@old-guy-photos I absolutely love the way you interact with people on this platform and I can only learn from you! :) I appreciate every comment from the bottom of my heart. :) @pharesim is the reason how I got here on Steemit and for that I will be forever grateful!
Phareism for witness ! Because you spread kindness in the community , and that's what we need 🙏 @phariesm
@paharesim thanks for being kind and for always upvoting my post gobless :)
yes it is a good feeling when we create account an some one appriciate us then we many feel thankfull to that person but here is the only some person who appriciate the newly person otherwise mostly person try to upvote to the high rank...thanks ur post @pharesim
Rock on! You're awesome. And you've been great to the minnows with your approach! So much love from the Minnow Pond coming your way :)
I'm not techy enough to know, but I wonder if the recipe for these bots are actually better kept as a secret. I mean, once we know how a bot works we know how to game them for votes...
Figuring out my voting pattern should be pretty easy without understanding code.
you are doing great work hope this will spread love all over steemit.
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STOPnice info
I liked the icon you used for the article, nice read!
i dont even have to say anything but thank you seriously thank you and what do i do if me and my wife use the same ip sometimes i got her into steemit and i worry it makes the blockchain treat us as one but steemit has no mobile app any kind words on that id be really happy
No need to worry, nobody cares about your IP address here ;)
Nice can you please help me how can i up steam power
Thank you for your kindness and for helping the community.
I found your channel upvoting many posts around the steem community. i just checked out your work, and i wanted to say thank you! I'll be looking forward to a new post of yours i can resteem. kindless kills
I hate the trending page too because really the users there only post for additional money and they rarely support the users who follow them
they are just self-voters for their own favor
Manual curation is not easy and very time consuming. I have put some money and do my best but jeezes, so many shitty posts sometimes, will have a look at how you do this, thanks.
I automated, because my voting power is too big. The problem is that I cast hundreds of votes each day to not have a single one have too much influence.
Steem depends on minnows voting manually though. You don't need to set overly high standards, and with the new limit of 10 full votes per day it's achievable without too much effort imo, especially when you include comments. Please don't stop, and if you need to don't become one of the stupid trailers.
Thanks for your work!!
It's great for us newcomers to feel that some people care about “inclusion”. I also agree with your rant about the trending page and I think it's a source of frustration for news users that don't know how this type of platforms work and expect to be rewarded for hundreds of dollars since the very beginning.
I believe in the same religion as you :) Thanks for your good work and kindness it is much appreciated and cool that you also made a botthat can assist you, I can definitely understand that it becomes an impossible task to do all curating manually.
yes here mostly people only support highly people and want to return from them but no person preffer a good article or good information from lower scale person and not appreciate him
Thanks @pharesim for being so fair and kind in this community.
@Pharesim... Thank You for sharing Your thoughts & actions. I'm still relatively new but observe You supporting people that tend not be on the trending pages and by You doing this, You are supporting new people who really need the support so they can continue to grow on Steemit. I try to do the same even though I have much Less SP voting power.
Thanks Again... Cheers !!
nice one i upvoted you and resteem
Thank you for sharing your code.
I appreciate you for that. I would love to know how to use that bot...
i am learning to code on codecademy that offer some free some paid courses, github lessons are next for me so will use your bot after that learning
Please curate manually ;-)
That's what I am doing :D