#plea

Open letter to change voting patterns | A plea to give #NewSteem a chance

It's been a while since the last Hardfork. A Hardfork that among other changes, gave Steem users some available Steem Power to downvote posts without affecting their Curation rewards.

A few of the big accounts on Steem have been using these downvotes to encourage manual curation to the point where most of the ex-bidbots are now supporting high quality authors who deserve recognition, rewards and exposure.

These ex-bots are giving #NewSteem and manual curation a chance

And you know what? It is working. Most Steem users who put effort, time and quality into their posts are getting votes on a consistent basis, maybe not in all of them and probably not as much as they would hope so, but since the bots are now allocating more than 15 Million Steem Power into manual curation - instead of using it to sell votes -, the situation and circumstances of the Steem Community and its users are definitely better than how they were two months ago.

The community in general is healthier, the users are happy and reccommending Steem to their acquaintances and trying to onboard people on a daily basis, a lot of projects are thriving and getting organic support, new users are not getting completely ignored as they used to be, experienced users are not quitting after months of not getting recognition.

I bet you have noticed that, you must have. Your posts are getting more organic votes, you are getting more comments from new users and old users alike and most importantly, you don't see several posts a day from minnows complaining how the rewards pie is reserved for only a selected elite. In fact, the vast majority of posts talking about the reward pool are written with a positive attitude.

But there is still one thing that the community of #NewSteem would value enormously, perhaps as much as they value how the bid bots changed their voting behaviour...

That is the way the OGs, the experienced users who are here for a long time, vote on a daily basis.

There's this perception, from both small stakeholder and big whales alike, that some Steemians are ignoring other users and allocate a big chunk - if not most - of the voting power to a select group of people, you may call them friends or even family.

I get it. I have friends on the Steem Blockchain. Friends I've known for years now, people I've met in person in both Steem Fests, users who I speak with on a daily basis both about business and pleasure. I vote on them of course, if I say I don't I would be lying and insulting your intelligence.

But in order to make Steem a better place I try to spread my voting power to other users.

Let's not get into the economic and financial consequences of spreading my voting power outside of my inner circle.

I know my fair share of economy and finances and I bet you do, but talking about that would be a never ending story and discussing theories and how they apply to the microeconomic environment that is Steem and the possible outcomes of applying each of them on this Blockchain would lead to nothing.

Let's focus on the social aspects of changing our voting behaviour

We've seen that spreading our votes is benefical for the community. More people are staying (ie, not ragequitting) and a lot more Steemians are positive about Steem's future.

I might brought attention to this post by linking it on a post of yours. I hope you're still reading this, I trully do

I get that you want to support your friends. I understand that your family comes first when deciding who to vote with a 100% VP vote. It's clear that you want to protect your investment and you can do whatever the hell you want with your hard earned Steem.

It may have taken you years of posting high quality content to accummulate the Steem Power you have at the moment. You probably invested a large amount of Fiat to have me, a random minnow ask you to vote one way or another. Who knows, maybe you think the Steem price is never going to get to an ATH and you prefer to grow your stake and your acquaintance's stale instead of growing someone else's.

I get it, I truly do and I'm not someone to question your motives or your reasons. I'm sure you are convinced they are positive and they hold the most value for you.

But chances are, you've had this mindset for a while now. I could bet my small stake that you're still voting the same way you used to vote before the last Hardfork and before this #NewSteem jibber jabber began.

My question is, NO, actually my plea is, why don't you try giving a chance to NewSteem and manual curation by spreading your votes among other users?

Try it for a while. Give it chance.

Take a dive in #created. Check out other people's posts. Try widening your inner circle. You might be surprised at how many amazing authors are out there. I know I've seen them and I know they would be grateful to receive a vote from you.

You might earn less rewards on your posts. After all, if all of us stop voting so much on our friends and family well, they will do the same, since we are all adopting the New Steem attitude and giving manual curation a fair chance to work.

But take a leap of faith. Give manual curation and New Steem a chance and spread the love, give your votes to other people and wait and see.

Who knows, perhaps all these users realize that anyone, big or small, new or old, any user can get a nice vote from you if they post quality content.

I know I said I wouldn't mention economic factors on this post but I changed my mind...

Who knows, maybe your posts earn less, but your stake is worth a lot more if you spread the votes, since every user you support will bring in more people, and if these people get some support, they might buy some steem, and the negative snowball Steem had before the Hardfork becomes an incredibly positive domino effect where people see value in buying Steem.

There are many if, might, perhaps and may on this post... but I bet it's worth a try. I bet you will see the value on this idea.

Give it a try. Give NewSteem and manual curation a chance, try changing a bit your voting pattern.

I promise it will be worth the effort.

Comments · 28

@mariannewest(75)· 2466d
I have always done manual curation but find it really annoying that there are some big accounts out there that have it out to destroy SBI. That initiative has encouraged community building for a long time and is under attack now by someone whose motives are pretty obscure. A truly sad day for Steem and I am seeing people leave that have been on here for a long time.
@flysky(72)· 2488d
.
@xpilar(75)· 2491d
Hi @anomadsoul

I like what you write about here and agree with you.

If everyone wanted to think that way, there would be no problem at all.

I have to sweep for my own door first. I have used bidbot in a peridoe before, but found that it was not right for me to use above the community so I ended it before HF20. I am very happy that bidbot is running manual upvote today.

I vote for some of those you call the "vote trading circle" and I will continue to vote for them because I like what they write. But a while back I set the votes in% lower to give even more votes to others

The same thing I've done with self-voting, I don't need it anymore.

I have supported many people on my journey here at Steemit since July 2016 and then I mean minnows and with many different competitions with good prizes in SBD and Steem. Now I support other projects and am a sponsor of SPUD driven by @streetstyle. I also sponsor the @art-venture run by @stef1 and @myskye. Of course, "they are part of my vote trading circle" "vote trading circle" you have to look at with other eyes and not judge it equally because there are big differences going on here.

I also want to thank for upvote from @ocdb with manual curation but after you gave it upvote I was immediately put down by others and it tells me about bad morals. It has happened several times when one bidbot upvotes me manually the other comes and gives me downvote. here are the ones who gave me the downvote after I got the good upvote from @ocdb
@justinparke(78)· 2492d
Well, if it's any insight, I had a Steem account for two years before ever becoming active. I saw many posts about bid-bots and vote-selling, and so much underpaid good content, that I didn't want to waste my time on Steem thinking good content would go nowhere. Luckily for me HF21 happened not long after I threw my cares to the wind and started posting out of curiosity. I am glad to see more posts not about crypto or blockchain actually having some decent payouts.
@vlemon(78)· 2492d
What do you think about promoters of newsteem voting with 70% of so only 15 people (including their own projects).

Especially when they are also witness and gaining a lot of steem for this?

Would be curious to know your thoughts about it.
@trendotoken(59)· 2493d
Congratulations @anomadsoul, your post successfully recieved 32.56737638 TRDO from below listed TRENDO callers:

^{@trendo.marketing earned : 21.71158425 TRDO curation}

^{To view or trade TRDO go to steem-engine.com
Join TRDO Discord Channel or Join TRDO Web Site}
@josemalavem(75)· 2495d
Hello, @anomadsoul. I think it's an excellent post he's presenting to us, with very relevant and necessary ideas and suggestions. The new stage that Steem started is extremely interesting, because it really allows the support to be more honest and broad. I don't even become a little fish, but I still do a constant work of reading and healing, certainly of some acquaintances (already tested in their quality), but also looking for the unknown or new ones who are also producing quality content, without plagiarism, well written, with respect to copyright rules, etc. These values must be defended and reinforced on the platform. Thank you for sharing these reflections and your impetus. Greetings.
@arcange(79)· 2495d
Congratulations @anomadsoul! Your post was mentioned in the Steem Hit Parade in the following category:
- Comments - Ranked 2 with 72 comments
@azircon(79)· 2495d
The king of self-vote continue to be @dobartim. Even after trying months of comments back and forth (I honestly do not know how @pharesim manages it!)

He continue to self vote 26% and another 20% goes to 3 @slowwalker accounts; @oldstone, @wisdomjustice

The un-yielding stupidity of this whole thing is mind boggling! @nomadsoul. See if you and @acidyo can do something about it.
@trendovoter(41)· 2495d
Sorry, @trendo.marketing you’ve reach daily limit of summon the trendo curation bot!

^{Support @trendotoken projects by delegating : 100SP , 200SP , 500SP , 1000SP , 2000SP}
@trendo.marketing(1)· 2495d
!trdovoter 100
@broncnutz(79)· 2495d
Oh give centralization another chance? No thank you, we have Facebook, Twitter and YouTube already doing that. People need to think for themselves and not have YOU or ANYONE else here decide where flags should be placed.
@dr-frankenstein(66)· 2496d
Hypocrisy,
@deepwaters(55)· 2496d
This #newsteem change was ultimately what we hoped for from the beginning.

Manual curation is the real "proof of brain" method. I am also very grateful that bid-bots have taken consciousness and are using that cumulative power for good. More than ever, I will post manually written content.

Something that I keep thinking of though is... how to get discovered by more followers naturally? It matters little if the post is good and no audience. Any ideas?
@goldmatters(75)· 2496d
Excellent post @anomadsoul! You have long been a very dedicated Steemian and I greatly appreciate you massive effort to constantly improve the platform. I also appreciate the long and thoughtful comment you left on my article. It’s clear that you take the time to read about other Steemians and truly care about all of our future.

I agree with the positivity in this post and that this is the best possible way to approach others on the platform in order to encourage them to find Steemians outside their normal circle to curate. Thats a good idea and I could definitely do this better and put more effort into looking beyond my group of friends.

This is a refreshing post because as a long time Steemian I am extremely frustrated with the other side of “NewSteem” which I see as quite destructive to morale and potentially the 2nd worse mistake ever to the ecosystem (the worse mistake in the history of steem was for steemit inc to keep its funds in crypto leading to the 70% layoffs ect, but thats a story for another day...) . It’s not something ive discussed publicly because I stay out of the politics\drama here as I find it a colossal waste of my time.

But I really don’t want to make this comment negative because I love your approach and thank you for again making such an incredible effort on behalf of all stakeholder and steemians here. I will keep this in mind and try to find new authors to support in the future!
@hitmeasap(75)· 2496d
To be rewarded for who you are and what you have done instead of what you do is and will always be one of the issues with STEEM, in one way or another. We want high quality and we want people who puts in time and hard work. We want people to build their presence, their own brand and we want people to truly become influencers to some extent.

But, that is also the moment you're starting to be rewarded for who you are and what you have done, instead of what you are doing further on.

It would be fairly easy to post 2-4 times per day with rewards of 50-100 Steem(+SP) on each of the posts. That would boost confidence and it gives you tremendous motivation to grind. However, when you earn 5-10 Steem it's not easy to find that same level of motivation (at these low prices), which also makes it difficult to grind. Hence, less content being published.

I can easily say that my latest article is better than 50% of the content I've read during the last few hours, but the rewards doesn't seem to agree. Instead, I see the same authors earning 200-500% more rewards than me, just like it has always been. Regardless of the content they publish.
- That won't change.
And here's the thing, I don't complain about my article being rewarded just above $5 at the moment I write this. In fact, I am satisfied, like I have always been. Earning $5 though, when you've spent an hour, two or three...

And you see others out there spending ~15 minutes only to get 500% more than you. Well, that doesn't really boost the confidence of any content creator. Especially not when you see that exact thing happen multiple times per day, 7 days per week.
@steevc(80)· 2496d
There are some improvements, but we are seeing the same few people trending on a limited range of topics. Believe it or not crypto is a minority interest online. I see whales and orcas giving themselves a big self vote on each post when they are likely to make more on that post than most make in a week anyway. Let's get more votes to the musicians, artists, photographers and writers who have stuck with Steem for months or years whilst not making much. They belong to communities that could really benefit from this platform and word will spread fast if it can be seen as a worthwhile place to publish. It would help if Steemit would pick more diverse content to feature.

I won't be at Steemfest, but I hope these issues will be discussed there.
@abitcoinskeptic(75)· 2496d
What a lovely message... What kind of numbers do you propose? At least 50% of Voting to real curation? Ie. No selfies no besties and no chronic/habitual supporting? I look at my CSI on steem world and it turns out all my autovoting leads me to vote for hundreds of people a week or 4x the amount I follow. However my curation efficiency is lower than sea level.

I guess things work cases by case and I know there are plenty of obvious cases. Includig some of the people curating this post.

I wonder how many of the OG people have a trail of confusion to do this secretly....thats when we should all be able to admit it's wrong, when they hide or cover up their shame.

Anyway keep doing what you do, I like this tonic and especially these debates.
@nathen007(73)· 2496d
Better? You mean like @ocdb upvoting videos of people opening game card packs but downvoting anyone who spends a dollar on a bid bot? Before preaching to the little folks try getting your own house in order and save the condescending crap for your whale mates please.

Posted using Partiko Android
@alucian(73)· 2496d
Hi anomadsoul, you´re a Part of the @ocdb Downvoting Trail. Please tell them, they should look a second view, before the Downvote a good non Profit Project like the @CommentCoin. It is Ok to Downvote. But we do not! vote ourselft with any kind of Service. Our last Post is absolutly legit growing and other People help us with a order for a higher Vote.

Newsteem looks like Oldsteem with other closes for me.

Thank you and have a nice day, alucian
@secretman(62)· 2496d
yeh,#newsteem helping quality content creator a lot.I had stoped using bidbot and focued on my daily post.As a result i am getting support from this amazing steemit community.Hope that #newsteem will help us a lot.
@michealb(67)· 2496d

try changing a bit your voting pattern.

Good plan, might change it around a bit more often.
@smasssh(67)· 2496d
'Who knows, maybe your posts earn less, but your stake is worth a lot more if you spread the votes, since every user you support will bring in more people, and if these people get some support, they might buy some steem, and the negative snowball Steem had before the Hardfork becomes an incredibly positive domino effect where people see value in buying Steem.'

Just wanted to repeat this sentence here in the commentsection again. A great summarizing of what could really make us grow. Resteemed.
@whatsup(76)· 2496d
NewSteem was about getting outside of our own community.

It was about taking the changes we made. (way more than 1 element of EIP) and marketing them. The movement went viral because the community was hungry for a vision and some hope.

It was about not focusing all of our attention on our own bullshit and taking a mass of changes and turning them into Marketable Message.

You and the others involved can do what you want with your stake. (influence)

Personally I see no point in calling people names and group downvoting them if they are creating decent content, which creates engagement. It is a bit tempting to even try to protect them. (I have too much respect for the platform to enter into these games)

So the plea... You don't need approval.

It's getting better you say? I say my feed is really slow, many good users are were downvoted to nothing for weeks. Have you considered you might only being seeing what you want to see? Trending mostly is still whales and witnesses and announcements. (I don't mind that)

I'd like to see some data beyond just number of posts per day on who is posting (I bet the number of minnows to dolphins is down) but I could be wrong.

My confirmation bias is that I don't think it is better at all. Yours says it is...

How do we check?

I support you in using stake that is yours or that others have trusted to you however you like, but I do not think it is better at all. (also here is where I will get a lecture on getting the adsactly vote even though it was for 3 months of the 3.5 years I've been here making casual posts that very often were in the top 3 posts for engagement and one look at my voting would clearly show I am not vote trading with anyone.)

I respect that you are doing what you think is right and I already know any voice less than complete approval is going to get extreme push back... So, have at it. I'm just posting this response in case you are actually interested in some feedback and so we can discuss what would be a measurable way to determine if it is really helping... because it is clear that you truly think it is, but I have a different perspective. We both have legit reasons to see things from our own bias. How will we check?
@rosatravels(76)· 2496d
@tipu curate

Posted using Partiko Android
@sanjeevm(78)· 2496d
To add to your points, people can use https://steemlookup.com/, to find good content, because its difficult to go through all posts in #created category. I have been curating india contents , and especially supporting people from india on Steem Hunt , though I never do any hunt. And in parallel, I vote for good posts after finding them through steemlookup.
@mattsanthonyit(81)· 2496d
Great initiative, I really appreciate your coming out straight and talking more about the #newsteem as it will bring more creativity and firmness into the Steemit community.

The community in general is healthier, the users are happy and reccommending Steem to their acquaintances and trying to onboard people on a daily basis, a lot of projects are thriving and getting organic support, new users are not getting completely ignored as they used to be, experienced users are not quitting after months of not getting recognition.

Yes, it is absolutely true. I Onboarded an old steemian as well and I think she is coming up again gradually, I still have more focus on some Twitter friends as well.

Thanks for your positive attitude towards the #newsteem

Posted using Partiko Android
@josediccus(83)· 2496d
Yeah that's it, I think it's worth it, I've been pleading with some people who have SP lying around to play the Steem curation game, I think they'll fall in line, the chunk of the reward might make them to. You're doing well anyway thanks for championing newsteem