You got it @chitty! Again, Dan is just making assumptions based on the few posts he sees. He hasn't actually pulled any data to show how many downvotes people have actually used. This whole notion of "bad whales" is nonsense in my opinion and from what I can see, and what I hear from talking to people, most are pleased with the way things have been going. Of course there are going to be people like @dollarvigilante who will complain, but who really cares about a post bragging about how much someone has earned that says the same thing that's been posted hundreds of time on here? Does that add value to Steemit? I don't think so and either do many other "bad whales".
It’s hard to decide what is good and bad without a set of written rules. There is always going to be 2 sides to every story.
What I tried to explain in the post is that whale’s power, good or bad, is the only thing giving Steem value at this point... taking it away completely could be far worse than the injustices some may think occur from time to time.... what we need is an efficient form to distribute Steem in order to have MORE whales.
a set of written rules about how people are allowed to use their votes? SHould we elect a central committee to enforce it. Maybe have political officers to make sure people are voting the right way?
I don't even know how to respond to that.
whales are giving up a lot of power by cashing out ( most currently do). By crashing the price of steem they will allow people to gain whale statut with very little money.
What I am more concerned about is people voting for themselves like bernie just did, this is a critical flaw imo.
Very true. And this reaffirms my suspicion that whales are frequently curating only based on potential reward payouts and not necessarily on the quality of the content, which is a major problem for long-term viability of the social platform.
Its not only him, but his sockpuppets, too, to swell the numbers.
Precisely. So at least he's being honest about voting for a comment here as opposed to voting for unknown sock puppets.
That's part of the protocol, to be able to vote for yourself.
Good / bad?
If it's removed, you'll just see random sock puppets and no way of verifying if they are his or not. At least with him voting his own comment, you know it's him.
I agree with you. I don have seen anny bad whales yet, and could not think it is that they want.
Ewery early adopter does wath he wants, and if they dont vote ewerything dat doesen mater. Couse the voting power sink ewery time you do a vote, so maby peaple who are noob understand why.
I have been here on steemit for a month now, and i see a realy bigg an fast growth. But some of the post who get bigg dollar vote lock wierd. But i dont care. I do my best to became a whale also. Since i am also a kind of early adopter here.
I reqruit friends all the time, and expect a wery big growth on this beta platform :)
Have a nice day guys
Well, to be fair - who really cares about commercial use pictures of coffee or even posts about non-existent "whale wars?"
The answer is: the people voting for them.
If you want quality content, you need quality voters. As it stands, many posters and voters are just playing the "trending topic" game. Tons of quality content is being ignored or completely drowned out and I don't really see a lot of whales helping to curate such content. At some point the game is going to have to change or lots of the quality writers will simply bail.
I would love to be able to get recognition for my posts, but instead, I just keep seeing whales and other influential voters complaining about trending content - when they are the ones who can actually correct it and start supporting those who are doing everything they can to get their quality posts in front of more eyes and be rewarded for their talents and efforts.
If whales want quality, it's in their power to find it and reward it. Isn't that the reason for being a whale? To ensure long-term viability of the platform by retaining those who can produce quality over quantity? Or is that not the case?
I've seen whales that are actively distributing and seeking unseen content. The problem is our community is growing (doubling within a few weeks) and there are limited whales so they're having a hard time keeping up.
I'm sensing a sense of entitlement unfortunately from a lot of people who feel unnoticed. Personally I'm not looking for whales or dolphins. By being consistent in my posts I'm seeing a very gradual increase in my list of followers. It's not the lotto that motivates me it's the future!
I was referring more to the ones who are upvoting the trendy content for the sake of making money on it. The fact of the matter is, if they want a change in voting and actually want the quality content, then the whales are the ones who are going to have to take the lead on it. They have the ability to greatly impact the voting habits on the platform. That's why they're whales in the first place. They're supposed to curate the quality content, not simply find the easiest posts on which to make money.
I'm not accusing anyone in particular and I'm not saying that it's all of the whales. But whatever the case may be, they have the power to change it.
@beanz
Not the trending content, but the trendy content. Like the steemit tags and the celebrity posters and whatnot. When the crowd knows what the trendy topics are, they're going to go vote them, even preemptively in the hopes that they'll be rewarded. The whales can change what is trending and what tends to be trendy by bucking it and finding quality.
Like I said - the very purpose of the whales is to curate quality; to reward those who deliver on quality content to make the platform more viable for the long-term. I'm not really seeing much of that. If there aren't enough whales to do that, then that's also a problem. But the incentive for curating tends to be skewing the trends and even influencing whale votes while they're missing out on far too much other quality. Dolphins seem to be helping, but the same curating incentive appears to be creating similar trends.
I don't know what the solution is, but if the voting habits continue, the quality will suffer at the expense of the entire platform - which, in turn, doesn't exactly benefit the whales. So it's on them to figure out a way to resolve the issues.
Voting on content that's already trending doesn't give them higher rewards than finding unrecognised posts that are likely to do well. The trouble is not everybody understands that once a post has been whale bombed the curation reward for any after voters is not as high, instead they think they'll make money by voting for what's trending and because they think this it doesn't matter as much to the whales what they vote on because the minnows are following them regardless of the quality of the post they vote. At least that's what I'm seeing.
@atx-david
Your comment is illogical. Everyone can't be early to vote on that content. Someone has to vote for it once it is already (low) trending to send the reward into the thousands and beyond. The people doing that aren't doing it for the rewards.
What is a "quality post" except those posts people happen to like.
The issue is, at this point, Trending is what people see first, not their feed of people they have followed. So getting on the start page is going to be the goal, and how to make yourself viral.
People can and should pick their own start page. Set your browser bookmark to
https://steemit.com/@wizwom/feed
I like how u look at it. But, what about posts like this - Win 12.5 BTC by tweeting about Steem ?
Are you really what people mean by "bad whale"? You have your own tastes and you're an enigma :) .. But there's the other issue of like Facebook etc coming in to try to make it a worse experience when/if Steem gets big.
I'm a noob and just getting used to how it all works, but I find all this whale stuff interesting lol.