Thank you for posting this!
As I've been saying over and over again, the opinions of the investors need to be better represented here because they drive all the value we enjoy and so many people don't understand their perspective.
At Steemfest, I was up till almost 4am talking with transisto to better understand his perspective because he invested a lot here. Understanding the motivations and vision of the investors is hugely important for the future success of this platform.
If investors stop voting for authors, adoption will fall, valu of the network will decrease to oblivion and at the end investors will loose everything!
This, I think, is the key concern many have. They think any amount of self-voting for simple comments puts the whole platform at risk (and serious existential risk at that). Examples are shown here: Whales: You Have Some Flagging to Do.
$150+ votes for the same "SBD Correction" comment over and over again is a big problem for the ecosystem. Some people here (cough berniesanders cough) don't seem to care about authors, investors, or speculators. They seem to just like creating drama.
If investors buy STEEM via their extra SBD reward that could increase the value of STEEM, but couldn't that also be offset by those who avoid investing because they see STEEM as a scammy blockchain that pretends to reward authors and curators but actually rewards self-voting "greedy" investors?
I think you make a lot of great points here and do a great job of encouraging people to trust in the long-term value potential here. I also think you may be under-representing the existential risk of mass self-voting and what it could do for the long-term value of the platform and token. Maybe I'm wrong there, but if everyone started self voting, the signal to noise ratio would get pretty messed up and we could lose quite a large portion of our community (authors, readers, investors, and speculators) because of it.
I had a detailed discussion about this 6 months ago: Self-Voting: Scammy Behavior, Rational ROI, or Something Else?
If there's anything I can do as a witness (currently number 10) to better represent the views of investors like yourself, please let me know. This post is a good start. I can now send people here when they start complaining about the "greedy whales" without better understanding how they create all the value everyone enjoys (something I keep repeating over and over again).
I might get a solution to unfair abusive behaviour:
I would like the steemit developer to cap the self comments upvote to 33% of voting power per day, i think it's fair and well balanced enought for the ecosytem.
I think if steemit developers cap the self comments upvote to 33% or more of the voting power per day. it's fine but wouldn't it create room for others to cheat?
I agree 100% that ......If investors stop voting for authors, adoption will fall, value of the network will decrease to oblivion and at the end investors will loose everything!
Voting quality contents is imperial to steemit's success. Steemit is an investment of wealth and intellectual asset. Let's create wealth today for a better tomorrow.
After reading your post I visited the profile to flag such comments and I saw that content of the comment has changed. It says "This is helping SBD correction, which is good for Steem". Has anybody explored further as to what that means?
Is it something meaningful or is it just a way to avoid all the negativity they are facing?
For the first time in... maybe ever? I gave my comment a full upvote. Feels weird to me. How does it feel to you?
I have read your posts about why you generally don't up-vote your comments. It has made me think but I have still stuck to upvoting my own comments whenever I don't feel bad about it.
Sometimes I upvote my comments to increase the visibility and at other times I upvote my comments as I would have spent time writing it. I generally don't upvote my comments if they are short ones like "Thank you" or "Good post". But whenever I feel that I have added some value I make it a point to upvote my comments. Whenever I am in doubt I upvote my own comment and make it a point to upvote a few other comments which have added value to the post.
In my opinion what differentiated steemit from other blogging platforms is the kind of interactions that happen in the comments section. One of the driving factors could be the rewards for comments and if upvoting their own comments is a motivation for people to engage with others I don't see a problem with it.
Would like to know your thoughts on the same @lukestokes
I'm all about upvoting other comments to encourage the interaction you're talking about. When you upvote your own comments, it can be seen (by some) as increasing the noise and decreasing the signal. Obviously the author (in this case) thinks the comment is valuable or they wouldn't bother writing it. What matters is what the network thinks. That's a true signal. Sometimes I don't upvote a comment if I see they've already given themselves a self-vote.
I'm a little disappointed they removed the option to decline payouts on comments so you could still get the visibility, but it was apparently a bit to complicated for most users.
Ultimately, people can do whatever they want, and they will have the reputation their actions give them.
Don't be ashame to upvote your comment here , you spent time writing this comment and time has value because we only have a limited amount of time in our life!
You also deserve some extra profits from all the work and positive impact you have on the platform.
Damarth, this is a very strong point and the meaning of being an author ,if yourself cant appreciate your work ,whre is the meaning of your job. I am still new here but with short moment i can upvote your work , you have done a great job by this post today . keep up ! I wnt to learn more from you!
Quick question though: I recall the witnesses recently discussing that self upvotes would no longer count toward the author's account but rather be absorbed back into the rewards pool for the day. As a whale your upvote holds a life changing amount of money for others. Since your vote doesn't cost you anything- you're not losing anything by voting- why not spread it around by upvoting those who comment on your work as well as upvoting those who are starting out? I'm not sure where the current conversation is regarding self votes being reabsorbed into the rewards pool as I'm not a witness, but if your self votes were just getting lost back into the voting pool then it doesn't make any difference if you're upvoting yourself. Is that correct?
I found @damarth though a comment and upvote that he made on a friend's introduction post. Thanks man! Really appreciate it on behalf of my friend @stylebeautylife
What are your thoughts on this?
Lizelle
HF20 has changes related to the initial window where curation rewards currently go to the author. You can read more about that from Steemit's own publications, but HF20 isn't live yet.
As for what people do with their own stake, remember, investors want a return and it's ultimately their vested stake to do with as they wish. Almost all of my voting power goes towards voting other posts (I don't even vote up my own root posts as most everyone else does). It "costs" something in terms of voting power. Since I flagged some abuse recently my voting power was down to 50%. With steemvoter down, it's starting to come back up now.
Voting for those who are starting out sounds easy, but takes a lot of time. That's time I don't always have. There are many responsibilities for me to manage, but my witness account delegates to a number of services that are helping curate content. You can see my recent post about that.
Thanks for your reply @lukestokes.
Thank you for all that you do. It does take forever to get through everything and yes, we're definitely here to get a return on our investments. I apologize if you felt I was attacking you. I meant that as far as I understand any votes for oneself are void, so it wouldn't make a difference either way. They were also talking about penalizing you if you vote for the same person too many times, which makes no sense to me.
Thank you for the links, I will go have a look. Hope you have a good day further.