As a commitment to the community and technology behind steem, I have just powered-up my account. I convert some Ether into Steem via BlockTrades. I was shocked at how easy and quick it is!
Within a few seconds the steem was in my wallet and I was able to power up immediately. If you're not sure what Steem Power is, here's the definition straight from the helpful FAQ.
"STEEM Power - STEEM Power (abbreviated SP) is a measurement of how much influence a user has in the Steem network. The more STEEM Power a user holds, the more they can influence the value of posts and comments. STEEM Power is less liquid. If a user wishes to “Power Down” SP, they will receive equal distributions of the STEEM weekly, over a 13 week period."
Now that I've got (a little bit of) the POWER a dilemma arises... should I upvote my posts and comments? Hmm... it feels like cheating but it is technically allowed.
What do you think?
I absolutely think it is NOT wrong. It is good that you upvote your content trying to give it visibility and to reward yourself for the effort you put in it. But, as I talked in this post https://steemit.com/steemit/@gibiuk/did-hf19-made-steemers-greedy, DO NOT BE GREEDY. Vote for yourself but reward also contents you think should be rewarded.
Yeah, it does feel greedy. And there's nothing stopping you from just upvoting yourself, which in the long term is not promoting healthy community growth.
It becomes greedy if you stop upvoting others thinking "if I upvote others than my steem power % goes down and I will get less reward when I will upvote myself". Othervise, I don't see anything wrong in it
Personally I think this is really lame and counterproductive to the site. It should be that a user creates a post, and every upvote has the same "weight" to it so the only way one can rise to the top is by actually being voted on the relevance and quality level by the community. The way it is now, the rich stay rich and the poor Steemiters stay poor unless they get lucky. The system is highly aristocratic and I believe will receive much backlash in the future as the power/influence gap becomes wider.
That is a fair point, which I agree with. I also think payout should be based solely on merit and not wealth. But since the ability self-upvote exists, doesn't it mean that those who don't do it will simply give away the advantage to those that do?
I agree on the merit thing. Anything Proof of Stake in any sense is an absurd approach IMHO. Yes, you are absolutely right the ones who do not self-upvote are at a disadvantage. The feature needs to be removed entirely for any hope of salvation. No one should be able to stroke their own ego thusly.
How about the argument that self-upvoting is a form of interest payment for holding the currency? I guess it could be seen as an effective incentive for bootstrapping the adoption of a new currency.
Sure, I guess so. It's free to upvote yourself after all. The problem comes in when you have users that have so much influence then can just effectively put themselves on the trending page. If your post somehow shows up their, your visibility level skyrockets and it's payday for you. It's the whole cutting in line thing when you can afford to bribe the bouncer that is so unfair to everyone. I could convert my crypto and get a bunch of steem power, but it just feels morally wrong to me so I don't.
I dont think its wrong, on any other proof of stake coin holders get interests just for holding. Here its basically the same, you hold steempower, therefore you get a share to distribute or eat up yourself. But what is maximizing value? If steemit grows your share of token will gain a lot in value as well. If noone is interested , the coin would loose significantly in value. So its in everybodys interest to promote good content, to build community and to strengthen the project steemit.com
Nope! upvote away !
I did the same thing as well. I powered up with my first payment after 7 days. I don't actually really know what that means, but it was suggested to me.
I think it means that as a plutocracy, steemit gives users as much power as the amount of steem they possess. I guess it's a way of rewarding the commitment to the community. I'm ok with it for now but can see it being taken advantage of if some big players decide to buy millions of steem and convert it to steempower. All of the sudden we'll be powerless... or something like that.
Yeah, but I think there should be a correlation of Steem Power and Reputation. Reputation proves your commitment and power is the reward. If you have a lot of power due to purchasing, but haven't committed the community, it should be less worth it.
I don't know if that made sense.
Yes you can
It can useful in different ways
Yeah, I like to use it as a means to boost comments up the rank.
Do it! upvote that shit!!!!