Hey @spiritualmax, you definitely have hit the nail on the head as to how the voting bots work and why they provide an important service to the community by helping new / smaller authors to get their content out there for others to see among the huge sea of posts.
I am the creator of the Steem Bot Tracker website and I run the @postpromoter voting bot so I would appreciate any feedback you have on how to make the site and/or the bots themselves better or easier to understand and use!
Wow!
I am honored to have you visit my blog @yabapmatt! I'm an avid user of the Steem Bot Tracker and I love the site. I don't usually go for @postpromoter but I can guarantee you I'll give it a go for my next post.
I actually do have a suggestion, and that would be to add if the bid-bot adds a comment stating your purchased the vote or not, because for instances upme does it but buildawhale doesn't. It would be nice knowing about that as I tend to use one of each to avoid my post looking like a meeting point for 2 bots. :D
Once again, humbled by your presence and the fact you asked for my advice.
Cheers!
Thank you - but i really don’t consider my visit very humbling :-) Regardless of how long you’ve been on Steem it’s clear that you “get it” and that’s why I’m quite interested in your advice.
I have been asked a few times before to add that feature to the bot tracker so i will bump it up in priority now. I just have to be careful to make sure it’s not confused with the existing icon that shows which bots will vote on comments.
What is your opinion on bots leaving comments on posts though? Initially it was very important for bots to leave comments because that’s the only way you could find out about them...that’s a bit less of an issue now thanks to the bot tracker but I still think new users find out about content promotion services and the bot tracker site through the comments.
Also some people feel it’s a good way of disclosing that a post was paid to be promoted.
On the other hand, I also don’t like seeing a whole bunch of bot comments at the bottom of every post!
Now that I’m thinking about it - i wonder if it would make sense to have a separate bot that simply discloses with a single comment when a post is promoted by one or more other bots. This may be a good solution to both promote the service while reducing comment spam.
Well... I see the point you make about it being the way the community gets to "meet" the bots.
I don't see any problem there as less use of the bots wouldn't exactly be a bad thing in the long run, although I hear where you're coming from.
On the other hand, I usually promote my posts on 2 different bots with minimal bids... I don't want two bots commenting I got a 0.1% upvote though, it makes no sense, that idea of yours is actually really great and something I would definitely prefer to this current system.
There's a whole economy around bots, and they will ALWAYS exist as far as Im concerned, but having the bots less promoted would be a positive thing and let me tell you why I think that is the case:
1 - Low effort users wouldn't make an effort to learn how to enlist the bots.
2 - High Effort users would get there anyway, as well as the occasional low effort user who would try to find bots to upvote shitty content, but some bots already curate their content so that is good.
On the other hand, this system we have now means people see these bots Everywhere! That is bad because:
1 - It turns new users off: Many get disappointed on seeing that bots run the show apparently.
2 - The guy who takes selfies and uploads them on the go can easilly see promotion bots all around him and just go manic on them. They are just too easy to get.
Of course, I'm a newbie, I may be mistaken, but as of now I think the exposure is too much, and we're making it so that even the lowest effort users know bots are around and can pump their rewards up.
Once again, thank you for your comment, and nice words.
Cheers