I'm a minnow and I have been on the fence about self-voting. I see one article that says it's justified, and I see another that says it's not.
You offer an interesting perspective that is part of a trend that is slowly defining my own perspective. I'm starting to notice that self-voting and even bidbots are not enough. They're interesting concepts, but they don't really demonstrate goodwill in the community, as you seem to put it.
Your message here seems to parallel something I have going on in my day job: "I don't worry about looking good. I am mostly concerned with making everyone else look good."
So I see it here in Steemit. Your message is one that encourages being of service to others without expectations for reciprocation. Your actions advance goodwill, and goodwill goes a long, long way. Evidence of the goodwill concept can be seen in the open source development community where people share code and work together.
And so it that a few days ago, I noticed a curation opportunity after reading an article about the same. After thinking it through, I find that performing manual curation as a service is very appealing. I get out there, people see me, they see me helping others.
I know the charge I get from a Curie vote as I've had a couple. I want to give that to others. That is what is tipping me away from self-voting. I also like your perspective on voting power conservation for others. That is a noble cause, and that will make Steemit appealing to aspiring creators to post their work here.
I'm a writer. That is why I'm here. But it must be more than just about me having a place to write and earn from it. The missing piece is to help other writers on this platform. The power of reciprocation tends to compound over time.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I now have a new perspective to consider with voting, curation and helping others.
Thanks for taking the time to read my post and adding your valuable perspective to the conversation. I love writing too but would be hardpressed to come up with something every day. By curating I don't have to create the content and still provide a service that others find value in.
It is slower to build momentum but the community that surrounds whatever theme you decide to curate around really become loyal followers and it's a hell of a lot of fun to mingle with people that share my interests.
That is really the jest of this whole experiment we call Steemit. It is a lot of work to build a community on this platform and it requires consistency. People need to feel confident you will continue and remain persistent. That's why it's so important to choose a theme to curate that you'll always have an interest in, something that inspires you and keeps you going. For me that is music.
The interesting thing about watching this community grow is how slow it started, but as you know, compounding numbers tend to grow faster as time goes on and that is exactly what is happening.
The other interesting thing is as the community grows and more inspiring individuals get involved, offshoots of my original idea have spawned into new projects run and supported by the core community. It is fascinating to see all the new projects that have grown around the Open Mic community and the same is happening all over Steemit. It's hard to keep up with all of the talent coming to the platform.
To me, the whole social experiment is an endless source of inspiration that drives me to keep giving to this community and the results, as you say, over time, increasingly rewards me for the effort. That's more than I could say for any of the bosses I have had in the past.
There is no financial safety net on Steemit, no secure income, but it is enough to live and it keeps compounding. Luckily, I'm in a position to give it my full attention and so I am and will see where it leads to. Wherever that is, I'm sure I'll be posting about it in future posts.
I will be thinking about "reciprocation" for awhile now. :)
As a minnow your vote will not do much and I think it's fair to boost your own sp. I see much bigger accounts doing it when they could make a real difference to others whilst still earning well. It's a personal choice and part of the freedom steemit offers
I'm glad you chimed in. On Busy.org, I'm plankton.
I was still thinking of going back and upvoting some of my most recent posts just to earn something on them while reading this article.
Lately, I've been getting noticed by a couple whales, and that is encouraging. So I will keep plugging away. I see Steemit as a challenge and I'm willing to take it on.
Those whale votes are far more than you can give yourself, so spread it around
I agree with you. I have been using them to buy upvotes for more SP (going 50/50 here) as I can't think of a better investment. Direct power up seems like I'm losing money in the exchange from SBD to Steem and then to Steem Power. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that buying upvotes is a reasonable way to go with SBD earned from a bidbot.
Then I spend a lot of time curating other posts and upvoting them with Steem Power I've accumulated.
I'm not a fan on buying votes as you may have seen. It's enriching a few and distorting the trending page. From what I've heard the returns are not great
I'm still on the fence about it. I've seen numerous arguments for and against it. It just seems like one way to at least get something for the post.
I've also seen evidence that the developers are finding ways to flatten the distribution of the reward pool. I'm not exactly sure how they're doing that, but a couple of months ago, I saw an article that demonstrated the effect of the programming on Steemit.
Now I see that Ned is introducing a new token just for the purpose of allowing people to use an entirely different token and distribution system for voting. One account, one vote, same weight regardless of SP. Not sure how that is going to turn out, but it is clear that Steemit is still in beta. :)
Where did you see that about a new token Ned was talking about?
As far as buying votes I'm not into that at all. I'm not against it, per se, but it's like drugs. Once you go down that path you get hooked and still are not really building a loyal following. The only way to build a good following, in the long run, is to do the work and build it.
I think a self-vote is a payment to one self with little expectation for future reward.
Voting for someone else has forward reward expectations like a bigger or healthier community.
I think they both have their place.
They do both have their place and I upvoted my posts, but not my comments when I first started on Steemit. But now, at least in my case, it just makes more sense to upvote others. Helping them find their footing by curating their content has created value for others and because of that value, they upvote me.