A Witness Pay It Forward Initiative
I have been thinking of delegating SP again for a few weeks, as a way to pay it forward as a Steem Witness. But I'm not sure exactly how to go about it. Last time I delegated 30,000 SP to one person for months (it was simpler/easier to just do that and not have to think about it too much :P).
I would like some feedback on this plan/initiative to pay it forward. I want to open up a discussion with you all to see what you think about this, generate some ideas, etc.
A basic plan is to delegate some SP to certain people for a week, and keep rotating it each week. Or bi-weekly. Maybe a week is best because more people get a turn at some extra SP to boost their ability to allocate rewards for content they like and get curation rewards as well in that time period.
Do you think weekly rounds of delegated SP is better than longer bi-weekly or monthly durations?
Maybe 100 SP for 10 accounts. 500 SP for 2 accounts. 1000 SP for 1 account. That makes 3000 SP delegated. Maybe make it all 100 SP delegations. Maybe more SP with a combination of the previous segmentation of SP.
Do you think many delegations at 100 SP is better, or high SP delegation to fewer people that fit more criteria?
That brings me to the criteria. How to decide who gets the delegation?
If it's short 1 week delegation, it doesn't matter as much as longer delegation in terms of who gets to use the extra Steem Power. They get it for a week even if their voting or posting behavior isn't what I like the most. Longer delegations would mean I need to make sure the people who get the extra SP are using it according to the merits and criteria I would prefer to see it used for.
What criteria do you think there should be for someone to get a delegation?
Anyone on Steem? Those who post material I value? Those who support my posts? Those who support the Steem community in some specific way? What does supporting the community of Steem mean, specifically? Hmmm... what to base it on?
Feel free to speak your mind and let me know what other ideas you can think of for a witness to pay it forward, or ideas on how to best do some delegation.
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
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I think larger delegations are better. I am creating a website and releasing all guitar learnging videos public domain/cc0. I can also pay for delegations. Would love to rent some sp bud!!
Interesting questions. I can only speculate what kind of effect the delegations you are talking about would have on the votes of anyone who received them, but I think paying it forward a noble intent.
The question that I think is important to ask is how you would hope for them to use the SP? You mention their voting or posting behavior but don't give any real idea of what you are looking for there. Do you want them to be a beneficial angel, voting only to help others? To help themselves? A blend of the two? Only vote for people below rank 70/60/50 etc? As to posting behavior, are you talking quality/frequency/topic/resteemers?
If you can find people whose actions are likely to coincide with your hopes / respect your wishes, I think that would help decide how many recipients get how much. Only help others? Higher delegation, fewer people (hard to find I guess). Help themselves? Lower delegation, more people (easy to find). Somewhere in the middle? Looking at it this way reduces the emphasis on the time factor I think.
As to the criteria for the recipients, we all have our own personal values. What are yours? I think recipients should align with your primary core values and narratives you support.
If I were you, I might just do the madness of announcing a competition along the lines of "Win X amount of SP delegation. Write 250 words about what you would do with it and why." Does make for a lot of reading though I assume.
It would be helpful to know, for example, what 1000 SP does to the strength of votes. I am hammering out .03 votes now at ca 250 SP for example, and have no idea what 1000 would do, increase my voting to .15? I think its great you are looking to how you can contribute more.
That old Spidey quote comes to mind, "With great power comes great responsibility".
Cheers!
Great suggestions, thanks for adding to the post.
I really like your idea of "Win X amount of SP delegation. Write 250 words about what you would do with it and why." I think that will probably be happening lol.
I work out 1000SP as 2.5% of my current SP about, which is about a $0.115 upvotes at 100% on 1000SP.
I love participating in challenges and I think it's a great way for new people to get blogging on steemit. You could pick a few challenges that you like and delegate to organisers that are looking to promote entries to their challenges with upvotes.
These organisers are often great community builders and supporters of steemit.
Thank you for the suggestion.
Thank you so very much for proposing to delegate with a "pay it forward" focus in mind! It's posts like this and people like you that make this platform what it is!
I have been fortunate enough to receive delegation from @hitmeasap for my work with @asapers, and from @abh12345, for my achievements in his Curation Leagues (which I see @maverickinvictus refers to here as well). Both are leaving it with me for the time being, with of course the understanding that I continue doing what I'm doing; I of course would never imagine doing anything different, with or without their delegations, although the extra SP certainly is appreciated and gives me the voting strength to go the extra mile.
If pay it forward if your focus, then anyone whose actions reflect that could be considered. For example, I see that @thedarkhorse is proposed a contest that mirrors your ideas, then delegating to him for the weeks that his contest runs, seems ideal.
I mentioned @asapers, which is a group whose aim is to curate undervalued, unnoticed posts and @hitmeasap has always had the pay it forward mentality from the groups' inception. I curate for them, along with @insideoutlet and @shai-hulud, and I know that the @asapers account is working diligently to get their SP to 500 to of course earn the coveted slider. Your delegation could work wonders there, but maybe it could have a more extended shelf-life for their purpose.
@newbieresteem(started by @davemccoy and @mudcat36), another group I'm involved with has the same mentality; they work tireless to welcome, educate, and support new and not-so-new members. They also fit your bill where a bigger and lengthier delegation would benefit the platform.
I guess my short answer to you (which is ironic considering the length thus far:), is that there's no short answer. Choose based on your criteria and then ask them what they need and why it's a good idea for you to delegate to them. This is all a much more difficult way for you, as opposed to you
But what I'm proposing would certainly make a difference for a lot of people here who are working selflessly to do exactly what you're proposing...paying it forward!
Thank you ;)
Thank you for the well thought out suggestions. I will have to take more time to think about this. There are many responses that I am only going through now, 6 days later. A busy Sunday ;)
Oh no worries! I read through the comment thread and thought to myself that you certainly have your work cut out for you:) Regardless of your decision, I want to reiterate how much I appreciate people like yourself, who are willing to selflessly give to make this platform beautiful. I'm know that whatever you decide, someone(s) will benefit greatly!
Get your pot of coffee on and go to it haha
Hi there krnel. Hope you're doing well. :) First I wanted to say thanks for trying to help give back to the community and for having done it before. That's awesome of you and I'm sure appreciated by a lot of people.
It seemed like your post was more asking about how to delegate rather than who to delegate too, and while I can't really help you with how you want to delegate.. I would suggest looking into our IFC (Information Finding Championship) contest in the future as a place to help.
We have a wonderful little community that has sprung up around this game we are playing and so many people believe in this idea including myself that I want to continue to see it grow.
It's been growing very quick with over 70 people on our discord after a couple months and a few witnesses helping to sponsor our event as well.
We like to give them credit and try to send votes their way, so if you helped sponsor our contest even a small amount, we would definitely do the same with you and help bring more people to vote for you as witness.
Our contest is largely created by the players themselves and seems to be a great game for newcomers to steemit to help get them posting more regularly. I've had quite a few people tell me this game helps them come up with ideas to postand helps them post on steemit more. We also work with #newbiegames and #newbieresteemday and have had a round in the past to send our players on a quest to help newcomers to the steemit.. So we definitely like to try to give back as well!
Our contest is largely about giving back and a good amount of the quests involve helping others or trying to solve serious issues in the world, or creating artwork, or helping people learn.. It's a really fascinating idea which I sort of liken to a human google that we can use to send people on quests.. And so far it's been absolutely amazing in so many ways. Almost every day I hear something surprising and positive and new.
I'd be happy to go into more detail if you are curious about any of this, but I don't want to talk your ear off too much so I'm going to end this here. Thank you for reading this and considering our request for assistance. :) And all the best to you in your efforts to help give back to the community! That's a noble goal!
Thank for the comment and sharing what you do. I'll look into it more to get a better understanding, as I like the idea so far. Getting people to learn it seems ;)
You're welcome. Thank you for appreciating the comment/efforts and for taking a look at our contest! I just voted for you as witness for taking a look at our project, it shows me you genuinely do care and that you're taking an honest look, which I think is an admirable quality.
And yes. That's probably the thing that I hear the most next to how fun people think the game is and how the game helps people to post more regularly on steemit and to give them ideas on what to post about, is that they have "learned" something new or that the game has helped get them out of their comfort zone to try something they've never done before.
For example.. And... I could tell a lot of stories of that, but one particular good one is how one of our players had never written lyrics for a song before and the other day he got a nice comment from someone who is a professional at that and he was really pleased to see that he could try something new he's never done before and get a nice comment from someone who was an expert at it.. It was cool to see! :)
Also in regards to learning, we had a teaching round not too long ago where I think we had 13 entries? And the subject was to help teach others something, it was incredibly hard to judge! There were so many good entries teaching so many interesting things! That was definitely one of my favorite rounds and one we will most certainly do again, I'll put a link here for you if you'd like to check that one out!
https://steemit.com/contest/@apolymask/information-finding-championship-season-1-round-19
The Information Finding Championship is growing more and more almost every day, and with your help I think it would grow even more! I think this contest could some day be popular sort of like the open mic one is and I heard they were getting over 1000 entries recently..? If that ever happens we could be sending like hundreds or a thousand or more people out on quests to help teach each other new things or help others.. The possibilities are really amazing to me.
So.. Anyways.. I don't want to flood you with too much text, so I think I'll end this here, and.. I'm pretty sure I already offered, but if you have any questions please let me know and I'll do my best to answer!
Thanks again a bunch for taking a look at our community. :) Cheers and have a nice day/night whatever time it happens to be there. :D
Hi @krnel
This sounds like a kind and worthwhile initiative to me :)
As others have mentioned, I run a League of Engagement (League 2 here) and choose many of my delegates from this list.
I don't have the SP firepower to be able to support all these people who are providing the grease for our blockchain with all their interactions, and so a boost from you here would be very welcome indeed!
Also, communities like @luzcypher (#openmic), @eroche (#culturevulture), @beeyou and friends (#newbieresteemday), and even @curie who are really keeping the love for the minnows going, could do with some assistance.
Very glad to see this, thanks for being a good example :)
Thank you for the suggestion.
Thanks for looking somewhere other than the bid-bots to delegate your stake to.
And also, thanks for the @steemcommunity witness vote :)
It really depends what your purpose in delegating SP. I have received delegations from people as gifts with no timeframe and no specific instructions on how it is to be used {e.g. no self voting, no shit posts or posts that goes contrary to the beliefs of the delegator)
Some have shared with me delegation in order to help achieve better engagement and curation rewards. The added SP increases my bandwidth to be able to leave a lot of comments and share a lot of upvotes.
Fulltimegeek, Asher (abh12345) and the Stewards of Gondor was one such initiative that aimed to increase the engagement of the community and spreading the upvotes. Even though FTG is out fighting a war and had to get his SP, the people are still doing what they set out with and making Steem an engaged platform populated with people with a pay it forward attitude.
The Curation and Engagement Leagues - Sponsored by @carlgnash and @paulag!
You can also support people who care about the same things like you, like equality, morals, veganism, philosophy and psychology.
IMO 1 week is a two short time period to make a difference. At least 2 weeks to a month would have a greater effect.
In the case of size 100 SP is big for redfishes but may be lacking if the desire is more engagement, around 200-1000 would be your better unless the main reason is only to help the person get past bandwidth issues.
You can have it delegated to communities like newbieresteemday and promo-mentors who are doing their best to encourage people to stay and keep writing.
In the end it is your decision.
Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. Yeah I agree, 2 weeks-1 month sounds better, but even 100SP helps people actually aware someone else with $0.01 and they feel like they are helping others out too and it helps them get more curation rewards. I'll have to think about this more hehe.
First of all fair play to ye, it's a very decent thing to do.
I agree with @jasonbu that it'd be good to bring a few people up to the 500SP mark so they get their slider. The 100, 500, 1000 split also sounds good, perhaps the latter delegated to someone already practicing paying it forward.
Hmm, good idea, the higher delegated amounts for people who already pay it forward and doing something I can stand by. Thanks for that suggestion.
Hi there! I’m pretty new here, and recently received a 50SP delegation (which I think has changed now that I’ve grown a bit). I can’t imagine what it would be like to receive a delegation of tens of thousands! I got excited that my vote was suddenly worth .01! Lol what would it be with 10k? Wow. I think it’s great that people like you give back to others. It’s very motivating to steemit starters. I was so excited to join! After 3 weeks of sucking completely I was frustrated. It’s a lot to learn, and discouraging when it seems your time and energy go unnoticed. I feel most people would be over the moon to get a 50-200SP delegation from you. That’s huge! To us little guys anyway.
I think if it was me, I would definitely want to support blogs with content I vibe with. People that support me, or maybe just newbies that seem dedicated but struggle with weak SP. You really can’t go wrong can you? Unless you gave SP to a hate group or something, which of course you wouldn’t. Anywho... there’s my two cents, since you asked. All the best to you! Peace. 😉
Yeah, personally I'm inclined to go with people who write what I value. There are many people who start up and can't get traction, but I don't value all of their content. Supporting people who come to my blog and comment is also something I am more inclined to do as well. Thanks for the feedback.
I started to write a contest that used the #payitforward tag yesterday and just posted. At that time there were no posts there. Anyways this is how I found your post.
Love the idea that you want to delegate out some of your SP to those who are smaller and in need. I'm currently running a contest to help highlight some of the smallest members of steemit get a little attention. Right now my plan is to run this for 3 weeks as that is what I can afford. The contest focuses on curating smaller members great posts and then posting about them.
Anyways I would look at 2 week delegations on the low end. With the cool off period 1 week just means you are wasting 50% of the time that power is delegated to nothing. At 2 weeks you are now benefiting someone for 66% of the time and only 33% is wasted.
It also will allow the person enough time to see some benefit from the delegation. With 2 weeks it's enough time to see rewards from week 1 and be motivated to push harder during week 2. Hope that makes sense.
If you could be so kind as to include a small autovote for 1 post per day during the delegation time frame you could really impact the person. I know when someone comes along and drops even a 50 cent - $1 vote I notice it and it makes my day. Have some requirements that you spot check and if they are violated the autovote gets turned off, but seriously these votes can really help keep a smaller member motivated.
Either way I hope you follow through with this and help motivate some minnows and plankton.
BTW, hope you don't mind that I talked about my contest...just realized that it might seem like I'm fishing for some eyeballs on my post but that wasn't my goal. I will delete the top part if you want, just ask.
@krnel, I am vouching for @thedarkhorse here! His pay it forward mentality is honourable, and please disregard his last sentence:) He is anything but,
His contest idea is a good one! The title alone, "Pay it Forward Curation Contest" pretty much says it all.
I agree about his contest and his pay it forward mentality is honourable .
Thank you so much @wolfhart; it appears that many feel the same way from the response to it thus far, so we are hoping to continue running it for a few weeks if the enthusiasm warrants. Thank you again for your generosity to this platform!
Thanks for the feedback. It sucks there is a dead-zone for delegation like you say. I don't use bots, autovotes, curation or anything like that, it's all manual. I support posts I want to support, which includes small accounts. But thank you for the suggestions. :)
It's just really hard for new members to get enough SP to even be able to keep the site running. Those of us with some capital to drop and buy SP forget that many people here are from countries were buying $50 USD worth of steem to get around 25sp is a TON of money.
It's a hard issue to tackle as new members come in and drop out at such a high rate. Would more stay if they didn't run into bandwidth issues left and right? Not sure, but I'd guess more would stay.
But if you give them more to start with even in terms of delegated SP as an automatic delegation then we run into more multi account scammers and spammers. So many people are looking for an angle to game the system.
Have some thoughts on a potential solution for this, but need to do a little research to flush them out.