As someone who's read a lot of rants and sometimes written a few of my own, mostly about stuff happening on the platform than about myself, I agree with your view on them. They do bring a lot of negativity but they might also change someone's perspective on things.
I've wanted to stop posting for some time now, focusing mostly on curating is what I've been wanting to do but seeing how a lot of rewards are being siphoned and leeched out of the rewardpool which more often end up outside the platform is what has made me stay active with posting as well. During the SBD spike I saw so many Steemians just lose it and go on posting sprees, especially those that used to post once or twice a day and had some autovoting support started posting 8-10 times a day and the amount of self-votes was heartbreaking in my eyes.
I do understand that people wanted to make the most out of the spike that no one could explain or tell how long it would last, but I felt that many Steemians lost a lot of dignity at the same time. Especially those that kept on self-voting like crazy even though most of their rewards were from other sources and then topping it off with never buying any Steem or powering it up with those rewards felt like I couldn't just sit by and watch everyone just go ahead and do so. I expected there to be more policing, more people telling them to calm down but it never happened. Many seem to forget that we all share the same rewardpool, when you earn a lot more either through autovotes, posting more often or buying votes it means that there are other authors who rely on organic votes that are making a lot less than they used to.
I promised myself to post a few more times a day but to watch the amount of self-votes I would cast. I couldn't just sit by and let this opportunity to power up with the SBD go by and just let the majority which at the time were not powering up do their thing and now that SBD is cooling off I am glad that I did cause it means once the delegations are gone and the SBD is back to it's peg I will be able to continue curating users which I believe deserve rewards more than others better with my stake.
I know that my decisions have indirectly made a lot of other users earn less since my post rewards have increased but I just couldn't sit idly by and let the "abusers" make the most of it. I've also told many other authors that I know are here for the long run to post more actively and earn their stake, especially smaller authors I've tried to encourage them to self-vote more and not care about that too much for now while this SBD spike was going on as it was a good way for them to increase their stake. Better them than those just moving value out of the platform.
Anyway, been meaning to post about this but your post made me want to say my thoughts on the matter even though it was not completely relevant.
Hope you had a nice vacation. ^^
I can get behind that idea, rants can create some consciousnes towards certain subject but as you say, they have to be on point to make it through the defensive mind state of some users.
I remember we spoke about the rewards a few weeks ago and I want to clarify that this is totally on point, if you are keeping the coins inside the platform and powering up, I think even more rewards should go to you (this is something that people don´t understand, the more we sell SBD, the more we unbalance the supply and demand and lower prices) so yeah, using you as an example, Im pretty much powering up arounf 75% of my rewards :D
Those people lost a lot of respect and credibility but we as humans tend to forget and forgive very quickly and easily... If only some of the autovotes stopped going the way of people powering down, people abusing the rewards and people who overposted during the golden days of SB being+10 well...
I think you know this but well, whenever I feel like I´m might be straying from the good path I ask for your opinion, so I guess you already know that I am more than ok with you posting a bit more than usual, because it was for the best reason, community building. I don´t feel bad about my rewards and no one that is powering up should, I just felt that for some people I may not deserve all of them (cause I just started to work towards the community, not like you or other OG steemians) so it was just a statement, but Im still going to try to post once a day (but wont feel obligued).
Thanks for this thorough comment, I really appreciate to read your take on this matter, especially because I probably would have asked you anyway :P
The trip was cool, not like I intended but was ok :D
There’s probably a point where an account is sufficently stocked and you probably no longer need to self vote... that’s the point when ur responsibilities as a user change, u probably have enough steem lol and you should probably be using ur vote to help grow other users and not applying it too much to ur own blogs (which likely have sufficent support too).
There is yes, the SBD spike has changed all that lately though, posts give you a much bigger opportunity to increase your stake than before. There's been a lot of talk about the curation rewards lately and SBD not being pegged sure hasn't helped that aspect.
I'm hoping SBD will go back down to the peg soon so other curators and authors will get more selfless with their voting. Vote-collusion on the other hand is a whole other issue, people seem to want to vote trade instead of leasing out their SP so they end up as if they were self-voting 100% daily. This has decreased the amount of organic curation on the platform by a lot.
I see what you mean. It's certainly a double edged sword.
On the positive note for the new user, they can instantly make greater rewards than when i started. My first post made 0.17 cents initially and paid out 0.00$ lol.
On the other hand, my friends who have finally joined (past couple weeks) after much encouragement have made like 10-20$ on their first posts which is really apporx 5 times that.
I'm betting that If they had made 17 cents well...lol I believe that the spike is partly responsible for keeping a lot of new users on steemit which is ultimately good.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: I believe the difference is in what you do with it all. And unfortunately bc of Steemit's decentralized nature, ppl are free to do whatever they want....The larger accounts might be getting greedy instead of thinking ahead to the fact that if they help grow the new users base instead of trying to get more Steem (when they probably have enough) they would ultimately be helping to drive the price up and popularity of the coin which would be way more profitable for them lol.
I'm with you in some sense tho, I hope the spike doesn't last too long. I'm just appreciating it right now more than I'm worried about the abusers in the short term I guess. I'm not going to be able to stop them currently, however I can at least make a bit of a difference using my little influence as I see fit right!?
Some direct result of the spike for me has been growing the shit out of my SP and in turn being able to reward all the entries for "Steemit Sandwich Contest" with post rewards even if they don't win. Furthermore, for a few months I was able to dish out 25 Steem or more in prizes per/week.
Hello @acidyo
I totally agree with some of the issues you raised here. And that's human beings for you - greedy and ruthless. There is a threshold to how much greed could define a man. Unfortunately, while very few thinks like you, thousands think the greed way. And that's very unfortunate. There are lots of hardworking Steemians with quality contents who don't earn 3sbd in a week and the fortunate few, out of sheer greediness, are bent on moving out hundreds of sbd per day.
You're only a human sir, you did what you have to do, and I don't think anyone could have stood idly and watch while events unfold before their eyes.
On sbd being pegged at 1$,...i think this is the best decision developers of Steemit Inc should take a serious stand on. Otherwise steem risks being rendered worthless by frequent hike in the price of sbd.
@eurogee
The good thing about the price of Steem is that the higher it is the more SBD is printed daily pushing the price further down. So eventually it should go back down to it's peg. The worrying thing is that there are some noob traders out there placing thousands of $ into it without knowing what it is or that it won't reach the prices they are hoping for, it could cause them to at some point dump all their SBD after they realize what it is and cause a short term price of SBD to be under $1. I'm sure there will be a lot of traders wanting to get back into SBD if it goes under $1, though so it's primarely just the ones pouring in money into it now that will be losing out.
The good thing about this is that it is giving those who trust the platform and the currency Steem to succeed in the long run a chance to increase their stake faster than those just dumping it for something else. The bad thing is that it has disincentivized most of the platform to curate properly and instead self-vote to the max.
I have to say it has been hard to remain at the current self-voting I'm at, I believe it has been at around 10-12% in the last 3 months seeing so many others collude and self-vote. I am glad I've made some good trades though placing it all on Steem when SBD was so high and profiting from Steem going up as well, wish many others had done the same.
What an educative response....
Thanks for exposing this truth to me... Really an eye opener. Grateful for this.
@eurogee