RE: Rethinking The Position of Upvote Bots in the Steem Ecosystem (without SMTs)
Great post, well thought-out, highly considered, fair and balanced. I want to emphasise this this excerpt:
I loathe upvoting bots though, by which I mean most definitely the paid services which have come to prominence in recent times and have Facebookified the hot and trending sections.
I think they're evil, I think they're the biggest threat the Steem ecosystem faces and if not dealt with soon, they can be absolutely detrimental to the platform and our community.
On that I fully agree with @fknmayhem. I myself made the decision to suspend the use of upvoting bot on my posts... My initial experiment produced disappointing results:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@miti/gentlemen-the-die-is-cast-i-will-never-use-upvote-bots
https://steemit.com/steemit/@miti/my-life-without-bots-a-story-of-declining-ambition
Don't use the upvoting bots and every other authors does, It's suicide.... I don't want to go back, so I think that only a few will read my posts from now on..
Thanks for your comment, @miti.
I hear you and totally understand the experiment to live bots free can be bitter an experience, a dire barren society to live in even. Yet, IMHO, the key is not in the financial rewards we receive but in our networking value.
There are plenty of communities which can be totally validating and reward awesome content with a high number of upvotes and even comments. Friendships are built there and it's a long term game to play.
I also have put lots of work in posts which went totally flat, yet others did much better than expected. Even if they were merely creative writing [to self] plays and didn't tap into any niche as such.
Not every community has SP weight and we may have to look at different rewards, rewards not enumerated in the form of $. But as long as we can maintain a healthy ecosystem, eventually some of those community members will power up.
In one of my earliest posts I wrote here on Steem, Imentioned these 3 errors most minnows make:
While also focusing on:
Oh... that post earned something like $0.5 pre-Steem Magic Sauce. :D
Followed.Thanks for answer..
"the key is not in the financial rewards we receive but in our networking value."
I agree with you, but steemit community need some time to get it to focus..