RE: How Curation Guilds Game the Systems and Direct Voting Bots to Selected Authors
@solarguy Great post and points you have expressed. Yes I do vote with a small amount of vote power as my idea is to share wealth. I vote more on posts that I read. Part of the reason I do what I do is lack of time. This way I am always using some of my voting power throughout the day which may be more efficient use of vote power in some way. Another is trying to get value. Another is giving votes. Am not sure what is better or worse to do at times. Currently I am giving early votes at times.
With smaller voting power I am able to cast hundreds of votes as a way to share wealth and rewards with more authors.
Each of the curation groups is exploring ways to help community members with other community members I believe. Some find better ways than others. Some have more SP than others. Part of the idea of Steemprentice is a live chat room on steemit.chat that anyone may join to give help or be given help on most anything.
Think we all use different voting strategies and what really matters is the end result. As long as we are getting and giving value in some way. Then steem(it) is gaining and sharing welth in some ways. Also agree iwth your concerns in many ways too. These curation groups have helped many users especially newer ones get more votes and curtion rewards they would not have other wise got. Think this has helped in (early) user retention as one of the major benefits. Also understand your concern of the disparity of usrs that get pennies while others get dollars.
Am looking to learn with others how we may all find better ways and thank you for expressing your thoughts.
Thank you for reading and replying.
I really like the mission and until recently I was all onboard with how anything turns out but things didn't add up after what I mentioned.
I am learning lots about voting trail habits since the comments have started coming in and I am happy that I may be wrong or not completely inaccurate with my hypothesis. Something just doesn't seem right.
I also understand why people vote with different power levels, just when ever I see a 1% vote it hurts. I don't get why people with low SP do it. You could vote all day with full power and it will drain but will it drain to 1%? It's actually not that easy to vote until your voting power is less than 50% by default. I've tried I gave up in the 60's% range more than a day. But I didn't have a bot running the show those were manual.
I do appreciate you reading and replying. I thought the wild west days of Steemit were past us but I still feel it here sometimes.
My voting power generally stays below 50, with really good days getting to the mid-50s. You can only spread it so much and still have any impact at all. It's because I follow SteemTrail plus I curate a lot of stuff personally. I wish my votes meant more for payouts, but they are what they are.
SteemTrail tries to make a difference. And we're confident that it's helping a lot of people. Folks volunteer their time to try to make that difference. Do some vote as favors sometimes? Of course. In fact, I propose that we all do once in a while.
But, another side of it is that none of us owe anybody else a vote. Yeah, we'd like to see it become more equitable across the board. This includes many of the whales. But, as long as humans are involved, it simply won't be.
And I can sympathize with the low payouts. I stopped in the middle of an intense series for that very reason, among other things. The work is too intense for such low payouts. So I'm focused on other things to try to make things better.
Personally, I don't see this as a Steemicide post. It's a well reasoned concern about the disbalance that's occurring. As discouraging and frustrating as it could be, I just don't think there's any room for finger pointing. As some users have pointed out, it's their vote and nobody has a right to it.
I hope you stick around. You're a blessing to the Steemit community.
You're welcome and thank you as well. Also I vote more on what I read that what I don't read. I agree things don't add up and there is madness going on. I'll adjust my methods over time as I learn and get feedback from people like you.