What are Curation Trails?

in #steemit7 years ago (edited)

... and why would I want to be a part of one?

I've been hearing about them all over the place, but just don't quite get it.

100% upvote (worth about .30) goes to the comment that must clearly explains this Steemit feature so that I can decide if I want to join one.

It seems to me that all I do is give my VP away without having the option of curating content myself. But as it is I'm always running lower on VP than I want to be for the posts and comments I really want to upvote more. How do I possibly benefit from doing this?

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For exemple , as you are interested by spirituallity, you go on discord and follow the spirituallity trail. There you should find some posts selected by curators about spirituallity. Now a days, everybody are using the steem-trail for self promoting and it is not so interesting. But you can try, it does not cost anything and you abandon it if you don't find interesting content.

But as it is I'm always running lower on VP than I want to be for the posts and comments I really want to upvote more.

This suggests that you're not a good candidate for a curation trail. They're mostly for people who want to support a particular goal but either don't want to or don't have the time to curate manually.

So they do it to try to earn money by curating content without spending time reading on the platform?

Some people do, but it's generally not a good way to earn money, certainly not compared to selling your vote or delegating to a bot.

Mostly it's for people who want to support particular projects - for instance, @curie has a very large curation trail from people who want to reward high-quality posting, and @openmic has a curation trail from people who want to reward musicians.

You can see it as pooling together resources to support certain people. Sometimes you don't have time to upvote certain things or you want to put aside a certain amount of VP to a cause. I was against trailes...then tribesteemup put me on their trail and it's turning my whole steemit experience around...I feel especially touched that they didn't require me to add my upvote to the trail in order to benefit from their trail so I'm thinking of adding a small upvote (11% to the trail) which shouldn't drain me too much.

That is interesting that you can give just 11% upvotes to the trail. I thought once you subscribed to a trail you upvoted everything the trail upvotes and exhausted your voting power on the trail. Well you’re getting me to consider the trail possibility then. Thanks.

I would only give to a trail that I knew was supporting great work, and I love what teamsteemup is doing so I'm going to get on it as soon as I remember how to. If it drains my vp I'll turn the % down because I still want to spend most of my VP on stuff that I read and interact with and the initiatives I'm supporting like #nobidbot and deadpost initiative.

Well I just signed up to support the teamsteemup trail at 11%. Thanks for the idea.

I have unsubscribed from many of these trails because I want to monitor where my votes are going + any rewards are negligible. I only keep with the very well-managed curation trail by @upv4life because the content there is always a good quality and it is content I feel okay with supporting.

Hi! I hope you are well : )
I was actually thinking of investigating a little bit and posting a guide about this .. When I do, I will let you know.
In short, following a curation trail is good when you have no time curating, so you find a good curator (such as steemstem, curie, sndbox etc etc) and you can always set limitations (via steemauto) like no votes if your VP is less then X.
I am currently studying but hopefully I will be able to post more about it within this month!
Lots of love all the way from Greece!

Some times we feel lonely, rounded by a huge amount of ideas from others, but to be alone in this ocean, is always good for reinventing ourselves, as the same way our nature goes green.

Algunas veces nos sentimos solos, rodeados de una gran cantidad de ideas que provienen de los demás, pero estar solos en este océano, siempre es bueno para reinventarnos a nosotros mismos, de la misma manera que nuestra naturaleza reverdece.

Greetings

A curation trail is a form of automation. You can choose to follow a particular voter, and any vote they cast - you will automatically cast. The chain of votes that follow the original vote is commonly called the “trail”.

Streemian is one of the common tools that people use for this:
https://streemian.com

But why would I want to follow someone else's votes instead of deciding my own? How does that benefit me?

Your votes earn a small amount of curation rewards. If you follow the votes of a good curator, you may earn more than with “organic” voting. Other people like to follow the votes from projects they want to support (like @curie).

Ah, I get it. If I either want to earn as much as I can from curation OR want to sort of donate toward a cause like curie, then I could join a curation trail and not concern myself with having VP available for my own curation.

I see now why the descriptions of them never appealed to me. Finding and upvoting content I love is one of my absolute favorite things about this platform. It never quite sunk in with me that some of the folks who love steemit don't love that about it!

Thanks so much for the clarification.

What is your method for finding something that interests you? I still have a problem with doing that. The best to find something "new" for me is to watch newest feed...but it is full of trash and it is sooo time consuming. Do you know a better way?

My feed is good now because I've been really selective about who I follow then unfollow people if I see too many posts of theirs I'm not interested in reading. But to get it that way I did a lot of "follow the trail" reading on the platform.

I searched first for topics that interested me (spirituality, psychology, and crypto mostly), then once I found good writers who were active in their comments, I started also checking out the profiles of the people commenting. Most of the people I follow I've found that way. Similarly, I check out the profiles of people who comment on my posts and see if I can find people who write interesting posts on my topics that way too.

That's a piece of nice knowledge. I thought for the long time, that curation trafiła are to collect rewards, but some time ago I read about other usage of it. Exactly what you said - to find better content

You approach this in the same way I do - I follow just one curation trail at the moment - I also upvote any comments made by a tiny number of my favorite creators whom I know very well. I am able to follow up using "account operations - toggling the 'out', 'upvotes' or 'comments' feature on @steemchiller 's steemworld tool, every single upvote that goes out as a result of my following a curation trail. I do it somewhat obsessively on a daily basis or at least every 3 days. This way I discover a ton of great content out there because I get to read the content plus the curation trail @upv4life constantly adds new members who support the project too. I use the open source steemauto tools by steem witness @mahdiyari for following curation trails ;-)

So a trail CAN lead to this side benefit - discovery. It beats looking at the trending page! I am still keen on supporting @megabot with delegation too. I get daily returns on my delegation and the accounts being upvoted are cleared and reviewed so I feel all right on that front. One should weigh up profit and acting responsibly. The bots imo are great because they give everyone a fair chance instead of having the whales support content which they agree with only. It isn't all about quality when you look at the content carefully - it's all politics. There is a lot of noise and hype made about bots and s&itposts - I disagree with all that and recognise that most of the garbage is supported by a handful of powerful projects which self-righteously claim to be all about democracy and quality. What is actually happening is they are recreating a google-type enclave by all their scare propaganda using spam scams and the like to get everyone on board with their opinions, while the accounts they support run away with the spoils of the day.

Same here. I've been here for around 2 years now, and every vote I have cast has been manual :)

I have seen you vote for posts from a lot of the same accounts every few days. How about the flags - are those manual too? I make very few flags - about one every week (on a bad week). YOu seem to make at least ten every day and then 10 upvotes as well in the same day. The flags are made in quick succession as well. How do you do that manually? I should learn speed reading ;-)

EDIT: whoa! wait just a minute Mr nice guy - a few days ago, about 70% of your votes were flags! Are you the censor board? - please don't retaliate by flagging me kind sir. I am just a wittle fishy if you don't agree with me, pwease weave me alone

All of my votes are manual. A lot of the votes go to people I follow, when their new posts show up in my feed.

The posts I was downvoting were all part of a coordinated spam effort to create a bunch of posts to shill an ICO.

No worries, I have no intention to downvote you.

Well , that's a relief! I was afraid because one of the whales who's posts you regularly support, punished me by abusing the flag on a completely unrelated post when I flagged a spam comment one of his coordinated efforts left on a project that I support.

I was afraid because you support him, I would be on the MARK by assuming that you support such flag abuse.

To clarify then, you call it coordinated.. I call it non-organic and automated. It's a form of censorship to prevent anyone from promoting anything or any point of view. Calling it spam doesn't get anyone a free pass in my book. One person's spam restricteratornatorfreedom fighter of spam, is another person's terrorist. If the process is proven as transparent, where a post is checked in a transparent and democratic way, then you could begin to call it organic or curation or anything like that. Democracy is very important to many of us. That's why we don't like Google+ or Facebook.

All of my votes are manual.

A flag (downvote) is also a vote. So what you said is not true. You have actually applied votes without reading them. Judging from your frequency of flagging, you seem to prefer downvotes over upvotes too. You also only upvote posts by accounts that you follow. This is fare enough. It's the frequency of the coordinated effort votes that are a concern to a lot of us. I just wanted to get that out in the open.

holy shit, really? How many other top 20 witnesses can say that? <3

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