Attention STEEMIT Minnows: You Have Been Given A Opportunity And Trusted With Great Power - Start Using It Or You Will LOSE It
So, Minnows: how are you liking the increased influence given to you by HardFork 19?
Isn't it cool that your vote went from being worth $0.00 to $0.09?
Look...
I know that with this change you feel like your vote is very precious now.
And it's true -- your vote is precious. But here's the thing: your vote was always important.
When a content creator such as myself posts something on Steemit and it makes a good amount of money, that's one way to know that my content is liked and well-recieved. However, the better and more consistent way to know if I'm making good stuff is by the number of votes, even if the dollar amount isn't very high.
I've noticed that the average number of people voting on my posts has gone down. And as much as I'd like to think that it might just be the content I'm blogging about is less interesting to you than it was, say, a month ago -- it simply doesn't make sense with the amount of real followers that I have.
This, along with other trends I've seen on Steemit, lead me to believe that the Minnows are voting less.
We've been given a great gift (I'm a minnow, too), and we are not using it.
Use it or LOSE it
HF19 was intended to level the playing field.
Many users were complaining that whales had too much influence and too much power. People would look at a post that had over 100 votes but made $5 and think to themselves:
If minnows had more influence, my $5 post would be worth $500.
And that's true.
When HF19 launched, I had dozens of pending posts with a hundred votes or more on them that were originally worth maybe $10-20 and suddenly jumped to over $100.
Everyone was celebrating, drunk with their own power!
Then they woke up the next morning with a hangover and suddenly didn't know what to do with themselves lol
Minnows, listen: Steemit is still in beta.
This HardFork is a test.
It's a test to see if you can actually handle having more influence. It's a test to see if you the general user-base is responsible enough to be a potential whale.
And right now, you are failing the test -- you're failing it HARD.
HF20 will give power back to the whales
At this rate, anyway.
And that only makes sense.
If minnows are coveting their vote power, the site is not going to survive. The developers know that. I mean -- do you think the developers don't know that?
What we are seeing now is that minnows cannot be trusted with more influence.
Basically, you've been given the opportunity to have more influence with less investment, and by not using your influence -- by coveting your vote power -- you are telling the developers that you don't actually want that influence.
By not voting like you used to, you are telling Steemit that the free-market approach is better -- that it really is true that those with more skin in the game (meaning: more Steem Power) are the ones to trust with the influence.
Want to retain your power? START VOTING!
If you don't start voting, you're going to lose it all.
If you don't start voting, HF20 is going to give all of that power you are coveting back to the whales, and this whole experiment will have taught us that minnows cannot be trusted with power.
This is a warning to all the minnows out there: HF19 is an experiment to see if you can handle having more influence, and when you don't use that influence you are telling Steemit that you don't actually want it.
So start voting like you actually want influence.
If you use it, Steemit will look beautiful!
If you, the minnows, start voting again, then Steemit will be such a lucrative place.
It WILL be like it was the day of HF19.
It WILL be true that accounts with fewer followers and hardly any SP will be able to make decent money.
We COULD have a Steemit where the least among us have the power to make a difference.
But we will only have that if you start voting!
So start using your power.
Start voting up your friends. Go search the "hot" and "trending" and "new" tabs and upvote as much as you can.
Because if you don't start using your power... YOU WILL LOSE IT.
Well said @shayne. People are not voting as they did before HF19. I think it's because of 2 reasons.
One solution would be to reduce the %age by which voting power goes down or just decrease the time it takes to recover. Even a 25% change would make a difference I guess.
You're correct here in your reasons I think, nail on the head.
I'm look at a project to stigmatize self voting now with @l0k1, might be of interest
Indeed. Myself, as a so called "Red Fish", have just today decided to only upvote 1 of my 4 posts per day, reserving the other 9-10 upvotes to benefit those I follow or find interesting/honest/creative/etc.
The patterns make it so obvious if one pays attention to patterns.
And part of the issue is simply the user interface, and the limited technical understanding of the majority of new users. This is also bad UX design, by the way, to make bad defaults. Anyone who tells you 'oh, the steemit.com interface is wonderful' I want to meet these unicorns.
Under 482 SP, or so, users do not have the ability to reduce their vote weight, in the steemit.com interface.
Yea, that is a challenge. Ability to reduce vote weight should be made even lower.
Enable vote slider for small SP accounts post HF19:
https://github.com/steemit/condenser/issues/1544
Of course, this is a 'feature request' and there is a practical problem at this point, minnow accounts have a much more limited bandwidth. Actually, that makes me think about how the account fee should actually be raised because this would also get around this problem (bandwidth allocation is completely controlled by the amount of SP in an account, as well as the block size).
Time to do a witness report. I wonder if @timcliff will post a link to it on his regular update :S
Thanks for posting! I've been wondering what people were talking about with voting percentages since I couldn't see a way to change mine.
I am campaigning to finish the process of leveling the playing field :) Vote 1, l0k1 for Witness!
That and perhaps remove the self upvoting option?
I had to reduce my voting power to 50% so that I would be able to vote more often. I also disabled the auto-upvote feature. I only have a 2 cent upvote, maybe I got to 3 cents, but still putting it out there for the community.
From what I read, the recovery is actually quite fast. I do not remember where I read it, but before HF19; I thought you could vote 40 times every day for a week and gain your power back within around 72 hours?
Glad there isn't a downvote because I am probably wrong, but I thought the time it took to recover was pretty short?
And I like the ideal of reducing the %age by which voting power goes down more. I remember the article expressing to vote not just for any random thing, but if you find 10 good posts and/or threads (does it matter AT ALL if it is a comment or a thread? You make less with comments right or?) then vote those, but if the next day you find 40 good comments and/or threads, then vote on them. Basically it said not to let the algorithm control you.
But let's be real with ourselves guys, we do study the algorithm and make threads (popular ones too) debating on such topics because this because every day we spend gaining STEEM Power that increases the value of our votes, that isn't why we are voting. Most people are like myself and don't just randomly going around upvoting but only upvotes when they see a comment or thread that they feel deserves more attention. Just like on Reddit, upvote for visbility.
Except with Steemit, it's upvote for visibility (or pay) and for money.
Thoughts?
#Word
Hi @shayne. This is very intresting post and i a good advice to us all little ones here.
I dont get it, people will litraly beg for followers,and when they follow and are followed,they find it hard to upvote and drop a good comment. Every one is looking out for his/her own post,but forgetting that as you mant yoirs to dp well,so dose others.
But i have a problem with voting sometimes..voting ought to be saying that "i like " your post but in a situation whereby the writer dose not connect with you,should you just vote...would that be fair.?
Nice one, will deffinately resteem.
@arizonawise
I have only tried to vote content that interested me, but I do vote a lot of comments (sometimes to just be polite which I shouldn't do).
okay...#gottohelpout
Boom!! #letthehelpflowthrough-youfeelmyvotepower?
lol..
#IDO
Hello @shayne
Along with the Upvotes, the number of comments on posts also reduced.
The general feel of community was affected by this behaviour.
There is a project i am working on now that i feel will bring Humanity back to Steemit. It will be out in some days time.
I will send you the details on steemit chat.
@ogochukwu
Well @shayne, really you raised an important issue to discuss so thank you
I am a minnow (less than5k SP) and my experience with HF19 is:
1 - since the HF19 implemented I invited 13 new users to steemit, those are my colleagues and friends. It is easy to invite people to steemit but it is hard to keep and let them see the potential here and what is steemit really about as a community. I was able to do that effectively because my vote relevant, I check their blogs and upvote good content and this makes them keep blogging.
3 - I did 7 videos fully explain steemit in Arabic, and it help many to enter steemit, people impressed by how they can really reach a level when their vote matter and some planning to buy STEEM
4 - Already did a steemit Arabic support website
5 - I decided to go to steemfest2 because I felt that I have influence on this platform.
From my perspective HF19 is the best thing happened to steemit so far and gradual decentralization of power on steemit will make this platform really scale. I think people need time to ajust.
I will upvote this comment for the seek of good discussion
Do you know that most of the minnows does not have a voting slider?
And they can give only 100% upvotes. So after 10-15 full upvotes they have 70-80% Voting Power and must take a break till next day. 10 upvotes only for the best friends...
It's easy to ask minnows vote more but if every minnow will vote more today, tomorrow will be no upvotes from minnows.
yeah.... i dont have a slider haha, i was like....what are they talking about !
eSteem gives voting slider for everyone, you can check it.
Exactly what I was going to say, but when do I get a slider on the desktop site? Is there a certain milestone that gives me the vote power slider? (sorry, just read it in the comment below, lol)
This is a massive point that I did not think of. Remind me what the minimal amounnt of SP you need to see the slider was again? is it 1000SP? I haven't used an account with less than 1000 since I had only 1000.
This is another example of how UX is biased against new users. The underlying platform provides vote percentage adjustment, but steemit.com does not. I am making an issue at the github: https://github.com/steemit/condenser/issues/1544
5 month here and only 350 SP and of course no voting slider. Get 1000 SP without donating is very long and hard process.
I wrote about this curation problem the next day after HF19 https://steemit.com/steemit/@erikaflynn/new-opportunities-for-minnows-after-hf19-about-voting-slider-esteem-and-minnowsupport-eng-ru
For myself I found the problem solution in using eSteem (it has slider for everyone). But not every minnow have a smartphone, so solution must be found here on Steemit.
@felixxx also told me that even if you were delegated SP, it is not factored into the calculation. I didn't get clarification from him about whether this was the steemit.com interface or on the blockchain.
HF19 was just the first step towards properly balancing the mechanics of Steem. We still have more changes required before this platform is 100%
That's steemit.com UI ... the blockchain accepts weighted votes from any account.
With little SP comes little bandwidth ... so small votes might not make a lot of sense, if you can only vote a few times/day due to bandwidth limitations.
I am glad I bumped your name and you replied to clarify that for me :) thanks.
Right, so this also is something to consider in implementing a way for the smaller accounts, perhaps even by relaxing the bias on bandwidth towards minnows, and making interface elements that explain the limitation on bandwidth.
As far as I understand the bandwidth limitations will change with the blocksize.
That's why I decided to signal bigger blocks, too.
I doubt that interface elements about bandwidth would be any good. Most users just want to use this thing and don't care much for the technology (at least the beginning)
oh, nice, I knew there was a good reason to do this. So now making 128k blocks is now part of our witness election platform :)
I just want to say a big thanks to you, you have been a very important person in my journey here.
Can you tell me, guys, how you know about mentions? Steemit hasn't such option and this is a problem for me.
Enable notifications in the steemit.com interface, it pops them up. You may miss them if you are not online at the time.
I got it at about 400+ something. I don't know the exact amount of Steem, but it is somewhere in the 400 area when the slider shows up.
I've had the slider since somewhere around 850 SP I think, currently 990
Really nice article and well crafted. When ever i look at a minnows voting power, its filled up. It makes me wonder whether they read whats being posted or they are here to observe and not comment or vote. If we dont stop that attitude, the power shoiluld be restored back to the right
I can only speak for myself, but I have been voting less in order get my voting power back up. Immediately after HF19 I was happily voting my newfound power, then saw the value of my vote sink as my voting power drained away. I have been conservative trying to give it a chance to restore.
I have decided now not to pay any attention to my voting power. Why should I worry about the difference between $.05 and $.02? I'm just going to go back to voting whatever I like and not worry about the value rewarded. What do you think?
If you don't have enough steem for the voting power slider to show up (shows at 400+ something steem), then you can only vote 10-11 times/day in order for your voting power to get back to 100% the next 24h.
Put you are right here. You can just ignore that and cast your upvotes as often as you want. Noone will complain, I guess :)
That is going to be my approach from here on out. I don't think it matters to you it my vote for your comment is $.02 or $.03, does it ?
No, it doesn't
You are in luck! You got both a $.02 vote and a $.03 vote!
Great post! Exactly what I was thinking the other day. I understand that people think now with HF19 their vote is precious and they want to keep it for themselves. There is nothing bad about that, but if everyone thinks that way, we will only see votes on our own content or comments.
Dont' you minnows love it when some guy votes on your post or comment? Well darling, then you should give some too!
Why don't spread the votes? If you like a post (like this one) I give it 100% Power Vote. If I think content is good, but not worth a 100%, I give it a little less voting power.
Yes, I also Vote on my own comments. For one reason it's because of the reward and the second reason is that my comment will appear higher in section. But that does not mean that one should cast all his votes on his own comments or posts. Give and take. Give and take.
Keep voting just for yourselfs and I guarantee you, this Hardfork won't las long. Cheers!
Oh, BTW: 100% Upvote from me for this post!
i agree with your pov @askaran i vote my own comments too and i enjoy giving votes to those that deserve it becuause you know teamwork makes the dream work, also forgive my lack of knowledge but how does one control how much % a vote has?
Thanks, jcleef. A vote for you my friend :)
Sorry, I didn't mention that the percentage slider only appers for people with over 400+ something steem. If you have lesser steem, you can't adjust your steem power. Its always a 100% vote in that case.
Every 100% vote drains your voting power by 2% of the Power you have the moment you cast it. Every hour about 0.84% Power regenerates. This means you can 10-11 votes/day and your voting Power would regenerate to 100% the next day.
no need to apologize, this was really helpful and now i have an idea for how long i have to wait to charge and also how many votes i can do a day. You've simplified this a bunch @askaran much appreciated :)
It's not that I don't want to, I'm still recovering my percentage. Remember we don't have the sliders so it goes away real fast. I don't think it's mostly people voting for themselves, I think most are like me, waiting for the percentage to regenerate by not voting.
Well, that could be one of the problems too. Your are right here.
Before the hardfork one without a slider could cast more votes. Not it drains your voting power by 2% (based on the power you have the moment you upvote). This means you can only upvote 10-11 times/day if you want your power to regenerate to 100% the next day.
Upvoted and Resteemed by the xx_Votes_Plus curation trail! Want more earnings? Follow @dropahead in Streemian https://streemian.com/profile/curationtrail/trailing/396 and/or fund @dropahead with more STEEM POWER! Keep steeming!
Look, our votes apparently become drained with very few upvotes now. We are using our votes but what good does it do to cast a vote when you have exhausted your voting power? May as well comment and leave it at that.
"by coveting your vote power -- you are telling the developers that you don't actually want that influence."
You do not understand. We ARE voting but we are choosing more carefully what we vote for. I myself favor content that is extensive and original. Gone are the days where people upvoted everything.
I myself posted a similar article like this yesterday. I was fortunate to have some people point out to me what I am telling you now. I was being naive in assuming I was posting content worthy of precious votes. In truth, I now feel I must step up my game to compete for these votes. In that regard I think what content that gets posted will improve.
I do not think it will kill Steem. It just may be the end of easy Steem. Maybe, just maybe people will actually write now instead of getting $30 for a meme.