This is everyone's problem, not one group or person. The outcome effects us all~!

This is all in regard to #Bidbots the majority(if not almost everyone has discussed today) of what I am seeing is quite disturbing. In order to address these solutions, we must examine the problems at hand, deeper rooted issues, and deeply held sentiments from the largest stakeholders and the smallest.

Let me breakdown what I have seen thus far:

1. Passing blame, and shifting responsibility to anyone but not taking a share of it yourself to solve the problem.

2. suggesting solutions that literally do more harm than good, and actually force more money to go to bidbots.

3. Everyone wanting to talk about a problem, but no one coming together and talking solutions.

4. Root of the issues not even being discussed, but a lot of moral high road, and let’s face it circle jerking for an extra upvote.

5. Also seeing a lot of people, who honestly don’t want to lose their investment, hiding their panic because they are overexposed, thus victim mentality comes to play.

6. Some of the largest holders in the community, have no issue perpetuating the problems for short term gains. While sacrificing the long term success of the platform -- directly supporting Bidbots.

I can go on, but this really sums up the majority of the 100 posts on this today, all doing it well… to get more upvotes…. Which is one of the driving factors of being here, I get it.

Why am I qualified to actually address this issue?

I’ve solved larger problems than this, simply put. I have organized national campaigns, solved enough problems and organized more people than I ever care to do again. With that in mind, I love using this platform as an example of what blockchain can be, and don’t want to see it fail -- so I am going to try and put in the effort here.

This post will be broken down into mostly 3 Main Categories: Problems we all face currently, Whale issues, Minnow Issues. Understanding where all parties involved are coming from is crucial to actually work on solutions -- with a final section on creating solutions, which I hope you all add to.

Things that Effect us all

1. Top trending content that is actually complete garbage.
Look I get it, we are free to do whatever we want here, but letting that post get to the top and stay there is actually kind of sad. New people to the platform see that kind of pay out, from such a trash quality post, it makes it harder for all of us to BUILD here, as well as encourages more bidbot use(yes even when you downvote). All day everyone talked about the Udemy post, yet the top one’s talking about it,collectively, could have moved almost ANY post above it within minutes.
Remember, we are all invested here. Whether it be with our SP, or our time. Whales would not have any value, if minnows were not here, and growth was not happening. Minnows can not survive without either Money or you guys.
How did the community respond…. Trolling, buying more bidbots AND giving the Udemy guy an even LARGER platform to have his name on!
My mind was absolutely blown!
That time could have been spent curating a quality piece of content, getting a few of your friends together, and knocking him out of the top slot.

I totally get why, I live my life for the lulz.

2. Bots pulling from the community pool, dragging us all down with it.
This along with these ghost accounts are a serious problem. Whether you are a minnow, dolphin or whale. This is a massive concern. @sorin.cristescu states in the comments here:

But for as long as bots are allowed and the Steem whitepaper says, black on white "Eliminating "abuse" is not possible and shouldn't be the goal." (page 15. I disagree, but who am I?) then downvoting people because they have used the system as designed is destructive and harmful ()

While I understand his reasoning for the limitation on on the first part, I fundamentally disagree - more on that in solutions. It is the latter, that I agree most with. There is a portion of the more affluent part of the Steemit community that believes in downvoting, stated in the same post from @heimindanger -- who is also the OP of where I am sourcing this current information. How he and others see essentially like this:

Downvoting arbitrarily based on the % of value coming from bot upvotes is the best way to select and avoid personal wars. At least with this tool, it's clear I have personally nothing against all the people I downvoted yesterday. If we started doing it selectively, egos would come in and people would take it as a personal attacks.

There is a fundamental problem with this, instead of encouraging a better method of improving their quality of post, they are now distracted on how to get revenge, and two how to stop you from doing it again. Psychologically you are pushing the minnows and dolphins further away, and in their eyes proving them right, and in reality you are causing a larger barrier of entry, which likely causes the continued downtrend of quality in these megabotted posts.

On the other end of it all, you actually see things like what @Rondras followed up on, with the 250SBD "Pump and Dump" by bots of a shit poster. Essentially saying the bots are getting better at flagging content that provides 0 quality, and the safeguards did their job perfectly.
If you take a look at the post he is referencing, it not only calls out the whole problem on the platform, but does show that the bots are trying to not boost the worst content in the world.

The problem is there is such a strong sentiment from groups here, that assume all posts that have bots are lacking quality. I have seen some that are exceptional quality that would have never been seen at all without that support.
Look at the way others feel here, a comment from @bi5h0p stated:

More and more it seems you have to go it alone, nobody much bothers to read any good content that you put out unless you spend a bunch of money to upvote yourself, using bots, etc. Then some whale will come along and trash you for giving yourself an upvote, as if your 1/10,000 portion of the rewards pool is hampering everyone else's gains.

After 10 or 11 months here, I think it's a great place to do social media on - just don't waste your time investing a bunch of money into powering up, unless you've got many thousands of dollars to pour into it. Even then, you'd just have to worry about not accidentally pissing off some larger whale who decides to start harassing you and trying to tell you how you should be voting with your own investment - as if it's somehow their "right" or responsibility to bend you to whatever their own agenda happens to be....the problems can really begin if you power a bunch of it up and expect to make progress as a blogger. Established personalities on SteemIt seem not to want anyone new coming into their space and getting any significant portion of the rewards pool....I think the whole downvoting thing needs to go away to improve the mood and new users' experience on this platform. I see a lot of flagging is really turning new people off to SteemIt.

When that is the sentiment of people who have been here almost a year, you know you have a problem -- we will address this further in Whale Problem's and in Solutions.

4. More Duplicates and Bot's, less new actual people
This one requires very little explanation, because it is becoming quite obvious. It is looking more and more lke wash trading, and gaming the system, hoping to exit before the hammer drops. Our barrier to entry is too high, we are fighting back out of anger and not rebuilding, and simply put we are not bringing new people here. Things have to change in order to fix that, the current model is not sustainable, in it's current state. We are here because we want decentralization and freedom, with that we MUST have spontaneous order. The minnows will be fine, they don't have nearly as much to exit if we can not get back on track.
I know that sounds a little doomsday, its all burning to the ground ish... It's not, yet. So we must take appropriate actions and steps towards making the barrier of entry easier, creating ways to help new steemians integrate into the platform, and lastly, invest in the community. The only way we invest in ourselves longterm is by investing in ways to bring people and less ghosts abusing the system.

🐟🐟Minnow Issues🐟🐟

1. Having Content Seen.
This is truly the number oneissue for those trying to build their steemit. No matter the quality, unless you even get into the Hot section, you have no chance for the community to even judge you. It's a lot different than it used to be, and it does take a lot of work if you cant afford bidbots or get help from a whale. Even if you can afford bit bots they judge the quality as lower simply because it wasn't organic. It truly is something that needs to be addressed, and understood it is different era of Steemit.

2, Stop saying anytime a whale won't do something for you, it's bullying.
Seriously, the victim mentality has to go, one of the beautiful things about decentralization and radical transparency, is that you can learn from others successes without ever asking them. One the inverse side of it, no one owes you anything to be here. I am not saying don't ask for help, but don't ever expect it, and be grateful for it when it is given.

3. Quit expecting to make so much money without any real investment of time.
You are building brand here, it takes time and investment. If you think you should get paid 20$ for that generic meme, that everyone has seen, you are very mistaken. People spend hours upon hours working on their posts, making sure it provides value to the community here, before they press post. Those who want to build a following here know it does not happen overnight, if you can get that out of your head before you get started, you will be much more successful here.

🐋🐋 Whale Issues🐋🐋

1. Stop Blaming Everyone Else
One of my biggest pet peeves that I keep seeing is that some "kid" with a little money makes it above you in trending, and some of you lose it. Yes we get it you've been here forever and have a ton of followers. You do not have the same barrier of entry to make a viable post and allow the community to decide if it is worth it.
2. Help Others
It should be a given, but on Steem, when we help others, and give them a hand up, we are able to reward ourselves in the long run with more quality people sharing even better content. Everyone has to be accountable, and hodling is not an option if we want long-term sustainable growth, our value goes up as a community whole, when we help and bring others here.

Solutions

Only when times are the most trying, do people look for solutions to the most crucial problems.

1. Radical Transparency, plus ease of use, and ensures our newest members don't become confused.
@transparencybot, which if you havent seen, has been getting a ton of positive feedback, but the negative side has been brutal. If you haven't seen it yet, then you don't go to many bid bot overflow posts. You can learn all about the bot here Since the first time I saw it, I loved it's purpose in our community.

2. New Tags to support Quality Content
We have two emerging currently. #Clean-Trending and #NoBidBot, more non bot tags will be great if we have people actively checking them for quality content that provides value to the community. We as the community have to take a stand and set an example to seek out quality content and create enough incentive for for quality posts that are often over looked to get noticed.
Loved @whatamidoing's reasoning for it from his post:

We don’t like our bought politicians so why should we support those who buy their rep and payout on steemit?

It is worth checking out the comments and understanding some of the reasons we should look elsewhere.

3. Create real advertising and promotional options.
@tarazkp has an amazing discussion already going on it here. So i will only briefly get into it. We have ton's of ways to monetize on steemit.

4. Mentor-ship and Apprenticeship
Adding those two tags along with #Introduceyourself will help us find new people and get them on the right track, ideally those who will help ensure they put together quality content, and give them that hand up everyone needs, not a hand out.
If we take a more active role in developing the people in our community, we will have more quality content, as well as, make an investment in ourselves and #steemit in general.

5. Completely flip the script.
What do I mean? Let's stop giving ghost accounts, or any account the free delegated SP upon creation. Instead let's ensure it's done on the production side. Whether they are commenting on posts, or creating their own content. Instead we can have matching votes up to the Delegation amount. This requires them to get involved in the community.It takes away the incentive for ghost account bots from abusing the reward system, and it allows us to get to know them, and help them build.
This would replace the need to create a 1 account per person mantra, that was stated earlier, while creating a harder barrier of entry for bots trying to game/abuse the system.

*I am sure there is so many more idea's and I would love to see them as well. Long-term the cycle we are in looks unsustainable, and we need to start looking for solutions now, rather than later. *

Previous Content:
5STEEM + SBD Giveaway
Don't Get Bogged, Risk Management
BTC Price Prediction
Correction? Crash? Nope, We are taking out the trash

🚀🚀🚀Note all SBD generated from this post will be earmarked to help fund any solutions that are agreed upon as viable and can help move the community forward🚀🚀🚀