RE: My Thoughts on Steem-UA (And Why I'm Not Delegating)
Right now for myself, I see the advantage of the twice a week vote. I know it is not a big vote, but it is two post that get a payable vote. The first week was just about $0.50 USD in vote payout, so about .750 steem. I know it will take a long time at that rate to equal the value of my delegation SP, but it is getting there. So it is like SBI, Inciniboost, Voteshare, and a few of the others, simply a means for a person to self vote for themselves without the attached stigma of self voting.
The only way to grow on steemit is to get votes, buy, beg, or borrow them. Steem search engine needs a lot of work, and more filters to be an easy content finder. Right now the primary way of finding content is through communities one follows, and viewing their compilation post. There really are a lot of them out there. I may end up a little late on voting some things, but eventually I do find content.
Steem-UA, does not really bill itself as a content finder. I do not think their algorithm is worth squat to be honest. A couple people in the top 100, that should not be there in my opinion, as to the heavy weighting of the witnesses, I do not agree with that either, they have in my eyes no more authority than a new user. They really need to change the name. It was a try at fixing a broken thing, but I think it failed in that, on the plus side, it is a very nice twice a week non-self-vote, non-paid-vote-bot. Stigma-free vote, for now.
The thing about it is that its lack of a functional algorithm that people can monitor means that it's fundamentally meaningless.
It's basically giving votes so that you can help yourself grow, sure, but it's not on the likes of SBI. SBI gives votes exactly as you provide them. Inciniboost is just a SBI knock-off, and functions more or less identically. With either of those services, I can be 90% certain that my support goes to people whose content I enjoy, plus boost my own growth and influence (and I'm quite heavily into SBI, so you can say that I've got a bit of a confirmation bias, but I was a recipient of it before I started giving it out).
The gripe I have with Steem-UA is this: It claims to be a positive addition to the community.
It isn't, or at least not meaningfully. It's only a benefit to those community members who pay into it, and perhaps not even that to a major degree. It's not "algorithmic curation"; it's the Busy upvote with an investment attached.
Yep, a pre-set self vote. for me a pre-set 50SP, twice a week self vote. Only it is a higher vote than what my self vote would be. I have seen a few post talking about the vote return being better than ten self votes a week. It is what it is a means to get another vote on a person's content, nothing more. The only comment attraction to a person's blog/post is for me the twice weekly we voted blah blah blah comment they give. I do not think I have gotten a single comment from anyone just because I delegate to Steem-UA.
I am one of those people that like comments, and like to give comments. But I also like to vote, it is part of my commenting habit I guess. I generally vote on content prior to commenting, recently I have actually commented without voting just because my vote power was very low. If a person, such as myself is looking for a few guaranteed votes without actually paying for them, then steem-ua is good for that. I only lose out on a temporary loss of 50Sp, which in the overall scheme of things when it comes to providing a vote has very little effect on my vote value.
I also have some SBI, some bought, some gifted, same with incinboost, and a few others. The money/steem for those are bought and paid for votes, I can not look at it any other way. steem-ua is nothing more than a self vote by proxy. It is what it is. I don't like vote bots, yet I buy votes. I do not like self votes, yet I do it by proxy. Because I do not like something does not make it wrong, especially when it comes to a person's vote, it is theirs to do with as they want, to use, to buy, to sell, to rent, as long as no one is telling someone how to use their vote I can accept a person's choice.