Since I made that post this morning a number of people have told me they will not longer be upvoting comments. In order to get mine past the dust threshold I'd have to upvote comments at >70% which would severly reduce the number of upotes I give.

I'm hoping that someone more knowledgeable than me will do the stats and post about it and include what they've discovered about timings too.

My best guess is that engagement will drop and more people will leave.

I think you make a very good point that many positives exist here developmentally and activity on the Steem blockchain seems in an upward trajectory. But as the majority of altcoins are experiencing very low prices we are a ship stuck in a low tide. Those who depend on this ship for their livelihood are in s bad way and I understand them being very verbal in their disappointment. I hope the tide rises for all to benefit. 

Incidentally, you will find several changes to Stermworld, which have improved its usefulness with regard to Steem-Engine, which are worthy I think of sending a few Steem the way of Steemchiller to support his work on this very useful application. 

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A look at my steemworld.org stats shows me that my curation rewards are going to be double as high compared to before the HF 21. When clicking the "refresh" button under "Coming rewards" on steemworld, it would usually calculate number of about 3.5-4 SP. Now it is almost at 8.5 SP. Incredible number when you consider the current Steem price below $0.20. Imagine the Steem price back to $4, curating alone would take the passive income to a whole new level.

The mere idea thereof makes me wholehheartedly acquiesce in the decrease of my author rewards: while before HF 21 my recent posts made about 16 Steem, now it is at 10 Steem. Altogether, it will make earning Steem more difficult for people streaming in in the future, which I think is a good thing so that the get-rich quick mentality will be curtailed a bit.

In terms of commenting I actually like the fact that upvoting comments is harder, in the optimistic hope that people holding a higher SP stake will instead directly visit other people's blog and invest these upvotes in their blog articles. That's the way I have been doing it for some months now, and personally it makes curating much more enjoyable. I am only curating manually so that I always know where my vote goes, and try to diversify my author selection as much as possible. I have always liked the joy when I realised that someone has manually curated one of my posts, irrespective of the vote value. So I now want to consciously give back that exact feeling I liked so much. Of course we can still upvote thoughtful, dedicated comments on our own blog articles, but in my honest opinion there are nonetheless quite some people who covertly comment mostly with the aim of getting a high upvote. In that case I definitely don't want to play the people-pleaser, especially when the comments will significantly increase when Steem is back at higher prices.

Congratulations @indigoocean! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

<table><tr><td><img src="https://steemitimages.com/60x70/http://steemitboard.com/@indigoocean/votes.png?201908281958"></td><td>You distributed more than 14000 upvotes. Your next target is to reach 15000 upvotes.</td></tr>
</table>

<sub>_You can view [your badges on your Steem Board](https://steemitboard.com/@indigoocean) and compare to others on the [Steem Ranking](https://steemitboard.com/ranking/index.php?name=indigoocean)_</sub>
<sub>_If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word_ `STOP`</sub>


To support your work, I also upvoted your post!


###### [Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1) to get one more award and increased upvotes!

#### Hi @indigoocean!

Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your **UA** account score is currently 4.726 which ranks you at **#1593** across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has not changed in the last three days.

In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 144 contributions, your post is ranked at **#81**.
##### Evaluation of your UA score:

* Some people are already following you, keep going!
* The readers appreciate your great work!
* Try to work on user engagement: the more people that interact with you via the comments, the higher your UA score!


**Feel free to join our [@steem-ua Discord server](https://discord.gg/KpBNYGz)**

Dear @indigoocean

> Honestly I've reached the point in this journey where I care more about supporting and connecting with the community than the value of my earnings 

That is very mature of you.

ps.
I would like to take some of your time and share with you some vision/idea behind "project hope" that I've been working on with few other guys from Steemit. 

I think that you would like what we're doing and you could also benefit from being part of our small community. Your content fits very well to our interests.

Would it be okey if I will send you an email? If yes, then would you mind letting me know whats your current email address? Or perhaps you can reach out to me? (promib.pl@gmail.com)

Yours
Piotr