Self-Voting: Scammy Behavior, Rational ROI, or Something Else? by lukestokes

steemd

witnesses

Self-Voting: Scammy Behavior, Rational ROI, or Something Else? by lukestokes

steemit · @lukestokes · Jul 6 '17 (edited)

$122.28

Self-Voting: Scammy Behavior, Rational ROI, or Something Else?

<center><img src="https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2012/04/13/12/46/button-32259_640.png"></center>

I've jumped into a few interesting discussions about self-voting and wanted to put my thoughts down as they are today.

I'll be up front with some of my own biases. I get <a href="https://steemit.com/entrepreneur/@lukestokes/how-to-make-an-entrepreneur-mad">frustrated by an entitlement attitude</a>. I think <a href="https://steemit.com/life/@lukestokes/expectations-breed-frustration-expectancy-brings-joy">improper expectations breed frustration</a>. I think Steemit has always been <a href="https://steemit.com/steemit/@lukestokes/adjust-your-expectations-steemit-is-designed-as-a-lottery">designed as a lottery</a>, though the flattened reward curve has changed that a bit. I don't think trying to make everyone equal is how <a href="https://steemit.com/life/@lukestokes/how-to-improve-the-world">we can improve the world</a>, because equality of outcome can't exist between people with radically different ambitions (though equality of opportunity is certainly something we should aim for as a compassionate community).

So right up front, I know Steemit isn't *"fair"*, and it probably never will be, much like life. It's not fair that I was born in a wealthy country to intelligent parents. Yeah, at times we didn't have much money and <a href="https://steemit.com/character/@lukestokes/living-on-a-boat-for-two-years-shaped-my-life">had to sell the house and live on a boat</a>, but I've had a lot opportunities, more than many.

With all that said, let's jump into a **Pros** and **Cons** list for self-voting. To be clear, self-voting is when you vote up your own post or comment.

<h1>Cons - Why Self-Voting Is Bad</h1>

* **You're essentially adding noise to the system.**

    I forgot where I first saw this argument in conversation, but I think it's potentially the best reason _not_ to vote for your own posts. The rewards mechanism here is designed to increase the signal and decrease the noise. Votes from Steem Power holders determine rewards pool distribution. It's supposed to be a signal from stake-holders to indicate the best authors and posts. Now by "best", I acknowledge this is a subjective concept. Not everyone agrees on "best", but hopefully all Steem Power holders at least try to vote for things they think should be repeated and supported in order to increase the value of their holdings. Unfortunately, I think many fail to consider timescale in this process and go for short-term gains.

* **You're signaling to the community something important about your intentions. Are you greedy?**

    This one's a little more controversial. If you regularly participate in behavior which ensures you get more than your "fair share" (whatever that might be), then the rest of your tribe may begin to resent you. In some tribal gift economies, to take more than you give out is considered a terrible offense. People who are overly concerned about their own wellbeing are difficult to trust. Trust is hugely important when building strong communities.

* **You're gaming the system.**

    In its worst form, some people add valueless comments just so they have another post they can vote up. This is similar to the early days where the bandwidth constraints weren't working properly and many were spamming the network looking for rewards. Steemit implemented a "4 posts a day" target with decreasing rewards beyond that. This limitation has since been removed, but the idea remains: If you're spamming the network just to increase your own rewards, are you really adding value to the entire network? Should the network be rewarding your behavior?

<h1>Pros - Why Self-Voting Is Good</h1>

* **You're a serious STEEM investors who needs to see a good ROI to remain engaged.**

    The way I like to think about this argument compares Steem Power holders to bitcoin miners. If someone invests $10,000 in a miner to obtain their "fair share" of the bitcoin rewards pool, no one complains at all. No one cries foul-play or considers that person a bad actor, even if their actions and investment decrease the rewards for everyone else. If that same person invests $10,000 in Steem Power and starts posting, commenting, and voting all their own stuff up with a similar mindset that a portion of the rewards pool is their "fair share" based on their investment, are they actually wrong? Just as the Bitcoin protocol allows for ASICs, the Steem blockchain allows for self-voting (and there is no real way to stop it anyway). If a Steem Power investor doesn't see an ROI incentive here, they will go elsewhere and the value of the entire network could go down. We all have an incentive to see Steem investors gain rewards, stick around, and bring in more Steem investors.

* **You're sending an important signal about the quality of your voting.**

    If the network agrees with your self-vote, they may join in (especially if they are follow voting you via a voting trail). If the network does not agree, you've given them important insight into your process of determining quality. A self-vote on low quality content may provide more signal than any other action, potentially leading to unfollows, lost trail voters, loss of perceived status and reputation, etc.

* **You've invested real money and time into Steemit in order to have power here.**

    Some people are afraid of the concept of power. I am not, only the immoral misuse of it. I see power and influence as closely related. I greatly appreciate power used voluntarily to benefit humanity. For me, I see this influence/power dynamic play out in the comments or in the newly created posts page where high Steem Power authors who self-vote get to have their ideas, their influence, stand out and rise to the top. That's a good incentive to purchase Steem and power it up. It's part of the design of this system.

With that said, I'd like to mention another point. To me, it's arbitrary to be okay with self-voting on a root post but opposed to self-voting on a post with a parent (i.e. a comment). The blockchain doesn't really care or make much of a distinction. Each comment can be viewed as a standalone post. In my opinion, much of this thinking comes from the default action on Steemit.com which votes up a newly created root post immediately. Notably, <a href="https://beta.chainbb.com/">ChainBB</a> does not vote on your new posts by default.

<h2>So now that we've unpacked all this, where does that leave us?</h2>

Could it be that the **Pro** and **Con** list above is too black and white? What if the ideal behavior for everyone is somewhere in the middle? Maybe we shouldn't demonize those who upvote themselves without first understanding their justifications and asking the tough question of whether or not their actions, over the long run, will increase or decrease the price of STEEM and the mass adoption and use of the Steem blockchain. Maybe taking a hard stance either way isn't beneficial.

As this discussion has taken place since hard fork 19, I've been thinking about my own actions a lot more.

The last week or so, I've stopped voting up my own root posts (note, one of these is a Resteem I did vote for, so ignore that).

<center><img src="https://content.screencast.com/users/lukestokes/folders/Jing/media/7c9375f5-3a75-4ab5-9fd2-484671714176/00003522.png"></center>

I was curious how not voting on my posts would impact the rewards and number of votes I get. When I compare to the week before, I see what looks like a pattern:

<center><img src="https://content.screencast.com/users/lukestokes/folders/Jing/media/d1528b03-c660-47d2-8939-1791faed912b/00003506.png"></center>

I seem to have had more votes (and thus, higher payouts) when I voted up my own posts.

I've been thinking about that, wondering why that is. I know some people follow vote my account meaning they've gone to <a href="https://streemian.com/profile/curationtrail">Streamian's Curation Trail</a> system and added `lukestokes`. Could it be when I don't vote up my own posts, those accounts also don't vote and any accounts following them in turn miss that vote as well? By not voting on my root posts, are they losing out on curation rewards they'd otherwise get and could that mean I could lose vote followers?

From this perspective, maybe a root post and a comment are actually different. Maybe we should continue to vote up own root posts but keep the self-voting on comments to a minimum? Or maybe I'm imagining a pattern and creating a narrative when neither actually exist. Maybe we should use our new 4x voting power to support other authors instead of ourselves.

Maybe we're back to the original discussion about fairness and (dare I say it) privilege. If someone's just starting out, their own vote might be the only vote they get until they build a following. Someone like me who's been building a following for a year still does very well without my own vote (though I may be leaving something on the table by not voting up my own posts).

I don't have the answers, but as always, I enjoy tinkering with the system to find what works, what doesn't, and what benefits the community.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

When is self-voting okay, if ever?

Why the stigma towards how investors use their Steem Power but no stigma towards how miners use their mining rigs?

<sub>(<a href="https://pixabay.com/en/button-yes-no-red-green-icon-32259/">image source</a>, CC0 public domain)</sub>

**Edit:** Looks like the default policy on new posts will be changing as this PR was merged in: https://github.com/steemit/condenser/pull/1541 

-----

<p>
    <div class="pull-left">
        <a href="https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@lukestokes/my-name-is-luke-let-s-create-the-world-we-want-to-live-in"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/steemimgimgs/2016/10/23/luke_stokes_head_shot31b50.png" /></a>
    </div>
    <em><a href="https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@lukestokes/my-name-is-luke-let-s-create-the-world-we-want-to-live-in">Luke Stokes</a> is a father, <a href="https://steemit.com/@corinnestokes">husband</a>, <a href="https://www.foxy.io/">business owner</a>, programmer, and voluntaryist who wants to help create a world we all want to live in. Visit <a href="http://understandingblockchainfreedom.com/">UnderstandingBlockchainFreedom.com</a></em>
</p>

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👍 sean-king, teamsteem, arhag, gavvet, nanzo-scoop, ausbitbank, billbutler, vortac, eeks, sephiroth, sizzlingmonkeys, sterlinluxan, timsaid, themonetaryfew, tarekadam, james212, midnas-howler, ajvest, jasonstaggers, churdtzu, jaki01, kaylinart, dwinblood, kyriacos, dragonslayer109, creadordelfuturo, penguinpablo, dexter-k, infovore, rapp, pharesim, nonameslefttouse, bryan-imhoff, intothewild, sethlinson, hilarski, kenny-crane, personz, jedau, cristi, paradise-paradox, thewisesloth, paulcoman, jacor, reddust, cryptofreedom, andu, damirkatusic, solar, chitty, berkah, steem-id, touchman, jademont, tastetwist, lexiconical, pnc, davebrewer, runridefly, biophil, healthyrecipe, scaredycatguide, tim-beck, meesterboom, and 226 others
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`post_id`	6,368,904
`author`	lukestokes
`permlink`	self-voting-scammy-behavior-rational-roi-or-something-else
`category`	steemit
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`created`	2017-07-06 19:18:15
`last_update`	2017-07-06 20:33:51
`depth`	0
`children`	292
`net_rshares`	25,712,848,031,538
`last_payout`	2017-07-13 19:18:15
`cashout_time`	1969-12-31 23:59:59
`total_payout_value`	102.350 SBD
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`pending_payout_value`	0.000 SBD
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`root_title`	"Self-Voting: Scammy Behavior, Rational ROI, or Something Else?"
`beneficiaries`	`[]`
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properties (23)vote details (291)

voter	rshares	pct
berkah	53,826,438,447	15%
pharesim	103,495,092,773	0.1%
sandra	16,722,855,489	6%
ihashfury	2,143,672,811	1.56%
boy	645,450,697	100%
steem-id	53,577,891,704	15%
bue-witness	787,018,124	100%
bunny	105,929,396	100%
arhag	1,654,566,277,189	5%
ajvest	275,937,659,872	100%
bue	13,377,741,297	100%
mini	344,982,684	100%
jason	7,740,331,953	2.16%
healthcare	128,564,546	100%
daniel.pan	203,392,126	100%
chitty	55,568,914,996	10%
pnc	47,709,469,085	15%
nomoreheroes7	8,686,533,619	10%
jademont	48,661,087,856	50%
gavvet	1,245,230,090,381	10%
holabebe	0	100%
eeks	711,369,558,390	100%
germanaure	353,447,999	1%
teamsteem	2,735,377,111,861	15%
nanzo-scoop	1,168,274,374,342	20%
steve-walschot	3,933,406,285	10%
mummyimperfect	10,333,979,461	20%
gridcoinman	7,585,311,447	20%
andu	58,787,264,842	100%
dragonslayer109	138,705,382,424	10%
ak2020	39,261,384,877	20%
midnas-howler	282,829,981,212	33%
billbutler	1,085,733,089,542	100%
writewords	729,261,611	11%
cm-steem	2,497,640,936	1%
churdtzu	250,159,076,990	100%
tim-beck	43,687,624,868	50%
paradise-paradox	70,606,842,506	100%
kenny-crane	81,148,984,329	20%
bravenewcoin	14,549,159,753	100%
kaylinart	186,857,318,408	12%
infovore	123,890,459,206	10%
schro	4,044,563,951	24%
sean-king	6,028,685,779,047	100%
angusleung100	927,560,303	100%
jonnyrevolution	8,590,211,831	7%
superfreek	2,433,543,824	100%
damirkatusic	55,816,206,040	100%
michaellamden68	807,477,202	1%
jholdsworthy	17,325,420,920	100%
lauralemons	3,271,280,512	7.5%
stealthtrader	7,976,316,755	100%
ausbitbank	1,132,345,124,815	10%
jacor	63,719,618,314	10%
livingfree	31,066,206,769	1%
vortac	864,925,429,269	30%
gikitiki	5,206,628,615	25%
biophil	45,380,988,016	100%
dwinblood	165,306,159,127	25%
igster	16,621,194,059	10%
sephiroth	606,868,773,058	100%
meesterboom	40,267,382,414	10%
corinnestokes	36,162,014,166	100%
benjiberigan	9,848,145,736	100%
james212	337,855,346,128	100%
jedau	72,443,778,956	100%
crazymumzysa	11,387,162,930	10%
roundoar03	10,762,566,716	100%
daynewright	22,559,586,206	75%
team-leibniz	35,159,650,270	40%
brianphobos	33,129,930,599	100%
pipokinha	4,272,703,432	10%
rapp	110,775,461,431	100%
sterlinluxan	509,078,057,259	100%
drbec	692,914,561	24%
jasonstaggers	257,281,624,842	100%
ap2002	51,468,832	100%
craigslist	86,992,889	100%
timsaid	442,333,913,940	5%
elena000	144,413,040	100%
themagus	29,154,058,078	10%
cristi	72,124,934,758	20%
fooblic	9,081,732,590	99%
bryan-imhoff	96,820,265,446	50%
scaredycatguide	43,858,858,257	10%
laissezfairedr	603,212,222	100%
solar	55,727,683,572	100%
razberrijam	1,209,140,323	50%
intothewild	95,437,563,991	100%
kyriacos	142,566,138,358	25%
lamech-m	2,993,435,495	15%
seraph	0	100%
stevescoins	19,197,311,280	10%
skylineking88	2,665,286,279	100%
cryptomancer	17,363,787,107	13%
samstonehill	21,252,839,017	10%
creadordelfuturo	130,132,541,185	50%
andrewawerdna	15,816,168,505	100%
sethlinson	89,513,284,720	100%
hilarski	87,490,311,882	33%
onetree	11,695,602,712	11%
gduran	4,098,584,998	20%
leesmoketree	20,071,204,921	15%
themonetaryfew	374,626,645,829	100%
franks	36,043,916,717	100%
runridefly	46,306,875,816	14%
wannabite	1,852,980,931	25%
penguinpablo	129,859,550,370	11%
yzomri	5,869,292,824	100%
dadview	212,623,693	100%
kyusho	9,649,602,667	5%
profitgenerator	13,145,305,458	100%
the-ego-is-you	1,252,994,246	11%
dexter-k	127,807,145,483	40%
rusticman1	1,795,723,753	100%
morkrock	1,394,556,442	100%
allyouneedtoknow	7,068,255,129	19.8%
abh12345	2,131,622,916	6%
heroic15397	8,880,585,732	100%
i-repost	311,017,125	100%
tarekadam	338,113,892,056	35%
t-bot	3,810,240,769	20%
rynow	15,094,663,661	10%
luzcypher	15,866,872,108	25%
bosjaya	126,324,810	50%
reddust	60,142,325,290	20%
jaki01	208,613,166,503	10%
slider2990	33,753,399,192	100%
farrisyl	613,584,941	100%
nonameslefttouse	97,973,300,815	20%
black-eye	153,994,632	50%
keuudeip	864,858,388	10%
erelas	419,074,735	100%
aker4444	751,030,630	100%
jonathanxvi	2,334,011,722	10%
wagnertamanaha	6,848,514,948	100%
mafeeva	17,561,063,181	20%
cryptofreedom	59,545,284,243	100%
valiozzi	1,997,505,669	100%
yaariart	743,136,656	100%
personz	80,754,451,647	100%
darth-azrael	2,865,651,617	7%
sebastianjago	19,477,009,038	5%
davidcurwain	247,209,913	100%
pavelkanks	273,816,294	100%
thewisesloth	65,392,823,261	100%
dzboston33	1,488,055,949	7%
len.george	7,562,994,176	33%
terencehill888	326,146,190	100%
macstyly	2,153,326,661	100%
darth-cryptic	485,205,197	7%
estronitex	2,039,840,426	100%
sebhofmann	16,181,308,705	100%
tabea	2,599,614,328	2%
inna-yatsuk	5,222,699,463	100%
nicnicy	2,526,052,051	100%
honeybeee	6,033,449,099	97%
oluwoleolaide	332,010,198	1%
crawfish37	11,602,268,465	100%
raftingmagazine	11,269,531,626	100%
redje	125,472,573	100%
almvide	1,127,025,411	7.5%
awesomianist	436,600,084	1.5%
aismor	351,493,539	100%
velimir	216,746,329	1%
airmatti	1,016,515,189	5%
eightyyroldself	6,734,883,565	100%
paulcoman	64,038,327,660	100%
stillwater	4,267,975,772	100%
andrewdaines	287,929,575	20%
ecentrally	4,359,208,763	100%
aarkay	124,527,660	100%
jawaida	9,614,538,913	15%
coolbowser	30,543,569,633	51%
endthefed2017	70,817,763	10%
resistancemedic	7,874,418,406	100%
sv67216721	4,956,766,363	5%
captainobviou3	3,951,878,378	100%
blakejames	3,649,682,025	100%
tbg1972	5,446,202,330	100%
surfyogi	0	1%
ylgv	6,393,366,230	100%
mandagoi	1,971,751,553	2%
hope777	8,914,511,093	100%
jonny-clearwater	37,536,674,996	100%
manojpatel280690	999,971,274	100%
stackin	35,841,656,734	5%
userperson321	6,170,478,919	100%
elowin	8,207,132,799	100%
schro.one	2,269,716,014	24%
roomservice	2,987,459,734	10%
leomichael	15,145,557,886	10%
florekus	3,000,730,742	100%
brendanwenzel	3,585,310,491	5%
catboy	35,853,845,174	100%
captinevil	563,170,467	100%
lexiconical	47,861,925,057	5%
dpencilpusher	4,796,876,151	100%
godswill	491,303,568	100%
guiltyparties	1,370,118,820	100%
ireneirkaola	293,611,017	100%
seymourbucks	190,851,870	4%
fairbee	1,198,546,119	100%
cryptohustler	7,718,271,825	100%
xerxes612	1,247,008,672	100%
vmining	2,398,660,268	25%
roever	3,520,974,434	100%
patriot	5,456,301,904	100%
xdauqzaru	740,864,369	100%
guzman	1,891,706,986	100%
jeffreylikeyou	314,362,332	100%
epixar	56,181,883	100%
ottostephens	11,881,812,155	100%
brandylynne	2,568,833,874	100%
ray.luv.music	1,347,554,949	10.09%
daydreams4rock	816,400,905	4%
sambo-rambo	374,988,225	100%
misty1z	13,845,767,107	100%
jaminguy	1,143,297,029	100%
silversmyth	1,543,985,771	100%
tastetwist	48,036,156,766	100%
healthyrecipe	45,270,185,498	100%
waza	1,260,497,077	100%
timcrypto	798,209,468	100%
deep1111	6,792,353,068	100%
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@moderninvestor · Jul 6 '17

$0.46

I dont see any part of this as a bad thing, its part of the code, its allowed , the creators know about it, and its not "illegal" per say because its part of the system

its ALSO a way for smaller people to start out, whales wont always upvote people, so even just a small 0.02 cents to new people might be an incentive to work harder and make more content on the platform

regardless if people are giving themselves 2.45 or $128.99, theyre not hurting anyone, their actions dont affect anyone else, and theyre not stealing from other people.... why is this still a topic to discuss?

👍 lukestokes, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

$0.10

>  their actions dont affect anyone else

No? It removes rewards from the rewards pool in a way many think is not helpful to the network. That impacts everyone by leaving fewer rewards for others.

👍 penguinpablo, bryan-imhoff

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@manojpatel280690 · Jul 6 '17

I think self voting is not good ...because  some of the steemians post plantly of post in a n  upvote the post ...

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@timcrypto · Jul 6 '17

Great post Luke, i been on here few weeks now I'm still learning the voting game myself 👍🏼
Trying to stick to good posts not just voting on any random sh*t lol

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@michellerhey · Jul 6 '17

$0.51

I suppose jealousy is the biggest factor. People don't see how much a miner makes. How much a top Steemit account makes is very public knowledge. I actually saw somebody try to call out a popular travel blogger a while ago, because she didn't upvote every single comment on her posts. She probably gets hundreds of comments a day, but this person tried to tell her she was greedy for not upvoting his comment. LOL

👍 lukestokes, stevescoins, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@pathforger · Jul 6 '17

That person probably did not understand that voting power is limited and recovers by 20% daily... and so needs to be used with a degree of conservatism. ^_^

Alternatively... 'entitlement' - though I do not personally attribute the term to people who 'try'.

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@vegeto · Jul 6 '17 (edited)

its a win win for all if we use stremian

👍 mykos

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@mykos · Jul 7 '17

there is no problem in a 6 star hotel lol. that's what steemit is compared to everyone else lol. so yes it's all win win and all upside.

👍 mykos

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@mykos · Jul 7 '17

btw i stand corrected guys... i should have said 8 star hotels... lol..

👍 mykos

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@stealthtrader · Jul 6 '17

$1.22

I feel bad for the new posters that never see anything over a penny.. even on great posts, because they have no voting power and no followers to get their posts any attention.

👍 lukestokes, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth, lostisthesoul

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@stevescoins · Jul 6 '17 (edited)

$0.26

the best best for new Steemers is to read and comment on more established Steemers' posts; to find areas of shared interest; to make going back and looking at their posts interesting...not by follow-begging or "come and see", but by showing they can participate in that area of interest with some value

👍 intothewild, stealthtrader

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@stealthtrader · Jul 6 '17

$0.04

True I would say when i joined the best way to meet other members of the community was to interact by commenting amd getting to know people.

👍 stevescoins

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

$0.04

But was it really so different when you and I started? Yes, the pond is bigger now, but the result is the same. If you know people who have SP (or if you buy some yourself), you'll do well. If not, it's like tweeting to no followers. No one will notice. Steemit is social. It's about relationships.

👍 stealthtrader

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@stealthtrader · Jul 6 '17

True.. so newbies should bring their followers and friends from other sites and let the blockchain the rest.

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@captainobviou3 · Jul 6 '17

This was the fall of the Democratic Republic. Any time you can vote yourself money, the outcome is a political nightmare.

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@tunmyatwin · Jul 6 '17

done sir

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@pathforger · Jul 6 '17

$0.92

Well... I did not initially expect this topic to receive such an in-depth run-down! But now that you have gone through the pros and cons, I am glad that you did.

It is hard to expect a person not to upvote his or her own content when that literally means shafting their own rewards. Of course - I suspect that this is more advantageous 'once' your vote impacts the pool significantly. That may trigger others to post to try to get on early.

Incidentally, I recently posted a suggestion about '<a href= "https://steemit.com/steemit/@pathforger/suggestion-lets-weave-steemit-data-flowers">data flowers</a>'. 

I feel that it may address some of the concerns you've voiced about the quality of content being posted out there - even if it does not truly solve a number of other issues - such as the disparity and consequently harder task of getting one's voice heard, as caused by the flattening of rewards.

To conclude, since I as a minnow have very little to gain from self-up-voting, I think I'll continue to refrain from the practice - and let others judge my content.

👍 lukestokes, stevescoins, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

Great post. I commented and voted it up.

👍 pathforger

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@pathforger · Jul 6 '17

Thank you @lukestokes! 

Your feedback was very helpfully 'on the nose' and I'll be modding that flaw out of it. :c)

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@yahyaoa · Jul 6 '17

$0.69

i agree 100% it's not correct to vote for yourself

👍 gentlebot

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@stevescoins · Jul 6 '17

$4.00

A concise assessment of both pros and cons

One question I have is whether the community looks at investment in writing is equal to a cash investment...does it matter where the SP power from?

The underlying theme that runs through all these posts, your and others, is that Steemit *isn't* fair.  People who take the time and effort to build networks of readers, and I daresay *friends* are going to be rewarded a lot more than those who put effort into writing...unless the roulette wheel lands on their post that day ;>

Finally, for me, it's not a self-voting process that is the question, but rather whether the value of any given self-vote is valid.  My own judgement is that a "me too" comment isn't worth an upvote, but that if you spend time on a comment or a post, you should reward yourself.

This was a nice read, thank you

👍 lukestokes, jasonstaggers, kaylinart, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth, truthforce, sarahjay, onetree, sethlinson, erelas

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

$0.05

Great comment, thank you.

I think the "earned" SP verses mined or purchased SP is a misnomer. What if someone earned BTC solving childhood diseases for a decade and then decided to invest that money into Steem Power? Are they less deserving than someone who writes blog posts? I don't think we can measuring things so easily.

👍 stevescoins, sethlinson, erelas

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@stevescoins · Jul 6 '17

$0.06

I'd say that both writing and a cash buy-in provide value to the platform; the first in providing content and the second in *proving* value.

And as you say, hard to measure which benefits the platform more

👍 truthforce, sethlinson, erelas

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2 replies

@onetree · Jul 6 '17

$0.05

Well said!

👍 stevescoins, onetree

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@yoda1917 · Jul 6 '17

$0.15

What is even more unfair are people building a huge following list using unfair tactics.  I personally want to do everything organically so I am not taking or inhibiting anyone else.  If I succeed in the end noone can say I took advantage.  [This is what I mean](https://steemit.com/steemit/@yoda1917/steemians-with-a-humble-following-level-playing-field-to-members-with-a-huge-following)

👍 patriciakm, fenequedvm

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@kenny-crane · Jul 6 '17 (edited)

$8.27

A long time ago, when I was a software engineer in an AI lab, we did some work with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic">Fuzzy Logic</a>.  It sums up my approach to almost all knowledge.  Nothing is totally black or while, but its some shade of grey and that shade may change due to context.

Self voting is fuzzy to me.  In my opinion, people stating out with low SP should always up vote their own posts and occasionally their comments.  

People like me in the middle should up vote their posts if they are doing about 1 or 2 posts a day.  Seems to me that if they are doing a ton of posts every day, then up voting them all might be seen as an attempt to take as much reward as possible, which may be good for them and less good for the community.  I'm not against the occasional comment up vote at this level either.

Whales who post occasionally should up vote themselves, maybe at less than full power.  Up voting their own comments might not be the best idea.

But its very fuzzy!  Different people are going to have different ideas.  How do you define hot?  What does it mean to be tall?  When is self up voting bad?  All fuzzy!

👍 eeks, kaylinart, lukestokes, thewisesloth, truthforce, stevescoins, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth, daynewright, contact95, guzman, onetree, mykos, surfyogi

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

$0.19

Great perspective. I like it.

👍 kenny-crane

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@kaylinart · Jul 6 '17

$0.22

Wow I agree! My brother just started here recently. His vote is worth only 0.02 and I actually told him he should upvote himself, And his comments. That way he can build himself a bit as fast as possible. It's kind of a difficult decision on whether or not you should, When you are much smaller than everyone else. It doesn't bother me personally when I see smaller people upvote themselves, but not everyone will agree on that. because at what point do we stop?

👍 kenny-crane, blakejames

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@jaki01 · Jul 9 '17

$0.35

In my case he would better upvote my articles instead his comments, because I upvote commenting newbies, as long as they upvote my articles as well (even if that has more of a symbolic value). If everybody keeps upvoting himself (or close members of his 'club' whatever they write) the motivation of writing time consuming high quality articles decreases. In my opinion that can't be the sense of this platform.

👍 kobold-djawa

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4 replies

@stillwater · Jul 7 '17

$0.21

I like this perspective also and yes have and do up vote myself but with that being said the majority of my up voting power goes to content that I want to see more of.   I see nothing wrong with the up voting of one's own self  especially in the beginning of their steem journey.  Thank you Mr. Stokes for  starting a great discussion.

👍 kenny-crane

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@nutela · Jul 7 '17

$0.20

I'll try it, thanks everyone for the insights!

👍 kenny-crane

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@truthforce · Jul 8 '17 (edited)

$1.67

While I agree minnows should largely upvote their own comments/posts, I wanted to make everyone aware it doesn't really do much. It takes 112 to 119 days of upvoting your own comments 10 times a day just to double what you have(assuming no one else upvotes you). Upvoting yourself when you have the 75ish steempower they give you doesn't really do anything because it goes away after a certain point. You might get 30 days I think it is before it goes away, or until you earn a certain amount.

The only real way to get ahead here is making quality posts frequently, or commenting good comments a lot, or having a following to bring with you, or buying into the system(I did purchase about 195ish Steem).

Upvoting yourself without first buying more Steem is an exercise in futility, because you will be making less than 20 cents per day when you do your 10 upvotes. A person could make way more by putting some thoughtfulness into their comment or by making their ow blog post.

**Usually when someone upvotes a blog post I make, I upvote them back then and there or a day or so later. I go back and look at who upvoted me and click their name and upvote if they had a good blog post.** I think that is how Steem should be used for the most part. But just my opinion from a newbie! :)

👍 truthforce, kenny-crane, cryptopal

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@ionlysaymeep · Jul 8 '17

meep

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@cryptopal · Jul 30 '17

$1.36

Although I had noticed this trend of upvoting of own posts and did not think much of it, I just happened to see this conversation. @truthforce, I am in agreement  with the points you have raised above.

👍 truthforce

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@fproductions · Jul 6 '17

$0.11

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/620/799/57a.jpg

👍 lukestokes, krazykrista, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

Hahah... it's been a while since I saw this one.

👍 fproductions

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@tastetwist · Jul 6 '17

$0.11

I currently up-vote my blogs a little bit, but mainly up-vote other people's  blogs if it is good. I do both at the moment. I learned from @jerrybanfield about self-voting. 
https://media.giphy.com/media/11R3c3jnv6o9oc/giphy.gif

👍 tastetwist

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@makrotheblack · Jul 6 '17

Thanks for explaining that,this is only my second week and I don't fully understand how the voting system works. So it was really helpful for me.

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@freedomnation · Jul 6 '17 (edited)

$0.29

Masturbation Steemit style.

👍 davebrewer, freedomnation

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@darvi · Jul 6 '17

$0.09

So what happens if you vote your own post?

👍 darvi

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@caronellis · Jul 6 '17 (edited)

$1.60

Hello, this was very insightful to read.
I'm a newbie here and have been watching many video's on YouTube about tips for using SteemIt. The few posts I have made have had negligible votes/comments, when looking at the trending pages and intorduceyourself you can see people with 100's votes earning rewards, it's like oh man where on earth do I start ? How do I even get my posts seen? This is not driven by a desire to make money, but lets be honest here every single person on here wants to earn some!

I want to connect with like minded people, when you're a deep thinker like my self, quite an alternative thinker full of thoughts and philosophies that most people around you in every day life could not even begin to comprehend, I'm excited at the thought that I might find these people on here, I might learn something, I might even be able to help people. But not if I can't get followers, not if my post's have one vote and £.01 value and drop off the home pages in a flash because there is no power behind it. If I want to be seen and heard I have to take steps to build up my account no???

One guy said that up voting your own comments is a good way to build up if you're just starting out, as you correctly pointed out sometimes my own vote is the only one on my post, and I actually do not make random comments just so I can upvote my comment, but I will upvote any comments I make. I have made some lengthy comments on people's post's which actually have meaning (in my opinion), and I upvote these.

Yet at the same time I'm not exactly at ease with it, he also showed some site where you enter a user name and it will automatically vote for you. As a newbie who entered Steemit thinking maybe this is something different (it is different but not in the way i expected), where you can share intelligent content which has nothing to do with X factor, or half naked women and actually be appreciated. It almost feels a little like SteemIt is actually a game you have to try and figure out. Work out the system and all the tricks, which mean's it's not about the content I write, or well not so much, it's more about how well I manage to play the game, as to whether or not my content even gets seen.

It's frustrating and exciting at the same time, but I agree, I don't think it's entirely fair. And I wont upvote my comment here out of respect for your post :)

👍 lukestokes, greatdabu, stevescoins, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth, onetree, paasz, lessbeatentrack

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

My post, hopefully, took the middle ground. Maybe it's fine for you to upvote your comment. Maybe it's not.

We all get to figure that out together.

I know exactly what you feel like because I felt it just the same 365 days ago. One year ago today I posted my first Steemit post. I had to figure out what works and what doesn't. I had to leave literally thousands of insightful comments like you've left here to get noticed. I had to build relationships. If you're curious, scroll way back through my blog to read some of my earliest posts. They may help you work through that frustrating/exciting feeling.

👍 caronellis

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@caronellis · Jul 6 '17

Yes in fairness your post is very neutral. I am still getting my head around this whole system and I will openly admit I am not fully aware of how upvoting my own posts/comments can negatively impact the community. It is really great to read all the comments on a thread like this as I feel much of the 'Top 10 tips for Steemit Newbies' video's are definitely geared at making money and this side of things we're certainly not explained in any of them. I am learning all the time, thank you for taking the time to reply to me I will go and have a read through your earlier posts and try and navigate my way through this maze :)

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@franks · Jul 6 '17

$0.46

I don't agree with voting up your own comments. 
As in, "What a Wonderful Post" and I'll have the 100% 2 cents or $100 for that fantastic contribution to the Steemit Community. Thank you very much.
It's not only acting the Nob, it's also unethical. 
If you want to enrich yourself with Steemit mining. 
Write a great Post. (Like this one) Then up vote it.

But let the comment up vote, be someone, who actually likes the comment. 
And go and use your selfie up vote on someone that deserves it

👍 lukestokes, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@dgarzongg · Jul 6 '17

Cool.

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@chitty · Jul 6 '17

$2.78

> I seem to have had more votes (and thus, higher payouts) when I voted up my own posts.

If you have a decent amount of SP, voting on your own post can also give it some extra exposure, people tend to read posts that have some payout as they see other people must have valued it, so they go and take a look too. 

I think people are more inclined to look at a post that has $20 than one that has $0.01

👍 lukestokes, kaylinart, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth, stevescoins, dpencilpusher, sarahjay, sethlinson, pavli7

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@pavli7 · Jul 6 '17

@chitty you took the words out of my mouth :P
I also tend to look at posts that generated more "dollars"

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

I fully agree. That could be it right there, but I was surprised to see so many more votes on posts I did last week. It's also possible many other factors (variability in the quality of my writing, this being a holiday week in the US, etc, etc) had more to do with it than anything else.

👍 sethlinson

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@kaylinart · Jul 6 '17

I've noticed this as well. Some of the newbies with no power, come out in the "new" section with 0 or 0.01 while I can come out a bit higher. Which gives me more exposure.
I feel this is somewhat justified because I have put more work into the platform than some of those newbies. So It's kinda nice that I can make myself "stick" out a bit. Maybe we could even have a limit of self votes per day, that Isn't included into our 10 or whatever it is. That we can give to ourselves at our own discretion, Whether it's a Blog post or comment.

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@michellerhey · Jul 6 '17

A limit sounds fair. Or perhaps a self-vote could deplete voting power faster than voting for somebody else?

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2 replies

@l0k1 · Jul 7 '17 (edited)

I don't look at the number, I look at the headline, the preview image and the preview blurb. If I was only loving a post for its rewards, why would I ever leave the trending page?

If your policy was universally applied, no new users would be able to get a word in edgewise.

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@davebrewer · Jul 6 '17

$0.59

You made the assumption part way through that upvoting a main article and upvoting a comment are the same.   You are right in theory.  You are wrong in practice.    Look at your own post above.  Have you ever put that much thought and time into a comment?

The conclusion is real simple - and you proved it further down in your post.

Upvoting your own posts is fine.  If you are posting such crap that you can't even upvote main  posts, stop posting.

Upvoting your own comments is tacky. I did that for awhile, but then saw the error of my ways.

STEEM On !!

Dave

👍 lukestokes, demotruk, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

> Have you ever put that much thought and time into a comment?

Surprisingly, I have. Ask @jedau. I've had many deep comments with him that he'll argue impacted him in very important ways. It wasn't about rewards, it was about a relationship and an important conversation.

That said, I agree with your general assessment, but I'm wondering, do I even need to upvote my own posts? I still get by okay without it and now I have more voting power for comments and posts from others.

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@cryptotraderx · Jul 6 '17

yeah i agree with you, upvoting your own comments sort of proves that you only commented for the money and not to engage in a conversation with this great community

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@bryan-imhoff · Jul 6 '17

$3.79

To me it's all a matter of the percentage. If you're splitting your vote power 50/50 between self and others, I'll be ok with it, though I'd prefer less self voting. As it creeps above that I'll start to grimace, and at levels of 80%+ self voting it's just egregious.
It's not illegal, yes the code allows it, but it's a matter of community standards and etiquette which we all organically form by our behavior. No one can stop a person from self up voting 100%, but no one can stop a person from posting plagiarized content either. What we do control is the community reaction to the situation.

I feel like the bitcoin miner comparison is somewhat flawed. I think a better analogy is to consider ourselves shareholders. I mentioned in another comment elsewhere, that if you can show me a company where the shareholders voted that all profit be paid out to them in the form of dividends, completely foregoing spending on employee raises, hiring, development, improvements to infrastructure, etc... and that company is thriving... then I'll change my opinion.
That's essentially what 100% self voters are doing, and they're relying on other more rational voters to pick up their slack and keep the overall organization running while they continue to reap profits that others are foregoing for the sake of the business and a more long term vision.
If heavy self voters consider themselves short term investors and follow this valid profit strategy, it's up to long term shareholders to down vote them in the interests of the whole. If people feel the self voting practice is harmful to long term success , it's ROI needs to be mitigated and made less profitable.
We force people to self tag potentially objectionable content with the nsfw tag so that it can be properly filtered. If they don't they'll have that content filtered for them through downvotes. We do this because we recognize that having such content clearly and randomly visible on the site would be a huge deterrent to it's growth and success. There is no code, no rule prohibiting people from posting porn under the tag familyfriendly. So to me the "it's part of the code, it's allowed" argument doesn't fly.

Of course that kind of depends on how "allowed" is being used. If it means that we should leave heavy self voters to their own strategies and devices then I disagree. If however someone takes the "code allows it" stance and equally agrees that if self voters begin to be flagged into oblivion, they are equally ok with that, then I respect their viewpoint because it's consistent and based on community consensus.

👍 lukestokes, l0k1, demotruk, kaylinart, lukestokes.mhth, stevescoins, djsimul, dpencilpusher, sarahjay, onetree, sethlinson, elfspice

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

$0.28

Great comment! I agree, I like your analogy better in that, unlike mining, here blogging is the new mining and rewards are what interest people in participating in this platform. If those rewards are forever unreachable because too much self-voting, the platform itself will not thrive.

👍 demotruk, startupacademy, bryan-imhoff

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@bryan-imhoff · Jul 6 '17

Yup. I envision it like some vulture capital firm in the business world buying up stake in a company, selling off it's assets and bleeding it dry at a tidy profit and moving on.
It really got under my skin when I saw a user who literally only up votes themselves, 100%, make a post touting how they're stopping their power down because they're so committed to the platform and asking for others to help them reach their Steem Power goals. That just seemed a bit too audacious to me. And they're getting legitimate sincere votes from other users who have no chance of it being reciprocated. Not everyone goes into a blockchain explorer or keeps an eye on stats, most would not have any way of noticing this kind of behavior.

I'd like to see some kind of visualization, badge, meter, have it factor into rep score, whatever. If someone comes on the platform and never upvotes another living soul, I don't think they should be able to build up to a 70 rep. I'm sure if people saw this community building metric at a glance, it would influence their voting behavior.

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1 reply

@onetree · Jul 6 '17

$0.52

Yes! I agree with the 50/50 concept!

👍 onetree, bryan-imhoff

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@l0k1 · Jul 7 '17

$0.23

I think the stockholder model is precisely what it in fact is, even down to how your votes count by your number of shares. Crypto mining is not anything to do with organising the actions of a group. It is just participating in a lottery. I have seen attempts to argue that Steem was intended to be also a lottery, but this is wrong, because if it was, why have a voting system at all? Not that anyone with big SP is not entitled to do as they wish randomly distributing it.

👍 demotruk, bryan-imhoff

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@nonameslefttouse · Jul 6 '17 (edited)

$0.94

I might be able to explain this:
>I seem to have had more votes (and thus, higher payouts) when I voted up my own posts.

> I've been thinking about that, wondering why that is.

.. using a bit of an analogy found [here](https://steemit.com/life/@nonameslefttouse/bleeding-ninja-turtle-and-the-state-of-the-nonameslefttouse-address).

👍 lukestokes

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

$0.23

Great post. Upvoted and followed.

There's a lot of psychology involved. Heard mentality, being part of the tribe, priming, anchoring, etc. It's fascinating stuff.

👍 nonameslefttouse

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@nonameslefttouse · Jul 6 '17 (edited)

$0.35

It is truly fascinating.  From my short lived experiment, I've discovered that as long I'm playing the role of performer, actually working, and not being shady street beggar, people do not have a problem seeing money sitting out.  They don't mind adding to the pile, provided they've been entertained.

You can watch those abusing the self votes.  Notice how they will vote up bland, meaningless comments.  Nobody is coming along to add to the pile.  Nobody wants to help someone that appears as if they don't need it.  They wouldn't last a second out there on the street being a shady street beggar.  I don't see them having much of a future.

👍 lukestokes, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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2 replies

@jtstreetman · Sep 17 '17

pssst ... it's H E R D Bro ! Heard is the past tense of hear ...  This post is 2 months old, but damn it man ! What a GREAT POST and the comments are amazing ! ... While I have your attention ... Could you instruct me as how to have you be my proxy witness voter ? Please .. When you get a chance that is ... And thanks for the great read !

Read More, Reason More   ...   JTS

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7 replies

@jonny-clearwater · Jul 6 '17

$0.41

I just want to comment on "you're gaming the system".... The personal upvote is the default on every post.
Many people aren't even aware of it.
I've made a decision to disable this when I post and I still forget constantly.
They should really change that.
Anyway, my point was simply you aren't gaming the system when the system selects this choice for you.

👍 lukestokes, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17 (edited)

$0.04

Yes, that point was more along the lines of those who add "Great post!" comments and then self-vote them up to more than most new authors will make in a week.

Also, it looks like this PR got accepted, so the change you want is coming: https://github.com/steemit/condenser/pull/1541

👍 personz

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@mikenevitt · Jul 6 '17

$0.80

Very interesting article your correct in what you say but unfortunately the voting power some people have will always be unfairly used and I'm sure they would disagree they have after all large investments so I have to sit on the fence. Great article cheers mike

👍 gentlebot, mikenevitt

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@sephiroth · Jul 6 '17

$4.00

If you don't upvote yourself in the posts or replies, you reduce your chances of being seen.

I say upvote yourself imo.

👍 sephiroth, sethlinson, eeks, kaylinart, stevescoins, bryan-imhoff, sarahjay

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@sethlinson · Jul 6 '17

$3.76

I understand that feeling, and I share it to an extent, though I don't often upvote my own comments. 

However, it irks me when people upvote themselves far more than they share the love. Worst of all, when people will upvote their own comments without upvoting the post they commented on.

👍 sephiroth, kaylinart, stevescoins, bryan-imhoff

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@bryan-imhoff · Jul 6 '17

$3.81

Exactly what @sethlinson says, and a quick glance at your history @sephiroth, it looks like you upvote others at least 3 or 4 times as often as you upvote yourself. No issues there. I think the main debate and concern is those who are the opposite of your ratio, and simply "mining" Steem with low quality content and self votes.

I'll quote Justice Potter Stewart of the Supreme Court when he ruled on an obscenity case in 1964.
>I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]**(abusive self voting)**, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture **(Steem User)** involved in this case is not that.

(**Bolded** substitutions mine for the analogy!)

👍 sephiroth, kaylinart, stevescoins, sethlinson

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2 replies

@sephiroth · Jul 7 '17

Right on. I always upvote the main post if I even bother to reply to it before upvoting myself.

👍 sethlinson

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@elfspice · Jul 7 '17

As someone who previously built a minnow account up to 15,000 SP, I call BS on that claim. I got visibility by engagement and following and periodically feeding my audience with more positive and helpful feedback (account @l0k1). And I am doing it again, with a new account, although once a week I will have a boost of 85 Steem... In fact, I am just going to be cashing that out, to make sure I keep my fiat surplus ahead of my costs. I'm moving again next month. So most of the growth of this new account will be also organic.

I also like that for the most part, big accounts have stopped playing God so much with new accounts. I am sure that at least a quarter of that big gain I made over 6 months was just ned, bernie, xeldal and others, attempting to reward people for joining the network. There is some aspects of what should be going on that are purely a matter of custom, there is no way to enforce it algorithmically.

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@jaki01 · Jul 9 '17

$4.66

And <em>if</em> you upvote your comment you reduce the chances of others of being seen. :)

👍 jaki01, kobold-djawa

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@jaki01 · Jul 9 '17

Was it OK to upvote myself to increase my chances? ;)

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@muhammadyasir · Jul 6 '17

$0.60

I think taking the middle ground is the best as one wants to get a good ROI as an investor. So, it's ok if one votes himself 2 or 3 times a day on his own posts but consuming all of one's voting power on it's own and not voting any other will also result in a lower ROI. Think of that in this way if all the whales start to vote just themselves and they have not much of voting power left to upvote a good piece of content or even if they have they don't want to consume it on others coz this way the next day there voting power is not gonna reach 100%. So, what's gonna happen?

Only 1000 or so people gonna show up in trending pages and there will be nothing lower chances for anyone else to get the same visibility as the whales. Result will be same sort of content every week for the genuine readers and when something gets monotonous it becomes boring. Result will be lower readership that means more inactive users, less faith in the community and thus it falls to the ground. 

So, it's best to do both. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Keep doing that. :)

👍 lukestokes

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

The trending page? I rarely look it. Sometimes I forget to check it for a week because I'm too busy interacting with people I follow and great comments on my posts. I agree though, balance is key.

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@muhammadyasir · Jul 6 '17

Yup I know you must not have the time as you have quite a following but i was talking about from a readers perspective coz not everybody at steemit is planning to be an author. Some are purely here to find quality content and we can only provide them with that if we keep some balance.

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@hamzaoui · Jul 6 '17

$0.33

Well done post You deserve for getting Upvote from me. I appreciate on it and like it so much . Waiting for your latest post. Keep your good work and steeming on. Let's walk to my blog. I have a latest post. Your upvote is high motivation for me. Almost all Steemians do their best on this site. Keep steeming and earning.

👍 booster

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

Do you really follow 7,600+ people? How?

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@hamzaoui · Jul 6 '17

$0.33

I try to support many as i can, people who react with my post i try as i can to help them, and please sir help me if you can @lukestokes

👍 booster

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2 replies

@booster · Jul 10 '17

<p>This comment has received a 0.08 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @hamzaoui.</p>

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@stackin · Jul 6 '17

$0.47

There so many ways to look at it, only time will tell. Good post my man!!

👍 lukestokes

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

$0.32

Thanks, Stackin!

👍 stackin

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@stackin · Jul 6 '17

:)

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@erelas · Jul 6 '17

$0.81

This, so much this..."In my opinion, much of this thinking comes from the default action on Steemit.com which votes up a newly created root post immediately."

That was actually a key thing I was looking for as I read your post, and you've definitely gotten my vote.  That is switched on by default, and how many new Steemians are even going to notice or give it proper regard if they do?

Putting an equal amount of both sides of the argument out there is great and I'm personally of the mind, technical aspect of adding noise aside, if it makes the poster / commenter happy or makes sense to them, then who am I to judge?  Let them do their own thing and be happy in it.

A small criticism, though it often makes me laugh, it's "foul" not "fowl-play", and for all I know, you intended that.

A suggestion, take a look at the criticism and outright blacklisting of posters accused of comment spamming their own posts.  Example, I'm the author, I respond to a comment (from bot or human, whatever) and then some arbitrary judge with a "blacklist" comes in and says, "Don't do that or else".  I'd love to hear your thoughts on that behaviour, both sides!!

👍 lukestokes, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth, erelas

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

It won't be for much longer: https://github.com/steemit/condenser/pull/1541

I just edited the post to include a link to that.

> it's "foul" not "fowl-play",

Hahah... <a href="https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/1208353-i-suspect-fowl-play">Here we go</a>.

Thank you! I often have my wife proof read my stuff before it goes out, but I was just too excited to get this one going. I do silly things like this all the time.

> "Don't do that or else".

There are a lot of bullies in every community around the world. They are here also. My best suggestion is to learn and use <a href="https://steemit.com/peace/@lukestokes/nvc-violence-is-a-tragic-expression-of-an-unmet-need">NVC</a> knowing that all violence is a tragic expression of an unmet need. Try to understand their needs, insecurities, etc and hopefully you can meet them without letting them control your behavior.

👍 erelas

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@erelas · Jul 6 '17

I'm going to give your NVC article a deeper read, thank you for that.  I found your comment particularly telling considering you are a witness and pretty sure most know instinctively where my unhappy is directed, heck I used to be "that person".

Love the shirt, family is giggling at it now, especially since our little flock of Hazel, Prissy, and Mavis (New Hampshire Reds), would entirely get it.

Just consider that topic though, I'm always up for a good read, or leave those cards were they are laying, as I think evolution is gonna solve that issue.

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@scaredycatguide · Jul 6 '17

$0.62

Really like perspective your example of SP investors compared to crypto miners puts out there.  It really is the same in some ways.

Me personally, I upvote my posts and do not vote on my comments 99% of the time.   As much as I enjoy the community here there is still a financial component as well and I have worked hard to have some SP behind me.

👍 lukestokes, mitchelljaworski, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

$0.02

I like the perspective of not being ashamed of the success we have and the Steem Power the network has allocated to use over time. Ultimately, it's ours to use. How others perceive that use is also a consequence of our actions.

👍 scaredycatguide

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@scaredycatguide · Jul 6 '17

Ain't that the truth!

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@troof · Jul 6 '17

$0.05

You can avoid the hate on self-vote by understand that anyone could create another account and still do the self-vote too... So it would be better to promote to use more percent of your votes for curating rewards, that could also give us good income with our steem power

👍 troof

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

That's why the steem blockchain will never be able to prevent self-voting. Other accounts could do it just the same. It's all a balance against a Sybil attack.

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@roundoar03 · Jul 6 '17

$0.64

Another great post Luke! I don't think there is a right or wrong answer. I upvote all of my posts because sometimes that might be the only vote (reward I get). It does get frustrating seeing those that have large investments in steem power but don't actively engage in the Steemit Network create bogus posts (ie. a video from youtube with zero explanation as to why they posted it) simply to upvote and collect their $30. I guess if that is there prerogative then so be it, but it is annoying and I wish there were a way to curb it. I suppose people could flag those posts, but then you could ignite a fire storm of flagging which I have read has been an issue in the past.

👍 lukestokes, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

Yeah, it can be annoying. One approach is to purchase some steem to power up and demonstrate a different approach. That's what I've tried to do and let the network decide what they prefer long term.

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@valiozzi · Jul 6 '17

The self-voting functionality is built in to the platform by devs on purpose, whatever it might be, so as long as you upvote others as well, self-upvoting is pretty much ok, even if it's only a comment, which also can be very elaborate piece of art )

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

Not so fast: https://github.com/steemit/condenser/pull/1541

Self-voting can't actually be stopped by the code. People will just create other accounts to vote themselves up, if they really want to.

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@dadview · Jul 6 '17

$2.35

Top 3 things I researched when starting to post in Steemit:
1 - when I write a post, should I choose 50-50 rewards or 100%
2 - what % of voting power should I use
3 - should I vote for my own posts

Most answers seem to be personal choice. 

One thing I would like to see done as an improvement would be to limit whale voting power. 
As they gain power their max voting percentage could drop. For example they may drop to a max of only 80% per vote. This would allow them to vote more often per day but their single vote would have less power. Especially since the K19 upgrade more votes would be valuable. This may allow them to upvote more quality content (and raise viability to more material ) rather than just content from their inner group.

Darryl

👍 lukestokes, good-karma, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth, stealthtrader

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

$0.04

Hey Darryl! Thanks for commenting.

So... this is awkward for me. We were roommates in college. I've now become an "orca" which is one step below a whale. Is it wrong if I upvote your comments as part of my "inner group"? Or is that a benefit I get for earning Steem Power for so long and rewarding my friends?

The 80% cap is an interesting idea, but they can already do that be self-limiting their own voting power. They could vote thousands of times with only a 1% vote, right?

(btw, my question is somewhat rhetorical, I'm going to upvote you anyway because it's also a great comment).

👍 stealthtrader

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@dadview · Jul 6 '17

$0.39

I agree that the larger fish have paid their dues to create a community that people want to join.
I don't disagree with upvoting your inner group as that is how it is currently set up. You play with the hand that you are dealt.

It was just an idea that came up while reading alot of 
Comments and posts complaining about votes being given to friends over content.

No matter how a system is set up, there will be those who look for ways to abuse it. Those who use it as intended are the ones who will help new comers flock to Steemit and stay!

👍 good-karma, feruz, esteemapp, steempoll, bounties, demo, tipping, mysteem

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1 reply

@demotruk · Jul 7 '17 (edited)

I don't think that's wrong. It's a perk, and you are still using it socially to distribute stake (unlike a self vote which only increases the stake of the voter, which is the opposite of distribution as you have not diluted your own stake). If people feel you're going overboard with it, they can counter your votes.

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1 reply

@elfspice · Jul 7 '17

Whale voting power, relative to the rest of us, is now far lower than it used to be. This is part of the reason why we are seeing this. I am not a supporter of the concept of plutocracy, by any means, but essentially HF19 has brought a light upon the issue of self voting, and its effects socially and to the distribution patterns. Which is why it's such a hot topic now.

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@onetree · Jul 6 '17

$1.63

Well considered. There is an element I think ia overlooked. For some the income from Steemit really helps with daily expenses, especially in poorer countries. If your own upvotes provided you enough for a meal, or petrol in your car, why would you not do it? First world countries have the luxury of debating moral issues , where in third world countries there is more of a focus on survival. 

That being said. Being solely selfish will not benefit you on Steemit at all. You need to interact and allow people to feel your presence, in order to both gain and provide popularity. 

As wirh everything this is not a black and white issue, but is influenced by factors such as need and generousity, financial circumstances, strategy, and even by how much your upvote is worth. 

And....lastly, there is significantly less voting activity on Steemit since HF19, so we sometimes need oue own votes!

👍 lukestokes, onetree, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

$0.15

That's an important point, one I attempted to touch on in my post. Many here (including me) are privileged, for sure. That's why, before we vilify someone, we should better understand their motivations for upvoting themselves.

👍 onetree

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@rusticman1 · Jul 6 '17

I up vote my own comments if I receive an up vote.  Other wise I leave it alone.  With limited SP I have to be selective in my up votes.

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@krazykrista · Jul 6 '17

$0.23

I actually accidentally upvoted my post, it isn't something I would seek out to do. I think there is a setting hen making a post that I hadnt initially noticed.However, I have yet to invest anything except for time into the platform. I could understand why an investor would want to protect an investment by making it more profitable. I won't be self voting, but as with many things it's fine with me if you do

👍 lukestokes, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

Sounds like a good plan to me. Live and let live.

👍 krazykrista

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@sethlinson · Jul 7 '17 (edited)

$0.23

I self-vote my own posts because sometimes my single vote represents the majority of the value that post will get. I work hard on most of my posts but don't have enough of a following to guarantee a consistent payout.

I will very rarely vote on my own comments. I don't think what I contribute in the comments is worth all that much! Lol. If anyone disagrees, they can feel free to upvote me.

What bothers me more than anything is the selfish voting behaviour of some users. They'll comment on my blog posts but won't leave me an upvote, yet they'll upvote their own comments. I hate that. I hate seeing comments worth more than the post that they're left under.

👍 lukestokes, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

But you understand the labor theory of value is bogus. Working hard does not equal greater rewards. It's all about building a following, relationships, adding value, etc.

If someone doesn't upvote your post and they do upvote their own comment, is it a positive comment or a negative comment towards your point? I can see people saying, "Hey, look at me, here's why this post is wrong!" and not voting for it. That makes sense to me, and I may have done it myself here and there. That relates to my point above about influence and power.

👍 sethlinson

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@sethlinson · Jul 7 '17 (edited)

Yea, I didn't mean to suggest that I agree with the labour theory of value. I know it's BS lol. One of my earliest posts was about that. All I meant by my statement was that *I value* the work I put into my posts, therefore *I want* to pay myself at least a little bit.

I'm talking about people who write comments like "great post!" And give themselves ten bucks without giving me anything. 

I agree with you about leaving negative comment while not upvoting the post. I've done that. I did it just today when I found that someone had shared my Steemit Voting Power animated instructional video without giving me any credit.

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@deniskj · Jul 6 '17

I  am supporting @stevescoins comment here. Indeed if you put precious amounts of effort into creating an original and informative piece, you deserve to get maximum reward from it. 
For example this post appears well thought out and it actually provokes the mind. If you have the power why not use it on yourself too.
However, upvoting oneself in the comments, in my opinion, is not fair. The precious curation awards would be better spent on your followers who comment genuinely on your posts so as to help them grow.
After all that is the essence of a community.

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@airjordan · Jul 6 '17

$0.18

Does anyone know how to control the percentage of steem power you use?

👍 lukestokes, albertogm, airjordan, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

Once your Steem Power reaches a certain level, you'll get a slider when you vote like this: 

![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmXAsLMy6CPjWr2weqA1Au92CqmmJeNyQQa6EfHiRYR73z/image.png)

👍 airjordan

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@demotruk · Jul 6 '17

I just got really confused why the slider was appearing on my phone and not moving.

👍 eroche

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3 replies

@airjordan · Jul 7 '17

thank you guys so much i was so lost there

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@cloudculpepper · Jul 6 '17

Hmmmmmm......I see SaYs The bLinD Man!!!   Very Good!!!

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@cloudculpepper · Jul 6 '17

AmaZing Post!

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@clixmoney · Jul 6 '17

$0.12

what if I really invest real time in steemit, I have two groups in facebook one with almost 20k an other with almost 2k, I am really working hard but didn't get the result that I want, I don't have really choice just to gather steem power and upvote myself to earn a little money, I saw people upvoting themselfs, I didn't like it in the beggining but when I see myself spending half hour to write a post to get from it 1 cent and an other member write one little comment in a second and earn few dollars from it, I have to upvote myself, so sorry if it was fair I will never do it, but in unfair place you have to play unfair, no choice !

👍 lukestokes, clixmoney, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

Well, how you define "fair" is important. <a href="https://steemit.com/steemit/@lukestokes/the-currency-of-steemit-isn-t-steem-power-steem-or-sbd">Steemit is about building relationships</a>. It doesn't matter if you spend 5 minutes on a post or 5 hours, if you don't have followers and relationships, few will see it.

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@nenad-ristic · Jul 6 '17

The way I see it, I upvote posts that I think add value to the platform in some way. 

So, I naturally upvote my own posts, since if I did not feel that they added value, I would not be posting them. 

I have only been doing that with the root posts since the hard fork, unless I want to boost a comment to be more visible.

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@everittdmickey · Jul 6 '17

one word...bots.
that blows your argument against self voting right out of the water.

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

Can you elaborate? How do bots change things?

Also, I wasn't aware I gave a one-sided argument. I tried to show both sides. What did you interpret "my argument" to be?

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@everittdmickey · Jul 6 '17

Cons - Why Self-Voting Is Bad
_Bots are essentially adding noise to the system_.

_Bots are signaling to the community something important about your intentions.Damn right the bot owner is  greedy. There is no other reason for bots to exist_


Bots are  gaming the system..that's exactly why they were designed..

In its worst form, some _bots are programed to_  add valueless comments just so they have another post they can vote up. This is similar to the early days where the bandwidth constraints weren't working properly and many were spamming the network looking for rewards. Steemit implemented a "4 posts a day" target with decreasing rewards beyond that. This limitation has since been removed, but the idea remains: If you're spamming the network just to increase your own rewards, are you really adding value to the entire network? Should the network be rewarding your behavior?

ban bots and the problem will go away...

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7 replies

@steemcollator · Jul 6 '17

$0.12

There are to many ways to look at self-voting.. for somebody like me who does not have to much steem power and following, but have faint in steemit.. self-voting may help to get those little reward and power up them up for a long run.. but it bad when people come here to make  money by self-voting themselves and cash it out

👍 steemcollator

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@kaylinart · Jul 6 '17

$0.87

I love this post! And you are brave for not upvoting your main posts, I would be afraid to do that! 

I have mixed feelings on the whole thing. I agree it's being abused. But at the same time I feel that we should have freedom on the platform. And I love what you brought up about investors. 
From what I've been seeing, Do we even get "interest" on our Steem Power anymore? 
I also like the the thought of being able to upvote my own comments if I feel that my comments are wrongfully being flagged. As a way to add more exposure. 

I upvote my own posts, And  I sometimes upvote my own comments when I want to see how much voting power I have. (I was guilty of this right after the hardfork, Because I was super excited. ) 

But I'm still on the fence on whether or not we should disable the ability, Or just discourage it as a community. Kind of like how Imgur discourages selfies, But it's not exactly Against the TOS.

👍 lukestokes, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

Great comment, thank you. Yeah, it's tricky stuff. I don't think it can be mandated either way, it's just something we as a community need to think about and figure out.

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@kaylinart · Jul 6 '17

I also just thought of something. Even if we were to disable the ability to self vote. It wouldn't be hard for those people to make another account, Send half their power over. And then they essentially could do the same thing back and forth between accounts.

 Just a thought. Not sure how we could counter it. Maybe some of you smarty pants could invent some kind of bot to help counter this. Who knows

👍 mykos

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

From my understanding, it can't really be countered. This is why Sybil attacks are about. Unless you have a serious identity verification system, but I think most people don't want that either.

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@demotruk · Jul 7 '17 (edited)

It can't really be countered in the long run. It takes less effort for the self-voters to increase the complexity of their strategy a notch, than it does for those policing it to detect it.

This was why vote negation was suggested in the original white paper, it makes the policing of votes much more feasible.

Right now the best we can do is counter the more blatant examples and try to make it a social faux-pas.

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@mykos · Jul 7 '17 (edited)

Good idea. Well it would be like trying to tax rich wealthy people that don't want to be taxed unfairly. You're going to find a work around lol. So i say give them the money.  However,  let's call it what it is.  We can't respectfully call it good content curation. If you're upvoting yourself 10 times a day at maximum power. 

At the same time they  shouldn't  be punished for it either. That's why i feel they should fall in a category to themselves. I can't respect that as good curation though. come on guys. lol.

👍 mykos

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@dzboston33 · Jul 6 '17

$0.11

I'm not sure the community will ever come to a consensus on what is right and or wrong when it comes to self-voting. The only time I get frustrated is when I see the “good job” or “that is awesome” upvoted to like $10 by themselves. If they have a well-thought-out response, by all means, upvote yourself. You've either earned you SP or bought it, doesn't really matter, you have it.

👍 lukestokes, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

It's an interesting discussion, for sure. Ultimately, if the blockchain allows it, people can do whatever they want. The community can also respond however they want. Things will then reach an equilibrium.

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@cm-steem · Jul 6 '17

I think that as long as you're not abusing the flagging system, you should be allowed to do whatever you want with your vote weight. I have zero rights (nor control) to tell anyone else what to vote for, and that's a good thing :)

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@gduran · Jul 6 '17

I have nowhere near as many people upvoting my posts as you do, so I find it even clearer, I have tried not upvoting my posts with a result of zero votes in half an hour, if I do upvote them I tend to get between 7-15 votes in that half an hour, so I am obligated to self upvote, just for survival.
Now upvoting my own comments I have never done that.

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@demotruk · Jul 6 '17 (edited)

$2.79

>Why the stigma towards how investors use their Steem Power but no stigma towards how miners use their mining rigs?

Steem has a rewards budget. It's part of the social contract and stated pretty explicitly in the white paper.

The budget comes from dilution of stakeholders and doesn't exist to increase the holdings of major stakeholders. Extracting the rewards at the expense of the network undermines the premise and value of the network as a whole.

Some won't see it that way, but it's in the financial interest of the largest stakeholders to counter this behaviour.

Edit: I don't want to ban or punish all self voting. There is plenty of blatant milking going on though. It's at everyone's individual discretion where they draw the line and what's worth disputing/downvoting over.

👍 ats-david, lukestokes, l0k1, eroche, dan-bn, albertogm, bacchist, lukestokes.mhth, supergoodliving, greymass, littlescribe, thylbom, ebargains, jawaida, allyouneedtoknow, writingamigo, bestoftherest, ninkhisibir, oluwoleolaide, sebastianic, arjane, ilvacca, pangur-ban

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

I like that point. The "social" aspect of Steemit does imply a different understood contract between all the participants.

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@demotruk · Jul 7 '17

I would actually argue that there's a social contract in Bitcoin as well, and it's the neglect of the social contract over time which has resulted in the community becoming dysfunctional.

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1 reply

@elfspice · Jul 7 '17

This is a subject I haven't seen yet talked about in this, but it was always something I remember posting a lot about. A great example of how counterintuitive it is, is the fact that cutting the issuance rate of new steem from 100% per annum to 9%, and within 2 months the price rapidly climbed to a valuation that more accurately reflected the growth of the platform. What it shows is that it's not how big the rewards are, that matters so much, but rather, that people see a good reason to hold it. Too much going out to rewards erodes that.

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@demotruk · Jul 7 '17

On the contrary, the empirical data has shown that when all rewards are going to the same people (which is still inflation), with little for new users, the network stagnates. When new users are getting rewards, it grows. This can be seen quite clearly in @eroche's payout distribution posts.

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1 reply

@captinevil · Jul 6 '17

my thoughts on self voting...there are a lot of "profesionals" on here who put together posts that take a lot of time, I don't hold it agenst anyone who makes more then me on posts or cry its unfair...every social media user isn't a "pro" and if you want the platform to grow and attract more people you need to cut the "amateurs" some slack.

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@barrydutton · Jul 6 '17

I remember you over the months in posts on here discussing why you have always / often UV your own posts and especially read some of the comments on why you often UV your own comments to move them to the top of the comment replies and that always stuck with me seeing those discussions from you.

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

I think my voting record shows I've not voted on my own comments "often" by any stretch but I have bumped my comments to the top of a popular thread now and again in order to get exposure and use my "influence" and "power" effectively which I listed as one of the **Pros** in my post here. Some may disagree, some may agree, but I do think it's a valid argument at least worth considering.

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@hynet · Jul 6 '17

$0.13

I think is good the way you bring this topic forward. But the truth is that the solutions to this is neither here no there. Most writers are frustrated by not making any money from their articles,  imaging  spending days to right a post but you can't even get 1 dollar for it. Then someone makes just one or two line comments and get 2 dollars through self upvote.  Some people have stop writing since they can't get upvote, they use the little vote they have to upvote themselves. In my opinion I think that the system should fine away to pay at list 50 dollars automatically for any content that is good. So that people will continue to write. Members should be encourage to upvote others instead of the comments. Or that they should share their days vote into two, one for themselves, the other for peoples post. The money is theirs, they have the right to do whatever they want with it. My own is that I want the system to be fair to all. Thanks.

👍 lukestokes, jesta, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

Who defines "good" if it's not the votes of users with the largest stake in the platform (Steem Power holders)? I understand writers get frustrated. I was frustrated a year ago also. For me, the solution was to change my thinking about expectations and how this system works. I wont' bother you with all those posts, but I wrote quite a few of them understanding myself and Steemit. Life is a gift. If we make anything else, we get frustrated.

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@hynet · Jul 7 '17

$0.03

Well your right, i use to tell people too that their focus should not be on money,  but to improve their life and have fun, money will come later. But you will agree with me that why many upvote their comment is to make money to raise their steem power. i have some friends here who feels that self upvote is the best strategy to grow their steem power, as for me, I don't  see it as the right thing to do, but the truth is that, they are growing fast with this, when they write article they don't make money, but if the make comment, they make money.  if you spend much of you time blogging without making money how will you pay bills.  Haven't  you notice that peoples content doesn't have more vote again, I think that one of the reasons for this is self upvote. If there won't be any solution for this, that means that more people will join the self upvote group, and with time contents might not get more than 100 dollars, If this happen, those who are spending much money in doing content will stop .  That is the way i see it. thanks.

👍 jesta

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@luzcypher · Jul 6 '17

$1.62

You made me think about a few things I didn't consider when I posted about self-voting yesterday. The analogy of comparing miners to investors and their RIO. I never really thought about that.

But it really irks me when someone upvotes their comment that only says, "Thanks" and adds nothing to the conversation. I think that is just a waste of time and makes people stop wanting to interact with you. It's a mistake on Steemit in my view.

This part of your post I agree with and think upvoting your published posts is fine but upvoting your own, weak comments on others blogs is spammy.

>From this perspective, maybe a root post and a comment are actually different. Maybe we should continue to vote up own root posts but keep the self-voting on comments to a minimum? Or maybe I'm imagining a pattern and creating a narrative when neither actually exist. Maybe we should use our new 4x voting power to support other authors instead of ourselves.

Here is more on [my take on self-voting](https://steemit.com/steem-help/@luzcypher/how-to-lose-friends-and-irritate-people-two-big-mistakes-you-want-to-avoid-making-on-steemit)

👍 lukestokes, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

Great post! I'm sorry I missed it. And thanks for including a link to this one. Much appreciated.

And yes, I agree. That's the form of abuse I see most people getting upset about. "Why is the network rewarding a 'Thanks' where my post gets nothing?" type stuff.

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@demotruk · Jul 6 '17

By the way, we have created a steemit.chat channel for discussion and countering of self votes.

https://steemit.chat/channel/selfvoteabuse

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@paulcoman · Jul 6 '17

$0.75

The only value I personally find in self voting, is getting more attention to my posts.

I believe I should get some real value from my STEEM POWER investment, and that value can only be derrived from the utility I get from it. **No utility, no investments.**

I don't think giving money to myself through self voting, benefits the platform, or the community in any way. Plus if you eliminate that temptation, there's a whole lot of incentive to start voting other people's quality stuff.

👍 lukestokes, paulcoman, startupacademy, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

$0.30

Well said, thank you. Attention is important and this is the attention economy after all, but finding the balance, I think, is key. We also can't just change our principles whenever the masses change their minds. :)

👍 paulcoman

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@bhightech · Jul 6 '17

$0.04

before the HF19 there was circle jerking and now there is self jerking..people will always try to monetize one way or another..what we can do is change the mentality of users and find a common ground where the investors whales minnows dolphins newcommer oldtimer all will benefit..
We should follow the 25% rule..25% self vote..25% to vote those who are in same level with us..25% votes to those with more sp and 25% votes to those with less sp...

👍 vinayakn

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@lexiconical · Jul 6 '17

Very thorough and well reasoned. I think it's good to focus on practical options, since the behavior can't really be limited technically.

I'm actually a bit more concerned with some of the advertising posts I see stuck at the top of Trending every day, so much so that I just recently wrote a post on it. They may be siphoning off as many rewards as a fleet of self-upvoters.

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@guiltyparties · Jul 6 '17

You bring up some good points, particularly regarding not triggering bots by avoiding self-voting.  If other account that trigger abstain from voting on their own posts/comments then the bots will be naturally redirected to supporting others' content, as intended.  

I've got a new account so I'm still stroking my own so to speak but I intend to proceed along this path fairly and dedicate my votes to others once I have enough SP (no intention of powering down at any point in the foreseeable future) and followers.  Reseteemed as my vote towards your post counts for nothing but a penny.

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@bluchr · Jul 6 '17

$0.08

Thank you for sharing this post i found it really intrrssting to see different lookings for steemit.
I always vote my comment up but also the post where i post under. I think it is a fair way. 
Sharing is caring!!!

Greez bluchr

👍 bluchr

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@purpleprose · Jul 6 '17 (edited)

I think everyone should do what they want to do, as  a libertarian I feel uncomfortable with people being compelled to act a certain way to please the crowd. I also think new-users should absolutely self vote, posts and comments if they want.

That being said I think users with a lot of  Steem power could help new users feel welcome on the platform by refraining from self voting and voting for minnows when they produce good content. This will ultimately be a good thing for your investment as more users means the price of Steem goes up.

You're already earning a lot without self voting, do you really need those few extra dollars when your vote could mean so much more to someone  else? But I think you should be able to do what you want without judgement or without being put on any naughty lists. Either way this is a good read and I like your blog.

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@personz · Jul 6 '17 (edited)

$3.83

On your edit about the PR, that was me! Very happy it went through. 😆  You beat me to an announcement, so I just made one I was planning for a slightly less tired moment 

It's really interesting that you mention the increased economic impact of HF 19 made you consider your own actions more. I've spoken to many who have also had this experience, as have I.

But a system like Steem must be designed to take into account all aspects, especially the negative. I don't think we can expect everyone to behave "well" unless the incentives are there to do so. Even a few scammers, spammers or otherwise negative actors can disrupt things for the rest. After all blockchain technology is built on the assumption of _mostly_ honest actors while allowing for _some_ dishonest ones. We need to bear that in mind.

I really think that self voting should be removed at the blockchain level. I'd love to hear your thought on this proposition.

Btw I think that answers the question "when is self-voting okay, if ever?" - not at all. I've laid out my reasoning in other posts, but it boils down to this: we are not qualified to judge our own work and reward accordingly.

👍 lukestokes, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth, oziey77

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@lukestokes · Jul 6 '17

$0.61

Great job! I upvoted your announcement just now and thanks for resteeming this post.

> I really think that self voting should be removed at the blockchain level. I'd love to hear your thought on this proposition.

It's not really possible. If someone really wants to do this, they will. They will create other accounts to do it. I'd actually prefer to know who these people are in a much easier way (see my signal argument above). If someone is going to participate in activity I disagree with (as an example), I'd much rather have that activity be fully public, not hidden in a corner. That's the problem I see with many government regulation attempts. They make something "illegal" and yet people will continue doing it anyway in the shadows. I'd much rather see people discuss the activity openly and honestly and that's what I've attempted to do with this post. So far, I think the conversation has been great. Some people love self voting. Others hate it. I think both have reasons for their positions.

Reminds me of this old post: <a href="https://steemit.com/relationships/@lukestokes/we-disagree-are-you-ignorant-immoral-or-stupid">We Disagree. Are You Ignorant, Immoral, or Stupid?</a>

It doesn't have to be that way. :)

Thanks for all your efforts on this topic.

👍 kenny-crane, demotruk, personz, bryan-imhoff

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@personz · Jul 7 '17

Wow, interesting perspective, I hadn't thought of it that way. You've certainly given me more food for thought with that analogy.

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@surfyogi · Jul 19 '17

$1.02

Prohibition often has worse outcome, than the problem it was trying to fight, as it creates an underground economy, and then creates a lot of judgemental attitudes. It's one of those things that divides a community, making it easier to bilk it, rather than support good behavior and tolerate things that not everyone agrees about..

👍 gentlebot

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@oziey77 · Jul 7 '17

I'm fairly new to Steemit (just a week old), and in this time I've read as much post I could've read.One thing I noticed that doesn't seem fairwas when started coming across post in which people would ignore voting on the mother post(the main post) but activey votes on comments..some even go to the extent of commenting on a post selfvote the comment then reply their own comment and selfvote it again.

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@personz · Jul 7 '17

Yep that's exactly the kind of thing I want to highlight and oppose

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@surfyogi · Jul 19 '17

See my post below, why I think this is a very bad idea, now that I've looked into it, and finally have an opinion.
I say, 50/50.

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@reddust · Jul 6 '17 (edited)

The whole deal kinda pisses me off, first we were told to upvote our comments and posts but now it's not cool. I may add that people that leave one or two word comment and upvote their comment are annoying. But I don't give them an upvote. Plus people are saying it's greedy to upvote your root post or comment 100%, I stoped upvoting my root post but give my commenters that engage nwith me at least 50¢..I'm going start voting 100% on my root post again and screw the naysayers😁 I've been told greedy upvoters of ones own root posts and comments will be ignore by the whales,  I have  not seen a whale in a long time.. Plus I don't get a lot of upvoters anyway ...getting rid of self voting would solve this problem.

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@yoda1917 · Jul 6 '17

$0.35

Upvoted,...  thank you for this balanced expression of this severe problem.   I believe that this problem will make steemit implode on itself if it is allowed to carry on.

I wrote a similar but much more dramatic version of this yesterday.  Hope you and others in this conversation check it out

https://steemit.com/steemit/@yoda1917/self-upvoting-is-no-longer-allowed-what-would-be-the-consequences-what-would-be-the-benefits.

![Screen Shot 2017-07-07 at 7.46.54.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmZW5UoqqPH9U5qbDqQEftV84KzdvfLNXstNU1Qjy87aqZ/Screen%20Shot%202017-07-07%20at%207.46.54.png)

👍 lukestokes, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@weetreebonsai · Jul 6 '17

$0.63

Thank you for posting this and the many replies delving deeper into the thoughts of each as the pros and cons are being discussed, as a new member here I have wondered if it perhaps had to do with cultural background, I felt uncomfortable upvoting my comments in discussions but was told I needed to do it, and no I have not journeyed into posting a blog yet and have no clue when I will, I am staying busy enjoying this fantastic community! Resteemit for others to enjoy as well!

👍 lukestokes, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

Thank you for resteeming, and I agree, this is a pretty fantastic community. :)

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@sean-king · Jul 7 '17

$0.48

I favor the right/ability of authors to self vote. My personal policy is to not do it all the time (only a half to two-thirds of the time) and generally to not do it during the first 24 hours after I post (so as to allow others to earn higher curation awards).

👍 lukestokes, personz, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

You evil capitalist, you! Heheh. It'll be interesting to see how this changes over time. It wouldn't surprise me if more projects and bots start downvoting self-voters if more people start expecting that to not happen as much. If they did, do you think you'd change your policy? Either way, it's interesting how divided people are on this topic.

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@sean-king · Jul 7 '17

Downvotes from folks or bots with low rep and/or low SP are unlikely to change my or others' behavior.  And folks with high rep and high SP are usually ones who have been around here a while and see responsible self-voting as a part of the Steem culture.  Plus, such folks benefit from responsible self-voting themselves.   So they seem unlikely to downvote except in cases of abuse (though I may be wrong on that). 

When self-voting becomes abusive (done too often or self-voting for crap content), offenders will likely be sanctioned (flagged) by folks with high rep and/or high SP, and this should dissuade abuse.  

In short, I personally don't see a day when all self-voting is verboten or shamed away, but maybe I'm wrong.

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4 replies

@tayken · Jul 7 '17

It's all relative. I self vote when I think it matters, and I'm also interested in  boosting early so that one day I can pay it back to others. I think the ultimate intentions become pretty clear if you peel back a few layers of the onion, so I say you do what make sure sense for YOU right NOW. 

The chips will fall accordingly in time.

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@thewisesloth · Jul 7 '17

$0.23

I'm sure self-voting will be removed very soon. I'm surprised it was ever allowed in the code. I don't want other people upvoting themselves, but if most people are doing it, then anyone who isn't, is shooting themselves in the foot by not giving themselves the same advantage. I hate to say it, but It's kind of suicidal not to, and it's leaving money on the table. Will it make you look bad? Maybe to the one or two people who notice, but the option will be gone soon, and a year from now I doubt anyone will remember who did it.

👍 thewisesloth

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

How will they remove it? People can always create other accounts to vote themselves up. It's not something that can be completely eliminated via code, I don't think.

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@dwinblood · Jul 7 '17

$1.97

People up voting their own post never really bothered me.  If someone posted a bunch of things that clearly had zero effort and voted those up to high payouts then most of the community would be against that, but that's about it for me.   I don't tend to get on the flagging for reward pool train.

I also understand up votes for visibility and often that takes just a few cents and I didn't really see people complaining about that.

Recently I've noticed trains of comments from some people that up vote all of their own comments apparently as high as they can.   They sometimes don't even up vote the post they are responding to, they just dump all of the steem power into their own comments.    It is not a sense of entitlement it is more a view that if we all chose to do that this would quickly become a rather unpleasant environment.    It could potentially reduce attractiveness of steemit and by extension steem and that impacts all of our investment.

I am all for freedom, yet I am also against things that can give the platform significant negative PR.

👍 lukestokes, demotruk, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

$0.03

>  if we all chose to do that this would quickly become a rather unpleasant environment.

This right here! I completely agree. That simple test, "If everyone did this, would that be a good thing for the network?" solves so many problems.

Thanks @dwinblood.

👍 dwinblood

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@theguruasia · Jul 7 '17 (edited)

@lukestokes,
I feel I am little bit late to this discussion, but what you have discussed here should be at community forum. 
Your perception of Cons & Pros really valuable. I have seen a lot of people with high steem power is rarely give their voting power to others and they just vote their own posts and comments feel ridicules.
I'm actually new to this system, so I still don't know why I am getting auto upvoted for the every posts of my own. Sometimes, this problem can be happened to most of them. But posting or commenting means we publish our viewpoint about something else. So voting back to our own post or comment, I feel it's just to keep the reward at his/her own hands(greedy). And really unfair to the people who actively use this platform.

Again, I need to tell you, I like your perception. The way you think and write always add values to the community. I really appreciate the effort you have put here and thank you very much for this valuable post. 

Cheers~

👍 mykos

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

Thank you. I really appreciate your kind words.

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@haphazard-hstead · Jul 7 '17

I don't mind people upvoting their own posts. But I think upvoting your own comments should actually cost Steem, just like the promote function for posts. But with the pull request, it's a moot point. I guess the future will be hidden self-voting from other accounts and mutually agreed self-voting across multiple accounts. New folks and smaller folks will be at a distinct disadvantage. I think there will be lots of hidden games -- and more skewed distribution that ever.

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@healthyrecipe · Jul 7 '17

This was a great read, really informative and easy to understand.  Much allreciate you taking your time to put out such great information. With that said I transfered crypto from another currency to here and upvote quite a bit my own content and post a ton in order to grow and be able to make a bigger difference for others, but when I see a post that really deserves it, I will 100% vote on it and even assign a randowhale to it. For no reason other than human nature and feeling like that person deserves much more than what they got.

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@wix · Jul 7 '17

$0.27

I personally feel that the more people that get a small piece of the reward pool, the more sustainable steemit will become over the long run. I think HF19 was all about sustainability.

👍 orcish, wix, crochetlover

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@resistancemedic · Jul 7 '17 (edited)

$0.94

I think that self voting on the root post is an acceptable practice. I would compare it to a public official stating that they appove a message. However like you stated in your post:
>From this perspective, maybe a root post and a comment are actually different. Maybe we should continue to vote up own root posts but keep the self-voting on comments to a minimum?

As a minnow with a very small following I am very selective on the posts that i upvote and even more so with comments. I try to only upvote comments that bring substance to the "conversation" so to speak. It is for this reason that I do not think that self voting on generic comments is a responsible practice. I did enjoy reading your thoughts and must say that I agree with most of the points you made throughout. Fair opportunity  does not equal fair outcome. Just my 0.002 sbd lol

👍 lukestokes, good-karma, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth, esteemapp, feruz, jawaida, bounties, steempoll, tipping, demo, mysteem

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

Thank you. :)

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@jen8 · Jul 7 '17

Interesting thoughts Luke, thanks for sharing. I've come across a few other posts where this has been discussed as well and briefly weighed in a few times here and there. Overall, I believe that the design of the technology should either encourage or discourage the type of behavior that the overall steemit community would like to see.

My own personal voting habits are to automatically upvote all of my own blog posts, but I never upvote any of my comments (I haven't done that to date anyways and right now I don't plan on doing that in the future either). I like it when others upvote my comments though as it's a sign to me that they appreciate/value what I am saying and I like to have that gauge.

I think in some situations it makes sense for others to upvote their own blog posts and comments. Other times I think there are people who abuse upvoting their own comments....meaning they just comment for the purpose of upvoting themselves so that they can earn more steem. I don't think that is healthy for the overall steemit community. I'm not, however, surprised by it because the system lets this happen. As long as the technology allows this behavior to happen, it will be very difficult to stop people from doing this, even if others come after them/call them out/down vote it. I think the real solution just has to be technical.....close the loopholes/stop making it possible for people to use the system in a way that was not intended and is not deemed appropriate by the majority of the community. That's my two cents anyways....

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

It's a good way to think about it, but unfortunately it's not really something which can be stopped. People can always create other accounts to vote themselves up. All we can do is add friction. See the edit on my post as well in that default for root posts will now be to not upvote when creating it. Quite interesting.

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@jen8 · Jul 7 '17

True, but there's a big difference between going through the process of creating multiple accounts, posting/interacting under the various alternate accounts to increase reputation/steem power etc. and simply clicking the convenient 'upvote' button on your own comments.  

If the ability to upvote your own comments was disabled, I believe that would make a massively positive impact on the whole issue.   Even if people had multiple accounts to upvote themselves, that would not cause the same dissension within the community because it's not as easily visible.  

You might also be able to eventually find a way to cut down on those alternate accounts as some of them will likely be bots and bots would be easier to detect than people of course.  I don't know....I just think there's likely a good technical solution to it and if not now....maybe somewhere down the line one could be invented.

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@daynewright · Jul 7 '17

Man...Awesome post and great comments!  This whole thing is an enjoyable read.

I am curious if there is a difference in self voting closer to the payout date to allow more of a percentage to go to curators.   Although I guess at that point you are an author and curator so it may not make a difference. :)

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

The curators get rewarded in the beginning. Later voters get no curation reward. So yes, some people do wait to do the self vote to ensure curation rewards go to others first.

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@blakejames · Jul 7 '17

I wish when we upvoted a post we could at that moment decide how much we want to give that person out of our steem power. If my full power vote is worth around .25cents , i should be able to allocate easily, while reading posts .5cent upvotes here and there ... then maybe .10-.15 cents on the better posts all together.

There also needs to be more discoverability from up voting!

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

Once your Steem Power reaches a certain level you'll get a slider to adjust your vote weight each time. I included a screenshot of it in another comment here as well.

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@josephd · Jul 7 '17 (edited)

Even from an investor's ROI perspective, it doesn't seem like the best option to self vote. Such behavior indicates  that they  don't believe in the platform, and wish to cash out with 1.5x - 2x times their investment. Which takes around ~6 months of self voting + 3 months of totally powering down

Considering you can have gains of orders of magnitude in under an year in the crypto markets, specifically self voting for ROI isn't so lucrative anymore. 

Then there are a host of external factors, imagine how much more user could've made through just curating content, which is a super important activity if steemit is to succeed. 

It is in the best interest of a long term investor to curate fairly and honestly. 

It's the usual " not me, someone else will do it " mentality at play here.  Imagine if every prominent member turned short sighted and greedy and began upvoting for every half assed comment they make, would you think the price of Steem would remain at $1.8?
I definitely do not. 

The public  notices these things and market corrects itself

Just some thoughts. ..

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

> It is in the best interest of a long term investor to curate fairly and honestly.

I agree and that's definitely the goal of the platform.

I also agree that excessive self-voting (especially on low quality content) doesn't pass the "what if everyone did it?" test.

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@airmatti · Jul 7 '17

$0.70

Great topic and objective post. I personally think we just have to save some vote power for the others, not consume all of it for your own. May be a question of balance. I personally upvote my posts later, so I can choose the percentuage of VP.

👍 kus-knee, lellabird60

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@daydreams4rock · Jul 7 '17

Hello Luke - interesting discussion i didn't know there was an issue with people voting for their own content - i am fairly new and am keen to gorw so that my vote means something. I have to say the most disheartening thing is this whalepower idea where we should buy the influence of a whale to grow in this society, i really think the whales whould be visiting the posts of minnows and helping them up from time to time and that way we gain a lottery sort of feel here as you say. The way it is not i have been here a month and any whale upvote i have got i had to buy from randowhale or booster. It is all good, but the community needs my type of content ie. original art, paintings and music and the way it is now , i couldn't see musicians staying here as it is too hard to gain and audience. We can't have everyone writing about steem orcrypto on steemit or it will implode into a very boring platform . I appreciate your point of view and that you tried not upvoting yourself. David

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

As a new member, do you think it's any harder here to get noticed than it would be on another platform like YouTube or Twitter? I wonder how much is a systemic problem caused by the UI and how much is just part of building a new following on a social media platform.

If I created a new Twitter account today and started tweeting, it would be silly to expect anyone to see it because I'd have no followers. The key, as in life, is to build relationships. Connections with influential people are really important. We are a tribal, social species. I wrote this post a long time ago you may enjoy: <a href="https://steemit.com/steemit/@lukestokes/the-currency-of-steemit-isn-t-steem-power-steem-or-sbd">The Currency of Steemit Isn't Steem Power, STEEM, or SBD</a>

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@daydreams4rock · Jul 7 '17 (edited)

well the first song i put on youtube got 800 views in 3 days and 1000 in the next week and i was new with no followers -- for a musician the result we get here are too low -- i appreciate i need to build a network and will work with this site as it is -i hate youtube and many musicians do ,so i haven't posted a new song for years --they ripped me off my few dollars of advertising money - i like steemit and reckon we need something to help promote original music and paintings --but that is because it is my niche -- i understand most of the interest here is for stories about crypto and steem --thanks for discussing this with me Luke -- i am happy enough and seem to building fast as i get a more than 10 upvotes per post -- it is a shame that i am now buying influence to help me move up faster , but i had no choice with posts earning less than $2 .. i will help other artist and musicians when i can afford to start some competitions... i need to learn to write a lot better and could of course write about popular topics or unusual topics too.. i enjoyed your linked post , that helped a lot. I need to be patient and enjoy the friendship building -David

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3 replies

@snakiest · Jul 7 '17

Hm, I am still not sure whether I should upvote myself or not, but I think if you do, you gotta do it either some time before the payout or at the very beginning to make sure you don't take away from the curators. 

Nothing to worry about for me right now, though. I mean, 5 bucks. Who would fight over that? =)

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@me-shell · Jul 7 '17 (edited)

Great post and a very good read! One thing I do like about others self voting on their comments is seeing how much their vote is worth. For example I'm going to up vote this comment and unless someone else likes it you can see my vote is worth ~2 cents. In this case I don't think anyone cares. It's only if you become a large fish that other people take an opinion. Personally I don't really mind but I normally only up vote my root posts and not comments. 

Edit: Sad day I over estimated and only have 1 cent

👍 me-shell

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

Heheh. Yeah, it's interesting how people's perspectives change based on magnitude. If I earn $1 selling something, no big deal. If I earn $1,000,000 selling a million of those $1 things, some will be convinced I must have taken advantage of someone. It's really interesting thinking to me.

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@me-shell · Jul 7 '17 (edited)

A lot of the time it is just jealousy. If they could do it they would. If one day everyone had only one $100 up vote I give a bet they would spend it on themselves or a friend. Not on some randoms quality post.  I remember growing up and thinking when I'm older I would never do _ _ blank _ _. But when you actually are older (or in this case a bigger fish) you do it. Its just life.  

Also appreciate how you try to reply to everyone! I feel like I should say thank you for your time haha.

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@elfspice · Jul 7 '17

You left out one of my points, that was that a post is essentially a vote on your content - why else would you post it? As someone who has often stayed quiet when I should not have, and then later on, I was right, and maybe I could have saved someone trouble by speaking... There is more to why a person posts than even just to 'win rewards'. I value followers and insightful comments more than upvotes, because these are apriori to getting more rewards.

Not only that, here I am in a newly minted minnow account (formerly posting via @l0k1) and I frankly don't want to vote on anything, but comments are a different game altogether.

Also, if you have got trails after your votes, of course you are going to lose rewards by not voting on yourself. And to double it, you will also lose the curation, since vote trail leaders naturally get the lions share if they are the first.

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

> that a post is essentially a vote on your content

Do you mean a comment? Sorry, I'm a bit confused by what you mean. A comment is like a vote on the value of the content of a root post?

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@elfspice · Jul 7 '17

I don't distinguish between a root post and a post with a parent, in terms of functionality. The consensus logic does not either, and I think it used to.

Yes, I think you can say that a comment is an upvote/downvote on the content, absolutely. As you can read in my rather scattered writings during my Dawn period, I even think you can skip voting altogether if you count a view as a vote, also, and confirm that with a share, which affirms that you believe the content is worth consuming.

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@gwiss · Jul 7 '17

Is it ok to vote for yourself in a political election?  Does the fact that you are, to some extent, submitting a concept to the community for judgment mean that your own personal judgement should not be considered or included?

Great post on a complicated subject with no clear answer.

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

Interesting example, but the dynamics of political election voting are quite different because it's one person, one vote. Due to Sybil attacks, that's quite difficult to maintain here and it's based on Steem Power weight, not individuals.

Thanks for the compliment. It is a tricky subject.

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@gwiss · Jul 7 '17

Different subject, but I have often thought that political voting would be more stable if it was one dollar of taxes paid equals one vote.  The more you pay in taxes, the more your voting power is worth -- kind of like steam power.  

That would be more stable in the sense that it would control spending and the tendency for systems to spend themselves into collapse better -- the more taxes you pay, the more power you have to vote to reduce taxes, and voting to reduce taxes of course reduces your voting power back down to more equal with everyone else.  It's self regulating.  As opposed to our current system in which those who don't pay any taxes are able to vote in concepts that they have someone else pay for, which is a system without feedback loops that is prone to unstable positive feedback cycles rather than stable negative feedback ones.

I think that whatever Steemit settles on as stable through trial and error would be a good better model for democracy than we have currently.

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@blueperegrina · Jul 7 '17

I´m new on steemit. Everything what is said here sounds very interesting, and overwhelming at the same time. I am on the beginners level - thanks for every kind of post like this one!

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@ebmgrj · Jul 7 '17

@lukestokes one of the best articles written on this topic.Thanks for breaking it down for us.

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@arcange · Jul 7 '17

Congratulations @lukestokes!
Your post was mentioned in my [hit parade](https://steemit.com/hit-parade/@arcange/daily-hit-parade-20170706) in the following category:

* Comments - Ranked 2 with 195 comments

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@mykos · Jul 7 '17

I'm not quite a month old yet but just my 2 cents.. or 2 cent upvote, lol. My observation is that maybe it's just confusion in the language of curation. If your idea of this content creation as it were, is to present and find good content at the most optimal level perhaps it may present an issue.

I think it's a little bit confusing that both of these things are linked together. Investment in the platform linked with the organization of good content. I would assume it would just be much easier to seperate steem power the investment from voting curation.

I see self voting as honestly just a means to cash out from an investment early. Would it not just be easier to grant the same incentives without it adversely effecting the curation process.

As it's hard to determine at this point the effects of self voting. Perhaps it stunts the growth of steemit. Perhaps not. However, would it not just be easier to grant full power of self voting back into your steem power. To be sold on the open market for whatever the market is willing to pay for it. If you follow what i mean?

Now large investors in the network still have that option. Without contaminating the curation process. If you're self voting at 100%. How do we know you're not just voting for the funds to cash out. You aren't really part of the curation process necessarily or at all. In that you aren't selecting quality content on the site. The only verdict we're getting on the content is your own.

So for me it's just a language issue. I'm pretty anal about parameters and objectives. So i dont really know what would be the objective of the self vote. If it's something other than selecting good content.. seeing that investors would have the power to control the payout of votes anyway. Simply give them access to the steem to be sold at their discretion on the open market at their possible maximum return. For instance if you perhaps have $100k in steem power. Maybe you can max out per day on 10 votes maybe $100 per vote. $1000 steem backed dollars per day in payouts minus curation pool fees or what have you. $500 a day possible payout to self. I'd say calculate it daily or monthly and just let them sell the steem power on the open market. I don't mean coming from their intial investment. I mean the dollars added or power added to their accounts. So they would basically still be able to achieve the same objective. Without it contaminating the curation process.

👍 mykos

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@lukestokes · Jul 7 '17

Interesting. Sounds just like a proof of stake coin. Those with stake get a percentage of the newly minted coin based on their size of their stake. That's not really how Steemit works though, which, I guess is an argument against self voting (and my mining analogy). Steemit has a different model which focuses on a social media platform and incentivizing the distribution of valuable content through author and curation rewards.

👍 mykos

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@mykos · Jul 7 '17 (edited)

Don't get me wrong. I completely understand it's all revolving around the same idea. I don't think terms like scammy behavior or rational roi are appropriate or even relevant. I think it's just a matter of good packaging lol.

I would say that how some of the things being achieved should be aren't packaged maybe the best they could be. So for people coming in and the future of the growth of the network it's just going to create confusion. It turns them off. I don't mean to say they aren't sophisticated enough to understand investment concepts. As i just see this as roi. I'm saying that over the course of time people joining the network are going to have many different competing ideologies. However, within the scope of investment i don't think for the most part many have ever had a problem with people fairly being returned monies on their investment dollars.

Now it's become a moral issue. A socialist vs capitalism issue. It doesn't have to be any of that lol. As investors and building value to the network can be two seperate things. Same as like facebook which carries tremendous value without direct investment from the users.

I liken steemit to a 6 star hotel vs a 5 star hotel, lol. Can there be any real complaints about steemit? lol. We've never had anything as good as steemit. It's a 6 star hotel. We never been to a 6 star hotel. So there isn't a real problem with steemit. There is confusion about steemit and indivudal ideas of fairness.

I don't feel that's a conversation even necessary to be had on steemit lol. Why unncesssarily create havoc instead of growth lol. You said it exactly incentivizing distribution of "valuable content". Self voting doesn't necessarily speak to that.

Self voting is not a problem. It's just got bad pr, lol. So to speak. It needs to be relabeled and repackaged in my opinion. I think at the end of the day. If you're a self voter. Does it really matter how you get the money from the votes, lol. I think people are divided simply because they have a philosophical difference with the concept itself. Not the money, lol... the concept. Everyone i would venture to gather is okay with means or increases on roi to investors. If they aren't they should be. So steemit is awesome. There is just confusion . There is just the idea that elephants don't bite but mosquitoes do. To say this isn't a big issue. However it can become one.

👍 mykos

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1 reply

@mikej · Jul 7 '17

My opinion on this is, it is rude to upvote yourself but not the author's blog.  

Some members may be just posting replies and not even reading the blog and in my opinion, its kinda like spam.

properties (22)

@wordsatwill · Jul 7 '17

Don't self vote, you'll go blind ..

👍 wordsatwill

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@wordsatwill · Jul 7 '17

I think I've just self voted again, I need help ...  it's the only vote I get these days..

👍 wordsatwill

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@mykos · Jul 7 '17

you got a serious problem. an addiction" lol..how many penny self votes you gonna do?  a million a billion? lol

👍 wordsatwill

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@wordsatwill · Jul 7 '17

Every little helps 😂

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@gulshannsaini · Jul 8 '17

According to me, yes I agree we should upvote our own post and we should not upvote for our own comments. And if I upvote my post then it means I have worked on that stuff and it should be appreiated by myself too and I'm standing up for my post. But recently I have posted a food stuff and copied the recipe from Google because my mom made it from the same recipe, I never know that before but people find it wrong that's why I'm removing my upvote.. because i can't stand with that what I have done wrong. That's why I wrote in their that the pictures are taken by me. But my intentions were just to help people to get the recipe.. so that people can get to know about that indian food too. I don't know how to apologize people for that but I can make it better next time so that people won't find it offensive...

properties (22)

@jaki01 · Jul 9 '17

$0.34

<blockquote>
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
When is self-voting okay, if ever?
</blockquote>
<p>
I think in general upvoting own <em>articles</em> (not comments) is OK (as the system allows it), as long as they are not written with the <em>only purpose</em> to upvote them, like you can see for example here:
<br>
https://steemit.com/@sandrino (every day many minimalistic posts with no text at all, just some YouTube videos from different authors, but all upvoted with full strength).
</p>
<p>
I consider the mixture of having less but more powerful 100 % upvotes available since HF 19 to be very unsatisfactory: especially many newbies <em>solely</em> upvote their numerous comments instead of the commented articles (I can deliver examples if you like). That can't be the sense of this platform! 
</p>
<p>
Even if I think it is normal that authors upvote their own articles ...
<ul>
<li>
... firstly I simply would eliminate the option of self-voting (if not there, it can't be abused anymore) and ...
</li>
<li>
... secondly would revert the stronger impact of 100 % upvotes since HF 19 (which strongly invites self-voting). I <a href="https://steemit.com/steemit/@jaki01/hf-19-and-the-question-of-self-voting-hf19-und-die-frage-bezueglich-selbstvotes">explained my concerns more detailed some days ago</a>.
</li>
</p>

👍 kobold-djawa

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@nicnicy · Jul 10 '17

If being GENEROUS is rewarded it is rewarding to be more generous.

There ... go vote that

properties (22)

@steemboys · Jul 10 '17

$0.18

Good post about the upvoting-topic. I did not have a guideline on this, so i made a blogpost about it as well, since i wasn't quite sure whats the best line to take. Would be great if you could respond to it. One thing you did not mention is, that besides the financial aspect, upvoting has a ranking aspect. An upvoted post, wether its a self-upvote or a randowhale upvote, does increase the time a post is highlighted in the relevant tabs(new, hot,trending). Same goes with comments , they would rank higher.

https://steemit.com/steem/@steemboys/upvotes-what-s-the-best-way )

👍 steemboys

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@drpuffnstuff · Jul 15 '17

$0.44

Great post Luke.  I found it late. After having already flagged someone who I felt was completely negatively impacting steemit. I told him why, how he could change it. Had a long conversation about ways to use the SP productively. Not that bots are much better, but I suggested he make one and let other people use his vote and give him money, that way the posts that got his upvotes, got more views since they probably added value to steemit as a whole...  

I see a big difference between upvoting posts and comments. regardless of what the blockchain considers them.. One contributes to analytics and good searches..

Lastly bitcoin is in no way a social media platform. on a social media platform thats connected to a block chain the dynamic is going to be different. So comparing it to mining, I get it. but they are fundamentally different. This place is community. They broadening, healthy community and the content created are what will give steem its value in the end.

But you did make the issue have a lot more gray areas to me. It is indeed not all black and white..

We both know what would happen if we all just upvoted ourselves 10 times a day though. and in particularly if we just commented, good job 10 times a day and upvoted that.. It wouldnt even take all of us, probably just a 51/50 self vote attack lol.. 

Regardless keep up the good work, thanks for bring up the good questions and talking about them so rationally

👍 lukestokes, albertogm, lukestokes.mhth

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@lukestokes · Jul 15 '17

$0.08

Great reply, thank you. I agree, Steem has some characteristics which make it unique from bitcoin and certainly adjusts the rewards dynamics. I'm a big fan of the "if everyone did this" exercise. There'd be no quality discovery process and great authors would leave which would lower the search rankings of the site which lowers value for everyone. That's why I think a balance is good. I now only upvote my own posts when I have plenty of voting power to do so. I haven't upvoted a comment of my own in a long time either, but I'm not competely against the idea if I feel my comment is important enough for others that it should be seen first to influence the discussion.

👍 drpuffnstuff

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@drpuffnstuff · Jul 15 '17

I concur completely. No comment upvoting for me, but I understand there are reasons where it's acceptable.. I only post 1 or 2 times a day and my vote is only worth 1$ so I upvote them.. 2 votes myself, 8 votes for everyone else feels a good split to me, but I would be fine without the ability to vote on myself too really... I am going to have to leave this account because of my new found flagging war. but I couldnt just let someone say 'yes' in a comment and give themselves 20$, when they didn't upvote the post they commented on in the first place.  I am on the short end of the voting power though, so I should have just left him be probably. let him take his 200$ a day from the reward pool.. Live and learn.. Keep doing what you are doing for steemit, need all the goodness we can get, to counteract those few mostly selfish people!

properties (22)

2 replies

@surfyogi · Jul 19 '17

$8.78

MAIN POINT:

- self upvoting comments, pushes them toward the top. This seems entirely intentional in the design. I actually like it. And I like being able to push my comment to the top, when a post gets older and I can no longer vote for the author, I can still vote for myself, and I can push my comment to the top of a VERY LARGE STRING OF COMMENTS MOST READERS WILL NEVER READ ENTIRELY.

"Anyone with big SP is entitled to do as they wish randomly distributing it."

Assuming they use one account, to invest in the community, and to distribute their upvotes, and to comment on other's posts, as well as post and upvote their own posts and comments.
To allow any less will take some potential motivation away from people investing in the community with SP.
To allow any less will only encourage behavior to route around limits, and prohibition will force this behavior underground.

I'd like to remind everyone, this seems to be a new issue, that I never heard about before HF19.
It is not listed in the FAQ as an issue (unlike how many times to post in a day, and many other things clearly spelled out).

New users are going to experiment with how to get paid. They are trying to build a following and get some value from their efforts.

And I agree:
- a tacit agreement of 50/50 others/self upvoting makes sense, and should be promoted as the community decision, and published in the FAQ.
- Users completely disrespecting the system, can be enforced by bots.
- USERS EXPERIMENTING WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF ONE ACCOUNT should be left alone, to their own devices, and not harassed by other users or bots.

1) Fairness - I see some people that consider self upvotes very unfair.
- But they are noobs. They don't understand the community very well, have only just signed on, and make no value from their efforts thus far.
- Or they are authors, that are used to making a lot from their work, and think it's the only "fair" way to make value from the system. But the reality is they were first, right at the beginning, and they have had it so much easier than people joining in the last few months.
- Posting is more valuable than commenting. I see this view a lot. I believe it's a very short sighted view. Luke covered this very well already..

2) Power
- People willing to invest their own money into SP, should hold more power. I agree.
- Investment is a firm establishment they are going to trust the system and community and aim to help it grow in value. They are investing part of their life's work, into a new venture they respect and wish to participate in.

3) Benevolence
- People that hold SP can use that power for benevolent ventures. Upvoting new users, encouragement, rewarding great posts, etc.
- 50/50 seems a reasonable goal or limit, of self promotion and devotion to others.

4) Noobs
- Noobs are lazy. They comment they liked my post, upvote their own comment, but don't upvote my post? I see it all the time. Strange.
- Noobs are still looking at how to make profit, and how to retain their SP for themselves. Nobody is seeing their posts, mostly.
- Very frustrated users.. but not willing to invest their own funds in SP.

5) Experimentation
- There is a lot of tribal knowledge that most folks don't know about how rewards and payouts are calculated.
- A/B comparison as Luke has done, is part of what new users are trying by upvoting for themselves.

6) Understanding the algo involved.
- Very difficult, not well documented, constantly changing, requires immense study.
- Lot's of ignorance abounds in users that make snap judgements, but have never taken any time to study how payouts work, let alone invest in SP.

👍 surfyogi, personz

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@lukestokes · Jul 19 '17

$0.50

Thank you for your detailed reply. Voting your yourself to bump your comment up is a neat feature, but it can also done in moderation and proportional to the rest of the conversation. For example, if the top comment is, say $0.50, then a $1.00 vote is more than enough to get that top position. No need for a $80 vote, right? Also, that argument doesn't work well for voting up sub replies which don't have other comments clouding them out. Some might also argue it's a bit presumptuous to think our own comments should always be at the top of the discussion, even if other comments provide more value. If our goals is the long term value of the content and community, it would make more sense to me to vote up other comments first unless my own comment really is so much more valuable than the rest. The point of voting is for discovering and rewarding good content, so I think we should all keep that in mind.

Curious where the 50/50 idea came from. Just something you thought of or have you seen that elsewhere? Why not 20/80 or 80/20?

I think it was an issue before as well, but the whales policed things rather tightly and (for the most part) didn't abuse it. Now that everyone's votes have value beyond a few pennies (via the 4X voting power), we're seeing more people do what was previously considered bad.

Either way, it's something the community is working out and will continue to respond to over time. Some feel it's their right to flag undeserving and overly self-voted commenters... others feel differently. Over time, the community will develop a social norm, I think.

👍 personz

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@surfyogi · Jul 19 '17

$0.97

I've seen this issue raised in many other posts. At some point, a level head or two started talking 50/50. 

Someone that may not see a lot of interest in their own posts, but spends a lot of time curating, then once in awhile comments. What is their opportunity to get much value, for an entire days work, if they are new?

The economics are easy to talk about for someone with 1 year experience. They are speaking to a much more frustrated crowd, when they are speaking to noobs. 

Somewhere in between; investors that care about the platform and community, need to be considered as well.

👍 gentlebot

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@surfyogi · Jul 20 '17

$0.07

What do u know about smackdown.kitty?

👍 personz

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2 replies

@personz · Jul 20 '17

> Some might also argue it's a bit presumptuous to think our own comments should always be at the top of the discussion, even if other comments provide more value. If our goals is the long term value of the content and community, it would make more sense to me to vote up other comments first unless my own comment really is so much more valuable than the rest. The point of voting is for discovering and rewarding good content, so I think we should all keep that in mind.

I agree, this is foundational. I might quote you on this, well said.

properties (22)

1 reply

@swissclive · Oct 9 '17 (edited)

$3.92

I have just spent all night here, on this post by @lukestokes, and I read every single comment on the self-voting issue. It’s a pity that the blog is 3 months old, but I couldn’t find a newer one.

There were a lot of links to other discussions and developments on this topic, and I have bookmarked these to read later. Firstly, a big thanks to everyone who commented! Everyone made really good and thoughtful comments and most were very balanced in their approach. Many alternative views and additional ideas were aired. I have a lot to say on the issue - a balanced list of pros and cons - but I will save that for a more recently trending post. If not found, I might start my own. I also have several ideas about how to improve from the current state, which were not mentioned here in the comments.

I would like to highlight one comment I found in this blog: “The precious curation awards would be better spent on your followers who comment genuinely on your posts so as to help them grow.
After all that is the essence of a community.”. That is the comment I most agree with.

Much of this debate is about what is “fair-use” self commenting. If you make a really important comment, that you strongly feel should get attention, and an answer, - because the topic seems so important to you, is it wrong to “bump” it to the top of a busy thread?

Much of the debate in this thread is about the monetary effect of self-voting. If we ban self-voting, then shills will appear. There is an obvious issue with people who write a one word comment like “awesome” and then upvote themselves without voting -or reading - the post itself. Yet the system allows it. If a supermarket puts a sign in the window saying “free lottery ticket with every visit”, there are bound to be some people who visit the store 100 times in a day. It’s not playing the game. But what about the person who visits twice and buys a lot of stuff each time? It’s shades of grey. At what point are you gaming the system?

As money seems to be the problem, it should also be part of the solution. The principal problem is that SP is both an investment and a curation tool. If you want to max out short-term returns, you only vote for yourself, thus destroying the long term value of the investment. If you are in it for the long term, you give all your reward to the best posts, and Steemit will grow faster along with the capital value of your investment.

Somewhere there is an acceptable use of self-voting, that is better than banning it, but I doubt we would get consensus on what a “fair use” would be. I believe the solution lies in money. I would try to think of a system where people who curate well can be given more rewarding power by their fellow users. A sort of Ebay peer-to-peer feedback system. The end users would spot abuse and call it out.

On the other hand, investors should all get the same percent return irrespective of whether they vote their own posts or other people’s. That shouldn’t be hard to fix. At the moment, investors who vote for themselves get more than those who don’t. That’s daft, and adds unwanted noise to the steemit system.

Another point: Bots Bots Bots Bots. So annoying. There are some very good ones like @Cheetah, but many are just making noise, casting random votes or rubbish comments to harvest monetary rewards. The community should have a say in these so called “tools”. Maybe that’s another debate.

Last point on voting. I often find valuable content, like this post by @lukestokes, but if it is more than 7 days old, I can upvote it, but not reward it. That’s wrong. If I write a book, I should be rewarded if it is still selling 20 years from now. If my time frame is just 7 days, and I have no followers, then why would I bother?

Steemit is still very young with only 10’000 to 25’000 unique users a day (please correct if wrong - it’s from another old post). I think things will improve for the better.

👍 lukestokes, tipu

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2 replies

@personz · Jul 20 '17

$0.06

People will find the balance of what makes sense for them based on the rules of the system, and you can't blame them for going with what makes sense within that. From this though two points:

1. You can still disagree with their actions by down voting / flagging. This is towards a social consensus incentive which while less visible but can still be a factor.
2. The structure of the rules should be changes to offer different incentives - i.e. another HF to recalibrate

I am part of the team that run @smackdown.kitty . We have flagged you as you know, and I want to take the opportunity to say that it's not personal and you are not on a blacklist of any kind (at least that's how we're running it now). You were one of the top 20 self voting authors / voters for comments in the last week on two occasions and that is the only reason you were flagged. If you continue to award yourself large up votes for your comments this will continue.

Your "Fairness" section above is not comprehensive, because we fall into none of those categories: experienced users who think voting should be cooperative. I've discussed elsewhere the reasons for this, but I believe it is supported by the original intention of the network and has just recently been severely upset by HF 19.

The 50/50 idea is missing the point a lot. A real stable idea allows voters to always gain from voting for others via curation rewards, more so than you can by voting for yourself. That's why the feature exists, and it makes self voting largely irrelevant when the balance is optimal.

We are currently discussing in #steem-coop ways that self voting on comments could be preserved for visibility (like [here](https://steemit.com/steem/@transisto/two-proposed-hf-policy-change-for-countering-reward-based-abuses)), but it's a tough one. My current view is that it is not a good metric for comment visibility. If it's truly buying the way to the top, then it should probably cost, instead of just being win-win for the high SP commenter, and everyone else gains nothing. This perspective rests on the idea that we cannot judge the value of our own posts or comments.

👍 the-ego-is-you

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@surfyogi · Jul 23 '17

$0.19

Fair enough. Thanks for responding; I am genuinely curious about several things..

I think @kenny-crane brings up many good points. The whole thing is fuzzy, through your own colored glasses, as you may see it yourself, but another view can be just as valid; of course if it breaks, it needs to get fixed, the other side of this coin.

I agree with @marillaanne; it's frustrating the level of documentation, as to how to really understand so many variables; and yet this is all being hashed out by very busy people; at the same time, I'm wondering if it should be better communicated to the entire user community as it's being done. And in a sense it is, and it's very difficult for any one person (@ned) or witnesses to keep up with it, except for HF release notes.

For myself, I've been a member 2 months. How much would you expect a member of 2 months to really know? Would you expect them to try anything and all, to attempt to understand how things work? If it's not the FAQ and white paper, would you expect them to know all the protocol of the community?

👍 personz

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1 reply

@marillaanne · Jul 21 '17

@surfyogi, you say:
>- Understanding the algo involved.
-- Very difficult, not well documented, constantly changing, requires immense study.

I keep asking, "Why is it that it's undocumented? And why isn't someone pointing to the code, line by line, to document the rules of this gambling game?"

properties (22)

@jtstreetman · Sep 17 '17

$0.03

Wow what a GOOD Read !!!   this post is 2 months old ...  But I just found it tonight and now its 5:30 a.m. I read every comment and was worth every minute of it, I even took a couple of breaks, lol 
Thanks again for a most thought provoking  post and as it turned out a great conversation !
Hope to chat soon !

Read More, Reason More   ...   JTS

👍 tipu

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@lukestokes · Sep 17 '17

Very cool! Thanks so much for reading through it all. Wow, talk about an all nighter! tip! 2 link

👍 tipu

properties (23)vote details (1)

@tipu · Sep 17 '17

<table><tr><td>http://i.imgur.com/sAg9ypb.png</td><td><p>Hi @jtstreetman! @lukestokes is sending you 2.0 SBD tip and @tipU upvote http://i.imgur.com/UwA0sjo.png :)</p><strong>From @lukestokes : <a href=https://steemit.com/steemit/@lukestokes/having-fun-with-tipu rel="noopener"> Having Fun With @Tipu</a></strong></td></tr></table><p><a href="https://steemit.com/steemit/@tipu/tipu-quick-guide" rel="noopener">@tipU - send tips by writing tip! in the comment, get share of the profit :)</a>

properties (22)

@mgarsteck · Dec 28 '17

This was really informative!

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@kiaazad · Jan 17 '18 (edited)

$0.32

edit: 
didn't notice it's 6 months old, (one more problem; old posts have no value)

👍 kiaazad

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@lukestokes · Jan 17 '18

Why did you edit? Now I’ll have to go hunt down the original on the blockchain.

I disagree about old posts having no value. They are tremendously valuable to me and they save me plenty of time.

properties (22)

@kiaazad · Jan 17 '18

$0.31

I didn't think that you would read it and the topic is already stale, plus I already suggested it long ago and pretty much got ignored.
you don't need to hunt it down, here's the original:

---
we want to persuade bloggers and investors to join alike.
the solution is fairly simple:
**increase the curators share of rewards or leave it to them to decide how much of their vote goes to authors and how much to curators.**
this will encourage curating other people's post while guarantees a desirable ROI for curators.
people like and need a blogging platform like steemit but not every investor want to spend hours crafting a post to benefit from their initial investment.
we need to give investors a good reason to spend their time reading another users post instead of self voting, and that reason is a reasonable profit from curating.

believe me you can't pitch steem to investors as it is right now, I've tried:
- put your money into steem
- there is rewards everyday
- but you need to be online every day
- and read posts to get it, at least 10 of them
- and at the end you only get 25%
- or write posts to get more of it, at least 10 of them every day...
- but others will hate you for it

even self voting possibility doesn't look interesting for many of people who have money.

on the other side steemit become less interesting with less investors, I didn't have much of success with good bloggers either:
- hey you're an awesome blogger, join steemit and get rewarded for your posts
- your posts must be original and you need to spend hours crafting them
- but at the start you'll get next to nothing comparing to your current revenue
- because there's not much benefit for up-voting your posts
- because up-voting your posts means less for themselves
- because they have limited number of votes and your post is a drop in the sea of posts
- (add all of the reasons you might not up-vote a post here)
- nah people with money don't want to spend their time reading posts

let's face the truth: on steemit "Money Talks" and instead of trying to stop this money talk to itself, give it enough reason to start a conversation with others.

I prefer to get 10% of a whales vote while he takes 90% than none of it

👍 kiaazad

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@kiaazad · Jan 17 '18

$0.32

you have the numbers, you can calculate what happens to the steem's value if we let people pour in their money but take the majority of the reward generated by their SP.
there might be less rewards, but the value of that less reward will be higher, there will be less spam, less self voting and more quality posts and more quality curation.

👍 kiaazad

properties (23)vote details (1)

2 replies

@abuyeti · Feb 9 '18

I think you upvoting your own post caused the effect of others voting on it because you typically upvote your own post within the first minute. If you have substantial voting power, your post looks like winner(larger reward pool) immediately. If I understand it correctly, it will also reach the trending tab faster because the trending page looks at stake weight. A noob can upvote their own posts all day or all year long and never get on the trending tab. 

Also, isn't part of the mining pool designated to the stake holders? Isn't that a return for just having steem? Isn't promoting the virtues and use of steemit a way to create return on your investment? No public company would allow share holders to go to their facilities and start using their employees or equipment to maximize their return on investment because that would take away from the company's ability to grow and the other shareholders wouldn't have it. How does that get so mixed up here?

properties (22)

@amahovac93 · Jul 21 '18

I agree 100% with you on this:
The way I like to think about this argument compares Steem Power holders to bitcoin miners. If someone invests $10,000 in a miner to obtain their "fair share" of the bitcoin rewards pool, no one complains at all. No one cries foul-play or considers that person a bad actor, even if their actions and investment decrease the rewards for everyone else. If that same person invests $10,000 in Steem Power and starts posting, commenting, and voting all their own stuff up with a similar mindset that a portion of the rewards pool is their "fair share" based on their investment, are they actually wrong? Just as the Bitcoin protocol allows for ASICs, the Steem blockchain allows for self-voting (and there is no real way to stop it anyway). If a Steem Power investor doesn't see an ROI incentive here, they will go elsewhere and the value of the entire network could go down. We all have an incentive to see Steem investors gain rewards, stick around, and bring in more Steem investors.

👍 amahovac93

properties (23)vote details (1)

Help/Feedback

voter	weight	wgt%	rshares	pct	time
kenny-crane	0 B		44,278,069,851	10%
blakejames	0 B		3,582,095,321	100%

`post_id`	6,609,442
`author`	jaki01
`permlink`	re-kaylinart-re-kenny-crane-re-lukestokes-self-voting-scammy-behavior-rational-roi-or-something-else-20170709t051028232z
`category`	steemit
`json_metadata`	"{"app": "steemit/0.1", "tags": ["steemit"]}"
`created`	2017-07-09 05:10:27
`last_update`	2017-07-09 05:10:27
`depth`	3
`children`	4
`net_rshares`	81,620,031,720
`last_payout`	2017-07-16 05:10:27
`cashout_time`	1969-12-31 23:59:59
`total_payout_value`	0.262 SBD
`curator_payout_value`	0.087 SBD
`pending_payout_value`	0.000 SBD
`promoted`	0.000 SBD
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`created`	2017-07-08 00:05:21
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voter	rshares	pct
kenny-crane	41,821,938,938	10%
truthforce	335,576,162,340	100%
cryptopal	0	100%

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`created`	2017-07-30 09:34:51
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`post_id`	6,370,512
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`created`	2017-07-06 19:36:00
`last_update`	2017-07-06 19:36:00
`depth`	1
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voter	rshares	pct
lukestokes	23,208,819,629	1%
lukestokes.mhth	507,307,414	1%
krazykrista	725,428,168	100%

`post_id`	6,372,761
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`created`	2017-07-06 20:01:00
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`created`	2017-07-06 19:38:00
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`post_id`	6,370,748
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voter	weight	wgt%	rshares	pct	time
freedomnation	0 B		19,152,583,233	100%
davebrewer	0 B		45,861,816,768	100%

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`created`	2017-07-06 19:40:12
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`created`	2017-07-06 19:40:24
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`max_accepted_payout`	1,000,000.000 SBD
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`root_title`	"Self-Voting: Scammy Behavior, Rational ROI, or Something Else?"
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`max_accepted_payout`	1,000,000.000 SBD
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`created`	2017-07-06 20:27:30
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`post_id`	6,370,971
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`created`	2017-07-06 19:40:54
`last_update`	2017-07-06 19:40:54
`depth`	1
`children`	0
`net_rshares`	97,561,371,575
`last_payout`	2017-07-13 19:40:54
`cashout_time`	1969-12-31 23:59:59
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`author_reputation`	22,330,008,525,791
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`post_id`	6,371,310
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`depth`	1
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`post_id`	6,371,534
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`created`	2017-07-06 19:46:57
`last_update`	2017-07-06 19:46:57
`depth`	1
`children`	7
`net_rshares`	586,367,610,075
`last_payout`	2017-07-13 19:46:57
`cashout_time`	1969-12-31 23:59:59
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voter	rshares	pct
kaylinart	53,387,805,259	3%
albertogm	14,659,258,146	30%
lukestokes	487,385,212,220	30%
stevescoins	9,598,735,679	5%
sethlinson	1,226,209,379	1%
sarahjay	1,915,556,046	100%
lukestokes.mhth	12,429,031,660	30%
dpencilpusher	4,621,990,041	100%
pavli7	1,143,811,645	100%

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`created`	2017-07-06 20:07:03
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`depth`	2
`children`	0
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`last_payout`	2017-07-13 20:07:03
`cashout_time`	1969-12-31 23:59:59
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`post_id`	6,374,124
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`created`	2017-07-06 20:15:57
`last_update`	2017-07-06 20:15:57
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