good

Nice post keep it up i was planning to create but good that u created it :)
upvoted it

That's the beauty here on Steemit.You can choose which post to upvote or downvote, nobody is telling you to do that. Who is using wisefully  they're votes will have more to win on long term.
I don't have much Steem Power,so I can't upvote everyone like someone else is doing,I choose you because I really enjoyed what you are writing and is very helpfully.
I hope one day to make posts like you do... and when I leave your post I feel like I learn something. That's the real purpose.

Should I continue to downvote spam comments? The comment ratio on Steemit is very low and when there are comments, it's the same people spamming gifs for pennies.

Im not sure but I think the drop to 26k was due to the 75% posting rewards payout... or maybe something to do with the price fluctuating.

I agree with you to a certain extent but I think these kinds of posts serve as potential advertisement for mass adoption. I recently convinced a friend of mine to join the platform (once sign ups are open) she's been hustling trying to create a cooking show on Youtube and then leverage that to start a catering business.

Even though she has 45k subscribers she gets paid peanuts. I tried to convince her with my geeky articles, but she only really showed interest when she saw the makeup video and then the cake baking video. She saw where she could offer value.

It's about getting people like her involved that will push the user adoption rate up explosively. I think the whales know this, which is why we're seeing article or videos that can 'advertise' mass adoption so heavily upvoted.

So far, I've really only down voted chesters or abusive posts, I hadn't considered the down voting trends, you're giving me a lot to chew on haha. 

I have to say that I agree that it's hard to identify when to down vote sometimes. For example, check out this gem of a conversation that I did not down vote because I believe the OP was being genuine, even though I can't stomach his line of thinking: https://steemit.com/homosexuality/@miguel12/the-cause-of-homosexuality

So I've determined how I'm going to respond to genuine OP's who's views I disagree with, but now I have to consider trending topics. This Steem addiction isn't easy

i think a lot of people just look at others and upvote top posts. Taras crap-post is a good example. There is a simple guide here on Steemit How to be a populat - just born with boobs and pussy. it is a pity.

Wonderful post! Sorry to hear you were locked out of your account during the hack.

" am I the only one who had higher hopes for this platform to become something game-changing and revolutionary - a socio-economic catalyst transforming the nature of social media"
 This. 100 times this. I have been everywhere from beginning of reddit, 9gag, funnyjunk, voat, etc and this is the first time I am so excited about a new one popping up and showing more promise than anything ever has before. Not that I had invested in any of the previous ones, and I doubt most people even had the possibility too. Steemit makes everything possible, and I am 100% that no matter how long it will take for mass adoption, with bigger userbase and more balanced voter-value in time it will all become golden.
Not to mention Steem can do so much more than just being a social platform, it can do what augur (crowdvoting) and any marketplaces and many other apps that are being developed by the Ethereum team. 

Usually I liked to compare eth and btc to Apple and Microsoft, now its more like btc being Internet Explorer, eth being firefox and Steem being the beta version of google chrome.

I have been into altcoins for some time, and have been promoting Steemit on my instagram: www.instagram.com/crypt0trader and the userbase is growing there every day too! Would love it if you could take a look at my post: https://steemit.com/steemit/@getssidetracked/the-steemit-community-on-instagram-is-growing 
where I warn people about suspicious activity from user: steemit on Instagram, and to make sure not more users get their accounts hacked/phished

Thanks for this blogpost! I also want to take the time to mention not to forget the comment sections of posts! If there is anything I've learned on reddit its that the comments can be a place of originality and most unique stuff you could read, most times leading to them being of more quality than the uploaded content, and that's the real beauty of quality reading!

If I don't like post, I don't read it. That's all. Thee's no need to downvote. If it's written by some disgusting hater, hardly it'll get many votes. I've never downvoted (maybe accidentally clicked this flag)

@rok-sivante Great write up! As @wingz mentioned the drop from 32k to 26K might be caused by the price fluctuating and not only downvotes. 

I'm not heavily invested as you are. In fact, I've only discovered Steem several days before but 26k for a simple make-up video makes me question the reasoning of people who voted. 

As I understand, a number of whales  must upvote to accumulate such huge amount. They might try to justify the vote as and attempt to expose Steemit to a wider  audience, specifically, women. But is it truly the best you can think of as an investor? By now the make-up tutorial has roughly 1.6k views... 1.6k views for friggin 26k? It's $16 per view. And I can guarantee, the video won't magically become viral overnight and gather additional 100 000 000. That being said, I have nothing against the make-up girl (she's lovely), I question the whales action for upvoting content that represents Steemit.

I actually agree with this use-case of downvoting. It's another way for high-value SP members to exercise their ability to curate and influence the site's content. 

Since the whales have the most to lose if the quality on Steemit degrades to the point where people start losing interest and leaving,  I think it's fair and that they have the right to make these kind of downvotes. 

I've definitely seen a fair number of posts earning ridiculous amounts of rewards for the type of content they've added, but overall I think the quality of the trending page's posts has been getting better and that makes me optimistic that the Steemit is improving and on the right track.

I guess if's it fake for sure or in bad taste.

<b>Steemit Quotes Of The Day – 
Sometimes life is tough. 諦めない</b>
<img src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0xgYvmGLJ7Y/V5ED8rd8lwI/AAAAAAAALF8/rWrcjfjBCQEAxXigwsQwwGA_Zbm0WcIKACLcB/s1600/steemit-quotes-of-the-day-oneyesoneno-11.gif" width="632" height="248"/>

Btw i upvote your post because it is a great sharing :)

What a refreshing post! I totally agree with you that the rewards should be fair and not excessive at all.

But due to the very nature of creative writing, it is difficult to gauge just how valuable something is. What I am trying to ask is....how do we determine at what point something becomes too excessively rewarded. Is a $10,000 reward on an original content more excessive, or is $11,000 reward on an analysis of something more excessive?

These are matters that will get solved automatically in as the platform matures and the users "settle in".