Awhile back when the big discussions about people who were self up voting their own comments after HF19 and draining the reward pool came up I indicated that if you wanted to do something about it rather than FLAGGING people for doing it you could simply not follow them. I did stop following some people, and I will do more when I notice it. Why? I am a pretty avid comment up voter. Unless it is someone being a jerk, or all it says is something like "Nice post" I'll likely be up voting it. I've been up voting comments at 1% for a week or more now while monitoring my voting percent. I am now doubling that so will be voting 2% on comments to see how it goes. I want to encourage discussion. If my voting percent can bear it I'll keep bumping it until I'm hopefully at 4 or 5%.
I can tell you some of the people I unfollowed I didn't really want to, but I try to be a man of my word. If people who currently vote their own comments stop and I notice and they are someone I engage with I will be more than happy to follow them again. I also will support your comments, and you shouldn't need to support your own.
If you are doing it for visibility. I am pretty good about looking at every reply I get. I've missed some before due to for some reason how steemit sometimes sorts the replies tab. It doesn't happen very often.
So if you are someone who has been following me, and I was following you and you are wondering why I may not be following you now, that would be the reason. If you are angered about this, that was not my intention, but if you feel the need to unfollow me then I would understand that.
If you however, have been up voting your own comments and are willing to stop doing that and instead cast those votes for other people in the community let me know and I'd be ecstatic to follow you again.
I wanted to write this post as one person just asked me why I stopped following them, and they were actually one of the people I was bummed about no longer following. I did write a few posts and comments about this before I did it, and like I said I didn't want to be a hypocrite. Practice what I preach.
I really don't upvote my comments, maybe because i am still growing on the platform. But i do give upvote to my post atleast with my least cents. I always think if you dont show people that you like your post then who will start it?. However, these are still due to my status on this platform.
I actually don't have a problem with people up voting their own post. It is only the comments that it can quickly drain things. I first noticed it with a guy who replied to me (disagreeing it was capitalism vs communism debate... he was the pro-communist) his first comment he up voted $3. There was a lot of back and forth between the two of us. By the time I finally pointed out that he who was talking about mean capitalists and how they concentrate wealth and are greedy yet I'd seen him up vote his own comments probably close to $30 in the span of that dialog. His voting % was down to $1.30 or so by the time I said something. He stopped responding, and muted me. :)
It's interesting how often I see the supposed negatives actually turn out to be the person projecting what THEY actually act like without someone calling them on it.
Status and improvement come on the platform just with effort, and perseverance. I had many a post I love make $0 when I started out. Many I considered some of my best made less than $1 at a time when there were trending posts making $10,000+ So I've been there. I just stuck with it. I tried to be civil, and keep my word.
Funny thing is it was the Communist in the debate that proceeded to up vote their own comments to about $30 in that single post with their first one starting at $3. So they did it a lot. Ironically this was lumped in with their comments about how capitalists seek to consolidate wealth. Which lead me to eventually thinking perhaps the reason the person really wants communism as the only mind they can read is their own and perhaps they for some reason have difficulty being a decent person without someone FORCING them. So they decide to project their problems as being the problems of everyone else. ;)
Poland swapped Communists for capitalists and in 20 years all they've done is swap state centralization for globalist centralization. Centralization is the big problem. So we decentralize things like Steemit & Bitcoin, and guess what happens? Yup! The top dogs rule the roost once again over time. Humans are much too complex for the centralization or decentralization of powers!!
Human nature is indeed what blows up even the best made plans. :)
As far as decentralization and the blockchain. For me it is more about not being able to easily shut it down, and the more nodes and decentralized it is the harder that becomes.
As far as people vs people. Let me make my own choices, don't make them for me. That's all I really ask.
I think that is the best we can hope for in either system: centralized or decentralized :)
Really!!!, apparently he was engaging with you because of the rewards. I dont know if it will be right to say he was acting greedy by slowly dragging a debate and upvoting till he drained his power. Also, he left when he couldn't get any gain again. I think he shouldn't have washed his dirty linen outside. But thats the world we live in. Hopefully, someday sort of these people will change and decentralize power and money instead of their own selfish interest.
Interesting perspective on the self voting. I was doing it for a while, then I stop, then I do it again. Still figuring out the Steemit Universe and what works, feels the best, etc etc. Thanks. Going to follow you as well. You write very well!
I think I am the only guy who upvotes and replies to 95% of all my comments. It's interesting. Just to let everyone know, Its probably thousands in 50 days :)
And yet another awesome discussion on this topic! Your attitude of if everybody did it struck a cord with me a few days ago on the thread of the upvoter bank rolling himself, it was so spot on all I could wonder is if he looks in the mirror and sees someone he likes.
My concern is less on the money aspects of this place and more on building a community of thinkers and folks who actually interact with each other for a better place.
Coming over here from YT (lots of haters/trolls) was like walking into a place where you can actually have a discussion and not lose your head for asking someone to quit cussing in a chat with small children reading the post (NOT Family Friendly), so it is a breath of fresh air.
And it is up to us to try to keep it the positive mind expanding place you are describing and when we encounter new problems try to do something about them if we can find a way to do so that doesn't hurt the platform.
I agree and am taking my time to learn the ins and outs along with the do's and don'ts of working with a place that is so different!
Well the dos and don'ts are also community built so you'll potentially have some input into shaping them as time passes and new things come up. We'll encounter new problems...
I think that all people in Steemit are very different, in the little time I´ve been here I see that a lot of people don´t vote for another people because "they don´t deserve to be upvoted in their posts" and just voted for themselves, that´s fucking crap. I´d like people stop thinking like that and help another people to grow up.
Yep, don't follow such people, don't vote for such people, and if they want to have their own private island so be it. Yet to support them by following them, voting for them, etc indicates you are okay with their behavior.
It is good to see that a person of principal is not only willing to follow his self imposed guidelines, but to make a public proclamation and follow up with it. Very genuine and the logic makes perfect sense. I believe with the spike in new accounts, the common consensus from these groups that are attempting to vie for the attention of, people of influence, is that this is the only option they have. I feel that it is very noble that you voiced your concerns and gave warning. The fact that you are willing to let them back into your fold if the corrective actions are achieved is beyond compassionate. Cheers to you!!!
I don't believe treating people as forever damned is very good for our community. Thanks for your thoughtful reply.
Thank you for having the patience and understanding of a saint.
Heh. Let's instead call it a long term view rather than a short term one. :)
And as you are leading by example, the culture of this community is in great hands and minds.
Are you also against self-voting on posts?
I am not. I was not one of those yelling for that. I have stopped self voting my own posts, but I didn't have a problem with that. The quantity of comments can lead to a much bigger impact on the reward pool than simply up voting your own posts. If the person was spamming 10 posts a day and up voting all their own posts at 100% so all their voting was going to that I might have a problem, but I haven't really seen anyone doing that.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that things this way. What are your opinions on things like booster and randowhale?
I thought those were pretty good ideas. Though they've balanced their random chance enough that I'm not sure in the long run whether it is actually worth the fee paid. I still think it is a cool idea. I haven't seen booster, but I used randowhale on a couple of posts by people.
I think people saying they don't up vote their own posts and then turning around and using randowhale to up vote their own posts is a little dishonest, but I think they are potentially a cool little bonus if you want to do it for someone else.
Ultimately, I don't really care too much about voting until it becomes detrimental to the community and steem ecosystem as a whole.
My litmus test is this:
Ask yourself "If EVERYONE did what I am doing how would that impact steemit?" If you come to the conclusion that it'd potentially be bad then perhaps you shouldn't do it.
Cool, thanks for sharing. You articulate the way I feel about these things really well! I am thinking that a vast majority don't see the larger impact theyre having on the community through some of these "initiatives".
I think many just do it to get towards the top of the comments, never done it myself, but always upvote my own posts, I am sure that used to be automatic?
It was automatic until a week or so ago. I actually think that is a byproduct of this up voting comments thing. People were complaining about the rash of self up voted comments draining the pool which logically lead to people saying "then why are you up voting your own post". We've been doing fine with up voting of posts since the beginning except the occasional powerful reward pool police periods... Comments getting up voted insane amounts still sometimes happened prior to HF19, but it was only a few people that could really do it. After HF19 a lot of people could do it and it became a drain.
The rule I have for myself "If everyone did this how would it impact steemit?" is a simple test.
It survived self up voting posts just fine. Comments were starting to drag it down.
I've stopped self-upvoting my own posts too, but personally that is not something I am against.
I came onboard in May, and recall there was a checkbox to upvote your own posts then. I don't do it either, because my vote is too valuable to waste on me. I'd much rather drop a vote on someone whose post has merit.
I reckon if what I post has merit, others will upvote it. Since I'm not all that concerned with money, but am rather interested in what folks have to say, that's where my votes go.
Good to know, I will stop upvoting my own posts too.
nice post follow me and i follow u bak...
just kidding! - great post
That's a pretty rational approach to voting in the environment we have. Thanks for the food for thought.
It's really irritating that people powerup and votes only their comments. It's kind of making fun of steemers like us who really don't have much voting power... I appreciate your stepping forward against this trend ☺️
Steemit could have been coded to prevent self-voting, but someone must have decided to not do that. I've stopped doing it even though I could make a few dollars from it. I'd rather support others. We have to encourage the minnows as Steemit tries to grow.
I saw a case today where someone has 2700 accounts voting up their comments that are just numbers. That adds no value to this system and deprives others of rewards. They are making a few dollars on each of those comments.
I understand this is the wild west and just about anything goes. Those who try to police it are effectively vigilantes trying to do good. We can choose to support them.
It's all an exciting experiment.
That's the problem with stopping it with code. There are usually workarounds such as creating another account moving some of your power into it via delegation or actual slower transfer and then up voting from there. So code solutions don't always stop it, they simply can add some barriers. The barriers can reduce the quantity of people doing it due to it not being as easy, but they don't stop it.
The best solution in my mind is to remove support from the people that do it. Don't follow them, don't vote for them, don't vote for them as witness, etc.
cool post hope it all works out for the community
Nice post @dwinblood! Upped and resteemed! If I was upvoting my own comments I didn't do it on purpose! Let's see ...
... ok I didn't upvote it ... :)
Why should we discriminate between posts and comments?
You can drain the reward pool equally fast by posting very low-effort blogs. Which is what I’d expect a person who self votes comments would do after being pressured not to.
The obvious solution is to hard fork self voting out of the code. I don’t know if that would be a good idea (investors might dump the coin), but it would make more sense to me than arbitrarily saying one thing is ok and another is not, when the blockchain allows both without restriction.
On a personal note, I comment much more than I post. Why shouldn’t I be free to self vote my comments as much as a person that creates a dozen Twitter-esque posts a day?
Or what if I’d like to make this comment more visible on your blog, so I can increase the chance of getting an answer.
Is that abuse of the reward pool? A shameful act?
Perhaps people want an overall limit on self-voting. I would find that more sensible. But I’ve yet to hear someone throw out actual numbers. I guess it’s easier to scapegoat SV commenting, since we can visibly monitor that.
Is there something I’m not understanding about this issue?
Try it. People are not doing it. That usually gets flagged eventually for spam.
I had a guy that could up vote his own post $3 at 100%. In an exchange with me in comments on one of my posts he up voted his own comments to the tune of around $30 because he did it so many times in that one post.
Comments are less visible than posts so when someone is draining the reward pool for EVERYONE it is less visible in comments.
I have the simple test "If everyone did this what would happen to steemit" until VERY recently up voting your own post was default and it didn't hurt steemit.
In the brief moments after HF19 we were already seeing the self up voting comments draining the pool and accelerating towards doing so.
Code cannot solve everything. Easy to get around a lot of code solutions. They can SLOW it down. Yet you could delegate power to another account and vote yourself, but then you could change the code and make it so it checks for delegated power too. Which then someone could intentionally troll people by spreading tiny amounts of delegated power around so they block a ton of people from voting on each other.
Yet if they transfer it slower and don't delegate it then they can simply vote on themselves with another account. We can monitor the blockchain and sometimes detect people doing this.
So the best solution in my mind is to have the community simply remove support don't follow, don't vote for, etc those who do such things. If they stop doing the negative activity then be willing to support them again.
If people want their own little private island and don't feel they need the rest of us then so be it.
You mean? You'd like to pay to cut in line? Simple test... what if EVERYONE does that. It'd be pretty negative.
So what is the reward pool drain of self-voting comments vs self-voting blog posts?
Well let's put it this way. The guy I dealt with up voting his own post 100% would get $3.
In his comments on my post he got around $30 because of how many he did it. So in that case 10x a difference.
Also comment voting is not easily noticeable by everyone... spamming posts and up voting them is and anti-spam stuff kicks in for that.
So there are some differences.
As to self-voting blog posts until very recently that was AUTOMATIC and you had to consciously remember to uncheck a box on a blog post to NOT vote for yourself. It is not and never has been automatic for comments, so that's another difference.
Now that it is no longer automatic on blog posts many people are stopping voting on their own blog posts as well. I didn't have a problem with it as it is how it has been and it has not hurt steem, steemit, etc. The comment up voting that began post HF19 was hurting steem due to being much larger... the difference between $3 on a post vs $30 on comments under someone elses post should be pretty obvious.
I've commented along similar lines a couple of times on other threads - with no response, but what do you think about reallocating a small portion of the reward pool and distributing it in proportion to the dispersion of votes that each account has cast, or similar? I think this could have the effect of offsetting some amount of self-voting, sockpuppets and clics, to bring those problems under control.
Perhaps this reward could simply be proportional to the number of accounts each user votes on, so a pure self-voter would get 1, whereas somebody who votes for 100 different accounts gets 100 times more from that reward pool.
This would probably have the effect of encouraging participation, adding to curation rewards, but also push people beyond their voting bubbles.
I'd be willing to try it out as an experiment. It might be possible to exploit that still as you could just create a bunch of accounts and make sure to vote among them and due to doing this by your system all your votes for your own personal accounts would be magnified.
That might be true. I don't know anything about the accounts creation process, and fees yet, and I haven't investigated the source code.
I'm not completely sold on the visibility argument of posts vs comments.
Most every visit to the new tab brings up a thick, almost unbroken stream of what I consider junk content. Currently, there appears to be very little action taken towards spammers. (Thankfully, we at least have @cheetah for a symbolic spanking of copypasta.)
But what constitutes as spam?
Upcoming apps like @Zappl will produce a plethora of short-form, lower-effort posts. Many of us would consider that normal social media content, but now context can matter more than the content itself.
Discerning spam and taking action against it will only get harder when Steemit acquires millions of users that are producing content in countless languages. I think it's inevitable that our blockchain will be carved into a great many private islands. At that point, the only real policing can be the code.
It seems your argument (self-voting comments is much worse than posts) is largely hinged on your anecdotal experience with a particularly egregious self-voter. Forgive me if I'm wrong.
Looking at reports from @smackdown.kitty, posted by @personz, I was surprised at how little the top offenders were actually taking from the reward pool. Some hard numbers to reveal the total depth and cost of this behavior would add clarity, but I haven't found any yet.
As for cutting in line by using self-votes to increase the exposure of one's comment, that could also be seen as a paid privilege -- much like buying an expensive theatre seat to sit closer to the stage. If everyone did it, it would simply expose wealth inequality. (Perhaps the reward from that kind of self-vote should go to the blog author?)
If SP shouldn't be used for self-payment, nor for increasing one's content exposure, what are the remaining incentives to hold SP? And are those incentives large enough to prop up (and hopefully increase) the price of STEEM?
I've asked this question before, and people seem to ignore it.
Care to take a stab?
https://steemit.com/project-smackdown/@personz/smackdown-kitty-first-real-day-out-charts-and-stats
On July, 12, 2017, 2655 self-voters were recorded, excluding users with < 1k SP. The average earnings per user was $0.635.
Thus, a reward pool drain of $1685.92
I guess I was expecting a figure far larger, from all the discussions I've read...
And I thought I should add that of course some of it is anecdotal. I react to the world by observation. So while yes anecdotal accounts are not typically proof by themselves that also does not mean they have no value or should be discounted.
I quit upvoting my own posts and try to use the vote on content that I get something from. I think if someone learns something or gets a value from that post it will get upvoted. I have on been on steemit about a month or so. I really don`t make a lot but I know it will get better as I post and get used to the platform. Thanks and have a good day.
I agree with you. I have only been on here for less than a week and am still learning my way around.
I reply, upvote or resteem to articles that I find pertinent, have an interest in or think others may find valuable. This is not a popularity contest, is it?
You could answer with the word, "Integrity" followed by a link to your post explaining your view of self upvoting comments, but I think you've got too much integrity to do that.
I've stopped following some people (with high profiles) who don't seem to bother upvoting anyone's comments. I would consider changing my mind if there was a valid explanation, but they don't seem to care enough to explain.
Cha-Ching
I know your opinion on the Mute button (and respect it too) but I find muting people like that reduces my frustration, just a little.
Ignorance of unacceptable behavior that I have no control over, is bliss.
I won't know if they change. It is bliss, but it is still ignorance. :)
Depends upon which is more important having bliss, or eliminating ignorance. A personal choice. I won't bash people for going one way or the other.
Me I prefer to face problems rather than ignore them. I pretty much just mute people that are intentionally trolling me, and I usually feed them quite a bit to make sure that is the case beforehand. :)
With traffic the way it is not following someone is almost like mute, though there is still a slim chance through conversation we might find a reason to follow them again.
Optimism. :)
I still take a look at the Hot & Trending pages occasionally, looking for something really good and it makes it easier to find new work if I've muted the people who always seem to be on there. It saves me from having to scroll through a few extra pages.
nobody should be angry that you are not following. Your reputation is 72 which generally means speaks for itself. (Nice post.. i know not supposed to say that :p)
I'm fine with people saying nice post. I just don't up vote things that that is pretty much all they can say. It's hard to tell if it is a bot or not when it is so brief.
No fancy reply, not fishing for a vote.
Appreciate the honesty.
I try not to be a bot, good job.
Namaste
So the consensus seems to be that it is ok to upvote your own posts but not ok to upvote your own comments, right?
Oh, this vague world of steemit etiquette...
Well that consensus was set at the time when STEEMIT by default had you set to up vote your own post. That changed recently. When it was the default setting that it up voted your own post people didn't really challenge it.
Now that this is no longer the default it is truly unexplored territory.
As to "etiquette". That's kind of decided by the community. I've stopped up voting my own posts too, but only recently.
I have a simple test for when I want to know if I should do something or not...
"If everyone were to do what I am doing would it be good for steemit?" Well until recently pretty much everyone was up voting their own posts as that was the default. It survived that.
Yet that is also an Appeal to Tradition. Simply because we did it in the past doesn't mean it ultimately was best.
So as far as self voting own posts that is still in flux. Comments can drain the pool rapidly and far more dramatically than up voting your own posts. The guy that made me first see the problem started with his comment at $3 and there was a bunch of back and forth so I watched his replies get lower and lower as he chewed through his voting percentage. When I finally called him on it he was at around $1.30 worth of vote. He easily voted himself to around $30 across all those comments in my post. Had he up voted a POST it would have been a single vote of $3. So he drained the pool by 10x what someone voting their own posts do. He was also not the worst offender, he was simply the one I encountered.
And my litmus test "if everyone did it" seems to indicate that steem would likely go into a death spiral.
It's not the first time people would destroy something. If it can be abused, it will be abused. =)
It is the classic question of the commons. I hope we can avoid enclosure.
That doesn't mean WE have to be the ones abusing it. :) We can also choose not to give those that do so our support.
Cheers at more vote power for us, the readers ^_^ I seldom upvote my own comments to get it some more notice when their is a lot of replies somewhere. But yeah, I don't really like to do it either, makes you look scummy.. Besides, it pretty much loses the idea Steemit represents.
Yeah it can be a lot like someone pushing their way to the front of the line. :) Whereas when other people up vote your comments it is more like people finding you in that line and saying... "check out this guy!"
"If you are angered about this, that was not my intention, but if you feel the need to unfollow me then I would understand that."
Unfortunate that you even have to say this. I can't imagine following my unfollows closely enough to have an emotional reaction to this. Hypothetically speaking.
Interesting topic.
I have yet to completely make up my mind on where I stand on this. Calling out a higher moral is a shakey thing in my eyes. As I think that can be a dangerous thing for any person or group of persons to do. Ref. most of history. (I'm not saying it's being done here - just that I have noticed that beeing one popular argument on this topic other places).
I do see why newcommers can deside to vote for them selves, some of them directly practical reasons and visibility like u mention. One reason that made me do it (yes, I'm a noob myself - about a week old activly) was confussion of the system. I read that your reputation depended on your "voting accuracy" which made me afraid for posting on anything but what I though was the very best. So as I was working and traveling and didn't have time to read new posts, I dumped some of my VP in some of my few post for ease through the mob-app, not to waste my VP. The fright of not voting on the "right stuff" was soon replaced by anger over "who, other than myself is to decide wheather or not I'm voting correctly!". But I digress.
I notice I could go on for pages more on my initial thought of Steemit and to wheather or not it's designe to promte any ideolistic goal or equal ground... but I will restrain myself =)
While I'm figuring out this one for my self, this is what I can say for certain: After posting my first two posts I've been engaging in a lot more small conversations. Not that my posts were so interesting and popular, they were not. However, some did indeed reply and the pleasure of responding and upvoting other peoples comments feels pretty darn good. In an indirect way one of the posts eventually lead me in contact with you mr. Winblood, for which I'm glad.
Thank you for sharing your piece of mind with me in this post!
warjar
You are like the first 70 up person Ive seen actually post something this legit about upvoting after the hf19! ( hope that doesnt sound rude)
Sometimes if I post a comment at the bottom of the thread pool...I upvote it myself if it's actually a good one! Lol
But you don't have to because the author will see it no matter what, and all the people who bother to start reading comments usually read all of them, at least I do.. but yes. Good job dwinblood. Keep up the good work! I don't comment vote but I try to make sure to upvote every good comment in my posts. Encourages engagement. And I like the engagement..
I know lol...its just a confidence booster for me not to be at the bottome of the pile, i did it this time just out of irony!
The problem is you were ironic on a post I was being serious about not being a hypocrite for, so i couldn't vote for it without making myself a hypocrite. Technically, I shouldn't be following.
HINT: You can un-ironically unvote yourself though and we can take care of that. ;)
Haha, your all good.. just know that you don't need that confidence booster, and in the end, it's always twice as good to get it from someone outside yourself!!
When I get on an interesting post, I also generally read every comment. It's like OCD or something lol.
Also my vote is worth more than yours. ;) Even at 1%. I've not been up voting comments that people up vote their own. :(
EDIT: I didn't mean that to be snide. What I meant is that if you don't up vote your own comments and it is more than "nice post" then I'll likely up vote your comment and my up vote will likely be worth more than what you could have up voted yourself. Someday that may not be true.
Upvotes are definitely nice! I just like the idea of a decent conversation getting started, commenting on something and getting just air in return hurts the old self esteem a wi bit!:) So I can be happy now that the maker of the post acknowledged my comment in some sort of way, so Thankyou:)
I always try to at least up vote. If I have something interesting to say I try to do that too. :)
If it is a good one, people will up vote it. If they are someone like me the person you responded to will. Most people think their comments are good. (some may not) I believe we should let our audience decide.
You may be spending a little bit, but the person up voting their comments $8 might be powerful and in the scope of their power they may be doing a smaller % than you. So I try to treat people the same.
I'm not completely happy about it, but it feels like the right stance to take.