When you follow someone to auto-upvote them. I think there should be options to filter which posts are auto-voted!
So, yesterday wasn't, the best, of my days, and in a moment of weakness I posted a very short, extreme-low quality post expressing my rage! I made sure to set the reward distribution to "burn," just in case someone upvoted it, because even in my broken state I knew that 3-words posts shouldn't get any upvotes.
To my surprise when I got better and checked my HIVE account's today's morning I found that I got some upvotes from more than one big account. Those accounts who continued to upvote my posts for the past 3 months. I got upvotes from @themarkymark, @therealwolf and even the bot: @buildawhale, I assume one of them followed me in auto-voting system and the other votes are triggered by the first voter's.
I was glad to know that such people trusted me enough to upvote everything I post. That's a huge honor! Especially since I don't interact with them that much. The problem is that I know now I'll get upvoted no matter what I post and that creates a bunch of issues (read next section.)
Why I posted it in the first place? I've done something terrible and I was feeling so bad I wanted my self-loathing to be recorded on the blockchain forever! I know I'll regret it one day but that's how I felt right then.
I thought auto-upvotes are filtered by something. There are many bots that won't upvote anything shorter than 150 characters! I was sure that post of mine will be caught in one of those filters and won't get voted.
Now I feel like I wasted 20 HIVE out of the reward pool, just for my selfish anger! Rewards that could easily have gone to someone who worked 5 hours on a post that got less than 0.5 HIVE in upvotes! (I've been there!) Thinking about this makes me feel worse than I was feeling when I made that post in the first place!
But this post isn't about yesterday's one. It's about Auto-upvotes and why they should be filtered:
So, why ?
Knowing that I'm getting the upvotes no matter what I write, at least for someone like me will have a effect on my posting:
This will put a huge limit on my content: I can't publish posts/articles that objectively deserve less than 20 HIVE (which is approximately, their auto-votes combined.) I can't make a joke post or some low quality rant (like this one,) anymore! At least not on my main account.
It makes me want to post everyday, anything, without a thought about value, just to get that sweet upvote: Luckily I don't do that, but the temptation is there! I try to only post about things I really want to say. This also means that there will be days with no posts from me, even when I have time. In these days, part of me feels I'm losing, the other part thinks it's worth it in the long term.
Knowing that no matter what I post will get upvoted might decrease the quality a bit! I mean who reads this stuff anyway? Right? Still, I don't do that for the same reasons above. Long term~
What filters should there be then?
It's been a while since I took part in one of these auto-vote services. As far as I know there's already the white/blacklist filters for accounts and voting power filters as well.
So I suggest adding filters based on the content of the post being upvoted:
- Number of characters/words! I think it's a must. Many users won't use it, bt for some, it's essential metric when deciding to give the upvote.
- Tags: That's easy, I want to upvote @ arandomstranger187638 but only if they posted about #gaming. Or I want to follow-vote everything @ randomvotingtrail votes as long as it contains #diy in it.
- Content: if the post contains a certain phrase they won't get an upvote from me.
I know all of these are possible because voting bots already upvoted by these filters. I also know that many Hivers will be thrilled to prevent their auto-upvotes from going to what they consider low quality content from authors who generally post high-quality content they love to see.
What do you think?
I'm conflicted about writing this post because I really want to keep getting these auto-votes, but I feel that there's a problem in getting them all the time! Especially if they keep being unfiltered.
Final thing I want to say is that I might be wrong. This article was written in a burst of emotion after watching my mistake of yesterday becoming bigger! I'm not even sure if I'll agree with what I wrote here in a week or a month. I also never checked if the filters are already there or if they're work-in-progress...
Image is taken from Reddit, found via Google search.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Unlike most I review my votes and will remove people who take advantage of them.
If you made more than one post like that and the rewards were not burned you wouldn’t see more votes from me or the list of accounts that trail my vote.
Auto votes are only bad when there is zero oversight or are done purely for curation rewards only.
If you look at the typical rewards your posts make it is not in my best interest to vote them, yet I do.
I am capable of handing out almost $30 votes. I typically do 10-20% votes as I prefer to spread it around to hundreds of authors rather than leaving large votes (which amplified the affect you refer to where people will take advantage of those auto votes).
If you look at most of the large stake holders, they are voting cents just enough to get good curation rewards and that’s it. There is no oversight after the vote or even before the vote choosing good authors.
While auto voting has its issues (as does poor manual voting) it isn’t auto voting that is the problem, it is poor voting and lack of oversight as the result of curation reward only focus.
As for your concern about being forced to provide quality rather than producing less stressful content, consider creating another account for shorter and less serious content. I did that myself with @theycallmemarky I also have a leo account for less serious content as well. There is nothing wrong with this unless you are posting spam or circle jerking votes with others.
Glad to know that you monitor these things.
I had a feeling that you do but I was still shocked to see $2.7 worth of upvotes for something I thought would be down-voted instead. I'll try to be more careful in the future. Seeing you responding to this post this fast is a relief too!
That's both smart and admirable
I already have one, (that's why I said "my main account" above.) I just talked in that a way because I didn't think having more than one account is expected here. (I mainly use @ahmadmangazap for testing HIVE services though. Recently d.Buzz.)
You have said it all
You don't need to feel guilty about getting a few extra hive, just use that feeling to motivate you to share better posts and to spread the support around. And if you ever need a kick in the right direction to be more positive, let me know?
Thanks, I was in a very bad mood that day, On those days I can't think of anything positive. I'm cool now.
I believe before anybody is placed as an auto voter, one must be sure that the person is producing good and quality content and continue to check them so as the auto vote not to be misused
Yeah, that's how it should be... I was thinking about adding another layer with filters, I still do, but after reading @ themarkymark's comment, I don't think it's necessary anymore.
Don't stress yourself that much. Jokes are quality posts if they're good. It depends a lot on the shit posts you have. Some are more fun, and interactive and valuable than some 1000 words blog posts.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Will make sure if I posted a joke/stupid post it'll be enjoyably bad!