Good morning! I have recently noticed the downvotes and followed them here. I do not know how long you have been downvoting. I have read this post with interest and would like to clarify some points in relation to my game and the points you have raised.
I had already decided several days ago that the basis of the game (essentially asking for the upvote was not a good idea). I have been trying to come up with a basis for the game not involving an upvote and I believe you have given me ideas and I will touch on that later in this comment.
Where my votes come from. I get my upvotes from having a subscription to HSBI, setting rewards.app as a beneficiary, and the individual upvoters. The bulk of the individual uovoters are “follow” upvoters who upvote because of the rewards.app designation. They would probably vote no matter the form of my posts as long as I make rewards.app a beneficiary. If you set rewards.app as a beneficiary for your posts (I do 70-80%), you would see some of my regular upvoters appear to upvote you. Except for the occasional cross posts to communities, I do not solicit votes by spamming other posts with comments or by sending spam in the memo space of wallet transfers.
I usually do two posts a day, the game and the post listing previous winners of the game and the amount of winnings they share (this is the post with the $100 bill in the thumbnail). This post is necessary for the marketing to previous winners and also as additional income to myself as none of the rewards are shared. Although, in actuality, the marketing function can be incorporated into the game post so there would only be one post per day for the game. And the thumbnails can be changed so they do not create any “flags”.
The work I do to determine all the players (winners and losers) is done manually. I have not created a bot to scan the blockchain and determine players and their corresponding txid. Do I not deserve to be compensated for this work? Work which is just as involved as doing a post on crypto financials or etc for example.
So to sum it all up, you specifically and the Hive community in general, would be okay if:
I stop asking for the upvote as a requirement for winning? Although I hope I can only make eligible upvoters a requirement (above .001 Hive or whatever)
Stop using the same thumbnail repeatedly? I am already considering going back to using my state’s lottery and would use that as the thumbnail.
Maybe these plans will keep me off the radar. And I also thank you for making me consider moving the game into other languages. I had not even thought of that and a believe it can be easily translated.
In conclusion, I would ask you to remove the downvotes from my “results” posts (the one with the $100 bill as the thumbnail). I am trying to grow my account and you are several thousand times larger than I. As always my intention with the game was to grow so I could get rewards from curation and some select investments (dCity and Splinterlands). As for the actual game posts, I realize you had a problem with my game and I won’t argue that point.
I will say I tend to agree with the commenter from the German community that perhaps posting a comment to start the dialogue instead of instantly downvoting across the board might be a better tactic. It seems to engender retaliatory reactions and reminds me of the worst of Steemit with the flame wars and all that back and forth downvoting. Thanks for your consideration.