Great post thanks.
Re steemfest, have a look around 55min on day 2. good info re different coins & ICO's etc. that was best part I saw anyhow.
re bots: my thinking is if you don't have time to invest in reading posts, then your only extracting from steem not inputting. so I dislike bots.
But having said that, I believe we (humans) are far more intelligent than any bot. With the number of users about to increase (per steemfest info) I doubt the bots will keep up. They will hit the big players etc etc.
But once the minnows learn to vote for minnows the bots will be beaten IMHO.
For the sake of the platform I would ask whales to re-consider the the use of up-voting bots they are a negative to the platform as a whole IMHO, and may / probably will hurt or impede platform growth, if they havn't already (maybe look at the 50% newbee leaving stat & ask why? :-) ).
I'll try check out that part on Day 2 of Steemfest.
As for thoughts on the bots, Well there are so many users and many people don't have the time to sit and read so many posts. Otherwise, there would be so many content that won't get noticed and less rewards distributed. Can't forget that this is a blockchain and we want as much distribution as possible.
With that said, I was also referring to pay-for-vote bots. A lot of whales are delegating to those services for an ROI instead of having to read through posts or have their SP sit there doing nothing. You have to remember, money talks. It's a capitalistic platform which is why I mentioned that it's not so much a social media platform and that is what most of the major social media platforms have turned into.
Sort of unfortunately you are correct.
I like the idea of "no personal engagement" = in input = no reward.
But as you say no votes = no earning
BUT
If there are less votes / day does that not mean each individual vote is worth more given a fixed size pool that is distributed? or did I get that wrong?
The pay-to-vote bots are a lazy person way to engage IMHO and a result of the "minnows have very little power" problem.
I'm also of the view that "1 post should be read by many".
not "many post read by a few".
Which means the work is of a higher quality.
But is also means that "commenting" or just reading posts is considered as valuable as posting which it currently is not.
With the expected influx of new users it will be interesting to see what happens.
Sometimes a system can be less than ideal because it has not scaled to it's optimum size.
Time will tell.
Less votes per day does not mean each individual vote is worth more. A users vote worth is relative to the amount of Stake(SP) they have.
The way the platform is, it's to give the incentive to increase your stake. So if you want your post more visible then you would need to find ways to get more SP or those whale votes. At the same time, this is a blockchain. So there is nothing stopping someone to pay another person with a lot of stake for a vote or collude.
1 post read by many does not necessarily mean the work is of a higher quality.
Yes, commenting and reading post is not considered as valuable as it should but they do still hold value.
Basically, what you said at the end, Time will tell.