Source: https://pixabay.com

About The Project And Advertising

I had started four or five weeks ago in my spare time, working on the Charity Rebot backend and scripts. And so i started promoting the idea and the already working beta program since beginning of march. Since i am really busy with my main job, i am not able to update my blog on daily basis, while bug-fixing and improving the code. So i decided to create a some lines of code searching for valuable community members (which equals a certain level of reputation, follower-followed-ratio and activities on Steem) and sending them a request for feedback concerning this project, by using a transaction to their wallet:

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Source: Screenshot of @rebot's wallet

Yes, i am aware this behavior could be labeled as spamming. I'm a little bit torn about that too. If you are reading this because you have received such a transaction, please let me know if this message annoyed you in any way? If this applies, please drop me a comment and i would like to apologize and i will rethink about this approach. Since i had started it, one user @ilt-yodith, reacted in the anticipated reaction and gave me real valuable feedback to my request. And i really would like to say him thank you for his feedback and his perception of my service and goals here on Steem.

Original Reaction and Discussion of User @ilt-yodith and me

I would like to provide you the original messages as screenshot between him and me, and i would like to answer directly on his doubts about the Charity Resteem service in this blog post. So again, personally i perceive his feedback as really valuable for me and some of his concerns are could be legitimate for others too:

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My Reply to Him (and i really thought at this point he was a little bit kidding with his mentioned requirements):

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And His Reaction (again - really true valuable feedback):

Bildschirmfoto 2018-03-08 um 19.46.32.png

My Reply to the Doubts About This Service as an Q&A

Q: "...Need to have access to all of your financial records..."
A: Please understand that a'm not willing to publish my personal financial records on the internet, on a blockchain or exchange them directly on the internet with strangers. I hope you understand, that for me running for charity purpose doesn't mean i have to undress myself completely to gain the trust of you and the steem community. Sure i understand, this would give enough insight to judge on trustworthiness, but if you are one man show and not running an organization, this would be a really hard point to meet. But the real advantage of running this service on steem is, that it allows every user (they even do not have to have an account for this) to access @rebot's wallet and see incoming and outgoing transactions. So if i would embezzle money from this account which was collected for the purpose of charity, you would be able to see that kind of transactions in the history.
Q: "...a written history of your organization/businesses decion-making procedures..."
A: Like i already written in this blog post, that i have started this project just some weeks ago, there is simply no history of any organization, since there even is no organization. Currently i am the only person involved. So the decision-making procedures are currently relative simply and i have to answer for them. I don't know how things develop, if someday some one will step up to and we will form a team or a group of people. Sure then there is definitely the need to clarify and document these procedures.
Q: "...a detailed mission statement and proposed roadmap of your plan as to how you will successfully use Steemit to help effectuate real positive change..."
A: I had already introduced this account with the blog post https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@rebot/introducing-charity-rebot-brandnew-resteem-service-supporting-charity-campaigns-worldwide in the past. Personally i thought the concepts of this service are explained in short. There is no existing plan for "real positive change" by myself, because collected funds of this account will be transferred to organizations of the current running campaigns. The organizations have their plans and they will be documented by them on their websites. This should be hopefully a de facto standard for every campaign and charity organization i'am supporting with this account.
Q: "...an explanation of the objective criteria you will use to verify a charity’s legitimacy..."
A: Currently there are no fixed criteria, and since there are no decision-making procedures, it's tending to be a gut decision of myself, which charity organizations will be supported in the upcoming campaigns. One important criteria will be, that they are accepting the funds in crypto currencies for transparency. Every transferring of funds of this steem wallet to charity organization will be documented as much as possible (screenshots, blocks of transaction, bills). It would be really tricky to fake block transactions from steem -> blocktrades -> charity organization's wallet with a specific amount. And i would like to clarify that it's not impossible to fake, but it would be really tricky and personally not worth the time for the expected amount of funds. If someone is not interested in supporting a certain charity campaign or organization, they don't have to use this service for the time the camapign is active and runs.
Q: "...your proposal for transparently verifying that all of the funds received on Steemit will be placed back into the administration of your project and not simply for profit..."
A: 80% of the funds received by this account will used to payout individuals which performed an resteem offer and will be donated to the organization of the current charity campaign (Split in 50%/50%). 20% will be used for promoting and powering up this account the have enough bandwidth for the transactions on the steem blockchain. Again, the community is able to see all transactions of this wallet on the blockchain - no simple way to cheat here.
Q: "I'm kidding only insofar as you're claiming to run a program where the main goal is the assist charities, but you don't have anything anywhere to give anyone any confidence that this is, in fact, your main goal, rather than working to make a profit. "
A: Yes you are right in your first point. I have missed to clarify more and detailed in my blog about my confidence and i hope that the replies on the previous and upcoming points helping to gather more insight in this project.
Q: "It's not a bad thing to make money! If it's honest money and you've earned it, then that's great!"
A: True. I would love to say that i am one of those early crypto investors with a garage full of lambos, but unfortunately i've missed that chance. So i have to work for my money and have a job and i'm happy with what i have achieved till know. But personally i believe, by investing time in "coding a fancy idea on a cool social blockchain project to support charity" could make me happier, not because it generate a steem account with a high steem power balance, rather because the concepts of "coding for better world" could really work. Man, this should be the point, placing a honest smile in my face. If i would be only for profit here on steem, i would lending a bunch of steem power and simply concentrate only on my curation algorithms of my main account.
Q: "But if you're wanting to run a program that seems like its using the concept of charitable giving as a selling point, and you write (spam) to someone asking for feedback about that, you're going to get honest feedback about what I think (in my own subjective, humble opinion) you need to do in order to run your program in a moral, ethical, responsible, legitimate way."
A: In my opinion a concept of charitable giving and spam are not mutually exclusive? In fact, personally i receive many of this kind of spam in my post inbox and i can live with that. The organizations would not pay for this kind of spam, if i wouldn't pay off for them. Again, this kind of honest feedback you gave me, was that kind of feedback i was looking for. And if your opinion is that writing those "spam" messages are not moral, ethical, responsible, legitimate than this feedback helps me in reflecting. Also your feedback resulted in this Q&A for users, who probably have the same kind of doubts and questions about this service and will give them more insights.
Q: "(Notice that you're not getting a lot of responses to your spam on the charity tag, because most people will just assume, with good reason, that you're not serious about wanting to contribute to charitable endeavors, and may even be a scam."
A: Thank you again. I thought it was because it was the first blog entry when i stared with https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@rebot/introducing-charity-rebot-brandnew-resteem-service-supporting-charity-campaigns-worldwide and was related of my low reputation and not using any voting bots. But i think you are right - scepticism is often related to bad experience. We will start slow and with the first payment delivered and documented to charity organization, people will start realizing that this is no sort of scam and they can count on my words.
Q: "But I'm a big dumb optimist, I guess, and I'm hoping you are doing this legitimately and will actually put in the work to make it count."
A: Hopefully there will be more "dump optimists" which will give me a chance to prove you were right and i'm keeping my words.

Thank you again @ilt-yodith for your feedback and giving me some good points to reflect on and writing this blog post. I really appreciate the fact that there are people like you, contributing quality content and helping others to improve. So dear readers, if there are any points i have missed, further questions or ideas regarding the Charity Rebot service, please leave a comment. Thank you very much.

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newsteemians (63) 7 years ago

Welcome to Steem Community @rebot! As a gentle reminder, please keep your master password safe. The best practise is to use your private posting key to login to Steemit when posting; and the private active key for wallet related transactions.

In the New Steemians project, we help new members of steem by education and resteeeming their articles. Get your articles resteemed too for maximum exposure. You can learn more about it here: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@gaman/new-steemians-project-launch