Hi @happyme,
Thank you and @nnnarvaez very much for this initiative.
Encouraging communication is the main reason I ask the participants on my SBD share posts to comment.
At first I was giving whomever votes the post, and as a thank you I was visiting their pages to vote one of their posts. But then I noticed that some of them were not active at all and others were rarely active. At first I had no idea that you can use bots to automatically vote, but then I found out from reading other posts, so I changed the rules of participation.
I lost most of the people that were voting me just for the fact I requested a comment, even though I explained that I will upvote each comment to increase the participants rewards.
But honestly, I feel much better now when I share with people who comments. Even if they only write something as simple as "followed & upvoted". I find that eventually they will get more involved in other ways, by at least saying "thank you"
But mostly I find them to become better steemit friends on the long run.
The other issue I face is not having time to upvote posts of all people that upvote me, which makes me feel selfish. So, when a reader upvotes and comment on my posts, I show them my gratitude for engaging and commenting and I respond to them as well as I upvote their comments. This way, I feel that I am exchanging good discussions as well as good values :D
Oh, my entry is 555
Cheers to everyone :D
Bots are not bad, people who uses bots for greed are making them bad...
I make bots, they help me help...
I have an run a vote trail (I vote last to give the rewards to those who have less SP a chance to get their share)
It doesn't encourage reading what i vote for, but frees the minnows time to post and read other's post, when my trail votes they give together around 25 cents (much more than the 0.001 a single minnow vote gives)
You post to receive, you vote to give.
Engagement is important to build human links! And this network is a tool to go beyond human greed and to share ideas and help or get help.
I very much agree with you @nnnarvaez,
I honestly just knew that it can be beneficial to use some bots. There is something to learn everyday on Steemit. I also do use bots on my posts to give them more exposure. After all I write from my heart and would like to share it with other people.
Since I keep my human interaction as maximum as I can, I don't feel bad to gain a little bit extra from bot votes. Every little bit that helps me grow, will only make me stronger and enable me to help others even more.
Thank you very much for the reply and for engaging me in the discussion :D
Thanks for that very nice bit of engagement! I find it interesting about you losing many of your participants when you changed the rules. From what I am observing here, I may have some bot votes as well. Even when I write to tell them they need to alter the format, some don't even read the reply in order to see it. Oh well... eventually we will gather our little group that will become closer as we get to know each other and become friends. Friends talk to each other! That's the social part of this social platform.
Indeed we will :)