When we started out with @ocdb it was meant to fill up the whitelist with quality content creators and since @ocd was already curating those and focusing on newcomers it made sense that they'd be able to use the bot to grow their accounts as they were still small. At the same time since they started out by being curated we hoped that they'd use their newfound growth of their accounts through ocdb to use their stake for curation as well, remembering how they started their Steem Journey.
In the meantime we did make whitelist application posts (the current active one is the 4th of its kind and before you ask, yes we will add and respond to everyone very soon) and added some other authors that were not curated by us but provided general quality content and were looked at as "good" Steem users. Meaning they curated with their stake and saw the potential in the long run, not just figuring out ways to extract as much value from the chain without giving anything back in return.
Of course with the size of the whitelist, currently over 3500 authors (many of course inactive after 2 long years) not everyone was going to behave as a "good" steemian or try to curate manually which many of us prefer. Not that there's anything wrong with auto now since downvotes are in, but we can all agree that autovotes had a lot of side-effects in the past that brought down quality and engagement as authors just came to Steem to write their 1-2 daily posts for their guaranteed upvote and left without giving two shits about anything else. Everything has changed though since the EIP and I think even autovotes will start receiving some flak from the free downvotes if the side-effects mentioned above keep being put into light.
The biggest reason to autovote though is the ROI of curation, as you may have guessed. People may say they don't like manual curation and that they want to support certain authors patreon style and that's all okay, but let's be real, especially nowadays autovotes are the best way to increase your ROI. You either follow certain accounts that attempt to maximize it or autovote yourself through steemauto on certain authors while front-running others. Without getting too much into the philosophy of autovoting and the front-running race to the edge of the penalty timer, let's get back to what I wanted to address in this post.
We have noticed many whitelisted authors that have used @ocdb for a long time, some max bidding on their content, growing their account over time and while their content was of quality most of it - it does not justify them now taking the easy route to autovote or trail accounts that attempt to maximize the rewards. Especially not when these votes are being cast on abusive content.
By abusing I mean voting rings, only bid botted content, etc. Ever since @ocdb has started using its downvotes to fight abuse, it feels very wrong to see whitelisted authors front-run said abuse. Thus we have decided to take action against this in the spirit of #newsteem and the general change in psychology and action being taken on our platform since the hardfork, and will be giving out warnings to accounts spotted doing this. If they then continue for some time to curate non-content/voting rings/abusive bid botted content, etc, we will have to take action by removing them from the whitelist.
I know many will feel that this is unfair cause it has nothing to do with their authoring but @ocdb has been nonprofit and we have always wanted the authors that grew with it to do good for the platform. There is always a cost to something and in this case this will be one of them to having used or currently using @ocdb.
If there are any more questions or thoughts about this, let me know in the comments and we can discuss it.
Thanks for reading.
I am remaining optimistic for the new changes. As a content creator, that is what I focus on with my time on Steemit. I still have not found my way into using the downvote option yet. I do very little curation anyways, so I just can't find a place for it. With that said there is obviously a lot of rigging in the system, and it makes it hard for newbies to get up and going on Steemit.
I've had quite a learning curve myself, but I do appreciate the service @acidyo, @ocd and @ocdb provide. I will continue to produce content and compare/contrast how it affects me under #newsteem.
I would imagine it would be more prudent using that SP to help onboard more people who are interested in steem by successful whitelisters. I am yet to see a lot of that at the moment but the reduced vote buying from bots is a start even as these bots evolve like tipu. Continue forcing the issue you who have the financial and community backing.
I am not sure how easy it is to check (@abh12345), but I have a feeling that some of the "best curators" (by earning percentage) are likely to have their earnings affected if the flagging of abusive accounts and overrewarded content continues. Hopefully this post will help people consider where their votes are really going and maybe maximize a little less on people who deserve it a little more. I am guessing the haejin frontrunners aren't going to do well this week at least :)
This seems to me as a very good initiative and I really hope that more human curated content and rewards are distributed rewarding your time and effort to find or write unique and good quality content and comments. Being comments one of the things many have stopped doing as it is pretty much useless unless you are self voting yourself or you better try and make a post and will probably make more rewards from that. If we really want to change #newsteem it has to be every individual attempt to make this a better place.
Get after it mate...Do what you gotta. Anything that pushes steem forward for all is worth doing.
Sounds fair to me. I appreciate you being as transparent as ever on this as well.
It will be nice to see the whitelist authors grow and have new content creators benefit while the @ocdb account can grow itself with the increase in curation rewards.
Fighting abuse will just be a nice bonus with the #newsteem
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Hello sir @acidyo. Honestly, I have to thank you for this information and I acknowledge what you mentioned with autovote earlier, although initially it seemed comfortable using autovote because this way maybe the fast way to get benefits but I felt something was lacking and I was not satisfied. Those who are on the autovote list might be happy, but many voters do not get a direct appreciation because interaction does not exist. Well, I have to decide to reduce my autovote list and maintain some due to emotional and closeness. Thank you for this suggestion. God bless you
If you are interested, I can provide a list of good SteemSTEM authors to be added to the whitelist (I cannot guarantee they will however use the service).
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If a warning is given, no one should bother when actions are taken.
Seeing some of the downvoting OCDB has been doing justifies even more so why I delegate my SP to OCDB. I don't have time to follow all the circle voting non-sense so it's great to see I can help stop some of this bad behavior through my delegation.
Keep up the great work.
I agree with you there.
Hi @acidyo I was wondering is the whitelist available for viewing? I have tried to stay away from all bot activity on steem and so never asked to join but would be interested to see if I am there .I learned recently that ocbd is different from other bots and maybe it is time I looked into it.
https://thegoodwhales.io/index.html
If not you can apply currently in a post of mine (possibly 5 days old haven't checked in a while)
Thanks, my name is there. Yippee. This is a great list to find others to support. I will think very seriously about delegating as the work you are doing is great for the community and can help raise up the voices of many effected negatively by HF21/22. I also applaud work ocbd is doing fight abuse/
A #newsteem with a #newocdb, glad to see that everyone is improving or at least trying to improve their own services with the launch of #newsteem, with the change of mentalities, I've seen some of those voting rings around and I really see them as a bad thing to the whole STEEM blockchain, the trending page of the meme tag is almost always filled with one or two of those voting rings...
I use steemauto to upvote content creators that I like to read and support, but even if the upvotes are auto, I normally go back and read them all myself and comment on each one of them... and even with steemauto on, I have some VP left for manual curation, I normally do that manual curation when I backtrack to read what the steemauto auto upvoted.
This really is a good intiative no doubt about that and let us all unite also to fight abuse on the platfrom. Looking at this, as time goes on, let us look hoe this settled
I find this change..... Stupendous. (Learned that word today)
Next step... OCDB ------> OCD 2.
:P
Five little ducks went out one day.. over the hill and far away. Mother duck said "quack quack come back" but only four little ducks came back. So mother duck called the neighbors and now they doing search and rescue to that one poor missing duck
please vote me
Here you go!