With growth on the Hive blockchain and a bigger weight of our voting, there comes the temptation of upvoting ourselves. And I must say that I have given up to this temptation and sprinkled some upvotes here and there on some of the posts and even comments. And few days ago I was reminded that it is not quite an ethic practice to do so by getting some negative upvotes neutralizing the payouts. And I must say that I agree with that and will shift that to curating others content. I got lazy and wanted to squeeze more out of my engagements and I was reminded that it is not fair to the other participants to the Hive economy.
Fair and balanced participation
We are all taken by life, we get to have less time to spend it on thing that we enjoy and which also provide some earnings and when getting some time we tend to make the most of it. But that doesn't mean to maximize everything as it is not all about earnings, but mostly about engagement and growing together. Instead of isolating ourselves, participating to the Hive ecosystem and encouraging others by varying the upvotes will get a healthier medium where more users will want to join. Sometimes we forget about the power of organic growth and it is good that we are reminded about it.
Retrospective
Thinking about it, I don't even know why I did it... I became lazy, bored or simply had too less time to spend in the crypto space and wanted to make the most of it. But this proves why we should have rules and why we should participate fairly to the Hive economy. We have a common interest here and we need to nurture the health of this ecosystem, in order to ensure fair rewards distribution.
Lesson learned
I could have kept silent about my experience on this, but I thought well that's a lesson that I've learned and maybe others could learn from it as well. Instead of going yourself through same bad feeling when received negative votes, it is way better to prevent that. Some could say or think it will never happen to them, but if you don't play the game correctly, someone will slap you sooner or later. So hopefully you'll read about my experience and you'll keep on the righteous path.
And this is another example that when blogging on the Hive blockchain being sincere truly provides value, even if the experience itself wasn't positive for me. But learning from it is what counts in the end and that's why I've decided to share it as well. Improving ourselves, evolving in thinking and practice is the way to move up and influence others in a positive way. Because in the end there is only one way that will make you sleep like a baby: the righteous way.
The content we write and the engagement we do is who we are. And we can always do better if we accept the feedback and put the effort into it.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
What you say, may be true for users that spent no $ on Hive and only drain Hive out of the system. Well, I spent about >1 BTC in Hive, never powered anything down and thus feel the right to increase the outcome of my investment by upvoting my own content. Also because I don´t shitpost but post only high-qualiy stuff with typically several hours of work; if I would post a pic every day, of course things would be very different. These posts are simply worth an upvote. If you value your own posts not enough to upvote them, why others should? There is no law that forbids it just that upvotes should reward good content, right?
Speaking of fair, how fair do you evaluate this: https://peakd.com/@buildawhale/comments
You invested >1 BTC into Hive? That’s a big stake and commitment. 💪🏻 Is that only for HIVE Token or including your witness project.
Anyways, huge achievement and conviction. 🏅
only for Hive, and some years ago when BTC was much lower (and Steem/hive was, too)
I agree that as there is no restriction on the blockchain level, it is an individual's wish to either vote or not vote. If it was supposed to be a hard rule, self vote should be blocked on blockchain level. But it isn't.
But anyways I stopped voting myself long back and I think this is a good topic for me to share my experience too.
By the way buildawhale posts are not a big deal because at least it goes to burning. You should check some curation accounts sharing posts everyday and self voting. That's the real exploit.
Not a big deal? Check again the link I sent and how many upvotes these comments get, including massive selfupvoting of repetiive comments!
Yes it is a good thing. People who vote get the curation rewards but the rewards on those comments goes to burning. Which means it goes out of supply.
not the curation rewards!
I didn't know about that. This is quite awful considering those rewards from which some people could live for 1 day or even 1 week...
People do get the curation rewards. Only the author rewards go to burning.
I see the rewards for those comments are all burned. But I think we have a valid point and I have to put a couple of Ethereums into Hive.
Only the author rewards are burned, not the curation rewards!
That is indeed really strange, upvoting nonsense posts, or do they burn those token they receive? Not really clear. 🤔
the author rewards are burned but the pic shows only the curation rewards which are NOT burned interestingly, and many top whales are involved in this abuse.
Apparently to secure max. curation rewards those whales prefer to curate these comments instead of finding&curating good content. Actually @mein-senf-dazu pointed this out initially.
edit: not many top whales are involved, mainly themarkymark and sometimes smooth
Very good research then. That’s not Ok. I personally like the idea of voting good content, that’s why I came here. If some big guys don’t respect that Core Hive idea no wonder we are getting nowhere at the moment. 🤷🏼♂️
That's true and the temptation should apply to skeleton posts or comments. Where there is work put into it and a matter of hours, I would agree that I don't see anything wrong in consolidating the rewards.
Idk about that. I upvote myself.. why wouldn't I? I invested 15K into this back when it was Steemit.. invested is the key word here. I invested in me. If I bought a grocery store do you think I would buy milk from Walmart? Plus I create original content every single day
I believe that voting long form of posts it is quite fine. Now voting also comments and every little bit of engagement I think it is a stretch imo.
Agree. Posts in my opinion 👍
Where comments is just pathetic 👎 Dave was talking posts
Let me vote you all haha
Greez 🍻
Vote me? No I vote u! 🤣
Yeah comments is a little bit of a stretch.
Very nice topic and I wish to write my experience too on this topic.
I used to vote myself and I stopped doing that. As such the blockchain does not restrict self voting but it is just a conscious decision that everyone takes. I personally don't see that as a big crime. There are bigger exploits we have on Hive.
One reason I was doing it was because I thought my content deserved more. But on the other hand curating will give us 50% back, so it is more healthier to upvote on others content in the end.
I’ve spent sometime on Hive here and I’ve realized that it isn’t really nice to upvotes oneself
We keep learning everyday though. Thanks for the reminder
Welcome.
You are absolutely right!
I always felt bad and did not want to upvote myself. I don’t follow some curation trails because I may get self votes by mistake 😂
Stupid? Maybe. But it helps me feel better about me
Right... our actions reflects on us and others see that one way or the other.
There is an option to not vote self even if you follow curation trails. 🙂
Hivewatchers look at self upvoting as an abuse.
I have also been working on this platform for a long time and we see that if a person wants to vote for himself, there is nothing wrong in that, he has to vote first with his hard work and power. Got and now he is doing himself and the rest of the votes he is doing to other people who are working hard.
When it comes to self-votes I like the approach Reddit has made. Every post and comment are automatically self-voted up. This way users don't have to wonder if it's OK for them to like their own posts/comments or not. As a bonus, instant +1 gives you this nice feeling that your post is net-positive. If it's not, people will vote it down. There's really no reason to start vote counter at zero. Also, apparently karma is not directly connected to upvotes.