This debate is really interesting, thank you all so much for your thoughtful and passionate discussion esp. @jpederson96, @indigoocean, @kusari (by the way all else aside this was a really creative post)
I am a complete noob here and though I have spent many many hours on this platform these past few days (probably close to 10 just researching the platform and how it works and how to optimize my experience here) I have never heard of vote sellers or queue list bots. I'm sure many of us noobs are in the same boat.
I can see how spending months creating content that you believe to have a lot of value and having it go completely unnoticed due to the mechanics of the machine and lack of a following could be extremely frustrating.
Of course we've all got dues to pay but when a system offers tools to facilitate that process then I see no reason why utilizing those tools should be frowned upon. However I'd love to hear about better options if they exist in order to best make use of this platform.
Spreading these tools is important because there is a bit of a barrier to entry on this platform (due to the learning curve for many users) and ultimately the success of the platform itself depends on the success of its users. Are there some good resources you can recommend to enlighten us beginners on some of these tools you've mentioned and any more you might have in mind?
Despite the "dustiness" of my account and emptiness of my blog I'm super excited about this platform and want to see it, and the awesome community here, succeed.
Thanks again.
Bots are a very useful tool that can provide a lot of exposure and cumulative roi. They are worth using.
However, what is ruining the platform when it comes to bots is the same thing that has been ruining the platform from day one...
spam and people trying to scam or abuse the system.
The reason this is such a big deal with bots is that they vote on tons of posts each day. In general it is to many to fairly curate to be sure that they are not voting on shit. So, many of them do in fact end up voting on shit.
This is something I am currently working on a great solution for.
many owners don't really care. I do.
I'm starting to understand the whole bot thing I think. I feel like if there were a bit of a gap between the 7 day vote period and the payout it would give curators more time to find spam/plagiarism no?
it definitely does but 2 strong factors prevent that from actually meaning anything.
They aren't doing it. In other words there are just not enough people that are going out there looking for bad content and flaggin it. It is a manpower nightmare, completely impractical and more or less impossible.
As bot owners, we are technically the ones that are voting on the crap everyone speaks of because that bot is our account. This makes it our responsibility. However, most owners never take on that responsibility because you would have to manually curate like 1000 posts a day on larger bots.
So, as you can see, we can give curators all the time in the world but it won't change anything. Because these curators are basically imaginary. It profits no individual person to flag people so very few people actually do it. Unless they were being paid and the team was large, which is not happening, it simply does not help.
There are other ways that actually do help. I've employed some already. I'm working on a super good one as we speak. Would you know it, it will not be forced on people either, it will be voluntary. Voluntary but effective enough you would be an idiot to not use it. lol
Yeah, perhaps if there were an incentive to flag plagiarism and spam, as well as a clear definition of spam that would motivate the community to police itself. There would still need to be body like the steam cleaner to verify but would at least a big part of the work would be done.
I think a problem we have is that we all pretend that there is no governing body or rules but there clearly are both, but the apparatus for discussing/changing them is slow to nonexistant. Having designated channels for discussion could potentially help make this platform even more awesome for everyone...
Well said there are both lol.
I"m working on a way to manually curate bots.