I would say - yes it is even it's not something that is mandatory.
But in your concrete case, I would avoid that for several simple reasons.
- You are a new member and your account (regarding the amount of own SP that you currently hold) is small.
- As such, you have to keep in mind and take care that, in fact, you have only 10 votes per day available (to keep your account healthy. Meaning not to lower your Voting Power bellow 80% as only 20% of our VP regenerates inside 24 hours.)
- As well, until your account would reach the amount of your own 500 SP (when you would become a Minnow) you wouldn't have on your disposal so-called Voting Slider by which you may regulate the strength of your vote, and accordingly, in my opinion no one would blame you if you don't do it before reaching that stage.
So do I understand that it "costs" for me to upvote? As a new user, do you recommend I power down? If it takes 500 SP to be a minnow, then I'm still an embryo! 😉
NO, you understand wrongly, as voting doesn't cost you anything as it doesn't cost anyone from smallest to the biggest member.
Every full (100%) vote would deduct 2% of our Voting Power, as for you same for me or anyone else.
The only difference is that you don't have available Voting Slider until the account reaches the amount of 500 SP. That means that every vote you cast, by default is set to be given with 100% Voting Power. While the members with over 500 SP have Voting Slider what allows them to give different combinations of votes. E.g., 20 x 50% vote per day or 40 x 25% vote per day or any other combination.
That allows all of us to spend only 20% of our total VP as 20% would recover again in the following 24 hours, so we would have 100% Voting Power available again.
The limit of 500 SP is set only to prevent the members to waste their vote (especially at the very beginning and in the early stage of account as your acc. are) with scaling it below 100% as that way neither the one who gives the vote nor the one who receive it would profit.
Regarding power down (especially at your current stage when you hold only 9 of your own Steem inside your Steem Power wallet) it's an absolute NO, NO!
The reason why is very simple - you wouldn't be able to vote at all!
The thing is the following...
When your account has been registered the company (Steemit) borrowed you about 15 Steem inside your Steem Power Wallet. The amount of 0.100 would usually be placed there showing as your own SP, while the rest would be displayed as amount inside the brackets like (+14.900). Those 15 Steem is a minimum needed to be able to use your account and give votes.
As trough your activity on the platform, you are building your own Steem Power the amount in the brackets (that was borrowed to you) accordingly is getting smaller and smaller until it would entirely vanish.
So, if you start a power down option you would start losing that minimum needed to keep your account operative. Besides, those 9 Steem wouldn't be transferred to your Steem wallet all at once. For full power down (no matter of the amount you are holding inside your Steem Power wallet) a member needs about 10 - 12 weeks, as first 10% (in your case it would be 0.900 Steem) of the total amount would be given 7 days after the power down has been started. The second 10% the following week (14 days after the power down has been started) and so on until the full amount wouldn't be transferred to Steem wallet or until the power down option is going to be stopped.
Regarding being an "embryo" (as you called yourself 🙂) - no - the members bellow 500 SP level is called Red Fishes.
I'm leaving you here a link to the article where you can see all existing levels.
SteemitBoard presentation for the various levels of evolution on the Steemit platform
Thank you for taking the time and effort to explain it to me in such detail. I really appreciate that. But, obviously I need to study your words and read further about how Steemit works. When I first joined, such matters didn't concern me, but now I need to pay more attention.
Yeah, Steemit is quite complex. I have said in above article how long I have been here, and I can tell you there is not a single day still that I don't learn something new.
However, I would like to encourage you to learn and understand the Steemit system (at least some basics, as above ones, from my point of view, are), as at the end it can be just beneficiary to you.
Since our last discussion I have concentrated on gaining SP, now I have 25 SP. I have also been posting every few days, and curating frequently. However, 10 days have passed since I have received any curation rewards, despite vigorous activity. I understand why my author rewards were low because of few upvotes, but why no curation rewards? I even got a small reward from our earlier discussion. I don't understand what's happening...I have reviewed the 30-minute allocation schedule.