As I have reached the depth limit...
[I now commit that all of the SBD from this post will be divided equally and distributed among the first 30 up-voters]
This is why I will not upvote this post.
As you state in a comment, that you want to get an idea of what it takes:
Why don't you look and comment on the blogs of the users, who comment on your post ?
That's how you will find out, what it takes.
Follow the right people (steemstats.com helps a lot thx @jesta).
Work the tools, create.
Effort needs to count somewhere and I think that its pretty clear that I'm putting a lot of effort into this.
I'm putting a lot of effort into this - do you care ?
I think my blog is better than yours, why exactly would I upvote you ? :D
I'm only trying to help, please don't take offence.
But this is not school; Effort doesn't count for nothing, mate.
:-) I'm not taking offense, I'm trying to learn the system.
And yes, I do care that you're putting effort into this as well -- in fact, I greatly appreciate it.
However, effort should account for something (and in your case, I do feel that you are appreciating my effort by continuing the conversation -- thank you!).
On the other hand, there is clearly a problem with the reputation system when my 5 reputation can be trashed to a -6 with a single post.
Yes, I too apparently inadvertently committed a cardinal sin (vote-buying -- even though @smooth didn't object when a bunch of his other reputation-saving projects did it -- which is where I got the idea). The good news is that Mark keeps trying to convince me that we (and the community) will come out of this better than if this hadn't happened so it'll all be worthwhile in the long run . . . .
Could you please let me know if you are still seeing my replies now that my reputation has dropped 11! points?
Also, I replied to your latest blog post if you Show comments hidden due to low ratings . . . . (I didn't realize I was negative until I didn't show up there after posting :-( )