Q: What impact does a whale have when they upvote comments?
A: When a whale upvotes a comment it makes quite the splash! Whales, for the most part, will determine which posts get the most attention and which posts make the most money. This makes sense, since the whales are the most heavily invested in the platform, and therefore have the most incentive to select worthwhile material.
Excellent, thanks again dude. Do their votes affect the #trending and/or #hot functionality?
I'm not sure how exactly those algorithms work, but ya, whales will affect that stuff. Basically how it works is the more STEEM POWER you have, the more impact you have. So like, you can't just get 100 of your friends to make accounts and upvote you.. the upvote only matters proportional to how much that person has invested in the platform. And a "whale" just means there will be a ton of STEEM POWER behind one single vote. (There's no specific point where someone becomes a whale, it just means they have a bunch of STEEM POWER.)
I'm pretty new myself so someone can correct me if any of that is wrong.
Thanks for the comprehensive explanation.
Sure! I'd probably suggest removing this answer from the FAQ .. or re-wording it a little and taking credit for it yourself .. I thought you were just asking off the cuff, I didn't realize it was one of the FAQ questions. Maybe someone who knows for sure how the "trending" and "hot" functions work could put up a better answer .. I was kind of just babbling and didn't mean for it to go on the FAQ :p
But leaving it is fine with me if you want to.