I am trying to find solutions to upvoting bots situation on Steemit. The situation is quite discouraging to the newcomers and I hope this post will to try to change the mentality in regards to upvoting at least to some extent.
Perhaps we can not change the mentality of the people that are determined to create low quality spam content and paying the upvote bots to get them to the top of trending pages. But we can change the mentality of the people that upvote only the trending posts. So please DON´T UPVOTE ONLY TRENDING POSTS unless you have read them and find them that much more worthy than the post of other Steemians.
The question that arises in my head is how to get people to stop looking at trending pages and take the time to go through their feed and new posts.
For me personally reading through my feed is a pleasant experience. I know that I don´t follow spammers and low quality content. So reading through my feed gives me quality informations and a chance to upvote people whose content deserves to be upvoted. Although many of this posts do not end up in trending pages they still bring quality to Steemit.
When I see profiles that follow thousands of people I just ask myself how must the feeds of this profiles look like? Do this people even look at their feed or do they have a different agenda? I personally do not follow profiles that follow thousands of people because their intentions are not in accordance the right mentality of the use of Steemit and do not promise healthy future for it.
If you follow thousands of people than you can not come even close to reading what ends up in your feed so why than have a feed anyway!
You are what you feed looks like – in your feed you should have posts of things that interest you and make your day more interesting. Beside low quality content people do post very quality content on Steemit and this content is worth viewing. Since getting our daily informations through television is rapidly decreasing we have to create for ourselves news feeds that interest us.
If you like poetry your feed should be full of posts with high quality poetry from other fellow Steemians.
If you like to get fresh news about cryptocurrencies than your feed should be full of posts that deliver high quality content about cryptocurrencies on a daily basis.
If you like different things than your feed should be full of quality posts that talk about this things. I think you get the point.
We have to encourage newcomers and show them the light that it is worth posting and staying on Steemit. For this I have come up with some ideas how to convince people to upvote differently.
Solutions to the situation:
1.Try to add one or two fairly new Steemians to your following list every day. Take a few minutes a day and try find the ones that produce quality content.
2.Spend a few minutes a day going through new posts and try finding some quality content and give it your upvote, resteem and a follow. This way you will have the people whose content you consider worthy of viewing in your feed and the newbies will feel welcomed on Steemit.
3.Don´t delegate steem power but take the time to upvote yourself. I know it is easier delegating steem power but the consequences of upvoting bots having the power to give the majority of reward pool to scammer posts is splitting community apart. It is also creating an exclusive club in which many of the people with their scam content do not deserve to be.
4.You should try to do your best at curating. There is good money to be made in curation. Curation is what keeps this community strong. But you have to come up with good comments that are related to topic of the post and which help to continue the discussion which was set in the post. Don´t just comment something like good job or I like your post or writing something even worse in the comments like I follow you, please upvote and follow.
I hope this suggestions will be greeted by minnows, dolphins and whales and that we all get wiser in this situation
If you have any more solutions on how to try to convince Steemians to upvote differently, create quality feed for themselves and to not just follow thousands of people for strange reasons please list them in the comments and I will discuss them with you.
Below you can check out my other post on the upvote bot situation:
It really is a problem, because minnows would resort to cutting corners to even get anywhere.
The only thing we can do right now is to try to change the mentality on who people vote, by convincing them to take the time for curation and checking new posts. Together we can do it!
Thanks @inspiration-bay for some good pointers...
Well written post. I was wondering about this followers of mine myself and why do they even follow me. Some of them are probably bots, than other s are simply following everything they can follow. So where is the value in that.
Since I started writing on Steemit a good month ago I had only maybe had a interaction with one or two people that commented on my posts and I think none of them are my followers.
As @glenalbrethsen has written, I want to be followed for my work not for me. It is a funny situation here on Steemit on one side you have the exclusive club that ends up on trending pages all the time. Than you have spammers that use upvoting bots to get to trending pages with their low quality content. And than there are the rest of the people that I guess are simply in this for the money and do not wish to search the quality content to follow and enjoy a blog for what it is.
We can only hope that people change their mentality otherwise it will become very uninteresting for newbies to join and stay on steemit.
Thanks. Enjoy...