Thank you so much for your input @happyme! I know this post of mine did a lot of generalisation by using the word 'newbies'. I know many of them are struggling aswell and I hope you'll forgive me for throwing everyone on one pile. For me it was needed to get a certain point across.
It's been hard on many people, new and old. It is just frustrating for older minnows to not only see lesser payouts (which is partly caused by Steem value going down), but also see lesser upvotes, while some newbies make huge strides forward with mediocre content at best. It just feels wrong to see someone surpass you with content like that in a matter of weeks, while you've been at it over half a year now.
You're completely right about the decreasing value overall and yes, it could also be worse, I could also earn nothing. Even after half a year, ofcourse I'm not entitled to anything, but I'm comparing to past results. They show a downward trend in not only value, but also amount of votes. It has been like that for a lot of older minnows, which was why I wrote this, because I know I'm not the only one frustrated over this.
I'd rather see voting bots go than stay. The only 'upside' of them is that everyone has an equal shot at them. Everyone can use them, so it's not like you have to brown nose your way into the good graces of a whale. I don't like using them though and quite frankly, anyone using them now, with the Steem price where it is, is throwing away their money.
I now only make an exception for my contest post. I upvote it with a bot to increase the reward payouts for participants.
Honestly, I have been thinking, but I can't understand why HF19 would be the reason for these things, other than the fact that newer minnows have less voting power to go around, because they miss the slider. That explains it a bit, but I wouldn't have expected it to have so much effect. And you're right, Steemit Inc. is facing big choices on how to run this platform and I certainly don't envy them. I think there are no changes that would please everyone, so they just have to do what they think is best and we'll have to understand the tough spot they're in.
From the things I have read, a lot of the whales are saving their votes for themselves and friends due to the lesser number of votes they can now make at full SP. This in turn leaves less votes for others and that is what seems to be the reason for less votes all around. The minnows don't vote on each other and chase the whales, looking to make a bit more on curating, so again, less votes to go around. This effect was actually predicted by aggroed.
That makes no sense to me though. Those whales (and dolphins and many older minnows) have a voting power slider. They can adjust the weight of their votes, so they will be able to vote on the same amount of people they used to, without draining their VP more than they used to. They all know how it works, so that's a bit of a lame excuse if they are using it.
Yes, they CAN use their slider to make more votes, but as they deplete their vote power, they make less on the votes they want to earn money on.
Look at it from a numbers point of view:
If a whale has 40 votes at full power per day and uses 5 to self-upvote the 5 posts they made that day, they still have 35 votes left to self-upvote their own comments and other content. They may use another 10 for their own comments. That leaves 25 full-power votes that they can then use to upvote content from others.
Now lets do that again with only 10 votes per day:
5 for their own posts, 5 for their own comments.... OH OHHHH.... ran out of votes! Sorry everyone else.
Now does it make sense?
That makes complete sense. I guess I need to stop thinking of people as though they are fair.
They say nothing is fair about love and war, but when it comes to money, things can get ugly real fast.
Don't get me wrong; there are many kind and generous people here on this platform. It takes but a few to ruin it for everyone though. What is that saying? A few rotten apples can spoil the whole bunch.
That saying fits perfectly here! I guess I was just hoping whales, with how much they have invested in this platform, will all want it to succeed, so they'd go for a long-term vision, instead of the short-sightedness you described previously.
I'm glad there are plenty of kind people here too, otherwise I wouldn't have lasted this long :-)
Are you still a minnow with over 3,500 Steem? I guess I have a heck of a long way to go because I just got past 2 digits a few days ago and am now earning just pennies per day. I was hoping that reaching 1,000 Steem would make a huge difference in earnings, but if you are struggling with over 3X that much, I'm starting to feel very discouraged.
I saw someone with roughly the same rank as me earn 25 Steem on a scientific article, so I wrote a scientific article to raise my income but it earned only 3 cents so far. I guess it really only matters who your friends are and not what you write about. Rather a sad commentary about the platform if that's the case. I used to be all excited and was telling everyone to join. Now I feel bad for anyone who took my advice and becomes totally frustrated. This platform is becoming no different than any other crypto-currency, where you simply invest fiat currency and take your profits when it goes up in value. There seems to be no point wasting your time posting articles for pennies on your hours unless you simply enjoy posting without having very many readers. I have 160 followers and something like 5 views on my science article. How depressing is that?
Perhaps I should simply invest a few dollars in Etherium and ride the wave on that rather than waste my time at the keyboard? I'll wait and see what HF20 brings. Apparently it is coming soon.
I could join one of the circle-jerk groups, where they use bots to boost their earnings, but that just goes against my morality and I don't believe it is good in the long run for the platform. As it currently stands, you either join those who would do what it takes to boost earnings or walk away. Hopefully they change this soon if they want to see mass adoption of the platform.