You can downvote them, it's called flagging. People are hesitant to use it though, but I think it should become more normal in these kind of situations. I'm sad to say, but it's like they refuse to learn any other way.
You are right about that! Some people with a lot of Steem Power try to counter-act this from time to time though by placing a flag. This results in lesser rewards for the person. However, if you don't have a lot of SP yourself, your flag won't do much. It'll be enough for most of the newbie beggars though.
I see. So it is biased towards those with more Steem power essentially so the whales have a lot of effect. What's your take on upvoting your own posts/comments? Is it generally regarded as not cool or do people view it as a fair reward for yourself for your contribution?
Yes it is, I think the idea behind that is that whales have more invested in the system and therefor its successes, so they are more likely to do what's right for the platform.
I think a lot of people (including me) upvote their own posts, so I don't generally care much about that. I think it's all to do with how much you give back. The same goes for comments, though I'd frown upon someone upvoting their "Nice pic" comment. Some upvote their comment when they feel it's useful and they want it at the top of the list. Some people find this acceptable, some don't.
I don't really care much about people occasionally upvoting their own comments, but I don't feel it's okay to exhaust your VP doing that. I also don't think you should upvote every comment you make. Most important in my eyes is that you also upvote other people's content. You gain something back from that aswell through curation rewards, so it's not like we do it for nothing :-)
Thank you for the response and a bit of explanation. As a "noob" it's a little confusing and easy to accidentally do something which others would consider not acceptable e.g. liking your own comment on facebook is socially unacceptable so it is helpful to know that this doesn't apply so much here.
Also, even though I have just joined, I can already strongly agree with your point about people simply joining to make money through various techniques is not good for the community - in reality we should all contribute in a positive way so that we can all grow together. These people who just try to make a quick buck could actually make far more if they contributed to the long-term success of the platform!!
Exactly, I completely agree with you. When I just started, I felt like most of the community was moving towards this shared goal of making Steemit great. The way things are now though, I don't feel that way anymore. There are still a lot of people who share this goal, but there are so many newbies coming in who don't understand that the platform still needs to grow, in order to succeed.
It's a sad problem, yes. Hopefully, it will get less prevalent as more and more people begin to understand the long term opportunity that the website and currency can provide!
Do you mind if I ask 1 more question... I have noticed that when you upvote it adds around $0.01 whereas mine appear to add roughly $0.13 yet you have 10x the amount of steem power as me! Is this because I'm a noob and there is an additional benefit after signing up or something? Because surely it should be that your upvotes provide around 10x the value of mine!
Feel free to ignore the second part of that if you are unsure or if you find it to be too off topic :)
Let's hope so.
It's because I'm using my voting slider. I think you should get it around the time you gather 500 Steem Power... You can then adjust the weight percentage for your vote, so you don't have to give a 100% upvote. If I were to upvote 100%, It'll be between $1 and $2, but I will be draining my voting power within 10 votes. I upvote comments mostly at 1%, so I can show appreciation to most people who respond to me. On posts that I upvote, I use a varied percentage, depending on how much I liked the post and want to support the artist, while still keeping enough weight for my next votes.
I'll give this comment a 50% upvote, as an example.