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I love that you share openly, compassionate humility and precision about your experience using bots. Even more so, the moral of the story as you so succinctly report "With voting, comes responsibility." definitely goes in accordance with my experience as a voter. I keep and eye on people who consistently bring about quality and haven't yet been taken for a ride... I cross my finger on this one but, of course for human reasons, the odds are always going to be there.

I wish you the best with your reassignment of bots and a profound thank you for exposing this situation to the rest of the big names out here as it does need exposure and rectification.

Namaste :)

Well said brother~
Namaste~*~

I noticed the exact same thing regarding Dana's content... and it is not the first time I have seen a previously respectable Steemian doing something that could be a bit sketchy.

To be fair, Dana is not actively breaking rules. I would not flag their account - but I did unfollow after I felt like it wasn't the kind of content that I wanted to engage with.

There was another user who I noticed doing something similar... one I had a lot of respect for.. and it really disappointed me.

Lastly, thank you for sharing your story about realizing you made a mistake with mindhunter. It takes courage to admit when you've done something wrong. It seems unfortunate that Steem's curation system encourages people to follow the herd and rush in to vote any content that will get money - regardless of the quality of that content.

I always encourage users, new and old, to just curate based on quality. The real rewards come from content creation and engaging with the community, NOT scavenging for dust from curation rewards.

re: flagging... yeah. I do disagree with the rewards, feeling they've been inproportional to the quality of content. However, it's a tough grey area determining when it may be appropriate to use the flagging power for such a purpose.

Thanks for bringing that up, as that was one point I wanted to touch on in the story but forgot.

And your welcome. Courage and some humility. But, we all make mistakes from time to time. And I'd rather suck it up and admit mine like this to set an example and pay forward the lessons, because it is a valuable lesson for the community and those using bots. Standards need to be set, and sometimes fucking up is a necessary part of the process of raising them - but if we keep our mistakes to ourselves, there's bound to be others who make the same fuckups, thus doing more damage to the community, when such could be avoided by simply swallowing one's pride and vocalizing as an example to others of what not to do. Not everyone might read or take such lessons to heart and implement themselves, but if even one or two do, the community will have upgraded because of it...

every time I look at dana's blog, I am scratching my head... there is a disconnect between content and rewards

i made the same mistake expt of course with significantly less power but the conclusion is the same thanks for reminding me to reevaluate my voting bots

I would love so much to know how to automate my own curation.
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It sounds like the moral of the story is to NOT use bot voting because you are more likely to wind up voting on SHIT because you're not actually "curating", you're simply trying to earn profit based on a specific author's past work.

There's a saying that goes something like: Past performance is not an indicator of future success.

This is why I feel strongly that any voting bot is actually not in the best interest of the future success of Steemit. The reason curation rewards exist are for quality content to be raised to the greater community, NOT for profit.

Curation rewards are not meant to be a giant whale circle jerk. By not ACTIVELY curating posts, you are doing a disservice to the Entire Steemit Community.

Sure, auto vote bots may have worked when the community was smaller. There were fewer authors to choose from. It makes sense that you would auto vote the best / most consistent ones and manually curate the one-off posts that you enjoyed.

But the environment has changed. And you must adapt appropriately in order to ensure the future success of the platform.

Please end the Circle Jerk of whales who post ANYTHING and receive literally HUNDREDS of high-valued SteemPower votes. Regardless of the quality of their content.

All this action does is encourage new users to "follow suit" because "that's the way Steemit must work if everyone who is successful is doing it."

Please stop the madness.

when will we (humans) learn that everything shouldn't be outsourced to robots and algorithms? Love your assessment of the problem.

Thank you for your comment. While you're on the right track, the problem isn't actually "algorithms". If someone instituted a legitimate AI algorithm, I bet it wouldn't be so bad.

However, outsourcing to a mindless robot that simply votes for the same author over and over (mindlessly), is absolutely not going to work in the long-term. It's barely a short-term solution for a complex growth proposition.

Just for the record...

I AM NOT A BOT!

:)))

Resteem...

Great post my mannn! Every Sunday, I go to check my steemvoter account. I usually catch a few people who were doing great content, then decided to do like 10+ shit posts a day.

You just made me go back to my account and now I want to go through everyone's accounts 😂

What's that saying?

"With Great Power Comes With Greater Responsibility"

Keep STEEM N ON,
Frank

@rok-sivante, first of all, thank you for your honesty. I am also thankful for the upvotes I've got from you a handful of times. Much appreciated! - You said it yourself, you've used bots but I'm living proof of the fact that you've been voting manually too.

I guess most people are doing that. They use bots or curation trails and upvote content manually too. At some point. However, I do believe it's time to review the users and update the lists. There's nothing wrong with automated systems, as long as one keep track of the process.

Tons of authors have started to provide crap content and are STILL being well-rewarded for their contributions and that's not only wrong.. It will also lead to less quality content in general, as people will start to produce less quality to reap rewards just like "established steemians" are doing.

I am sorry for sharing my article here, but I truly believe it fits perfectly: Is This What I Want? - Is This What I Have To Do? - These Posting Patterns Is NOT What I Had In Mind.

I believe hard work and quality content will be rewared, at some point... But seriously speaking, it's annoying to see all this crap reaping this much rewards when you're putting in TONS of hours yourself without earning a fraction of the amount they make.

  • That's from the article I mentioned.

With that being said, I actually didn't think of it like this.. And truth to be told, if people reviewed their lists and changed the users they're voting for... They'd still reap curation rewards as others would do the same. - And it would bring quality content to Steemit again.

Thank you for a great read. I enjoyed it and I'm glad someone brought this up. - Let's see if any changes will be made in the near future. I just wish the established Steemians would stop to publish ~8 articles per day just to reap as much rewards as they can... They take advantage of the support they've got and I can see why, but it's terrible and it will ultimately hurt the entire platform.

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Yeah, I've got to review my SteemVoter list as well. Most of my people are consistent posters of quality (most of the time) but they don't get much so I like to do 100% votes.

I think that a lot of people are relying on auto votes to give their support to their favourites, I do it as well. People might be upvoting a bit less / less power these days, though. I've lost a bit of voters for the SPC, but going to keep it going nonetheless!

I have yet to use bots but I am pretty sure I have a couple that I am on their list judging by regular votes, (not complaining at all) that I get.

This also is VERY important for other aspects of the ecosystem as well, like witnesses. People really should take time to re-evaluate their witness votes, or at least check in on them at @netuoso's STEEM Witness Stats site.

I really want to contribute more and better written blogs but I'm not really a writer even though I'm trying. This also explains why I see so many blogs that are just plain boring or not well written getting hundreds of dollars. I'm affraid if I write what I am thinking and believe nobody will take interest. I need think and be able to research more so I can contribute more on this platform.

I'm affraid if I write what I am thinking and believe nobody will take interest.

well, even if that were the case, nothing was lost but your time - or you could reframe that as an investment in building your skill and receiving feedback.

I need think and be able to research more so I can contribute more on this platform.

there are many different ways to contribute. everybody has their own unique talents and viewpoints. maybe more research could help you put together something of greater value to contribute to this platform. Or maybe no research at all might be required at all, just action in starting where you're at and writing, even if it's not the best. with practice, you'll get better. and if you enjoy the process, that is its own reward.

do check out some of the info in this curation post I put together a while ago, as it's quite dense in some great pointers that may be of value as you venture forward here:

The Dirty Dozen: My Top 12 Most HIGHLY Recommended Posts For Steemit Noobs To Accelerate Your Success...

;-)

Thank you for responding. I really didn't think it would get a response. I will take your advice to heart. Thanks again.

Thanks for another honest and valuable post. This without a doubt something that MANY people need to check especially anyone with lots of voting power. There is a LOT of great content getting under rewarded and lots of mediocre content being over rewarded.

Full Steem Ahead!

it is hard to maintain motivation to write long posts when rewards maybe less than a dollar -- i try hard with some of my posts and others not so much, but i can never tell if anything will gain an amount of votes. Anyway , i will remotivate and write one of my better efforts again for the next .. rock on

I have been reading various posts on voting bots to determine if it is something I would want to try. I found this post to be one of the most grounded and transparent I have come across. Thanks for sharing your experience, both good and bad. I'm still not sure what I'll do, but I like your point about regularly checking the accounts on your list to make sure they are still producing quality content. That might be a good balance of trying this out, but still staying in line with my values and promoting good content.

Your welcome. ;-)

I want to confess my sins and start to be a better person.

  • I came here two weeks ago. That is the first thing I need to confess. Stupid me. Unforgiveable. I should have been here since I've heard about it the first time last year!
  • All I understood was that I need to find whales and powerful Steemians and engage with them. Somehow I even liked the fact that I don't even mind strange opinions. I mean, isn't it a good thing to engage with pweople yu disagree with? But still! Opinion doesn't count, quality does. I made a mistake and I am going to tidy up my list right after commenting.
  • I upvoted content in languages I can't even read.

I made a terrible mistake. I'll pray the blockchain 30 times as a redress.

Haha. Brilliant. :-)

not so brilliant is that I am cleaning my flippin' list for 2 hours now … Still not half way through!

@rok-sivante excuse me ,was an mistake . I begin to learn the Steemit rules and I'll promise to do the right things , no spam only good comments and activity . Now I fallen from 42 level to 8 , I learned my lesson . Never make again .

Now how I can grow my same level like first , now I'm 8 :( ,thank you

four of the exact same comments, and 8 in total were unnecessary. ONE is all that was needed.

you're back at a 40. 2 points is quite a reasonable price for the lesson you got today. ;-)