This is another great one of yours. I appreciate you taking the time to break it down for people. Another thing I'd like to add, the minnows of today are the dolphins of tomorrow. Who will choose themselves to be a dolphin? The Orcas and whales have been specifically chosen on the merits of their ability to give wealth to others. Those who give and curate the next wave of dolphins are entrusted with wealth. Those who simply hoard and do nothing to grow Steemit, are not really trusted. This is a layer of Steemit that people are largely unaware of. Advice to haters: start devising ways to share wealth, more wealth comes to you as a by-product. Healthy ecosystems need healthy people.....
"Who will choose themselves to be a dolphin?" look, if the whales dont see my blog as a way to market Steemit, then I will never gain their vote. Genuine quality is often overlooked. That just doesn't happen very much on Reddit, where everyone is given equal power to vote and be voted on. Reddit's foundation is quality, not the wallets of arrogant whales.
I personally believe that those upset with whales and bots are looking at this from a viewpoint of needing to grab as much money as possible as quickly as possible due to jealousy. I haven't met a whale, or anyone with success who has been a jerk. All of the people that have consistently great posts have high numbers as their reputation. I find the people who claim steemit is a ponzi or that whales only upvote to game the system are those who came in with high hopes, went right away to writing and having found little success, instead of looking at themselves decided to blame others. One of the most beneficial things a new person can do is to not submit posts immediately in the hope of making something viral. Spending a week here before even writing an #introduceyoursel post will pay dividends, as those users will have taken the time to realize how this ecosystem works as @rok-sivante so brilliantly described.
This is a pretty ridiculous and unfair characterization. Me personally, ive only ever made $500 or so posting, and ive given away around $800-900 to good posters or ppl helping fight spam.
Basically, youre employing a double standard. If rok or bella want the money to be distributed one way, then thats because theyre great people who dont care about money.
But if someone disagrees, then theyre greedy stupid assholes who just want to blame other people for their failures.
Also, FWIW, i don't think wales are trying to game the system. I just think, for a variety of reasons (most probably involvng how busy they are), theyre crappy curators.
They have a bunch of "staff" authors who they painted into a liquidity trap, who are mostly producing low quality infomercial type posts, then they just look for boobs, well known crypto names, and cheerleading.
I dont have a problem with the ethics of it. My problem is that it is so transparent and hamfisted its killing the credibility of the platform and driving down the price of steem.
From what I have noticed is it usually goes like this.
3.They spend a good amount of time writing a few great posts that make a few dollars
4.User becomes frustrated and start posting negatively
That is what I've seen time and again from many with negative views of steemit.
Can you explain what you mean by
"Basically, youre employing a double standard. If rok or bella want the money to be distributed one way, then thats because theyre great people who dont care about money.
But if someone disagrees, then theyre greedy stupid assholes who just want to blame other people for their failures."
I'm not sure what the double standard is exactly that you are referring to. rok and bella both care a lot about their votes and use them when they see great content. Whales don't necessarily look at each post and choose to upvote it. They can promote new users or ideas as they see fit. The people complaining are the same ones who have earned more money than on any other social media site. It's because of the comparison to others that they are upset. I also feel I would use steemit without any rewards, because interesting content and writing can be found here that I haven't seen elsewhere.
I do also agree that some whales may need to delegate their voting power to those less busy than themselves, because so much good content goes unnoticed.
When I look at the trending page I guess I don't see as much "low quality infomercial type posts, then they just look for boobs, well known crypto names, and cheerleading," as you do. I see the stella and rok and donkeypong and piedpiper posts that add value. Eventually I believe less will be made about steemit and how to's, but that is something new people continuously need to see and with wang being invisible, they will most likely be looking in the trending section to find answers.
You raise valid points and while I disagree with you on the whole, you are right that some aspects do need changing to keep steemit as a credible platform in the long run. Content and community is what will set steemit apart if it is to succeed.
I don't see rok or stella complaining and they had to work their way up like everyone else. I understand that spam bots are not beneficial, but I don't see any reason not to encourage bots and botlists of those who are heavily invested. It should encourage users to want to create content that would warrant being on a list. Essentially a sponsorship. I'm not saying it was at all easy for me to figure out, and not everyone is good at blogging, and I do not consider myself a great writer, but I saw what posts did well and adopted pieces of them and made them my own
I don't think those who don't support the current reward system are poor intentioned as a whole (as I too have changes I hope will be implemented), but I think many are short sighted and see steemit as a place to come get rich and leave. We can continue to disagree. We both have valuable opinions and I'm glad you brought up these points in an appropriate manner.
The double standard is:
People who object to bots and botlists do so becausse of greed, jealousy, stupidity and being shitty people.
People like rok and bella support the bots becasue they care about the system and theyre great people.
and if you think there's any problem with the way awards are apportioned, its because youre jealous.
You assume one side of a debate has good intentions, and the other has bad. thats a double standard.
Just as a side note, and speaking of double standards... if the minnows and dolphins can automate their votes, that fair game too, right.
Minnows and dolphins can automate votes if they want, but it will make much less impact than whales, and minnows have barely any vested interest (steem power wise). I'm not exactly sure if that was your question or not, but hopefully that is along lines of what you were talking about.
Not really. It's just that some of us understand how platforms like this work, and if they are designed in such a way to silence thousands of regular users in favor of a few rich whales, they will quickly stagnate and die.
The whales have a vested interest in all users. Without minnows the entire system would collapse. New users are not silenced, but have to consistently make good content to be noticed. Usually new users try a solid 2 or 3 posts and get frustrated and switch what they are doing. I started at the bottom like everyone else and learned from the many posters before me and networked to meet new people with similar interests. If steemit collapses, those with much invested have the most to lose. So I believe they are thinking up ways for everyone to have a bigger voice regardless of their current size in the ecosystem.
And before it finally collapses, they have a method for making tons of money off the ponzi scheme.
Minnows won't notice until the platform is already dying. Oh well, no skin off my back.
Enjoy your spam platform :)
See for this to be a ponzi scheme you would be forced to invest money. Find me another ponzi scheme that gives away money to people for joining and I will join there as well. And if you truly believed this, why would you be wasting your time here?
I know it's not a traditional ponzi scheme. That doesn't change the fact that it's entirely useless as a content aggregator, since only whale posts are ever seen.
This site is going to die in a matter of months once regular users realize that
1 - Content is 100% Stagnant: Only spam from whales reaches the front page, regardless of how many votes are given by regular users
2 - There's no incentive to post or upvote anything interesting because of #1
3 - Because of #2, people will leave
I get it: you want to ignore the glaring flaw because it benefits you. That doesn't make it a valid reason.
I love the content @stellabelle puts out along with almost everything @rok-sivante writes. If you read their articles and still believe that this site is stagnant then I would encourage you to find me another place where I can find:
If you can find those elsewhere please tell me. But I believe you are truly missing out, but the decision to stay or go lies solely upon you.