I don't think a day has passed since I have been here that I haven't heard some mention of self-voting. For the first month or two, I didn't fully understand the debate. I believe the first week or so I self-voted and then stopped. For four months I didn't self-vote at all. The last month or two I've thought about it a lot and am not really sure how I feel about it.
Keep in mind, there are no real rules on Steemit regarding this, and it is merely my opinion and observations. Feel free to completely disagree.
Is self-voting bad?
If you want that answer, you can stop now. I really don't know, but before you leave I do have a lot to say on it and I think it is worth listening to.
Types of self-votes
In my opinion, there are many different kinds of self-votes and I believe they should be considered differently.
Upvote Post
The most basic and popular upvote is self-upvoting your own post. The typical Steemian posts one to ten times a week, don't quote me on this, I haven't done any official research. This type of upvote is what I avoided for most of my time on Steemit, but I am starting to have doubts. In fact, Steemit Inc almost encourages this practice as when you create your first post you are greeted with this:
The default option is to vote on your post, this sets the initial mindset for new users that self-voting is fine and in fact, encouraged. Now I still don't know if this is a bad practice, but at this point in my life, I think it's ok. If you are only posting once, twice, maybe three times a day with valuable content that you spent time on and are not just creating posts with as little effort as you can, then I think this is acceptable. The key thing here is offering value, every post I write I try to offer value to anyone reading it. I value every reader and follower I have, and I don't want to waste their time. I am a firm believer that you Are not entitled to an audience, you need to earn it!
I wrote a post recently about The truth and lies about 25% curation, why what you know is FAKE NEWS. and I did a little research on self-voting. I looked at the top 10 posts on the Hot section and checked which posts were self-voted. The results are not likely surprising.
Upvote comment
This type of self-vote comes in a few forms. I am not a fan of the self-vote every comment you make. It's just my opinion, and it isn't etched in stone. There really are no official rules here, it's more what the community finds acceptable. There are scenarios I am ok with self-voting comments.
When there is an active post, and I believe I have important information regarding the post. Now here is the thing, almost everyone thinks everything coming out of their mouth is important. I hate to break it to you, but that is not the case. Most of us like to talk, and most of it is just that, talk. There are situations though what you say has a big impact on the discussion. For example, a post talking about something that you find important information that is incorrect, I could see self-voting my comment to get it to the top to get more exposure to the author.
Another situation that is happening frequently now is downvoting, a lot of people are emotionally flagging people because of a difference of opinion. Using a self-vote to counter these flags is understandable.
Just self-voting every comment you have for 100% isn't a practice I agree with, but I am not Steemit Inc, and it isn't my responsibility to set what is allowed or not allowed here.
One thing I do think we should all agree is a problem, is the 6-day 12-hour self-vote comment/post. For example, there are multiple users making comments on #introduceyourself posts and voting them for $15-60+ right before lock-out (6-days 12-hours). The comments are typically as simple as "Welcome to Steemit". This is a practice I'd love to see die as it offers nothing to the Steemit community. Post rewards should be proportional to the value you offer. It won't always work this way, many people have supporters that vote for friends and causes they believe in. This is perfectly fine, but there is no reason a "Welcome to Steemit" comment spammed in 10+ threads a day should be rewarded with $56 upvote (which is more like $230 USD).
I frequently hear the phrase "it is their stake to do with as they please" and this is where I am really conflicted and where the system fails to scale. Let me pose a few scenarios.
Minnow
As a minnow, you likely have around 1000 SP or less, your upvote is valued at $0.25 or less. Self-voting every post isn't hurting anyone, it's your stake to use with as you please. It's extremely difficult to get any other votes from anyone or even get someone to read your post. In an ideal world, they would make one post a day, and distribute their 10 $0.25 upvotes/day to commenters of their post. The readers and community will reward the user with around $2.50 or more worth of upvotes to make a completely balanced system.
Dolphin
This user has over 5,000 SP, his or her upvote is worth a few dollars. The dolphin posts and receives $10 or more on their post, and distributes their 10 $1+/day upvotes to the commenters and the system works as intended.
Whale
This is where the system starts to break down, a whale is going to have a $25-$500 vote. This same scenario no longer works, on the lower end, it is possible. $250 for a post isn't unheard of, but $2,500 isn't going to happen. Nor can you expect someone with $3M USD worth of Steem Power to be expected to donate it away to commenters.
If you invest hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions, you should be able to realize a return on your investment. The way curation is now, that's not going to happen with just curation. A decent curator can average 2 SP/week per 1,000 SP they own. A whale with 1M Steem Power could be looking at 2,000 SP/week in curation rewards. That's roughly 10 years of 100% participation and consistency to see a 100% ROI on their vested Steem. What is the point of investing that much money into a platform when you have to give it all away?
This gets at the heart of the discussion going on now to change the way curation rewards are handled. There are talks about going back to 50/50 where the author gets 50% of the rewards and the curators split the last 50%. This would provide more incentives for whales to vote and create a more attractive ROI.
Hard Fork 20 Changes
Hard fork 20 is changing the way the reverse auction works and cutting the first 30 minutes of a vote down to 15 minutes. If you vote in the first 15 minutes, instead of it going to the author, it will be returned to the reward pool. This will remove some of the self-voting, at least the early self-voting.
Conclusion
All that said, I am still not sure where I stand. I can see reason with both arguments, and to be honest they both have flaws. I think the system needs to change to find a better answer to this question. I believe it is your stake to do with as you feel is a fair as long as it is valuable content that shows effort and isn't plagiarised, stolen, disproportionately taking from the reward pool and preferably not farming comments and posts prior to lock-out. I think a good rule of thumb is if you saw this content with this current value on it, would you vote on it?
Like I said, it isn't a perfect system. In an ideal world we would spend 100% of our voting power on the community and promote the best content, and investors would get an ROI they are happy with. I don't think there will ever be a perfect balance. The important take away is that we all share the same reward pool. Everything you do has an impact on everyone else in the community.
In the meantime, I started to self-vote my 1-2 posts a day, and spend the rest of my voting power in the community upvoting good posts, supporting friends and causes I believe in, flagging spammers and abuse. I don't vote comments unless I feel it is important (about 0-2 a week).
It will be interesting to see where things go, but we have some work to do.
I tagged this with @timcliff's #discussion tag, so have at it in the comments. Like always, I read them all.
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It is really complicated subject.
I hate self-voting, yet sometimes it is the only way for the comment or post to be seen.
ANd more-over sometimes you invest hours and no one read it...
Steem should show some low rating posts at top by random...
All those whale vottting need to end one day...
@themarkymark I believe that since the platform allows it, one can upvote themselves all they want. However, with great power comes great responsibility so if a powerful account uses their own power to upvote their useless comments, other powerful users may flag those overvalued posts and bring balance. Everything mentioned is my humble opinion.
Completely agree, the problem when this balance is brought, the tears and rage come out. People feel they are being attacked and call on others to help them 'fight back' and it never ends well.
I see you, but if a user has read the terms of service they already know that one can flag content just because they disagree with its payout value. Nothing personal and nothing to do with hostile behaviour whatsoever. We just need to grow up as individual users and treat the matter with maturity and look at this from a community point of view.
You can hammer that point in until the end of our days, and some people refuse to accept it.
Thanks for this post. I’ve thought about this a lot myself. I’ve discussed it with a few people and the general consensus seems to be consistent with your article - it’s ok to upvote your own post, but it’s bad etiquette to upvote your own comments. I apply this thinking with my account.
One thing I’m interested in is your opinion on upvoting other people’s comments. You mention this briefly in your post. As a rule I upvote everyone who comments on my posts (assuming they are relevant comments). I feel that if someone has taken the time to make a relevant comment on my work then they should get rewarded for this. You seem to be more selective in who you upvote?
I tend to only upvote comments that really add to the discussion, I also tend to be very low on VP a lot of times due to flagging spam so I don't always have VP to upvote as much as I would like.
Great discussion point, this is one of the things that, for someone like me who just got here, seems a bit off. Self voting when you have a $100 vote puts you right at the top of the hot section which will garner all the attention of the minnows and dolphins because they want to upvote and comment in order to try to get votes from people with value. I understand some people are well established and others are heavily invested, but the system makes it difficult to gain much traction starting out.
I think it would be interesting to see something like only allowing self votes after one day of being posted, or perhaps increase the rewards for curation and decrease the rewards for self voting. The first idea would make it so hot articles were actually more "viral" than just being self voted, and the second could promote more interaction where whales are working to upvote content they enjoy while still being rewarded in a similar way. Just throwing some quick ideas out, the solution isn't apparent, that's for sure.
There was also some talk about having users of similar levels be able to cancel eachothers votes.
While I am not a fan of it, I have less to gain by not doing it as you pointed out in your section on whales. There is more financial gain for them to self vote. My point of view might change if I had more of my skin invested in the system. I have not invested anything more content into the forum. For those that have invested processing power or purchased Steem to grow their account, there should be some expectation of return on investment. The nature of the platform is what it is, we have all signed up for it and we must accept how functions. We all have a choice, we can take our content to other platforms and try to monetize that content.
Personally I do not see a problem with self voting one's articles that are quality. Of course, this is subjective. However, if one takes the time to put in effort into an article and the person thinks it quality, an upvote is warranted.
I do not upvote my comments. Comments are made in response to the author and belong to that person since it is his/her article. If the author and other ones commenting thing my comment worthy, then they can upvote it.
Just my .2 steem.
There is no advantage to that.
10 accounts with a $6 vote in each is no different then 1 account with a $60 vote.
Splitting the SP across all those accounts does not yield any advantage in that regard.
THIS IS REALLY GOOD INFORMATION
hmm I don't even know what are my personal thoughts on it
And this greed one day it will destroy all of us!
Regarding self voting i think it should be done with common sense and i don't see nothing wrong if its done when you make a blog for example, at least at the beginning when you are a red fish or a minnow... helps the morale to see a vote and digit there!
Have a great week-end!Hehe it's all about our human nature and our biggest virus which is GREED @themarkymark!
Thanks for this post! I think I have pretty similar feelings. I understand that a lot of people are trying to abuse the system, but if you are only upvoting your original content posts I do not really see it as a problem. I only post 3-4 times per week on average, so the amount I have self-voted is quite small. I definitely don't think I would ever vote on my own comments, and I may even think differently about voting my own posts once I achieve higher than minnow status. ;) I look forward to checking out other people's comments to see what the consensus is!
@plantstoplanks, I'm in agreement. I've always been confused about how self-voting works. If this post doesn't exactly bring clarity, it does invite discussion. And that, in and of itself, is a good thing.
Absolutely! I think lately I have seen more of the negative about it--almost shaming everyone who does it. I agree with you that having open dialogue about it is a much more positive approach. I am still learning every day on here, so I love seeing posts like this where the author (thanks @themarkymark) provides a well-thought-out post and then other members add enlightening comments. :)
I still have very little understanding of how this whole thing works, I upvote someone, they get zilch it seems, it was 0.01 before, now nothing, so my vote no longer counts
The early days on steem are very tough. Persistence is key. Produce awesome content people want to reward you for. Early on, commenting and networking will yield better results.
superb, will try that
I do not self vote anything I create on steem. That goes for comments and posts. I like to use the number of votes and steem received as a gauge to how well my work is doing.
That being said, there have been a few time where I thought, "hm, if I upvote this the author would have a better chance to see it."
It's a tricky subject for sure...
Number of votes is not a good metric as it becomes quite arbitrary. Views is a better metric but not perfect.
That is a good point. Forgot about the vote trails that we have here.
It's not a perfect system, but it's pretty darn close. I am both fascinated and proud of the way steemit exemplifies the true power of decentralization and self-regulation. It is up to us - every single user - to make it really shine.
Hmm interesting to read on this topic since there are so many conflicting thoughts! I didn't really know some of those pros/cons/facts about it before I read your post either. Thanks picking such an informative AND important topic to share with the community.
Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by Malcolm Reynolds from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews/crimsonclad, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the
If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP. Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.
This post has received a 0.13 % upvote from @drotto thanks to: @banjo.
thank you!Hey @themarkymark, Do you allow me to translate this to Hebrew and post it? I run the project for Hebrew guides to new Israeli steemit users @hebrewguides . our goal is to have everything everyone needs to know about steemit and I think it can add a different perspective about Steemit and self-voting that new users need to hear.
I prefer to keep my content my own, sorry.
It's all good! thank you for answering!
Interesting read. I’ve learnt something new. Followed. Upvoted
I think self-voting on your own comments is rarely good, but upvoting your own posts, if they are good and you slaved away at writing them, is perfectly fine.
I write long text based posts and I spend a lot of time on each one of those, I feel like my upvote partially helps me be rewarded for my work, and since it is my stake it makes sense.
On the other hand, I upvote myself on those posts because I think it helps with visibility.
I see what you're getting at in what concerns to Whale, and frankly I still am not at a point where I think too much about it... ,maybe one day.
Like in the real world money talks. The more money the bigger the voice. I wish all whales would share in their wealth among all minnows and therefore lifting everyone's bottom line. But the reality is most whales got to where they are by strategically investing what they see as best ROI. So wrong or right they see this as a business transaction and a self upvote is collecting their interest.
But personally I feel this will ruin steemit if we allow the biggest investors the majority control of the reward pool. Why is there not a limit on how much one can upvote themselves or limit on self voting pyramid scheme? Where minnows have unlimited self upvotes but when you reach to a whale limited to once a day? Not difficult to do and there would be a better distribution of rewards. The drawback is this would seem to not be a decentralized system because users are being limited and less willingness from users to invest money into steem.
Yet I thought the main goal of steemit was to be a social blockchain where everyone has their own words shared to all. The earnings should go to the ones who perform the most toward benefiting steemit. Not the ones who has the deepest pockets.
Right, I agree that it's OK to self-vote comments sometimes when you really want to get some visibility. Maybe if you're self-voting more than 10 percent of the comments you make, you should think about it. As for voting on your own posts, well as you said, a minnow's got to do what a minnow's got to do. As for dolphins and whales, I can certainly understand why they would want to.
I think 10% is probably high, I probably upvote 1-3 comments a week and I make a lot of comments.
Now this has been an interesting read. I'm not totally new here, but I am still in the process of figuring it all out. The funny thing is I was contemplating hitting that upvote check box on a recent post I made, but then didn't because it seems the community frowns upon it, so why the heck is the option there???
After reading this I do believe I will be following your lead and upvoting myself on a minimum scale and only my posts I put up as I think they have value for the steemit people.
Thanks for the insight.
Do you have a post explaining the author/curation or is it curation/author voting system thing right above that upvote yourself check box. Just don't know what to do with it, lol. 50%/50%
Do I change it? is that frowned upon, lol. so much to learn and trying not to screw it up is a challenge!
Namste!Goodness @themarkymark, I came here via a resteem link on so's blog and had wondered why this post was hidden - now I see hi-gin's pal the rancho at work, down-voting this post - I presume as a result of your (to my mind reasonable and interesting) content which the whale user finds offensive; or perhaps it is some other battle where you put your head over the parapet and got shot at! Either way, just commenting to show a bit of support, and to say that I've read some of your other stuff and like it :)
This bugs me as well. I think the current system is broken and this will make it worse. At the moment I go to the new posts feed and scroll through till I find something I like. Then I have to wait 20 mins before I can vote on it. If Steemit wants to encourage curation then it needs to make it easier to curate. At the moment it feels like you need a spreadsheet to do the maths every time you upvote.