This seems to be the hot topic of debate on steemit. I think it arouse when we changed the voting power default to 10 a day instead of 40. Now a vote takes 2% of your power each and users are more hesitant to randomly upvote others posts. Since they only have so many votes, it makes sense that they will gravitate towards voting for themselves. You can vote for yourself with less power but then you have to do it after the post is made and most of us (myself included) just leave the upvote post box checked off and post. Maybe we can add an option under the posting menu that people can change their voting percentage for their self-vote before they post but I do not know how many people would us it.
The main point I want to make with this post is that we all need to be respectful. People are allowed to self-vote, like it or not, so please do not attack anyone who does it, even if they choose to make 40 comments and upvote them all. I know you do not like it, but it is part of the system and since it is their voting power, they can do with it as they with. If you think it is a problem, then we need to make system changes to stop it. Maybe you can only upvote yourself 5 times a day or your voting power becomes less each time you do. But I am always hesitant for these kind of changes as limiting users in any way can push people away.
We also need to keep in mind the benefits that self-voting has as people are more inclined to buy and keep steem if it lets them vote for themselves and get their content seen. Maybe changing the voting power to 2x instead of 4x and give 20 votes might balance the system more. We need a system where people can take care of themselves and help others. You cannot just expect people will behave in a certain way and the best way is to encourage the type of activity you want is to have the network benefit those activities.
What do you think?
*my upvotes/rep disclaimer: https://steemit.com/steemit/@whatageek/my-steemit-account-where-i-stand-on-bots-self-votes-and-multiple-account
I'm not gonna post a wall of text here (you know I want to! lol) so just want to recommend the VP decay curve proposed by @liberosist, which is that we get ~100 votes at full power, and then VP rapidly decays to nothing, that I think is the best option presently to address the issue.
Thanks for bringing your perspective on how to consider the self voting issue. You got one of my 10 measly votes =p
You get a full upvote for all your work on these comments. May I suggest you turn some of these to posts :p. You are doing the work. I am looking at the VP post now, will reply after.
Can you link the article, I think I am reading the wrong one. This one suggests an inverse in loss of voting power.
I actually did search for it, but, despite having linked to it before, was unable to find it.
As you might guess, searching my comments is like looking for a bush in a forest...
I'll look again, but if there's a graphic showing two lines that represent VP decay, that's the right post.
Side note on your side note: brevity is the soul of wit! I really like making long comments and rolling things out but sometimes I can't read everything you write because I don't have the time. Happy to see a short one 😜
LOL clearly I am not often witty =p
The distinction here is the self-upvote for minnows or whales. Minnow upvoting is only worth 0.01 therefore there's no discussion on that. However, an upvote from a whale, that's a different case.
Again, we all need to vote responsibly if we want the community to grow.
Very good point
Yeah we should be more lenient for those trying to build an account.
Yeah everyone is talking about this... I think self voting is not a bad thing if you still upvote other peoples content. Like keeping a good balance between this, you know ?
@whatageek it's really amazing!! But we need to upvote to those people who are really genuine!
good!
I agree with you, love how you think, we do need a system like that.
I agree with you, everyone should decide for themselves where their voting-power goes. But if we all end up only upvoting our own post then we could have a problem :D
I upvote my posts, not my comments. My average likes per post are 3, so if I want to add a fraction of a penny to my own posts I don't see how people can get upset over that. Of a whale upvote their own post, then good for them because they have earned that.
One thing, you can't please everyone.
A person flags because another posts too many memes, people dislike topics so they flag, people flag because a girl got too many votes so she must be fake. People cry over the smallest detail and I can't see why. Just log in, post, then log off, don't fight with people. One guy even said the new people are being stingy with their votes, but if we vote too much how do we know when to stop?
I'm fine with the system, I just wish we hade a traditional block button.
I personally agree that we should be respectful, especially in dialogue. However I also think that it is right and proper to challenge people on their behavior. For my part I will do that, and while I do not believe it would ever constitute an attack I will use my words and stake, as I am also entitled to, to oppose it.
You're absolutely correct, the incentive needs to be there to encourage behavior towards a pre-agreed goal. I think the alignment of this is currently off.
However social incentives also work. For example it is quite frowned upon to flag excessively. By challenging self voting I think we can work towards promoting frowning upon self voting too. Obviously this is only a temporary solution until some system change is to be made, but it does not mean it's not worth doing.
Yeah please do voice yourself when you feel there are changes to be made. We need to deal with problems. And about social incentives, at the very least, it is bringing attention to the situation.
The fact that there is a unvote your own post at the moment of posting checkbox shows that the platform doesn't frown upon it. You've taken the time to make a post, if you can vote for it, I think that's generally OK and if it's normal behavior for minnows, it should certainly be normal behavior for whales too.
The thing is, with the new voting curve, there is little insentive to vote for anybody but yourself because your curation reward is not likely to be much higher. Our votes have become more valuable but unfortunately, the fact that they are fewer makes most of us quite stingy with them.
When people had 40 votes to spend per day, they could throw some outside shouts, upvote some comments and still have enough voting power left to curate and even if there was a small self-upvote here and there, it didn't matter so much.
Now our votes are more valuable and with the flat curve, we don't really have a logical reason to spend them on others besides the health of the platform and not looking like self-serving d-bags.
But the rules are what they are and HF19 is a reality.
I recently saw that it's been the first week in some time where the total number of posts and the total number of new signups has been in decline. That might have something to do with the fact that there are fewer votes floating around so it's now actually harder for new and unrecognized users to get some love.