It's an interesting point of view: upvote herding, but just as the post typology you've mentioned (how do build quality content), this topic has been posted as well many times around.
The thing about whales is that they have started to diversify. For about 2 weeks now I started seeing more individualism develop among the whales, stronger than before (I think it was after @dollarvigilante joined - just to have a milestone).
This diversification I see could be happening from 2 reasons:
- Whales are more comfortable now and start curating manually (less upvote botlists) as the content is also diversified, the Steemit userbase is larger, more content to choose from.
- Wealth distribution. Whales simply distribute their upvotes in more directions than before. I see more <500$ posts on the trending page whereas we used to have a just a few and only >7-10k before.
Why is it still happening (upvote herding)?
- Lots of new people think they will get a curation rewards off a post that has a high reward amount. Minnows will get nothing if a post is over a few hundreds..
- The whales actually have good taste and upvote quality content that is highly appreciated by hundreds of others, like for real.
We're still small though growing rapidly, we're still in beta, though with less and less issues every week. Once we hit a few hundred thousands users (maybe even 1 mil.) this will no longer be the case as people (whales too) I think will focus on the specific area of their interest (like development in your case) and contribute there, looking for posts in their main tag interest areas only.
This post is rather a motivation to being an individual rather than following the herd.
Lovely comment, i agree with every word you say.
Yup, I got that totally. I was merely saying it's been discussed before too :D:D
Keep up the good work, I have been following your posts for a while now!
Thanks!
I somewhat agree with you, but this:
What's this ?
The whales are ordinary people with their own biases, points of views, narrowed by their life experiences and areas of interest.
NOBODY can be a "good taste"/"quality content" judge. No even a writer, a psychologist, a marketing manager, content manager, creative, etc. Nobody.
You know why ? Because this is a platform without any theme. For an art gallery there are curators. For a science magazine there are scientists-editors, for a game there is a game designer.
Do you think Zuckerberg is the most qualified person for Facebook ? No. He has a team. But he has the decision (part of it). That's all. Has the decision.
So, whales are just people. With power. They are not better or worse than me/you. But they decide what's the future of Steemit. That's all.
I didn't want to be too aggressive but I disagree with that quote. I agree for 75 % with your statements.
Peace.
You're right, good taste is subjective and strictly relates to the individual expressing it. Used in the same context as Steemit quality content I think there is a line that can be drawn, from a majority point of view, to what is quality/non-quality without too much expertise behind the curtain :)
Upvote herding will happen on quality content. Again quality can be considered subjective, as you've pointed out above, but the majority of whales/users will pretty much have it in the same scope I think (content informative level, originality, catchy titles, good language control, formatting, visuals etc.).
PS. I always appreciate feedback @fishborne, never see it as aggressive unless..you know, it's aggressive (is aggressiveness subjective too? hahah).
No, no aggressivity here. Just exchanging opinions like adults. :)
Love the way @smooth is always upvoting a comment to say "i've read your post...." :D
yeah :D
well, I upvote only the stuff I like regardless of how many votes it has already - who is to say that my taste is bad just because my vote doesn't count for much? assuming every new person only upvotes because they want a payout is using faulty logic, and bestowing whales with all the magical attributes just because they are whales - too. they could have transferred a few bitcoins to their account and now have lots of power to throw around - does that mean they are better people with better taste?