I understand the issue, but I also understand where it's coming from - minnows I am guessing. Because of these solutions, they are able to get a better payout for their posts because without it, Steemit gets quite depressing. No one likes to see $0.80c rewards on a post they worked hard on. However, this also causes less valuable posts to get high payouts aswell.
How to solve this? No idea. But supporting great, original content is a great start!
I understand the frustration aswell and I think many of us have felt it. Lately, when people ask me for 'vote for vote' or such things, I reply by telling them to stop asking this and to write meaningful comments on people's posts instead. I think by now, that is the only real way to earn new followers. The New feed is way too overcrowded to get noticed anymore.
This is key. Writing such comments make someone stand out from the rest and is open for a conversation - which 9/10 times the author is interested in, otherwise he/she wouldn't have posted. This way it's so much easier to find more engaging and interesting followers and people to follow. Honestly, this is what I think is the best way to gain more followers.
I actually never check this.. Sometimes I check a random article in a hot section of a given tag; photography, travel, introduceyourself, crypto are my favorites.
New is simply too crowded and most of the time content that doesn't interest me, is useless or is in a different language.
This is really bad because if one doesn´t have yet a big follower base that would be the only chance to get high attention (buying oneself into a trending page is not an option for most of the minnows, let alone the morality aspect)
Very true. So I guess we're back to commenting!
I'm brand new, so no one would ask for my vote, because it's not worth anything, but I find asking for a vote to be highly offensive!
I suppose trading a vote for a vote is the same sort of thing as buying one...but it somehow feels wrong.
I am very happy you feel that way! Many of us do, but new users do seem to resort to these kind of 'promotional activities' sometimes. I talked to a few who basically told me "Oh, I though that was normal here, everyone seems to be doing it". That's a bad trend to set, but we can't really do anything but teach the new members some proper etiquette (basically just normal social standards...).
These things happen due to a missing "onboarding management". People start to be active on this platform before actually knowing how it works.
Yeah, that's a very good point. We do have a Welcome and FAQ page, but I think social etiquette isn't covered much there. There is mention of an etiquette guide written by someone, but other than that, people have to figure it out on their own. I doubt many people will even look for such a thing.
From my person point of view the welcome page is too static. I'd love to see some fancy video tutorials that are as cool as the platform itself. A black & white 2D list is very old school and I don't really know how many people even read it...
Yeah, definitely.
Not really. Rather people who found a weak point in the system and took advantage of it.
I also "comprehend" the behaviour or the motivation, but I won't support it :-)
I am always trying to look at the bigger, or maybe the nicer picture here. But, yeah, that's the result of it :l
I also love that bigger and nicer picture :-) Lately it's been a bit difficult to see it...
The problem is that "whales" don´t even see lots of the awesome content some minnows provide.
To grow organically on steemit requires a bit more than publishing content and waiting for whales :-) During my first 6 months on steemit what I did here was: reading, commenting, engaging, learning, studying, improving. Nobody gets rich over night, but everybody gets better over night :-)
That´s what I am doing :), or trying to do
I know, I feel like they generally just trail, bot or don't actively search for good content in the first place.
I think delegations is one part of a potential solution, but not entirely. Because also in the terms of delegations people just 'sell' it for a lot.