War Between New And Old | Good VS. Evil | We Want Change
I was very skeptical about HF21 and it took a long time before I eventually started to realize that it could've been the best thing for STEEM. Nowadays, when we've been rolling under these new changes for a while, I'm both impressed and fairly satisfied with the outcome...
Some of the things I was the most skeptical and concerned about, before HF21, was how the new reward changes would affect lesser accounts. I have always been keen to see growth and to strengthen the middle class on STEEM because I truly believe that it's the healthiest thing to do. This is why I have focused on lesser accounts and newcomers for long periods of time in the past. That is the sole reason for my previous initiatives and projects. To support, motivate and help others to grow. By doing that, the entire platform would eventually grow and become valuable for others. I believe STEEM would grow because of that.
So, whenever I heard that authors would earn less and curators earn more, it was natural for me to think of how this would affect everyone except "the heavy hitters" in a negative way. It felt like the perfect change for investors to minimize (or cover) their potential losses and to grow their accounts in a faster pace than before, and that was not something I was looking forward too.
I did not look forward to see the well-rewarded authors earn more than ever before, and I was not looking forward to see the large accounts earn more on the expense of all the lesser accounts, including myself.
#Newsteem played a huge role in convincing me though. I still can't say for sure that #newsteem and HF21 was the best for STEEM, but we had to do something, and #newsteem along with HF21 was definitely the best idea at hand.
A leap of faith, some trial and errors later and we're here. Rolling under these new changes and things are looking decent, to say the least. But, it has caused us pain and suffering too.
Many of the lesser accounts complain about the lack of rewards, and this was pretty much bound to happen. Most of us could see this coming from miles away.
However, we don't want to reward garbage and the old days are over. Prior to HF21, people complained about the same thing as they complain about today, but the complaints seems to be slightly different.
I have talked about this in the past as well. People complain because they earn less than before, or less than what they expect to earn...
- Why do we expect anything at all?
I could easily have had hundreds of thousands of SP today, if I had bought Steem, powered up and if I had bought votes for hundreds of dollars during "oldsteem". That goes for literally everyone.
Most people did not (ab)use STEEM, bid-bots or vote-buying like that, but everyone could. If they did not do that because they couldn't afford it or for other reasons doesn't matter today.
Nowadays, we have countered bid-bots and the abuse that came with vote-buying, but people still complain. We see bid-bots curate content manually, and we have several projects and initiatives out there curating content manually, all because of #newsteem and due to the "healthier" way of doing things.
Some users earns more than previously because they put in effort and hard work. This was not likely to happen during "oldsteem" because most people refused to change their voting habits. But, we have also users, like myself, who seems to earn based on who I am rather than what I do...
- And that is still an issue.
This is an issue we will never find a solid solution for though, as this is what happens with time and hard work. Users work their way up by putting in tons effort and time, and they should and will be rewarded for that. At some point.
We Need Change But War Is Not The Solution.
Recently we've seen some of the large accounts become targets of downvotes. The result of all those downvotes even seems to have made it clear for some people that they are not wanted on this platform. They don't feel welcome here, and some of them have started and/or will start to power down. Some of them are about to leave STEEM.
This is the result of downvotes. This is what happens when you take away rewards from people, and people still claim to be on STEEM for other reasons than money. - Bullshit.
It's funny though, whenever a lesser account or someone who power down starts to talk about the lack of rewards, or the price of STEEM, they are often seen as "takers". Someone who doesn't care about anything but the rewards they can make for themselves...
They are also often accused of not caring about the "greater good" of the platform, and they often hear all this crap about powering down and that cashing out ruins the price of STEEM.
However, when a "big fish" talks about the same things, they are instead praised for doing it.
- It's hypocritical.
Money is and has always been the biggest reason for anyone to be on STEEM, but only the "rich" are truly allowed to complain and talk about how much the price of STEEM or their rewards have declined, because people listens to wealth more than anything else.
And this is where some of the current issues arrives.
People have always been upvoting content, but even during the earliest days of STEEM, users started to upvote their friends and family members more than anyone else. With time, as things escalated, many users started to vote only for their friends and family members, because they earned more by doing that. - They were trading votes.
You have probably heard of the "follow 4 follow" method or approach. The "vote 4 vote" thing was the same. Newcomers thought that they would earn as long as they got upvotes. This was before RC and before they realized that they have X-amount of voting power etc. - But it was still a thing, and it is still a thing.
That is what most of these downvotes are being used for currently. To reduce the vote trading. They are used in an attempt to change a behaviour that has been in affect for years. Change takes time, but it should not be seen as an act of war.
This is not about "Good vs. Evil" or "OldSteem vs. Newsteem". This is about change. This is about the voting habits, and to change them going forward.
Upvote your friends or your family members all you want, everyone does that, but don't forget about or ignore the rest. STEEM is an ocean with creatures from top to bottom. We need seaweed to survive, and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you'll be able to feast as well.
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You mean anyone could've. That is a very important distinction.
Nah. That's just circle jerkers who've been earning a ton on mediocre content making the expected noises when their game is brought to an end. They can curate with their large stakes. Why not? It's less profitable than vote trading but vote trading has been slowly sinking the platform. Nobody is trying to drive anyone away from Steem. Some people's rewards are just trimmed to a level commensurate to the quality of their content.
You can probably find far more errors than that in any of the articles I write or have ever written. That is literally the same thing for me. I never seem to learn the difference, but I'm glad that you pointed this out.
I agree with this, but the same could literally be done with 99% of the users, which is why I personally think it's extra difficult for people to see the true intentions behind these downvotes. I mean, even this article could be downvoted for much of the same reasons depending on who you ask. Especially as I have support from a bunch of users I auto-vote (vote trading). The only difference is the amount of rewards.
To me, it's perfectly clear that the people who run @ocdb and @curangel are doing it to reward quality and punish abuse. The curation team of @curangel gets 20% of the curation rewards but they also work hard to read a lot of posts to curate. They don't personally profit one bit from what they do. The effects are already very clear in terms of quality authors getting better rewards and the overall reward level for decent authors going up.
The circle jerking rings you seem to be talking about are people whose mediocre content has ended up in Trending for years. It's about time it is taken down a notch. Trending is what the world sees first. If you make $50 for posts with blurry smartphone pictures and some text even when the price is as low as it is today and if you revenge downvote anyone who dares downvote you, then you richly deserve @ocdb with its 5 million SP bring the hammer down on your rewards.
Whales have a greater responsibility for the platform because of the greater power they have. Also, they simply have a lot more to gain when the price moves up or to lose when the price moves down than the vast majority of accounts. You can expect small account holders to be more concerned with amassing more tokens. But this behavior is more easily countered precisely because they're small.
I've seen certain people complaining about lots of income when they have done really well from Steem. The big accounts can continue to earn from curation. Just voting up their friends will be spotted and some will counter it. This sort of behaviour is bad for Steem as small accounts make less and we cannot afford to keep losing them. We desperately need more users who may also invest if they can see some benefit. Short term thinking is not going to help the Steem price.
That is very true and we all should've realized that by now. However, some of the users who earned due to their past behaviour doesn't appreciate having their rewards taken away nowadays, when they continue with the same type of behaviour as before. I guess it's a learning curve for these people as well...
Some people will have to learn to find a new approach, and others will have to adapt to the new changes. Before that happens, we will continue to see these sort of complaints.
That being said, I can see why some of these users are taking things personally though, even though they shouldn't.
I was so bearish on HF21. I wasn't going to be surprised if it was the nail in Steem's coffin to be honest (although I wasn't expecting that).
The thing I was most bearish on was the separate downvote pool. Adding a huge new resource like that can have some drastic unforeseen consequences.
Seeing as how Palnet came out right before the HF I warmed up to the 50/50 payout structure pretty fast. It feels like a 50/50 partnership, and it's very easy to upvote other people when you know you are getting a big kickback.
All this being said, I think it's foolish to think that bad actors aren't going to adapt to this new paradigm and start exploiting it. It hasn't been nearly enough time to act like everything worked and we are in the clear. That's the part about this that annoys me the most now.
Just one of the small hypocritical issues with steem block chain, still there are less of those than on other social media sharing outlets.
If I as a content user, (which I am), I am going to first and foremost visit those accounts on my follow list. They are on that list because I like their content. You are on my list because I like your thoughts and content. Should I bypass giving you a vote over an unknown quantity chosen at random from the newly created list? I tried to do that some, I would spend hours on some days searching for things to read or enjoy. That is why we have a follow list, so that when we do find someone we can follow it and have more entertainment options.
I still am up in the air over the recent two hard forks, and it is all due to the down vote issue. It started with the bots, It has expanded, I honestly hope some people remember the joke/story of first they came for... then they came for me.
I do not look forward to the day when steem says You now have 8,000+ accounts to vote on, you are not allowed to vote on only those you follow it is coming to that. I do try to reserve out 2 full votes, (8 25% votes), for new content or for accounts I have not voted for before or in a long time and reputation/length of time on steem block chain does not matter. I am not going to abandon those accounts I enjoy whether people see it as V4V or F4F voting, it is not. simple reason it is not is because I do not post often enough to trade votes, never have, likely never will.
If we abandon those accounts we enjoy, in the never ending 2 am find something on cable TV dilemma that is not an advertisement, then all we will have on steem block chain is a never ending run-on commercial advertisement and people complaining there is nothing to watch, see or do, on steem block chain.
I was skeptical of new steem first. But I'm doing better with less effort now. My posts have just as much or more going into them, but i don't post every day and still manage.Much less trash floating to the top. Good for longer term vision.
Wars are quite unpleasant, but sometimes they are quite necessary. It's too soon for peace, but we are starting to win.
That's awesome. I'm glad that things worked out great for you. I feel that I am pretty much in the same boat as you, in terms of the amount of rewards I earn, but I can't help to feel that I earn what I do because of things I have done and not so much because of the things I do going forward. It feels like it has become more "who you are"-rewards rather than "what you do"-rewards to some extent.
I am obviously satisfied with the support I have and the rewards I get, but I also feel like this whole "downvote-to-counter-vote-trading" thing can be difficult for some to understand, especially for the victims or the users being targeted. I mean, you could literally downvote this article too, for vote-trading, if that is the sole reason for them to adjust the rewards for some...
But they ignore lesser accounts and go after the bigger fish. It's perfectly clear in my book. I understand why they are doing that, but I can also see why some people might have a hard time to understand.
I hope these people are able to adapt to the new changes around here, and that others will learn them.
I feel this aswell. The rewards still feel rather calculated. I guess it is a new and less obvious form of reputation. If you have no history, how do I know to vote for you? Engagement is important.
I do find only the larger vote traders are punished. They have more inflience and experience. If they go, less noobs and small guys will develop bad habits. I personally think people should keep selfvoting and vote trading below 25% to 50% of total value depending on their size and if they want outsiders to go near them or not.
Hey dude! What code do you use to style your posts? And what UI do you write on?
Thanks!
!trdo
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Hey man,
I write all my posts on Steemit.com and markdown. So, whenever I want to make a bold text for instance, I use ** the text here ** or * text here * to make it italic. If and when I make a title, I go with ## or ### before the text to get it like this:
title
I also use < center>the text here< /center> to get the text in the center, like this:
So, I don't know... A mix between some random stuff. :D
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Would you contact me on Discord please? (I thought we had a DM thing going, but I can't find it now.) viking-ventures #2883. Tusen tack.
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