Just over four months ago I decided to experiment with an upvotebot on Steemit

I wrote this post about me starting my experiment: https://steemit.com/bots/@bitbrain/give-the-bots-a-chance.

As I said back then: "I'm a purist and I believe in doing things properly, the right way, the old fashioned way."

That means no bots.

But being curious and willing to experiment with things, I explored the world of bots a bit until I found something that looked a lot better than the other bots.

In the last paragraph of that post I wrote; "I'm going to test it out and perhaps I'll write about the results in a few weeks time. " Two months later I wrote a follow up post, creatively titled: "Give the bots a chance (Follow-up post)".

I'm not going to go through most of the details and findings of these posts again, please read them if you want that. I'm just going to quickly focus on new information.

From https://pixabay.com/en/robot-artificial-intelligence-woman-507811/

Give the bots a chance - Four months later

My first follow up post was not particularly complimentary. I had been looking for a minnow helper, something that many things claim to be, but that very few really are, at least in any significant way. I concluded that the bot I was trialling - shadowbot - was not a minnow helper, and I stand by that comment.

I was a bit disillusioned by shadowbot and the very low amount of votes that I had got from it, though it had been using my votes fairly consistently (but also wasting a few by leaving my account at 100% power for far too long on many occasions). I said the following about it:

Patience is important; I didn't expect instant results, but I do expect some sort of fair result for the effort I put in. I may not have a ton of SP, but I put in all I have and I have been writing like crazy, things that the SteemBot FAQs say should raise my rank. I simply don't have fiat money available to buy more SP. We will see what transpires in the long-run and I'll post about ShadowBot again.

While having been disappointed by shadowbot (after getting perhaps 20 very low value votes in a total of two months), I decided that that alone did not make it a bad bot, just not a minnow helping bot. I said that I would give shadowbot a proper chance, two months being too short a period to fairly judge the bot.

I have now given it four months, and my impression of shadowbot has changed somewhat.

Shadowbot continues to improve and update its platform. They have given away a few bonus shadowrank upgrades (these determine voting payout), most of which I missed, but it's not shadowbots fault if I was too busy to participate.

The important thing is that in the last two months, especially the last month, I have seen consistent votes reaching my posts compliments of shadowbot. Sure, the dollar amounts are still miniscule, but votes are coming in for my posts and my rank has been climbing on the platform.

My latest post votes on the shadowbot platform:

Portion of my dashboard from shadowbot.us

Not only that; I see that I never find my account sitting idle at 100% voting power and therefore wasting my votes anymore. This is good work by the shadowbot team and I commend them for it.

Conclusion

I my last update I said that I would give shadowbot a 👍 or 👎 vote when I looked at it again. I'm going to give it a tentative 👍, based mainly on the improvements and the moves towards supporting all the shadowbot members, not just the big fish that it is biased towards voting for. It's still very biased, but it's getting a lot better. More importantly: I would consider it worth using! if it continues to improve like it is.

Well done shadowbot, you just earned a highly coveted Bit Brain recommendation. I will be continuing to use shadowbot for the foreseeable future, even if it is not particularly minnow friendly.

I was never my intention to do another shadowbot post after this one, but perhaps I will if shadowbot either:

1. begins to perform very well for me and I think that you should all hear just how well it works in the long run, or
2. it takes a turn for the worse and I pull my recommendation. (I've done it before, not so Envion?)

Keep improving @shadowbot, you're on the right path!

P.S.

In both my previous bot posts I published a list of rules that I think STEEM and Steemit in particular really needs. I am going to publish it again because I feel very strongly about it and I would like the word to be spread on this platform.

For Steem to work how it should it would mean that:

• Bots would have to be banned - you do all your curation YOURSELF!
• No Resteeming. It creates a circle of brown-nosing. If you want to draw attention to a post then you should link to it from your own posts.
• The end of reputation scores. All Steeminians are created equal, but some Steemians are more equal than others. This system is being abused. With no bots around it would become unnecessary. You don't need reputation on Facebook do you?
• Anonymous voting. Same as the resteeming. If you don't know who voted for you, you won't try to vote for them as a reward (and get more of their votes in return). You'll vote only for good content that you enjoy! No more buddy-buddy systems!
• No more promoted posts - I hope that this much is obvious.
• No trending posts - same as the promoted posts. IF people see a good post, let them talk about it. I don't want someone else's idea of a good post shoved down my throat while it gathers a disproportionate share of rewards.

If all this is done then the cream will rise to the top and the abusers will disappear - their incentive to keep spamming and scamming the system having been removed.

As I noted previously, the "Hot" posts are a small step in the right direction.

Yours in A.I.-driven crypto,
Bit Brain

Links:

The latest shadowbot daily stats page: https://steemit.com/shadowbot/@shadowbot/daily-shadowbot-stats---10-september-2018
Shadowbot FAQ: https://shadowbot.us/shadowbot/faq.php (a very good resource).

Bit Brain recommends:

Crypto Exchanges:

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Published on

by Bit Brain

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