How to Steem (Part 2): Upvoting
As the #classical-music community grows (and also the wider Steemit community!), I am noticing more and more people who are coming in with absolutely no idea of how this place works, with their only other reference being services like Facebook, Twitter or Reddit. In addition, pretty much every newcomer is a complete beginner in the crypto-sphere and so has no experience with how things work in this gray corner of the internet.
So, I have come up with this ongoing series to cover details (both big and small) about our life here on Steemit. I hope it is of use to people! Everything I write about is probably covered in the FAQ but who ever reads the manual?
Upvoting
Upvoting (the thumbs up icon, not to be confused with witness voting), is the a way of giving appreciation to an author of a post or a comment. Depending on your Steem Power (SP), your vote will worth a share of the daily rewards generated across the entire Steem chain. So, in the beginning it will be very little compared to accounts with a much larger investment of SP in the ecosystem.
Before we go too much further, I suggest opening a tab at https://steemworld.org/@youraccount or https://steemd.com/@youraccount, to better visualise the terms I am talking about.
Each vote that you cast is cast at 100% vote weight, unless you gain access to the Voting Slider (by default it will start appear at 500SP, or if you use another condenser (way of interacting with the Steem chain) like Busy.org(please note that this link is a referral link). If you use the voting slider then you can cast votes of differing strengths (weights), which will have an effect on the end reward and also the depletion of your voting power.
Linked to the idea of upvotes is the concept of voting power. Unlike other social platforms, your upvotes are a resource, renewable but limited. At full power, your Voting power is at 100% and each vote that you make drains this resource of vote power. A full 100% vote weight drains your Voting Power by 2% which is recovered at the rate of 20% (absolute, not relative) per day.
Reward ∝ (Voting Power) x (Vote Weight) x (Steem Power)
Voting Weight: The weight that you choose (via a slider) to allocate to this vote
Voting Power: The resource that is depleted each time you cast a vote, but is renewed over time.
Steem Power: Your investment into the Steem Chain
So, as you see, it is not a good idea to go around upvoting everything (like it is on other platforms!), as you will quickly reduce your Voting Power and your vote will rapidly be worth nothing.
Self-Voting
Okay, we've all done it, we see the big fish do it....
Self-voting is the idea of voting upon your own posts and comments, and is probably the first thing that we have all done when we arrive on Steemit. However, some people just don't grow out of it (I know there are exceptions for community accounts and such like, don't hurt me!).
In the end, there is nothing "wrong" with self-voting. However, as it is a resource that you are draining from yourself, you might consider that it is a much better investment to vote upon someone else's good work and leave a thoughtful comment to gain followers and a much better long term return on your vote. By self voting as a small and new account, you are choosing a tiny reward in the present at the cost of your future growth.
Eat your seed now, or plant it for the future!
Let me know if there are things that you would like to know about in the comments
Other articles in this series
How to Steem (Part 1): Two essential services for a newbie!
Good communities to begin with
Newbieresteemday (@newbieresteemday)
Asapers (@asapers)
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I really like the "Eat your seed now, or plant it for the future" analogy. It's a very succinct way to express the concept.
Maybe you mentioned it, and I forgot reading it already, but another thing that I would mention for the new voter is that timing is important.
When a post first appears, 100% of the vote's value goes to the author. The first 30 minutes is known as a "reverse auction", and during that time, the curation rewards slowly switch from the author to the voter. From 30 minutes to 6 days & 12 hours, all curation rewards finish shifting to the voters. From 6 days & 12 hours until 7 days, it is possible to flag (downvote), but it is no longer possible to upvote.
Of course, the size of curation rewards is dependent on the order in which we vote (earlier votes gain more), so it's a balancing act to decide if you want to vote before 30 minutes in order to get there before the other voters. The early-voting penalty is pretty severe during most of the reverse auction window, though.
Here is a summary table:
If/when they implement hardfork 20, the reverse auction window will change to 15 minutes (instead of 30), and curation rewards from early-voting during the reverse auction will go to the curation rewards pool (instead of the author).
Hi @remlaps! Long time no see! Hope everything is well!
I didn't mention timing in this post (along with a few other things like dust threshold and the 7day limit on rewards) to avoid making the post incredibly long. I will keep writing these little posts to help newcomers, so I will hopefully cover these topics.
Partly, at the beginning the curation rewards are pretty small and not really worth the effort in timing. But mostly, my guides are based around my work learning and I'm not overly fussed about curation rewards in my everyday Steeming!
But thanks for the input, I should cover it in a later post.
Resteemed, not for curation.
Your post has been supported and upvoted from the Classical Music community on Steemit as it appears to be of interest to our community. You can find details about us below.
The classical music community at #classical-music and Discord.
Follow our community accounts @classical-music and @classical-radio.
Follow our curation trail (classical-radio) at SteemAuto or help us out with a delegation!
I realise that in talking about self voting, that my vote has appeared on this post! I don't self vote with intent, however, as I follow a number of curation trails in an attempt to support communities and so sometimes my vote appears on my own posts via those.
Thank you very much for expanciating on upvoting, all i used to observe before now is that my vote on people's post differs not knowing that my voting power reduce with the rate at which i upvote
Glad to have helped!
Thanks for the heads up of how to manage and grow the steemit account
No problem, I hope the series will be of use!
Nice I am going to put this in the library
Thank you! Archiving is a good idea given the way Steemit works with surfacing material!
Good tips for newcomers! :)
Thanks, it's probably been written about to death, but given the way Steemit works, it just needs to be constantly surfaced!
Thanks. Really helpful for a newcomer like me.
Most recent user guide released on: May 14th
As a friendly reminder, the current upvote fee is $0.12 SBD ($0.121 for incognito). Current 300%+ upvote is now $0.36+ SBD.
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