Computer Says No: Steemvoter down & I can't keep up!

in #vlog6 years ago

With Steemvoter down, I'm learning that manual voting is tougher than ever!

Manual curation? Been there got the T-shirt


Since I joined Steemit in May 2016, I’ve been on all sides of voting/ curation equation.

I’ve been that guy whose upvote wasn’t worth shit, yet upvoted and curated religiously.

I’ve been that guy that spent hours creating a ‘masterpiece blog post’ only to receive little or no upvotes.
Sidebar: I once accidently downvoted myself when scrolling through my posts on a phone (it was easy to do back then), and the UI displayed -1 vote – that was definitely a ‘what-the-fuck-am-I-doing-on-this-site!’ moment)

I've been that guy watching from the sidelines as (to my mind) 'whales milked the rewards by uploading crap, that wasn't my crap.'

I’ve been that guy that on the receiving end of obscence upvotes/ rewards from whales.
Another Sidebar: I once did a post that got upvoted by ned, dan and berniesanders… yes there was a time when all three actually agreed on something!

I’ve been that guy that was a top curator on the site, outdoing bot voters by manually hunting down and voting on good content before they did.

I've been that guy that has tried to support other content creators eventhough I only had peanuts to offer as rewards.

I’ve been that guy sick of spending every spare hour god sends on a social media site that resorted to using bots.

I've been that guy that spent Bitcoins on Steem Power (when it was expensive and dirt cheap) to try and have more influence.

I’ve been flavour-of-the-month, I’ve been the zero votes and zero views guy. I've been a 'manual curation maximalist'. I’ve made crazy curation rewards, I’ve made pennies. I’ve written plenty of posts and comments about curation, voting, bots etc.

Now I’ve 'paid my dues'... what's my conclusion.

I use a bot (most of the time)



I use a bot not so much to profit from curation rewards but to ensure the author rewards are distributed as widely as possible (and in a meaningful way) for people I believe provide value to the platform.

For me this is important for two reasons:

Firstly, I’m passionate about rewarding content creators. As there is no ‘long tail’ reward/ royalty structure in Steemit, focusing on rewarding content above consistent creators of content doesn’t make sense to me. I know what it is like to create post after post and rewards being ad hoc. It feels like a lottery and can be disheartening. Knowing that someone appreciates your body of posts and rewards consistently is a great motivator.

For me, rewarding creators of content by using a bot is not an issue, provided the rewards are being reviewed and adjusted regularly. It’s just a more efficient method of rewarding content.

Secondly, I prefer to put (meaningful amounts of) Steem into the hands of as many ‘good’ content creators as possible. I prefer this over only rewarding good content that I have personally read.

I think that is the best way to protect my investment in Steem. I also think in the long run it is the best way to project my cryptocurrency investments across the board. Cryptocurrency only works if it gets adopted and Steem rewards are (for now) the best way to onboard new users. I'm not talking speculators and investors. I'm talking people that actually use blockchain technology and their currencies/ tokens in everyday life. This is the 'big picture goal for me.

Wisdom of Steem Power


I want Steem to be all-pervasive. I want millions of people to have some Steem in their easy-to-use Steem account. Yes , right now the temptation for many users will be to cash out their Steem for bitcoin (and then fiat), spend it, whatever. However eventually once a critical mass of users is reached, they will use Steem (with its 3 second confirmations and no fees) to trade and transact peer-to-peer as Satoshi intended. That’s the vision anyway.

And that is part of the beauty of a decentralised platform like Steem. I have a vision, and I can take steps to try and implement it. Other people are free to try to implement their own vision of how to move this blockchain forward and the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ (or rather ‘wisdom of SP’) will dictate the direction we go.

Manual is crazy


Over the last couple of days (with Steemvoter down) I’ve tried to allocate a few hours a day to manually curating again.

It has been crazy!

Being an early Steemit adopter I remember the days when I use to go to sleep (I live in the UK), wake up in the morning and scroll through everything in the new section (that had been posted overnight here but during peak hours in the US and other places). It would take me ten minutes, literally to catch up.

It was easy to manually curate then.

Now it takes me hours just to catch up on the posts and resteems just on my feed. I lost a few hours curating and I hadn't even left the circle of people I follow. Ironically, manually curating for the last couple of days has cut into the time I would usually take to explore the site to find new content creators to add to my bot and support.

Early adopter perks


To my mind we are in really early days of bot curation.

As Steem grows curating will need to grow with it. Manual curation (particular with large Steem holders) cannot scale.

I said it previously, if Steem 'moons' to a point where a single ‘whales’ upvote is worth tens of thousands of dollars – 'whales' will need to treat ‘curation operations’ like small/ mid-sized businesses not play-things. The platform will be a pariah if it becomes a play where a select few give out obscene rewards on a whim. Each whale to protect their investment will need to become more and more sophisticated about the way they use their voting power. With great power comes great responsibility. We'll like need a combination of bots, curation teams and AI to ensure we are accountable to the community that give our Steem value.

For now, however we can afford for our ‘operations’ to be pretty crude.

In my case I’m probably erring on the side of being over-generous, in the same way, I’ve benefited from whales before me being over-generous in rewarding my ‘early adopter’ contributions. It is one of the perks of being an early adopter. We get the opportunity to earn as much Steem as we can get our hands on while it is dirt cheap.

There will likely come a time where I need to make really tough decision about removing people from my bot but right now I’m happy to share the Steem love as wide as possible to valued contributors here and now. And hey, if you disagree with who I upvote for, don't vote, how much vote powering I use, drop me a DM in Steemit.chat and we can discuss. The community is small enough to do that now, it won't be soon.

However don't jump on me about using a bot. I do think just classifying all use of bots as ‘evil’ is lazy reasoning. People can ‘circle-jerk’ and ‘lazy curate’ manually; conversely people can use bots to implement a sophisticated, well-thought out, meritocratic voting strategy that they work diligently to update. I’d love to employ a team of curators that sit around a triage what to upvote and by how much… however we are not there yet, so voting bots it is!

Hold tight


Okay so I went on a bit of a tangent with this post!

Back to my main point which is my having to manually curate the last few days...

For my own sanity I’m not even trying to match (manually) the output of votes that I was able to do with the Steemvoter bot. So that means, unfortunately that some people that I voted previously, won’t be receiving my customarily upvote. I'm taking the time to write this post because I know a lot of people appreciate my constant upvote. I know because people tell me. I also know because I’ve been there! For example, I remember when @wang (much maligned) would consistently upvote my content. As much as people resented @wang voting tactics at the time; I appreciated the support when my content was getting very little recognition. Psychologically it helped a lot.

So my message to those on my authors list is hold tight... I'll do what I can to ensure my bot is pointing in your direction soon!

NB: If anyone knows of a script (preferably python) I can use to build my own voting bot (so as not to have to rely on third party apps like Steemvoter), hit me up in the DM… else I back to trying to work out how to hack one up myself

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I have such an appreciation for you man. You know that!!

My posts are really hurting right now and I am getting like 7 or 9 votes on most of my posts.

I have worked so hard on here for so long and I am just SMH at these numbers, while I have nearly 7000 followers, half are likely not active, just like with everyone else but man, it is hurting.

I’ve been that guy whose upvote wasn’t worth shit, yet upvoted and curated religiously.

I’ve been that guy that spent hours creating a ‘masterpiece blog post’ only to receive little or no upvotes.

-- both ring so true.

Man, you are one of the best people on here -- your beautiful shiny melon and wisdom --- and support of regular folks are true hallmarks of your greatness.

(:

I am thankful for your attitude and support.

I love your work especially the crypto 101,investment language and the best of all wallet friday(i will particpate today), my upvotes cannot reallly do anthing!

Keep doing the great work.

please, keep on steeming. we never know what tomorow may bring. if i don't buy bots, then i hardly reach 2 steem dollars. i believ with courage, hardwork and determination everything will be possible.
I do also follow you and like your post. At least you have me. we do enjoy your crypto writtings.

Really nice work

Well, I truly appreciate your upvotes and I'm not judging you for using a bot, LOL!

In fact I noticed this week that quite a number of people must have me on autovote, something that I wasn't really aware of. It's good this happened, it makes you appreciate your loyal upvoters even more and it also makes you check-in with yourself about why you're here: How much do a few missing votes matter? Have you become lazy and taken things for granted? Do you need to engage a little more again? Are you only here for the money? I think a little forced self-reflection every now and then is quite good.

I mayyy have a little auto-vote on you :)

Like @nanzo-scoop, I use steemvoter and have over 50 rules/votes set in there.

I'm currently using https://steemdunk.xyz/ but there is a limit of 20 accounts to vote on the free version - I just paid for steemvoter so I don't really want to pay again!

The vote is handy, because then I can use steemworld.org to see where my votes go and then go and read the blogs to make sure it's still content I enjoy and think has benefit - yes I'm doing it in 'reverse'!


@nanzo-scoop

Respect to raising the points about the holders of large chunks of Steem Power potentially requiring bots in future to scale with the amount of content/users appearing on the Steem Blockchain.

This shows to me that you are willing to seek out new content that promotes the platform in a positive way.

Finally, you did have @osm0sis on an auto-vote which she appreciated greatly :D

Oh thank you! ☺️
I will check out the link you shared, I only had two people on autovote so far but maybe I'll need more soon.
For now I'm still able (and prefer) to go to people's blog directly once a day (like yours) because I want to engage as well. I rarely vote without a comment. But of course doing things in reverse is also a good option :)

I think i'm going to post about it soon :)

It's funny, the more people you start to see on your voters list, the more you want to add to your own auto-vote list.

So in a way, you are supporting the person as much as their content. It's like supporting @ocd, or @curie, or @utopian-io i think, but on a more personal level.

I want to support nice people, who are supporting the growth here and trying to free themselves from things that don't want to do.

So i think as long as you manage your vote and save some for new interactions, new users, one off excellent works, then it's nice to give and receive regular support. Of course, voting in advance could mean a smaller, or bigger vote than you would otherwise have given, and so i choose to up-vote quite a lot of comments to rectify this :)

You've really got all the math worked out for maximum fairness!! :)

I'm trying! :D

Hey! You scared my Nanzo votes away! Totally jinxed it @abh12345 😱
@nanzo-scoop, no joke, I thought your fingers slipped when you put me on your auto-vote. It was too good to be true and I am so thankful for all your support.
My turn to have you on my auto-vote now.
Cheers again for such an awesome boost!

I haven't used a voting bot ever but I can relate to your feeling about manual curating. I already think it is cumbersome let alone how it must be for your manually vote again. Also, and I am not the developer guy, I could perhaps ask if @blockbrothers, the group I am part of, can help you in some way with finding a script for you, or helping you creating one. Our dev is @bennierex, I'll point him to this blog of yours.

I could definately help you out if you like. I’ll contact you tomorrow.

Haaaaaa @nanzo-scoop !!!!!! I understand everything better now :-)

So, this means that my auto-voter doesn't work anymore either !!!!!! (yes, indeed, you got no vote from me :D and apparently the others people I support neither !).

I understand better why my VP was at 100% in the morning :D So, good opportunity to recharge our VP ! :D

Will also make a post about that (what's funny it's that few people I had on autovoter when to talk to me in MP without saying that.... I wasn't expecting them on MP so I was happy and surprise :D Now, I know WHY HAHAHHA ;-)) Amazing Humans <3

Ps: Why don't you use Dtube ? I am sure you would find a great place overthere ;-)
Re ps : I understand your position..... I tough I could stay with manual curation for the french community, but its even not possible anymore and we are only 400 people (I started, we were 8 ! :D). So... I started to pu auto-voter on people I really trust !
Re re ps : I will ask Olivier for the Python bot, I would love to have one too so we do not need a third party! Let's see if he has time.
Re re re ps : Thank you so much for supporting me since Steemfest. I still couldn't believe that you did really put a bot on me even if I was writing in french. Reading this sentence, make me more confident : ...author rewards are distributed as widely as possible (and in a meaningful way) for people I believe provide value to the platform This is because of people like you that I stay here, produce quality content, try not to be discouraged and keep the faith. And people like you are probably 1 on a million. So thank you.

I’ve been that guy whose upvote wasn’t worth shit, yet upvoted and curated religiously.

I’ve been that guy that spent hours creating a ‘masterpiece blog post’ only to receive little or no upvotes.

All minnows now (including myself of course) looking at their vote worth in $:

All dolphins and whales (feeling nostalgia for early Steemit times):

Those are great LOL!!

This is one guy that sure practice what he preached. I always look forward to your visitation. About the bots, like most technology you decide what you want to you want to use it for - good or bad. Some still think the best way to use the internet is to commit fraud, the same internet young people are using to kill it here and elsewhere legally. Thank you for input into the growth of steem and community, I and many others are beneficiaries of that.

hallo your good post, please upvote me, i again break up with my girlfriend @nanzo-scoop

And somebody 100 percent on the road all the time for music who has been spending -inordinate- amounts of time in the van searching hashtags and trying to get as engaged as possible (for both altruistic and obv networking benefits) ... the knowledge that influential curators like yourself are using bots to help make sure they spread their influence consistently and fairly to creators they believe in...that’s a serious lightning bolt level revelation. I had zero knowledge this was even a thing. Gonna jump on steemvoter and figure it out.

Thanks for (hopefully) helping to accelerate my rise to relevance on steemit. Only have two music videos that took wayyyyy too much time up, but the feeling of creeping into the community while there is still time has made it 100 percent worth it.

Thanks for the insight from the top, my man!

Bro I feel you. I only learned out the bots this week. It's a lot more involved than I thought.

I'm new to Steem and your posts. I'm going to give you a follow now and really dig into your content. Thank you for providing resources for the community.

Hey buddy, you have really laid out the pros and cons of bot curating and manually curating! The task is really huge and i can understand that most of the time good content are neglected especially by the whales who possesaed humugous amount of stem power! Thanks to you, at least minnows like us can have a chance to level up the platform! Kudos@nanzo-scoop!

Yes, I agree. @nanzo-scoop is VERY supportive!

Thanks@diamondinform!

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