RE: HF 19- A few thoughts now the euphoria is dying down some
As a member of the dolphin class, I am loving HF 19 so far. As an experiment, I gave my first post-HF 19 100% vote to a new user, and... holy freekin bejeebies, my vote gave the guy $25! Before the hard fork I was able to do about $1-2. Ye gods, I feel like a mini-whale now. Today I went on a voting spree through a batch of introduction posts. It feels so good to be able to actually make a difference to people!
I've decided that I'm going to continue supporting a large number of people through my 100+ Steemvoter rules, but I've reduced each of my auto-votes to 10% for now so I don't deplete my voting power too quickly.
I only have time to read 3 or 4 good posts per day, so I will save my 100% super power votes for manually curating those exceptional posts that really deserve my attention. I'm also going to spend more time reading introduction posts, because now I have the power to really provide a nice boost for new users who need help getting started.
It's too early to tell how this is going to work out over the long run, but my initial impression is very positive. These results far exceeded my expectations.
I was also shocked how much value my votes went up too. Not nearly as high as yours but I was pleasantly surprised. However, yeah, views are down, so I'm concerned about long term prospects here. Really hope that articles written aren't going to end up in the dark side of the ether for the sake of some more power in voting.
Agreed, we mustn't accept short term gratification at the expense of Steemit's long term sustainability. Or, to put it another way, don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. I think new users don't have access to the vote power slider, right? I'm pretty sure there's some minimum Steem Power you need to have to get that slider. But it might help if everyone had access to that so that even little accounts could still choose to vote often if desired.
Yeah the vote slider doesn't appear until you have some level of STEEM Power. Mine started to appear when I deposited some of my accrued STEEM into STEEM POWER. My guess is that those with very little STEEM POWER don't have enough to make an impact as is, so providing a smaller percentage using a Vote Slider would actually make no difference.
I also noticed that the Trending section is becoming far more concentrated with the much larger players. That is unfortunate for those trying to get noticed with good content, but without the influence to do so. Crossing fingers here that things improve
Some of the people at the top of trending deserve to be there, they work hard and produce excellent content / services so I don't begrudge them their due. But yeah, it definitely would be good to see more new faces making it on there from time to time.
That is very kind of you to use your votes on new members. I'm sure they will really appreciate that. It is such a good feeling to know that we have so many caring people in our community.
That's one thing I really like about our community: the fact that so many people do care. There are plenty of initiatives to help people out like @minnowsupport and @curie, and I've seen lots of contests / games to give away Steem or delegate Steem Power temporarily. And people are usually quite happy to answer questions & teach newcomers how the platform works.
Sure, you still run into the occasional troll from time to time, but overall there's so much positive energy here compared to, say, Reddit or Facebook (those are the real cesspits of the Internet).
That is absolutely true about all the games and contests to make life more exciting. Sykochica surprised me by offering to donate 25 SBD to my own weekly contests. That way, even if my post doesn't generate enough to make a worthwhile prize, I at least have her SBD to give out. The first week, my prize pool was tiny and her donation was the provider of 5 SBD. The 2nd week ended just after HF19, so I was able to dole out 5 prizes worth a total of 23.489 SBD. That was fun. I'm all excited about next week's prize pool, but also a bit worried because I read that posts are getting less readers now. With only 10 votes per day, people may be reluctant to upvote and raise the amount in the prize pool. Time will tell I guess.
I hope people realize they don't always have to vote at 100% all the time, they can spread their votes around just as before by dialing down the slider a little. I'm gonna go check out your latest contest post right now. :-)
I'm quite confident that those who have sliders will know how to use them.
Thanks for looking at my page. I hope you find something of interest there. Way at the bottom (2nd post) I posted a video about self-manipulation for back pain (allowed me to break free of visiting chiropractors). Lots of people have back problems and this could help many. Of course I won't get any more pay-outs from it, but I do wish to help as many as I can, so I keep promoting that video. If you know anyone suffering from back pain, please direct them to it because there is a good chance it can help them.