💁 Answering Common Questions about Voting and Curation 💡
While voting on somebody's post is not hard but...
I've seen people asking some more in depth questions about how voting and curation work. I figured the easiest way to find what you're needing is a simple question answer format instead of a full blow written post. If you have a question feel free to ask it in the comments and I'll get it included in here for others curious about the same thing.
Q: Why do I see posts with many more votes but less earnings?
A: How much money an individual upvote gives depends on how much Steem Power the voter has, including what's been delegated (shown in parentheses under SP in wallets,) as well as their current vote power percentage. So the person with less votes, but more earnings on a post had voters with higher Steem Power.
Q: Why does the estimated earnings change even when no votes or flags were added?
A: The dollar (or whatever your fiat currency is) value of the reward pool is based on a rolling 30 day average. So for example we've been seeing the price of Steem go up, which makes the 30 day average go up a bit each day it remains higher.
Q: How much do I earn through curation rewards (i.e. voting on posts/comments)?
A: This depends on a few factors:
- How much Steem Power you have, including what is delegated to you (shown under SP in parentheses)
- How much your vote power percentage is (100% give you maximum possible reward for your SP level)
- How early you voted compared to others (you earn more if you vote before something becomes 'popular')
- If the pre-30 minute penalty applied (voting before a post is 30 minutes old applies a percentage penalty on curation)
Q: How exactly does the 30 minute penalty work?
A: The penalty is a linear percentage between 0 and 30 minutes. So if you vote on a post that is 0 minutes old, you'll get 0% of the what you would have earned as curation rewards. At 15 minutes you would get 50% of the maximum possible reward for you and at 30 minutes or older, there would be no penalty applied.
Q: How much of a posts payout goes to curators?
A: The short answer is that when a post pays out 75% goes to the author with 25% be split among curators. How much each curator gets is based on the factors mentioned above. However, any of the curation rewards lost to the 30 minute penalty are instead given to the original author of the post. Frequently this will end up have more of a 80/20 or 85/15 split of things.
Q: Should I wait to vote on myself instead of upvoting upon post creation?
A: Go right ahead and click the 'Upvote post' box when you're writing you're post. While it's true that you will get zero curation rewards due to the 30 minute penalty, what you lose goes right back to the author....which is you! So don't worry about trying to come back later to upvote yourself 20-30 minutes later.
Q: So when should I vote to get more curation rewards?
A: This is where you have to make a judgement call. Vote too early and you take more penalty. Vote too late and tons of people have already voted. So you have to decide how popular something will be. If you think it will grab a lot of people's attention to vote...it may be better off to vote earlier, say when the post is 10 minutes old. If you don't think it will be picked up like that...probably shoot for more the 20-25 minute old mark.
[NOTE: Personally I don't focus on curation rewards, preferring to just vote on what I like, support and/or want to see more of.]
Feel free to ask any questions about voting or curation in the comments. I'll get them answered and added to the post. If you have a question about anything else Steemit related, I'll still answer, but just include in a separate post.
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@deepapoudel, she this, here's a lot of information you might be interested :)
@unmean-stweets & @sykochica Thank You BOTH !! There is definitely a "learning curve" on Steemit and it's people like You & many others I've had the privilege & honor to meet during my first 12 days on Steemit, that make a "World of Difference" for all of us new people... Thanks again !!
UpVoted Both, Following You Both & will Resteem !!
As always, I love @unmean-stweets and the positivity it brings to the platform!
I have a question, who are the curators?
Thank you for passing this on to her!
If any of you guys have other questions, feel free to leave them in here as a comment. I'll get them answered. :)
thank you @aashishkandel for the mention,
my all questions have probably been included here in the post, if I have any other questions that I don't know, I will ask them
@sykochica, you are really helpful, thank you!
Hehe, I tried to cover that I'd seen a lot of people asking.
Happy to help out :)
Good day @sykochica,
I see you have opened up mentoring site for new steem users, I came across your profile from Internet site.
I am a new user and I am really getting frustrated cant seem to get help the steem. Chat disappeared overnight Oky here's my problem
I want to know if I have claimed my reward what do I have to do next in my wallet with the drop down menus. Because in my wallet on top got notification BUY STEEM OR STEEM POWER does this mean that I have no steel or anything. Or must I choose other option from the drop down menu like transfer to savings.
I would appreciate if you can help me in this regards
I'm curious about what happens when someone votes on a posting that is beyond the pay-out date. Does the creator still get reputation for the post or is the vote totally wasted? This 'cutting off' payment seems rather counter-productive to me. Why shouldn't a content creator be paid by someone who finds, likes and up-votes an article even 10 years after it was posted? It shouldn't be that difficult to write code that pays out weekly but keeps paying out every week for the previous week.
Also; What happens when someone votes on an article that has the rewards with a line through the number (where the author is declining payment)? Does the curator earn any curation reward? Does the author earn reputation?
What about articles that have been resteemed? When an article gets resteemed, I read that the payout deadline is extended so that the author has extra time to earn rewards from the resteem. What is the amount of time that is given for the extension? And if it is once again resteemed, is the time also extended again for every resteem period? If so, is there a limit to the extended time? For instance: Let's say someone resteems an article and it is extended by 2 days. Then someone sees the resteem before the extended time is up and resteems it on the 2nd day. Will the payout now be extended for 4 days? Can the extention be compounded every 2 days to extend the payout period indefinitely by people resteeming ever 2 days?
If you upvote a post that is past the payout date, then the vote itself is accepted but nothing else happens. There are no rewards applied towards it but the person that voted on it does have their vote power percentage reduced (like any other vote would do.) I believe that no reputation is applied either in this scenario, but I need to double check on that to be absolutely sure.
There's been a lot of discussion since Steemit started over how long payouts should be left open (even indefinitely.) We used to have 2 payouts, one lasting 24-36ish hours (which activity extended the time on it) with the second being 30 days after the close of the first.
While I do absolutely understand the drive to be able to earn on posts forever (the long tail,) there is computing overhead that has to be dealt with too. Right now the vaaaaaaaaast majority of votes are placed within three days...and remember votes can only be given by steemit users, not just viewers. The witnesses (people who actually run the steem blockchain) have to keep all posts with active voting in memory however, making it more intensive with more open payouts. Right now we're sort of in that balancing act of what we'd like versus what's best for a quick, functioning blockchain. Especially when the processing time allowed for just about anything on here is at 3 seconds.
However, I do suspect over time we'll see the payout times be revisited to account for things like this.
When voting on a post with a declined payout, the vote is accepted (with vote power % decreasing.) Technically curators still would earn rewards from their (up to) 25% or the payout...but since that's 0, they make a percentage of nothing.
I'll have to double check, but I do believe that reputation IS earned, even when payout is declined, while the payout period is still active.
I believe that was probably from an older post before we started the 7 day payout. However, it wasn't resteeming that extended the time back then, but was voting activity with larger SP votes extending it more. This also provided some diminishing returns on the extensions beyond there being purely less SP accounts left to vote.
Now, it's a pretty hard closing time on payouts without there being any extensions. 7 days after posting, the payout is closed...with the last 12 hours (I believe) only allowing for downvotes. This 'downvote only' window was to provide time to deal with large SP users that were trying to 'game' the system.
Thank you. On testing voting in posts over 7 days old it seems now that voting power is not reduced.
Thank-you very much sykochica! You sure know a lot about how this all works. Are you part of the developer's team?
I can understand wanting to close out payments if active payment status requires the process to remain in memory. I would have thought that perhaps there is simply a call that asks to modify the data and refresh it either with new activity or to calculate the weekly payment. I'm not a programmer, so have very little knowledge about this sort of thing.
Great post!
Before today I also had questions about voting power and curations rewards etc - I had done a bit of digging around Steemit and found various great posts which answered my questions.
In saying that, If I had maybe waited even a week - I would have had all the information in one spot. This post is that good. Very informative and very easy to follow.
Good stuff @sykochica. Have upvoted and followed you 😊
Thank you!
I really try to cover the big questions, while keeping it very clear and concise.
Feel free to ask any other questions that may come to mind...I can try to save you some digging time. Lol
Thanks for the incredible post. I love the info as I have been completely lost on how it works. Followed and upvoted!
@Digestingreality
Absolutely! Happy to help out. I've got some more of things coming up.
If you have any questions (even if not about curation/voting) feel free to ask them here. I'll get them answered for ya.
😊 Thank you. I have a question regarding the Wallet. How's the best way to manage the Wallet and all the different catorgories. To maximize the most and to buy some Steemit coins. I want to buy low because I know it's going to go high! Thanks
This is actually something I'll be including in tomorrow 'guide' post on Steem, SD, SP and what to do with your earnings. But I'll give a more brief version here for you...
First we have three categories in your wallet...steem, steem power and steem dollars. (feel free to ask for clarification on these if needed) Most of the time when we our posts are paid out, the curator percentage is deducted and from what remains half goes into steem power (using the current steem price as the conversion from dollars to SP) and half goes to you as Steem Dollars (which right now seem to still be paying at 1 SD = $1 US)...even though it's market rate is currently $2 USD.)
To give the quick disclaimer...it's always up to you to decide the best way to manage your money and this isn't meant as trading advice...
With that said, Steemit (witnesses) actively try to keep the SD within 10% of $1 USD ($0.90 - $1.10 USD)...so right now it is extremely high relative to that range. This means that there is currently a 0% interest rate on SD's (which is paid every 3 months when there is interest) as well as there being people trying to get the SD price back down.
Personally, I take this to mean I don't want to just hold SD's indefinitely. So I've been first checking the internal market (found by clicking the down arrow by SD in your wallet and clicking market) to check the going rate to buy steem with my SD. I compare this to what that rate would be on the crypto exchange market by dividing the steem price by the steem dollar price (I just do this in US dollars by looking at coin market cap info for steem and steem dollars since it's easier than dealing with satoshis.)
Whichever is lower, is the better exchange rate to sell SD's for steem.
Now, you don't have to sell the SD's for steem..it can go into other things or be cashed out and spend (either by sending to your bank, a bitcoin prepaid card or bitcoin debit card.) **I do recommend for new Steemians to take a little bit out from your wallet and use it to buy yourself something real, whether a dinner, shoes, whatever. But not only does this solidify the reality of make money from here, you know it's spendable, can easily say that to others about Steemit it, as well as already have a method setup for any future times you wish to spend some.
Now, I like having a little bit of SP build up where I can award people something with my votes as well as be able to get some curation rewards (even without trying) at about 7-10 SP a week. That's free money to me. The higher my SP, the higher my curation rewards without changing how I vote.
Steem is what has the price fluctuations, similar to other currencies like bitcoin. If you hold some, and the price goes up...you make money. So if you think that Steem will go up in price, there is a good reason to hold on to it. If you're willing to hold it over the 13 weeks it would take to powerdown fully, I don't see a reason to hold it as liquid steem or in an exchange, when at the same time it could also be letting me give more with my votes and make curation rewards with it.
In the end...it boils down to a few things:
I personally don't like the idea of holding tons of SD's with there they currently stand. Though I do tend to keep some in my wallet in case I want to promote a post (which can only be done with SD's.)
Did that all answer your question?
It sure did and thank you. I will have to read through it a few times to get my head completely around it but I get the general idea. Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me as after almost 2 weeks on here I am almost as lost as day one when it comes to how to make and how to spend Cryptos.
I am sure I will have more questions for you tomorrow. Once again thanks for your time and support.
@digestingreality
Absolutely happy to help!
It's tough to present as nice in a comment versus a post...and it's a little more complicated an answer. The short answer...I'm not holding many SD's in my wallet (mainly just to promote posts.) Either hold as Steem, SP, another cypto, or cash it out to buy something.
If you've not bought anything with your Steemit earnings take $20-$50 (or whatever amount) to by yourself something. :)
We can always talk in discord about this too sometime. :)
Ok thank you once again for taking the time. I look forward to seeing your Post tomorrow.
I had to push this post back a day with the hardfork announcement needing a corresponding guide. But here is the guide/faq on the steem currencies.
https://steemit.com/steem-help/@sykochica/answering-common-questions-steem-steem-power-steem-dollars-and-what-should-i-do-with-them
Nice Post, im newbie here and it was pretty clarifying. I'd read a couple of posts about this and i had not fully understood, but this answer format was very simple indeed. Upvoted and resteemed Thanks!
Thank you!
I try to be pretty clear and concise on these things. I know I don't want to always read pages and pages, just get my question answered. Lol.
Feel free to ask any other questions you have (even outside of voting/curation) here in the comments...I'll make sure to answer them.
This is the best explanation of curation rewards that I've seen yet. I'm with you -- I just vote for what I like and often don't want to wait for the 30 minute mark because I don't want to miss upvoting a great piece. 😀
Thank you! Feel free to any questions that may come to mind, even outside curation/voting. :)
Hehe, I spent a week or so many months ago on trying to maximize my rewards. I ended up finding that I forgot to go back after 20-30 minutes anyway! Lol.
Thanks for this post, it was really helpful, now i understand better how it works. Btw, i agree with you, i vote on what i like to support, i don't focus on curation rewards.
Happy to help out! Feel free to comment with any questions you have, even if outside of voting/curation. :)
While I won't fault people for going just for the max rewards, it's not as enjoyable and typically when I was trying that out...I didn't even open the posts. I prefer the content over a few extra SP, lol.
🍒 Useful, specially the 30 min penalty, I didn't know about that, so thank you
You're very welcome! I love being helpful to Steemians. :)
Feel free to ask any questions that come to mind, even if outside of voting/curation.
And I absolutely love the happy kitty gif!
The name of this particular kitty is Pusheen and I love him too :D
Great answers to a lot of the good questions newer people like me might have. Thanks for posting them. Following for more helpful information. Have a good day yo
Thank you!
Feel free to ask any other questions that come to mind in a comment and I'll make sure to answer....even if outside voting/curation.
Very nicely written. Helped me a lot 😁
Thank you!
I'm glad it was helpful for you! Feel free to ask any questions that may come to mind (even outside voting/curation) in here. :)
And welcome to Steemit! I just saw your intro post a few minutes ago.