There seems to be all kinds of drama happening at steemit. If you haven’t noticed it, good, just go on doing what you are doing, it isn’t worth your energy. If you have already been sucked into it as I have (especially if you carry any weight around here), please consider putting more of your energy (and your upvotes) elsewhere. There are still thousands upon thousands of users who are struggling to be seen despite offering content that ranges from decent to absolutely stellar.

While whales bring in $300 to $1000 payouts for posts calling each other out or arguing with each other, splitting the community up into factions, most of us are struggling to maintain an average payout of $1-10. We want to believe that working hard will pay off in the long run, but it’s hard to feel that way when we see still see circle jerking and now, on top of that, wars between whales where two sides rally for support and consolidate a larger portion of the reward pool.

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It might seem counterproductive to claim that we should all pay less attention to these issues while simultaneously writing a post about these issues, but as almost every post regarding this drama seems partial to one side or the other and usually demonizes someone, there is a larger issue at hand that I’d like to bring up and that is that drama on such a wide scale is not beneficial to the general populace of steemit. It will only serve a few people.

The drama keeps us even more focused on the users who already have the most attention on the platform and takes it away from the thousands of posts which deserve your attention. This is not to say that abuse should go unreported. Occasional probes done by community members into some of its most powerful members are not a negative thing as long as they don’t turn into harassment and we allow the accused to explain themselves.

I’d like to name names in order to encourage other minnows to share how they feel and not be afraid to speak to power. I beleive there are enough users with influence who will allow minnows like us to share our opinions openly without fear of being flagged and protect us when a vengeful whale decides to punish us for speaking our voice. I am literally staking my reputation on it. I’d also like to give the benefit of the doubt to all people mentioned. I cannot be unbiased, as I know far from everything there is to know about these people but I am impartial in that I I do not assume any of them to be more guilty than the other side. As soon as I’ve gotten this out of my system, I’d like to pay even less attention to them as there are so many users on steemit who are starved of attention that they deserve. These are my assessments of the situation based on my fragmented knowledge, please takecit all with a grain of salt

I’m not trying to accuse anyone of anything here. If I’ve spread any misinformation, feel free to correct me. My main point remains the same, regardless. I’m sharing this because I care about steemit.

Hive account@dan vs. Hive account@ned

You guys have created and brought to life a brilliant experiment and a revolutionary idea that has already started to change social media. You’ve changed thousands of lives for the better and even helped to bring some people out of poverty. Some, like myself, had been watching bitcoin as it rose to $1, then to $10 then to $1000 and $8000 withou any money to invest. Steemit gives many of us an opportunity to get into cryptocurrency and is helping to introduce crypto to the masses. You already have our deep gratitude.

Please don’t let petty arguments and competition taint all that steemit has accomplished. It doesn’t really matter who deserves more credit, you will be properly credited based on unwavering devotion towards projects that improve people’s lives, to your creations and to the community and all of its members. You aren’t going to convince anyone to stick around or follow you on to something better by belittling or undermining each other no matter how much you disagree or even if you feel you’ve been wronged. There is obviously more going on behind the scenes, but I urge you to think about how many lives you have the ability to affect.

Hive account@ned, we need composure from you. You represent this community and this blockchain now. Please change the tone of your comments to be a bit more respectful, even if the comments are downright ridiculous and untrue, be the bigger man. We need that from you. If SMTs help spread the distribution like you seem to believe they will, let them prove all naysayers wrong. Your interaction with the community is always appreciated, but the less reactive, the better for you and for us.

Hive account@dan it’s hard to really know what’s going on in your head. It’s obvious that you have always had a much larger vision than what you have been working on at the moment, the scope of which most of us can only guess. It’s also clear that you know how to get shit done. I don’t presume to know much, but I can promise you that any provocations towards Hive account@ned, this platform and blockchain, or its community, whether real or merely percieved, will negatively impact your future work and you’re reputation.

You already have the upper hand with the hype and real utility of EOS and so posting anything that may serve to draw users away from steemit in the future is probably best posted elsewhere, so moving to medium is probably a good choice. Steemit has your name attached to it for good, so you and your current and future projects serve to gain the most if any competition is friendly in nature and can allow both platforms to coexist.

To both of you, if there is any petty drama that we are unaware of, it would be best to settle that off the blockchain. If there is any real corruption or abuse, it would best be presented in such a way that it is both undeniable and has minimum impact on the general user base of steemit.

The Hive account@haejin and Hive account@berniesanders war

Hive account@berniesanders, I hear that you do a lot for this platform and its community. I don’t doubt that. There may be disagreements about your methods and the use of paid upvote bots like Hive account@randowhale, but it seems that you care about this place and you want others to succeed. That being said, you must have some inkling that you come across as unhinged and difficult to reason with. Sometimes it’s hilarious (especially given your user name), I have to admit, I laughed at your first #rewardpoolrape posts....but you could accomplish even more and have less of a headach if you learned to stay calm and tried to appeal to the community in a way that was more respectful of others rather than petty insults. Even if the other side wasn’t willing to reason, you could rally the support of the community. Just like the American politician, you are a hero for many of us at steemit and more of us would be willing to support you in your crusade to end #rewardpoolrape if you were able to be a bit more level headed in your approach. Mad respect for what you do, despite some things I disagree with, but a change in your approach could help all of us. I hope you don’t think I’m trying to pick a fight with you, I want to support your cause, so please make it easier for me to trust that you have your emotional shit together enough to always act in the community's interest.

Hive account@haejin, I don’t know much about you, but I can understand if you feel frustrated by people flagging your posts. Just try to understand that you and a few of your supporters wield an anourmous amount of power and people are going to want to make sure it doesn’t get out of hand. Perhaps there are others who should be under the same scrutiny and are not. I don’t think that a few people have the right to say you don’t deserve your rewards. In the same way though, I don’t believe that a few people get to decide that you DO deserve them. Perhaps if you did more to spread the wealth around steem and to interact and help the community as a whole, you’d be able to ward off those who accused you of raping the reward pool. I personally don’t have any problem with the material in your posts and can see how they could be beneficial, but this platform will become unsustainable if any one user earn some too much of the reward pool. You should be able to at least understand the reasoning. A trending page full of your posts is bad for the platform. If you don’t care, then I can promise you, not even your massive income will make you truly happy.

Hive account@sweetsssj and whoever else vs. Hive account@transisto and whoever else

I’ve already left long comments on both of the posts accusing you two of abuse. I don’t know either of you well enough to know what’s true and what’s not, many of us who are trying not to kiss whale ass don’t. But as members with a lot of power and influence at steemit, you should not be surprised that people take an interest in where a large portion of the reward pool goes. If you have nothing to hide, be more transparent about which accounts you run and who you have made deals with. It is hard for us to know all that any user has been doing and you all recieve enough attention already so we can’t all be bothered to know every good deed you have done and trust that your intentions are pure. An occasional analysis of your activity may not be the worst thing for steemit and provides value to the community. If you haven’t engaged in any misbehavior, a simple explanation should suffice. If it doesn’t, at least you have your loyal whale friends to keep you afloat.

I did see some admission that Hive account@transisto has some kind of deal with Hive account@zer0hedge, and Hive account@zer0hedge has a disclaimer admitting that it’s not their original material, but come on, when so many of us work so hard on posts that would certainly do well if they had any noticeability, and don’t have much noticeability because a few people have all the steem power, can you blame people for being a bit upset when the Hive account@zer0hedge account makes consistently high payouts? You guys might want to find a way to share some of those rewards with members of that with the community who produce original content. Call me socialist if you want, but I think your enemies wouldn’t have much justification for their accusations then. I realize that you already do a lot for the platform and appreciate it.

Hive account@sweetsssj, it can be said that you do a lot for the platform too. Whether it be raising visibility of steemit as a kind of ambassador, inspiring people to write about food and travel, or upvoting your followers, you haven’t done anything noticeably wrong and no one should demonize you personally for your success. You must have an inkling that a large portion of the community finds your content to be a little cookie cutter and lacking any deep meaning though. Its all formatted and presented very nicely and bilingual at that so I not want to belittle you, it’s obvious thatnwork goes into your posts regardless of how I or anyone else feels. I appreciate that you’ve remained impartial on a lot of the other drama at steemit. You also don’t post extremely frequently to constitute spamming the reward pool. But you’d be able to get the haters off your back with more transparency. Most of us believe there is a team behind your account. If that’s true, let it be known. If not, proving it would certainly gain you a lot of respect, even among those like myself who aren’t particularly interested in throwing even more of the reward pool your way.

None of these problems would be as big as they are if the reward pool was more evenly distributed. No case of abuse would be so consequential for the platform if there were a wider pool of dolphins and if dolphins and minnows held a larger percentage of steem power. All of us can fight abuse by spreading the rewards to those who are smaller than us, particularly the ones who are working hard to create content and a sense of community.

The entire community would benefit and abuse would become detrimental to the ecosystem if all whales and dolphins spent more than half of their voting power on users significantly smaller than themselves in order to create a much larger and stronger middle class at steemit. Free delegation to minnows who use it responsibly is another option for those who don’t have much time to curate manually. You don’t even need to stop circle jerking, just minimize it.

After spending a full day on this kind of drama myself, I will promptly be putting my own involvement in it to rest and returning my focus to the many great undervalued minnows I know after posting this post and replying to it’s comments. If any whale or dolphin is looking for undervalued users to support, come check out our Deadpost Initiative which is a a weekly contest that allows undervalued (dead) posts to find readership and payout from beyond the grave. We are coming up on week 20 and have yet to see any consistent support from you big fish, get on it and help out all these wonderful minnows who deserve your upvotes.