I love the STEEMIT idea where you get rewarded for great and quality content by members up-voting your post. It reminds me of the days of sites like MyLot and the rest even though one never really made anything meaningful from such platforms. The integration of crypto-currency into the framework changed everything and has permanently ensured that social blogging will never remain the same.
Having said all that, to be honestly, let's not pretend, most of us here are here for the money, to ride on the wave of this new phenomenon and cash in while at it. While hoping to make a post that will go viral within the next twelve hours and make some serious money from it, your dream can be cut short by the power voters called Whales on STEEMIT.
I have read a few posts of people who honestly are trying to be very constructive in their posts but yet got voted down for no serious reason. Not ruling out the activities of bots, but once voted down, their reputation immediately plummets and their rating can be said to have reached "Junk Status". Their posts turn grey and their comments disappear from the network, because all their contents become hidden from that moment onward. This is almost becoming like Google Slap all over again. All it takes is just one power voter voting down your post and then you are out!
Can the Whales please show some love to the newbies. We are new at this and many will make a few mistakes here and there whether it is through wrong tagging of posts or importing posts from somewhere without giving the appropriate credits where it is due.
A times voting down an article or post might actually be the best way to stop abusive, tasteless and senseless posts from polluting our STEEM air and going viral since there are no rules on this platform. This can help pass across a message that people can't just post anything regardless of quality simply because they want to make some money.
Having said that, I am hoping that the Whales are able to do something to help remedy the situation. For instance message the post writer about why the post was down-voted and what they need to do to either remove the down-vote or restore their reputation. If a Whale mistakenly votes down a post, there should be a way for them to reverse the action. I think that should be very fair on everyone.
I guess it is a learning curve for the newbies and probably everyone else and considering that STEEMIT is still in its beta stage, all this issues could be looked into and incorporated into the platform.
If I'm to sum up what I have learnt since being a STEEMIT member, it is that Reputation Matters!
Happy STEEMING!