Selfishness
Let’s face it. Steemit takes a lot of everyone’s time. We all are here for the rewards (to an extent…it of course SHOULD NOT be the only reason). Everyone will try to create a strategy that nets the most Steem in as little time as possible. But there are some strategies that support the overall value of the token and vice versa.
The value of the Steem
Obviously, Steemit is not the only entity that provides value to the Steem. As of now though, it’s the MAIN one. Without Steemit, the token would be closer to the infinite amount of shit coins that are in existence as of now, than to providing some real value. There are several groups and individuals, like 
I do not pretend that I know what the real quality is. That is totally subjective matter and it would be against my own belief to act as if I knew what is good for the site. It’s actually the exact opposite. I have no idea what the masses will want the site to look like in the future, whether we will have whales supporting all the topics, or whether few topics that are “wanted” on the site will crystalize, while the rest will slowly perish.
Quality > Quantity
There are some aspects that form some kind of “apprehension of the value of the token”. I’d like to underlie some of them, to help the curators with their decision of how to spend their voting power. What is important to decipher is whether the user is here to game the reward pool and snatch as much as he can, or whether he really tries to bring some value to the table.
It doesn’t matter how skilled one is, but it’s impossible to write 3+ posts per day while maintaining the high quality. Sometimes when users realize that a valuable trail has started auto up voting them, they suddenly start to spam one post after another just to gain as much as they could from the automated bot. Instead of being appreciative and show it by further effort to improve, they start gaming the system. When new potential investor spots a user spamming one post after another taking a big portion of prize pool with them for much lower quality standard than he used to have, he will basically not buy in. Action needs to be taken in order not to further assist the future drop of the value.
Instant power down
Truth is that every single user that starts trading the token (buying or selling) increases the volume, therefore helps the prize grow. The value of the Steem is though closely connected to the amount that is currently powered up. Power up actually represents overall faith in the token. The bigger the faith is, the higher the value will be over time.
Now the user that wants to sell all the gained Steem hurts the site more than the one who keeps at least some of the Steem powered up. I do understand that person can find himself in a bad life situation as in need of the money injection. Im more concerned about those users that continuesly send all the gained Steem to exchanges as soon as they can in order to sell them. By supporting those users the curator actually supports “the lack of faith in Steemit”. And that is clearly something that hurts the platform.
“The praising bot syndrome”
A lot of users are trying to game the reward pool by automating “the praising bot”. The praising bots are those that praise everything about you and the post without specifying anything or bringing additional value. People love to hear praises so they often times up vote those bots. The reputation of the bots are from my experience usually above 35, which is truly wrong. This is what we need to actually censure as community. This is what we have our flags for. Again, if a new investor spots that such behaviour is prospering on the platform what do you think his action would be?
