Un-Voting on Steemit: Learn about How - When - Why.

_{Feel free to skip my introduction and move on to the tutorial part}

It started out as a good day. But it did not develop so nicely. There was a disagreement between me and someone who thought he knew it all. And believe me, I never loose my temper and never behave in a bad way. Everyone has the benefit of a doubt - until proven otherwise.

For you who already know me, you have realized how much it means to me to be able to answer questions, explain how steemit works and help in any way possible. I even prefer to upvote others and actually invest my time in giving my (even still so small) upvote to my friends and to the content I think is valuable for the platform.

I wish not to share more info at the moment except that:

• Steemit exists and grows due to users' content
• Content may be posts or comments including texts, stories, facts, images, videos, graphics, music etc
• Content gets rewards via upvotes - which correspond to a certain amount of steem. The amount is distributed among the author and the curators (people who upvoted the content) 7 days after the publication
• If we use content created by someone else (be it text, images etc), it should be correctly attributed and linked to the original author / creator.

I invite you to read the below for more information and to use as a reference for sharing content online (on steemit and in general)

• Copyright by Hive account@xposed
• Everything about images by Hive account@katerinaramm
• Copyrights by Hive account@steemstem
• Cheetah by Hive account@katerinaramm

And now off to the inspiration of this post

I was talking with someone who wrote a post where there existed many sentences copied by another website. He/She would not understand why this should not be done. He/She insisted that the source was mentioned so why would it matter? So, guess what..
a. The source was not mentioned and
b. A vast amount of its content was from other sources with lots of sentences exactly copied by a specific website.
and most importantly?
c. The person did not understand it was JUST WRONG!

So I un-voted the post (removed my upvote). For the very first time on steemit, I decided to UN-VOTE a post that I believed should not be upvoted (at least not by me)

How can someone un-vote a post?

1. You click on the post
2. You scroll down to the end of the post
3. You click on the little green arrow
4. You confirm the unvote
5. Voilà! Upvote gone! (You can upvote again with a different percentage if you would like or if necessary flag)
   
   _{Note: For being able to un-vote a post, you should have upvoted it in the first place}

When can a post be un-voted?

Case A
If the post was published less than 7 days ago, an unvote will remove your upvote and the rewards for this user. Unvoting also results in not getting any curation rewards

CASE B
If the post is older than 7 days, you will receive a message that your curation rewards will be reset - but it is not true. Only the number of upvotes will be reduced by 1. The total payout amount will remain the same. Your name however will not be among the users that upvoted for it.

Why should/could we un-vote a post?

This depends solely on your own decision. We should be careful what we upvote for, in the first place. This way we should never need to unvote a post. BUT

• If we believe that the post's (or comment's) author is abusing steemit
• or in any way we do not agree with the content posted or edited
• if there is information about the post that we have learned 'a posteriori'

then we can proceed to unvoting (guilt free)

How does an un-vote affect the un-voter _{is this even a word?}

• No curation rewards for the post
• Voting Power apparently and sadly is considered consumed and does not get restored
• It does not consume more voting power

Unvoting by mistake..

It is possible that you unvote a user by mistake. You can always re-vote the user :)

Where can I see that I was unvoted?

You can see all actions on steemd.com/yourusername or steemnow.com/yourusername

Note: Unvote is not the same as DownVote or Flag (see below useful links)

Here are a few useful links, especially aimed to inform new users

Steemit Beginners Guide | What is Voting Power | Flags in steemit

Thank you very much for visiting my blog! I always welcome comments, thoughts and feedback!

---