I am writing this in reaction to numerous posts about the whales' votes, the jealousy, and even the anger some authors express towards some heavily rewarded articles.

A few hours ago Hive account@sadochismo came with an article where he raise some questions about the quality of Hive account@dollarvigilante latest post which from nearly 2k goes down to a few bucks. He is not happy with the whales had massively upvoted it and I appreciate his point of view, btw his blog post is becoming very successful.

Let me give you my point

The good and the evil whale

What I like on Steemit is that the whales voted the Hive account@sadochismo post as well as the post he incriminates, it's showing that they are open to the discussion. I don't think they regret to have voted on the Hive account@dollarvigilante post, they are not schizophrenic either. It’s much more complicated.

Whales vote for different reason, and it’s not always related to Steemit knowledge, hard work or quality content, it could be that they see an article useful for the beginners or that the author can bring his followers to use Steemit through his success, for example: Hive account@dollarvigilante, Hive account@brendazambrano.

I just try to show that Steemit is not white or black. I've done a couple of parodies and got massively upvoted; that’s not mean my parody became more legit than the post that inspired it. It just means that sometimes you need multiple points of view to get the whole picture. I am still confident in the success of Steemit. It may be not perfect yet but, it's improving quickly.

Almighty whales

Do the whales have too much power and how they perform with the associated responsibilities?

Let’s break down a few whales upvotes habits.

You rarely see Hive account@dan voting with his main account; I am not sure, but Hive account@dantheman could be the secondary account he uses for upvotes, and it looks like he votes wisely, Hive account@ned has sometimes voted for boobs in the past but come on we all like boobs. I never saw an upvote from the Steemit main account Hive account@steemit and that’s OK, I think it will just be too much reward, Hive account@berniesanders is the robin hood of the platform I never heard someone question his votes except maybe a few weeks ago under marijuana tag. Hive account@smooth upvotes are smooth and Hive account@steemed aka Hive account@itsascam aka Hive account@steemroller said he had hired a team of ten curators to dig in the feed for the rare pearls. Hive account@rainman Hive account@summon and Hive account@complexring have proven a high level of integrity from my point of view

Whales' interests

What quality could lead to a whale's vote?

Quality content, storytelling, useful tutorials, In-depth analysis.
Steemit promotion, billboards, flyers distribution w/cupcakes and so on.
Notoriety and network, followers, can help the platform upscaling.
Humor, Parodies, we should laugh at least 10 min every day
Boobs
And probably much more

An upvote is given for numerous reason.

Conclusion

When someone gets a whale's vote, it may just mean that a part of his article was interesting, I don’t think a simple upvote is a guarantee that the curator approved every single line of the post. Don’t be jealous or angry because a big fish supported an article that you will not qualify for an upvote. Keep trying don't blame others author for their succes, don't blame whales for their upvote.