"Steemit: Come for the rewards, Stay for the community."
We see this phrase on the Steemit welcome page and just about all marketing that has been put out revolves around the has the monetary rewards as the exciting draw. Now, I'm not trying to put this down because it really is a big part of what makes this platform unique and grabs attention. On this note, I don't have a great idea on changing this marketing strategy because just pitching the community aspect has to compete with TONS of existing sites. On top of this, most people don't want to change to something new when it's viewed as equivalent, it has to be better.
Before going to far, I want to mention that making money is a big draw and what makes this place exciting. For many of us this each post is like a pull on the slot machine to see what comes. Even though I felt this way when first starting, now I instead view it more like Texas Hold'em poker such that there is some aspect of luck, but you can make the odds go in your favor.
Now onto my point. I've seen in myself and some others who completely immersed themselves in the platform (numerous posts, lots of editing time, tons of reading, tons of commenting, etc) during their first month or so, to then scale back a bit through month three. I have to believe that at some point things get viewed in the sense of dollars per hour of work time which is affected but many things like the reduced price of steem as well as votes getting spread around better than they did in Steemit's early months.
Debates over Flags!
Over-Rewarded Posts
I want to start by stating this is purely my view of things. I'm sure there are aspects and/or discussions I've not seen, so as usual take things with a grain of salt, research and decide for yourselves.
For a while now we've seen posts with higher payouts (relative to the total reward pool) being flagged due to being 'over-rewarded.' I'm not going to put out specific names but rather highlight the different situations. Most of the below scenarios have had flags from a small number of whales using their "stature" to protect and/or benefit the platform as a whole.
Early Days
In the really early days this didn't seem to happen at all. From what I saw, flags were only used to deal with abuse such as plagiarism, personal unconstructive attacks, and the like. At this time it seemed that using flags to 'de-value' a post was frowned upon.
Over-valued for non-interaction
I remember a specific user who made huge rewards while steem price was high and as the share price (and hence post payout dollars) reduced, they began to use a bot (or secretary or whatever) to post their articles from their other sites to Steemit (which is totally allowed.) However, many users both large and small took issue that this user was regularly receiving such large rewards while ceasing to respond to any comments left on the post. Overall, this was a statement that large rewards requires community interaction. They still post here, often getting some rewards, always some flags, and seemingly still never interacts with the community. I'd bet that if steem price were back at previous highs they would respond to comments more, but I'd also expect many users had a 'bad taste' put in their mouth at that point.
Flagged for Repetitive or Now Free Content
I have seen a few cases where a user had been posting things for the community that over time were seen to be 'taking too much' and typically had a free app developed by somebody else to provide the same service/info. There really is a fine line to providing periodic updates to the same things and being viewed as 'being greedy' or draining the reward pool. Even if a good deal of work is put into compiling, analyzing and reporting information, these things become automated by that user or another. At that point, some saw these 'paid' posts to be overvalued between some combination of 'being lazy if automated,' 'greedy' if posted too often and/or no longer as valuable with a new 'free' app being available.
Flagged for Concentrated Whale Voting.
Most recently many of us have seen flags being given due to concentrated whale voting. While I understand the 'painful ping' anyone feels when they see their payout drop due to this. But at the same time, even more people would be up in arms should only a few dozen posts have rewards of a hundred or two dollars with everyone else being less than a dollar. While the first sight for most of us is this dollar amount, it is also a percentage of the total reward pool. This situation typically has both sides feeling that they are acting to better the platform as a whole, one by creating quality content and/or an integrated helpful personality and the other a whale to counteract the large number of whale votes on a specific post.
It is worth noting here that on the user (non-whale) end of things, there are those who regularly earn high rewards and those whose post rarely reach those levels. While not perfect, often when the person who was flagged due to this that rarely earned that level of rewards, ended up getting direct donations of steem/SBD that equaled or exceeded what was lost due to the flag.
Final Thoughts on This
It's really rare for a whale to flag a post to reduce it's rewards due to personal malice. Most the time it is due to their view of benefiting the platform as a whole and never pads their own pockets. Remember that every flag a whale puts out is a lost opportunity cost for curation rewards (which is really the only way they earn on their SP now.)
If you are one who rarely makes these higher rewards and gets flagged, try to understand where the whale is coming from rather than taking it personal. You can easily let it be known what happened and see if the community responds to fill the gap you lost through direct donations. There have been many instances when non-whale users have banded together to help somebody out.
If you regularly earn high rewards and get flagged, I get the demotivational aspect this has, but you still have received a decent chunk over time. Again, try to understand where the whale is coming from. While most instances will end with a agree to disagree at best...this is very different from a direct, malicious attack.
Censorship Claims
While I understand the technical definition of censorship, I do view things in a different way depending on if it's the topic itself that is being 'shot down' versus a person being an ass or abusive. Most of those who have had their reputation flagged WAY down are either serial plagiarists (which really doesn't fall under censorship at all) or have continuously been a complete ass who then turns around and complains how their being censored.
Short of rather specific hate speech, I've really not seen entire topics being put down. Usually it's a case of an individual being flagged. Now I'll concede that there easily can be instances I've not seen myself, but every time I've followed down the rabbit hole of somebody whining and claiming to be censored by such and such...just about all of them had a rather blatant pattern of being an ass. To me, flagging someone for this behavior doesn't fall under my umbrella of censorship, rather penalizing horrible behavior.
There are many people on here who are gruff, blunt and argumentative yet haven't been flagged into oblivion. There are ways to disagree...in reality it's encouraged. But when you start a pattern of unconstructive personal attacks, people aren't going to want you as part of the community. If you're that pissed off about this place, then why stay? To me this is similar to the angry drunk...doesn't that defeat the whole purpose?
Build a Slightly Thicker Skin
It's worth mentioning that because of the drive towards minimal 'censorship' there is some extra burden on the general user here. Being setup the way it is, there is no ban button (luckily mute works now) and we're going to run across those who just seem to enjoy seeing others suffer. While I'm not advocating their behavior, we the general user, need to have or build up slightly thicker skins. Don't be so quick to emotionally go off the deep end.
If the person is being an ass-hat or a troll, mute them and probably pity them. (Can you imagine waking up that way everyday?) I've held the belief for a long time that I look to be disagreed with and find holes in my ideas. Even though it's never pleasant to be shown a flaw, this is how we improve. There is minimal value to always being affirmed or getting a 'smile and nod.' In the end...
It's not about being RIGHT! It's about being BETTER!
Part of this place is learning how to grow as a society. Right now we're all in the giant pool with everybody included which has it's pro's and con's. In the (near I hope) future we will have topical communities which while not solving all the issues, will make it easier to build smaller groups around people with certain interests with those that take issue often avoiding these areas. Hopefully this also helps to draw in new users by letting them join selected areas of interest rather than having to sift through so much.
Self Fulfilling Prophecy, Voting and Payouts
In my view, people tend to be driven (consciously or unconsciously) by what is being monetarily rewarded. To a large degree this only makes sense. They see what others are earning on and try to follow suit with their own material in that area. In short, what the whales vote on, we get more of.
Now I do want to thank the manual curators out there. I know it's not always the easiest nor always the most profitable. Nowadays a vast amount of steemit users use some vote bot/follow system. There's good and bad things about this that I don't feel are worth getting into with respect to the vast majority of users. However, with whale voting having such impact, it has to be looked at differently.
Regarding the 'Oprah Winfrey' bot that applies dozens of 1% votes to just about every post, while I think there were good intentions, I'm not personally a fan. I think the new users you were looking to motivate just get confused of why they're not earning a payout (assuming they don't see the vote percentage.) For those that do see the percentage, many take it as insulting. In the end, I think this while good intentioned, is doing more harm/confusion than good. When steem price is higher or the UI showed more payout decimals, it may have a better effect. For now, leaving one engaging comment achieves way more than dozens of small votes (in my opinion.)
It's got to be tough being a whale with the constant double edged sword where everything you do receiving complaints from somebody. At the same time, you're the ones with the most to loose financially. Personally I believe that most of those whale users that didn't want to be here have had the opportunity to leave by now after the economic changes some months back. The ONLY real way to be 'earning' on your vast steem power is to curate with the bulk of 'interest' no longer being there. If you don't vote, you lose opportunity cost of having your money else where. If you do vote, people complain about what's voted on, who made what or about the majority of vote power being 'centralized' into too few users.
Even with the upcoming delegated voting, issues will persist. Sure, vote power may be passed around some more, however the whale giving this power away earns no curation rewards. The only account where this would be effective is the actual steemit (steemit inc corporate) acct, not one held by an actual person. Short of this managing to increase the steem share price, I don't see the benefit for whales to do this outside of being nice (which I'm not complaining about, but only lasts so long for anybody.)
In the end everything is based around a long term, be patient strategy. Those that believe where this is going will stick around, ideally reaping the benefits. While I'm not saying I'm leaving this platform, I don't feel like I understand the holistic vision anymore.
Final Thoughts
We have to look at both the user and the investor side of things when it comes to longevity.
Users need to stay excited. When the payouts aren't there needs to be something else to keep them engaged such discussions in comments. I'm happy to see the trend of these being upvoted again. When comments decrease, the focus on post and their payouts go up. Often the 'gold' is in the discussion around the post instead of the post itself. While I'm sure many people have been upvoting comments, I have to give props to 
The public infighting has gotten flat out annoying for me. Just about every person here does things to make Steemit a better place either through posting, commenting, helping, supporting or even flagging. While we'll often disagree on the methodology, take a moment before flying off the handle, taking something personally and feeling the need to 'attack.' Instead ask a question, try to gain a better understanding and remember the option to just agree to disagree.
Lastly, I would love to see a way for investors to get a return on their investment beyond curating. I don't see how we can 'spread' the voting power around so that smaller users have an impact on the reward pool distribution while investors get their ROI. The proposed delegated voting doesn't solve the later problem in my eyes. While I'm a user and not an investor myself...invested money is what sustains the price of steem. Right now I don't know of a reason to hold liquid steem, interest rate on Steem Dollars is rather low, and holding (rather large amounts of) Steem Power requires curating. So in the end, the only reason to buy steem is to curate (in my eyes.) Is this enough to attract new investors? Maybe when the share price gets lower? (I don't claim to be an expert in this area, so feel free to enlighten me.)
Anyway...these are just my thoughts a little more than 7 months into Steemit. I want to see this place take off. I'm curious to see how the upcoming changes work out. There are many things in the works between hard fork 17 and the 2017 roadmap to be dealing with many of these issues, others are something the user base itself has to do.
End Rant
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