Many seem to complain about the trending section yet on the random times I go there, the content has lots of votes. Of course, the majority of vote value comes from a very small minority but why so many votes by small accounts? If the content is worthy content, I understand but then, why would people be complaining since technically, the numbers of voters do make it popular content.
I figure that the reason there are so many votes is that people are trying to increase their curation returns. As far as I can tell, most are doing it wrong. Now, I am not a curation optimiser myself but I thought I would just bring up a few basic things that people seem to have missed somehow.
Firstly, the first 30 mins.
All things remaining equal, voting after 30 minutes with no other voters, the curation return is 25%. But, voting in the first thirty minutes incurs a penalty. If the vote is at zero minutes, it is a 100% penalty with a straight line drop to 0% penalty at 30 minutes and after. So voting at 15 minutes will get a penalty of 50% applied to it. If hypothetically, the curation return would be 1 Steem, but it was voted at 15 minutes, the 50% penalty makes it 0.5 Steem paid. The other 0.5 goes to the author.
So why vote early?
Well, if the post is going to have big voters come in after, the chance of getting a multiplier affect for discovery increases so even with the 50% penalty the overall return will be higher. However, this depends on who has voted before also.
Now, this is what is quite strange in the Trending section. A lot of the content is voted to trending by the posters themselves, bidbots or whales relatively early which means all of the following votes will stack on top of very large votes and from a curation return perspective, it will actually be less than if you went into the new section and randomly selected an unvoted post after 30 minutes and upvoted that.
The difference however is that your 1 cent or 10 cents will go to a non-trending author instead of one that already gets high reward or, has bought the position through bidbot. 1000 x 10c votes is still $100 of value from the pool that could be spread further.
There is of course no problem voting on trending authors but complaining about trending is difficult as a minnow if minnows themselves are the majority of voters on trending authors, and the majority by a long way. I was looking at the current top post in trending which is a dlive post.
(There is nothing wrong with the post, this is not a judgement of quality etc, it is just for demonstration since it is number one in Trending)
There are about 1060 votes and $974 but, if you look at the votes themselves through a site like Steemworld you will see that only about the first 20 votes are over 1 dollar in value. The largest vote is from 
All of the votes that come after however are going to be affected by the large vote in front of them. Again, there is no problem in voting on these, it is all good but from a curation return standpoint, the return will not be the 25% that many think it will be.
What I am trying to say is, for those voting on popular content because it is popular content and somehow thinks it gets them some magical higher value, I suggest looking into how curation actually works as you are most likely better off voting on good content that has not already been voted into the trending sections.
As I said, I am not a curation return optimiser and have a very simple strategy that anyone can follow if they want. Ready for the list?
1. Vote on content you like.
Phew... I know, pretty challenging with all of those steps.
Some of this content really might be trending material but some of it may be the recipe from that person in your home country or your friend who just poured their heart and soul onto the paper because their beloved dog died. In the long run, the value gained from voting on content you like will far outstrip voting on content aiming for curation return as it is what builds the community and shares the wealth.
Minnows do not seem to understand the power they hold here and they think that because of the whales upvoting themselves, the platform will fail. Most likely, it will be death by a million tiny cuts as people are trying to maximise tiny amounts of curation and pushing it to the very few, instead of sharing larger amounts of it with the community.
Sure, the few whales consistently upvoting nothing content isn't great, but all of the small voters trying to frontrun them for curation is justifying their trending position by adding a lot of small votes. It would be a lonely trending section indeed without the minnows.
If you still want to earn from curation, there are curation projects like 
As times shift, Trending content will shift with it as the waters fill with more large and diverse groups of voters. Again, this is not a criticism of the authors and content in Trending at all but popularity is based on the support of the masses. One can get into trending by buying a big vote but, that doesn't make it popular. What makes it popular is the mentality that if it is in trending, it must be popular and have hundreds and thousands of voters come in because it appears popular. It is herd mentality and how crap singers get so much airtime on radio stations, their publicity team boost them artificially to 'radio trending' and repeat it often enough until people think it is good.
So, trending has nothing to do with quality but much of it for many people is quality content, but for many others, it is not. If you think it is not quality enough, do not vote on it and instead vote on someone you like. Even from a growth of account perspective, in the long-run you will get more value from building relationships with normal users than adding a tiny vote or random comment on a popular author where there are already 400 comments from like minds.
On top of this, your little vote that was lost among the masses may instead brighten someone's day who works hard to create good content but gets no traction. Your vote and comment on their article may mean the world to them and motivate them to continue developing.
My advice for the majority of the minnows I see here is the same, stop trying to optimise curation returns and instead use your vote to reward the content you really enjoy and encourage the authors who create it. It really is the way to build a strong community.
Of course, for the whales who don't give minnows a chance to front-run their votes on their own posts or those of friends, perhaps rethink the strategy, wait a little longer and reward the little supporters who you know will come in. You will still hit trending and be seen but the small costs to you will be large gains for the community in time.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
For precise curation numbers and figures, there are plenty of posts out there by much more number orientated people. This is just a basic reminder for the minnows that they hold a lot of power over this platform but most do not actually realise how much. This is all meant for consideration, not as a comment on or criticism of trending authors or their supporters.