I often think back to the time my friends and I were discussing some project we were working on. I suggested, "let's go around and say something good about this project. Don't be afraid - we'll have a second round for criticism, too."
Well, more then just a few people really had a problem with that. They were ready to say something good about the project, but later. First, they had to explain the problems they had with it - why they could never allow the project to go forward as it stood.
For me that was the moment of truth: I realized that as long as this attitude prevails, we weren't getting anywhere.
This is why I've never agreed with people criticizing Facebook. FB accomplished something really remarkable: it legitimized likes. Thanks to Facebook, people have gotten used to liking something. The fear of being penalized for liking something seems to have since dissolved.
The next really revolutionary change was presented by Steemit. Here, not only will not be punished for likes, we take it one step further - you are rewarded.
Well, that seems to be to good to be true, doesn't it? In fact, I'm used to donating money for projects I like rather than be paid for contributing. I was immediately fascinated with the idea, but the question remained: would it work for me?
To be rewarded, my upvotes have to fall in line with the votes of other people, specially with the votes of whales, and that's not something I can take for granted. We might very well have quite different preferences.
You see, my curation strategy is pretty old fashioned: I read, I like, I upvote, I follow.
That strategy didn't work very well in July and August when it came to rewards. However, it started to work slightly better in September; surprisingly enough I found myself on the first page among the most effective curators in October.
Of course,It just might be due to lack of competition. Native English speakers might consider that, instead of curation, content creation would be more rewarding, but for me it's not about the actual result, it's more about tendency.
And the tendency is quite obvious. The Steemit hive mind seemed to start working more in line with my own mind.
People I picked up and added to my feed began to get rewarded much quicker than they did just a few months ago.
I didn't investigate any deeper than that, but it seems to me that curation guilds made a major contribution to that result.
I do not vote for any sure bets. in fact, I almost never see the posts I vote for end up on the Trending page.
So, the message from the Steemit hive mind is: "you don't have to vote for things you don't like in order to get rewards", and that's of course very encouraging.
A few more observations about my curation habits.
I vote for people rather than for specific content. Also, I definitely have a weakness for art. Once someone has become someone rooted in my feed, especially if we had some interaction in the comments, that would mean an almost automatic upvote from me.
However, if I see a post has already generated more than $1 already, in most cases I would save my upvote for something that looks more underappreciated, making an exception only for some real pearls.
Most of the people in my feed use the resteem function really mindfully, so a resteemed post also usually gets an upvote.
If I'm done with my feed and my voting power is still over 80% I spend some time investigating the New section, too.
Some say that for people with a vote weight below 1 cent that it's not polite to use the vote slider. With all respect I don't follow that.
While my vote weight is mostly below $0.01 I'm whale at heart - I use the slider the way a whale would, trying to spread my votes around to reward the most diverse content.
Even if I vote with 10% weight, my vote is still good enough to keep the upvoted post Active and to attract attention of curation bots as well.
I generally vote at 50%, reserve 100% votes for special cases, and for the rep 25 people it's usually more like 25%.
For those who are interested to learn more about curation, here's a few posts from fellow effective curators:
@liberosist/minding-my-votes-a-personal-journey-deep-into-curation
Introducing a simple, but highly effective curation bot:
@laonie/introducing-my-new-voting-robot-better
Introducing the smartest curation bot so far:
@biophil/how-my-bot-learned-korean
Link to the trending list of most effective curators:
http://steemwhales.com/trending/?p=1&d=30&s=cr
You can see that so far people can still compare with bots regarding curation efficiency. However, the Steemit blockchain is a perfect incubator for AI.
If Steemit and Steem price grow, resulting in bigger curation rewards, competition for rewards would also grow. In the future I can imagine big scientific labs working on curation bots, and that would likely mean no more people on the trending curators page.
I think if an author spends enough time posting to Steemit, a well-developed AI would be able to predict how much his next post is likely to generate and what is the best time to cast a vote.
However, there will always be a niche for humans and manual curation. If a new author is appears on Steemit able to tell the authentic people from those fake-it-till-you-make-it types, then we could do better than bots.
And, of course, there's always going to be some whales around who would vote for junk content just to make the whole game more irrational and less predictable!
For myself, I'm going to try some automated voting bot strategies in December, since I plan to be offline for two weeks anyway. It will be interesting to compare the results.
I do not want to overload this post with more observations and reasoning.
And I know that short posts were announced to be in vogue going forward!
However, any questions are most welcome.