I like the idea of outrunning the bots, and I would imagine that the only way to do that successfully with any kind of consistency is to employ an autovote service.
I wonder at a few things, though. Even if you beat them to it, is your curation reward based on first in, or on how big a vote you have with how much VP? In other words, could you still be muscled out by the bid bots and the bigger accounts regardless of your position?
Then, what happens when the voting window gets moved up? It's probably not anything to worry about right now, since it's been over four months from the last HF 20 update, but moving the 30-minute window to 15 is supposed to be a part of it.
As I said in my comment, I believe the curation rewards are on a decreasing logarithmic scale. So the first vote is worth the most and by the time you get to vote 11, it's not worth much at all. I think SP has something to do with it, so I don't know that you'll soak up much of a $200 vote if you only used 100 SP at 100%. @royaleagle might know. I think he's pretty good with this stuff. Royal Eagle, you got any info you could give us?
Okay. I might have to hunt down the post I read a couple months ago now and re-read what it said. Except I'd probably be starting form scratch since I have no clue who might have written it. Any input, though would be just peachy, because this whole curation thing is way more complicated than it needs to be, and much more than it out to be. :)
I don't know why they obfuscate things so much. It would be so easy to be upfront and clear about how things work. Most businesses have a website where they talk about this stuff. It still amazes me that they don't have a Steemit.com/info page where you could get all this information. What do I know? They're the ones making millions of dollars. I'm just an idealist.
Apparently the Steemit FAQ and the user written etiquette pages are that. I'm not sure how up to date the FAQ is though, and what I remember reading was kind of general, not getting into the weeds at all.
It would probably scare people off before opening the account (instead of after). If it's open and they leave, there's always the chance they come back.
You may be an idealist, but it's coming out like common sense and best practices and they should be following it. It's generally left up to someone else to come up with things, so maybe we try to advocate for a more transparent system? Trying to be positive here. :)
I haven't even looked at the FAQ in a while. They hadn't changed and the stuff they said wasn't accurate. What's the point of saying "don't send wallet spam" if you're not going to enforce it? Come on! The FAQ are more of a joke than a comedy show. Am I right?! :D
I think people are scared away because of the complexity of it, and once they start, it's hard to get oriented. Fortunately some people stick it out and they're the ones we get to talk with today.
I'd love to have a more transparent system, but the system as it is gives ned a lot of control. Even if they system is broken, it's his system and he doesn't want to give up control. I'm honestly not sure what his gameplan is. I wish he seemed more intentional about Steemit. He seems so laid back and uninvested. Being that he has a ton of money now, he might consider investing in a personal coach to help him with things. Mark Z probably used one. ;)
I should probably go through it again. I've gone through a lot of material so I don't know what came from where.
We're kind of off topic on someone else's post, but I will say there are plenty of things that could be shored up on Steemit, and throughout the STEEM ecosystem, if the intent is to actually move forward with what exists. With SMTs coming, I don't know what that means to Steemit as a platform. If Hivemind/Communities come and blows everyone away, then maybe Steemit gets pushed to the fore.
The problem is, we as users don't know. And maybe some of it we don't need to know. I'd just rather post, comment and curate and have the rest of the inner workings be handled. There seems to be competing interests at work here, and I don't know how it gets untangled. I just believe it needs to be sorted out, and I have hope that it will.
Just my 2 cents, this is part of the radical decentralization that blockchain does best.
Steemit should focus on SMTs, onboarding, and HF 20; there have been 19 hard forks so far (with some big changes in a couple of them) and so you have old posts that are no longer relevant showing up on Google searches that mis-explain curation.
I think the community can work on some solutions here...
So, what would you suggest as something the community can work on? Like offering training on the ends and outs of curation? Or is there something else? We're kind of limited to how we get the information out to posting, which can get lost. Not everyone who might want to see it will.
In my mind, the curation situation is code. It's set up that way. I'd rather it be less complicated. You vote when you vote and you receive some compensation for it, unless you're dust voting, which you'd need to be aware of.
One thing I've always wondered about the calculation when you beat the big boys with your vote:
and earn more than 10 10% gambles
or even 1 100% gamble?
I've also toyed a bit with curation trail auto-voting, but the problem was you voted after the fact. It would be better if they let the hmm not sure what you call someone who follows a trail ??? anyway if the main curator would let the followers go first it would be a greater service to their followers...
Hmm I wrote this yesterday, but evidently didn't get it posted. It showed up when I came back to this post. Strange...
I've never tried being a part of a curation trail of any size, so have no clue as to how that works or why trail followers (I don't know the name either) can't vote first. I've noticed, though, with the curie vote in particular, that there are users who do vote ahead of the bigger voters, but most vote after. So I'm not sure how that works, or why a few might be ahead. And in general, those curation trails are coming in a few hours, if not a day or so after the fact, because it's being manually curated to start with then going whatever approval process they go through.
Something else I understand I'm supposed to go to Discord to find out about. :)