We Rise by Lifting Others! What Does the Community Support Index Really Mean?

It is not a surprise that we all use steemworld.org to viewing account statistics. Have you ever paid attention on the Voting CSI row? What does it really mean?

Before starting this tutorial, let's have a look at some CSI values obtained from some accounts. Take a minute to think about the differences between them.

What is Community Support Index?

Community Support Index (CSI) is a value, that generates based on your voting behavior.

According to the SteemWorld Newsletter #2 /January - 2018 by @steemchiller following variables affect to CSI value.

Self votes are the votes that a person makes for his own posts. Self votes give a Negetive Impact on the CSI value.

In other words, this is the behavior, how a person spreads his votes among other accounts. Voting the same author multiple times while not spreading votes among others, affect the CSI Negetively

Vote weight is the percentage that you use when voting. The slider for vote weight is unavailable until the account reaches 500SP. The voting percentage is also take in to consideration when calculating CSI.

• The vote amount or the available SP amount doesn't affect CSI calculation.
• Only the upvotes are counted for CSI
• To display a value for CSI, you have to make at least 35 upvotes

Before going to more details, let's take a basic idea about the Voting CSI row in steemworld. It consists of 4 parts.

Community Support Index as a Sign of Togetherness

"A community is a group of people who have come together, and they work and they live to try and improve the standard of living and quality of life - and I don't mean money."
_{-William Baldwin}

It's a nice definition I have seen so far for a community. It is true that the sustainability of a community depends on how much the members take care of each other's needs. It is similar in steemit. As same as we get rewards, it is our responsibility to reward others in the community. Voting CSI allows you to evaluate yourself on how much you support others to grow.

The CSI value can be a negative value, zero, positive value, or a null [?] Negative behavior implies a high amount of self or circular votes. When a person continuously votes for himself or for a set of accounts the CSI value goes down. The most important thing here is, when an account tends to vote himself than voting for others, it doesn't contribute to growing steemit as a community.

What is Better?

As I early mentioned, CSI is an optimized value that we can use to evaluate ourselves. It is unfair to decide someone else's behavior using it but usually higher positive CSI values are better . It is good if someone can manage his CSI higher than 10 but there is no rule or standard about it. It is our self responsible to vote others and keep the CSI value in a high positive value

Negative values imply that you are not using your voting power to support the community but to enrich yourself. When you see a lower CSI value, just try to spread your votes among many other accounts. Never limit to a particular set of accounts. Always try to help others to grow using your valuable voting ability.

Why I Don't See Any Value for CSI?

You will see your CSI value as [?] when you haven't made the minimum number of votes that need to display the CSI value. According to @steemchiller, you have to make at least 35 votes to show a value to CSI.

It is very common that many newcomers don't use their voting power well. But it is a good practice that voting on the good content of others. As a practice, I never do self votes because I feel it like clapping for my self. Always try to Rise by Lifting Others!

Wrapping Up

• CSI stands for Community Support Indicator

• CSI can be used as a measure to evaluate your own voting behavior

• Number of self votes, Number of accounts that votes are spread among, voting weight are considered when calculating CSI value.

• The CSI row displays values only for the last 7 days.

• There are no rules but high positive CSI values indicates that you are highly supporting the community using votes. Higher the better

• You can view stats on how many votes you have made within the week, how many self votes you have made and how many accounts you voted using CSI Row.

• Keep in mind, supporting others is your self-responsibility.

This article is based on facts and understanding taken after discussing with @steemchiller and referring his following two articles. Article 1 and Article 2. Also, @dr-frankenstein helped me with some information and directed me to the above valuable articles. Thank you very much for helping me with this article.

@steemcurator01 I believe the attention on CSI will very useful for everyone.

_{The reward for this article is equally shared among the author and the real owner of the CSI concept. :)}