Let me start by saying I already think that the EIP and SPS has been a huge success. Trending is drastically different, whales are re-engaging on the platform, we've already seen the first proposal start to get funding, and we've also seen proposals without community funding kept from receiving funds. My post rewards seem a little down, but my curation is way up. Seems like a great balance and these are great signs. While even some of the witnesses that voted for it didn't think it would make much difference I have been and continue to be a vocal proponent. It's good and this is better.
if a post adds value please don't flag it even when it's bidbotted, especially if it isn't excessively botted
Yesterday I put up a post about a lot of work I had done, showed results of a new working node for the ecosystem, put out some initial thoughts about ways to improve the ecosystem, used a handful of bidbots, and got some pretty large flags and also some pretty large support. I expected some flags. That's the nature of the beast right now, but I'd like to provide some thoughts on flags and bot use.
It didnt' take much to figure out that vote swapping was rampant on the system. Mined stake and even steemit stake was being put back and forth on circle jerk posts. New users sometimes caught a rare vote, but the exponential rewards curve made that severely punished. If you voted on a new post by a new author your rewards were literally crippled. So, the voting was largely insiders helping one another.
A major change happened when 
When linear rewards first hit there were no downvotes. So, now everything became about upvoting content indiscriminately. Get your return, get your money by posting, but that also affected the whales. For them to get their return they passively sold off all their votes and leased all their SP.
The resulting ecosystem became a shitshow of figuring out how to leech rewards fastest through the least amount of work possible.
The biggest change to me is the free downvotes. Now people can freely determine what is good content and what is bad content. This is an extremely subjective field, and I would argue is really hard to pin down to any one thing. Generally speaking though posts about things or that are things that add value to the ecosystem are "good posts," posts that are about personal matters or only really effect a small group of people are "neutral posts," and one liners with a cat meme that are designed to leech rewards are "bad posts."
good posts add value neutral posts don't add much value, but don't harm the ecosystem bad posts leech rewards
Over the last week it's been startling to see bidbots with vote windows that go unused. Many in the ecosystem I'm sure will stand and say "this is amazing, fuck them, glad to see those fucking bots gone." I'm not one of them. Bid bots played a role in getting my posts seen and that of others around here. It helped me get the audience I benefit from now. It would be disingenuous of me to turn around and say "hey fucktards, don't use bidbots you'll ruin the ecosystem."
Bidbots have a place. They are the first businesses on the blockchain. It's literally a whole industry complete with tens of millions of SP. They can also be used to help posts, projects, and people get seen.
If your goal is to run off the bidbots I think that's equivalent to your goal being to run off whales who want a passive investment here. I prefer to keep investors on and in the Steem ecosystem.
Yesterday on my post about the work I had done for the benefit of SM and SE as well as trying to figure out how to make the ecosystem as a whole not be reliant on steemit nodes and how to make it easy for new apps I decided to use 3 bots.
I used minnowsupport, not so much as because I needed the vote, but because I wanted to support the community.
I used a relatively small vote from therising because it was available right that second, and I put upmewhale on it as a single large vote to get it promoted. The last one worked to immediately get it into hot. And then it also worked surprisingly to get it to the bottom of trending.
These days when I try to promote something to trending I'm typically aiming for spot 4. It gets it on the wall, and I don't have to get it all the way to the top.
I think this is a reasonable approach.
Bot usage wasn't zero, but it wasn't maxed out. The post was well written and details a lot of work and also includes a new tool to the ecosystem that others can start to use and Privex is already making available to others.
These guys have a right to flag. I actually support the flagging. I'm even happy to get flagged myself. This is how this shit works now. But I think the standards of the whales aren't exactly right just yet. That's ok, we're a week deep into EIP and honestly the fact that they are voting at all and not just being completely passive is a huge win.
Here's my ask though. Not all bidbotted posts have to get flagged. When flagging ask "did this post provide value to the ecosystem." If the answer is yes, and especially if the botting is outrageous then please let the post stand. If the answer is "No, I don't see value here" then please nuke it.
Indiscriminate upvotes don't differ that much from indiscriminate flags to me. So, just flagging everything because it's botted seems like the opposite of linear rewards and just flags everywhere instead of votes everywhere won't help curation much.
I agree that having them get 90% returns versus holding your own stake and voting reasonably would be bad, but I trust the downvote economy to prevent complete gaming of the bots anymore. I'm hoping for an equilibrium where bot investors can be here, invest in steem, remain passive, maybe get slightly more for their curation rewards for their risk and their stake, but not have it be automatic. Bad bots that indiscriminately vote should see small returns. Good bots that force standards and practices should get higher returns.
There's a reasonable zone where bots, whales, flags, and promotion can coexist. I think the trick is asking "did this provide value." Please take that one question into consideration when botting or flagging.
if a post adds value please don't flag it even when it's bidbotted
