This is a difficult post to write for a number of reasons. I don’t want to upset anyone in SGS because I know that all of our members mean well and want what’s best for SGS. I also don’t want to draw heat from any whales of HIVE because I have seen that go badly too. Thus I am going to try and tactfully explain why I think it is so important to maintain the Reputation of our Precious and in doing so explain why I manage and promote her in the way that I do.
Precious has a long history that goes all the way back to the STEEM days in early 2018. She is now almost 6 years old. Many of our members have been through a lot with her and they would remember those days, but there has been a lot that has gone on behind the scenes and some of our newer members don’t have the benefit of that experience so I’ll try to give a bit of back story.
In the STEEM days there was a lot of commercial Vote Selling services operating. It was very common for people to just Buy Upvotes and it was also very common for accounts to Self Vote their own content very heavily. One infamous individual who I won’t name would make 11 posts a day and Self Vote them with his massive stake. It was a poor example to set and for many (including me) it was a big problem that plagued the platform for years. In time these phenomenon became commonly referred to as Raping the Reward Pool and there were several big (and very spiteful) Downvote Wars that were fought in those early years and it was ugly to see. They caused a lot of Collateral Damage for smaller accounts.
Eventually a kind of consensus was reached amongst the Whales of STEEM (and then HIVE) that Vote Selling was not going to be tolerated and the Vote Sellers were driven off the blockchain. Those who were Self Voting heavily were also targeted and some of those were driven away too but the fight against abuse of the Reward Pool went further. A lot of users who were pushing out poor quality, low effort posts purely to collect Upvotes have also been targeted over the years and the SGS Community has lost several members because they had run afoul of these Big Whales and Anti-Abuse Projects. Again, I am not going to mention names here and my intention is not to spark debate about whether this was a good or bad thing...I am just pointing out that, YES – It is a THING. It happened and it continues to happen.
This is why I have been slowly but subtly trying to evolve Precious in a way that brings our Community Curation Project more Reputation and Legitimacy as a positive participant in the HIVE Ecosystem. Our project HAS come under fire in the past and it DOES face scrutiny now and then (along with our members) so I believe it is important that we don’t start doing things that will see us backslide and jeopardise our good reputation.
Recently I’ve faced a few requests from within our community for us to start pushing out some posts from the 
These measures are not something I am prepared to do but I do also acknowledge that it may be time for me to stand down if the community wants to take a different direction with Precious. I may have put a lot of effort into this project over recent years, but it’s not mine to do with as I please and I serve only with the ongoing support of the SGS Membership.
