On steemit and in life, we all have differences when it comes to what we value. A post that almost everyone loves you may not find any value in, and sometimes a post that isn't that valuable will be attached to a "valuable" blogger. The question of what we value is always individually represented on steemit, whether that individual is a person or an organizational based account. We all get our votes for the day, they are one of our main voices.
So the questions comes down to: Are we giving value to what we get value from? Are we really supporting what we value, or are we giving our value to things we think we should support? There could be a 15 minute long post that really doesn't bring anymore value into our life that we upvote, while we don't upvote, or upvote at a lower percentage, a zappl post that changes the way we look at the world.
How are you deciding where your upvotes go?
I know I value certain posts more than others. Some of the things I take into account:
Post Topic - If I'm not interested in the topic, I'll rarely read the post, which means that unless I think the post or user is deserving in another way I won't upvote it.
Post length - Steepshot and Zappl require much less time and effort, and provide less value to the reader in most situations. I usually vote these at a lower weight unless I really like them. I feel like if done right, these types of posts can be more than meets the eye, providing condensed value. Don't just write them off, eventually they will be a big part of the entire steemit ecosystem.
Formatting, readability - If I can't understand the writing, or if the formatting is all over the place, I'm pretty likely to just back out of the post. These two things can make or break an article, regardless of content. Something that is well done is more likely to get my vote.
User - We all have our favorites, sometimes I'll vote people because they support me. Sometimes I'll look at someone's blog just because they interact with me, it's much a much better way to find people than by slogging through random content. Usually people who interact with me have blogs that are relevant to me anyways. Plus I feel like this is a big community and we should all be helping each other grow, so building relationships and friendships is part of it. It's not easy to catch everybody's articles everyday, so if we miss one before payout we can just get their next post.
Content - Let's face it, content is king, and unless you have a bunch of whale friends who will support you even if your post is garbage, content is what will bring in more followers and upvotes. There are plenty of people posting trash posts with little to no substance. Some of these posts get a lot of upvotes because of the value they seem to have - maybe they are from a high rep user, maybe the post author used 10 bid bots to make the post look worthwhile. Other posts go unnoticed for the same reasons - lack of reputation/followers and $0.00 post value. The best way is to judge for yourself whether the post is valuable to you.
Current Valuation - This is the reason for most every flag war, someone disagrees with how much one person is making in some way, whether over time, or in a single post. Let's face it, most posts on here that are truly worthwhile do not make as much money as some of the most useless posts we see. Some users hold way more voting power than the rest of us, which is the main reason for this. I think that supporting an already highly valued post with a lower weight is perfectly acceptable, especially if the poster is consistently receiving high payouts. This allows one to save their VP for smaller accounts that need more growth.
There are a lot of factors that can play a role in how we vote content here. I think we should all be voting based on overall platform growth, and the growth of our personal community. I think that self-voting should be limited to posts, and that the majority of the VP should be going to lower value accounts that are adding great content.
I think the more whales vote other whales, the slower steemit will grow, and the same goes for small account voting whales. Most would admit that their is wealth disparity, yet people still shower the whales with votes, even on the most pointless posts. I've seen whales getting higher payouts for accidental posts saying "don't upvote" than some of the best posts on the site by a minnow.
Really though, it doesn't matter what i think, we all vote how we want to vote. I'd just recommend taking another look at what you want to see happen with steemit. If you want to grow communities, start working in your community, networking and voting the good content there. If you want a more even wealth distribution, start voting smaller accounts more heavily. This doesn't mean withholding a vote from a great post by a whale, it means voting larger accounts at a smaller weight and smaller accounts at a larger weight. If you want more discussions on your own posts and value the interaction, upvote your commenters. Not only do they profit, but it's the closest thing to self voting there is, usually you pull 25% of your own vote.
In the end you should vote how you want to vote, just be aware that the actions we take here will help produce a certain atmosphere on steemit. I'm personally all for growing steemit from the ground up. Building the smaller accounts so that we can have a much stronger foundation to eventually support full time bloggers and creators. Some people right now are just trying to make a quick buck, not really thinking long term. Long term success, in my eyes, is going to be based on wealth distribution and communities, so I do my best to act in a way that supports that.