So I have recently stumbled upon something that does not work too well on the steemit platform.. CONTESTS or anything else which includes comment based voting.
The only thing that I have noticed SO FAR that is not very wise to be conducted on the current Steemit platform, are user held CONTESTS which rely solely or partially on COMMENT SECTION BASED VOTES placed by any user of the Steemit community as the PLATFORM on which the WINNING CONTEST SUBMISSION/S are DECIDED UPON.
Or in other words, a contest or anything else which requires Steemit users to vote using the comment section to decide upon the winners of said contest or whatever else is being voted upon.
If you do not see why or how this could be a problem, well then..that is what I am going to tell you right now :) It seems pretty obvious why exactly this is not the best idea AT ALL once you have been a contestant in a contest held on Steemit using the comment section as the voting platform, or if you have witnessed a contest etc being held on Steemit which used the comment section as the voting platform.
I'll start off with explaining to you how the comment section of posts on the Steemit platform works, even though most of you are well aware of what happens in the comment section of Steemit posts, this just seems like the place to start with explaining the flaws of comment voting contests on Steemit.
When you leave a comment on ANY Steemit post, your comment can be seen by anyone who reads the post and scrolls through the comments, if you enjoyed the post your have just read, normally you like to show the author that you found some value in his or her post by upvoting the post, which in turn pays the author a certain amount of steem power, which can be traded for cash, your upvote on a post will give a certain amount of steem to the author, depending upon how much steem power you have in your wallet, the more steem power you hold in your steemit account, the more your upvotes are worth & the more influence you have to get certain posts which you like noticed by others who could read the post, upvote the post themselves and get the post noticed by even more people, the more upvotes you get for your posts, the more value your post and account gains.
The comments in the comment sections of every post on Steemit work pretty much exactly the same way, if you upvote someones comment because you like what they had to say, their comment gains value which they can claim and add to their account and increase the value of their own accounts. So, theoretically...you COULD earn just as much money just by commenting on other peoples posts as you could earn by creating your own posts, though I would assume that it would be easier to earn Steem by just creating your own content and posting your own posts, but hey, IT IS POSSIBLE to earn a lot of steem just by commenting on other Steemit users posts, but I assume that you would need either a lot of luck doing so, or be very good at creating comments that others see value in, enough value that they come to the conclusion that they should waste ( or use) on of their valuable upvotes on your comment. You cant just go around liking every single thing you see to pay every single person who commented or posted just cause you like helping people cause your upvotes will degrade in value after a certain amount of upvotes and wont replenish for a few days.
Alright you all probably (most definitely) already know all this, but it all kind of had to be said anyways before getting to the main discussion topic of this post..
Think about everything I just said. Now Imagine that you are holding a contest on Steemit, you ask the community to post a picture of their entry into your contest in the comment section of the contest post. Once the deadline has come, you then ask everyone in the Steemit community to vote for their favorite entry by leaving a comment with the username of whoever submitted your favorite entry.
BUT WAIT... one of the people who submitted an entry for the contest thinks of a very sly (and what he considers to be a smart, brilliant and completely fair) idea/ plan to get people to vote for his entry in the contest BY BRIBING THEM WITH $4+ likes to whoever votes for his contest entry! "ITS SO FCKING FAIR OMG ITS NOT EVEN FUNNY HOW FAIR IT FCKING IS! COME ON GUYS STOP BEING SUCH SORE LOSERS!!!"-says the guy who thinks bribing is fair. Even though he knows...nay...he totally knows... that it is not fair or smart or righteous, oh no. Well, unless he is really really not very intelligent, then i guess he could possibly believe that it is fair...nah..probably not even if he was dumb.. he just fools himself & others into thinking its a good idea cause he is a greedy fck, but who knows, if no one is smart enough to notice his plan then he could get away with it...but i doubt that EVERYONE out there is as dumb as he..nay...turns out no one is as dumb as he. Everyone will eventually see his evil plan in the end.. realizes what he is up to.. BUT theres another way he could get away with it.. if whoever is throwing the contest just does not care if cheaters enter their competition than he will be A-OKAY and unfairly win this contest, unfair and unsquare he likes to say. . BUT not a very moral plan nor is it a very sportsmanlike plan BUT FCK IT HES GREEDY SO WHO CARES AS LONG AS HE WINS, FCK THE OTHER PEOPLE WHO ENTER THE CONTEST, HE WORKED PROBABLY 2% AS HARD AS EVERYONE ELSE HE DESERVES TO WIN WITH HIS SHTTY ENTRY, RIGHT??? <---(P.S. answer is Noooo... WRONG!) he thinks everyone else is just dumb for not thinking of it first, and when the other contenders in the contest confront him about his scheme, he tells them they are just jealous they did not think of it first and to stop being poor losers. He tells them hes not cheating..oh no no no...you silly wabit..
" Just because I know Steemit users who have accounts which are worth over $500,000 and all you other entrants in the contest do not personally know nor have you personally bribed ANY of these WHALE members like I have.. THAT IS NOT MY FAULT! YOU ARE JUST BEING SORE LOSERS!"- Says Mr.Bribster
"Anyone can become friends with users who own accounts worth over $500,000, its so easy, its also EXTREMELY easy to talk them into rigging a contest with you! no problem at all!!"- Says Mr. Fuchsuinashhole
"ITS SO EASY GUYS DONT BLAME ME FOR DOING IT WHEN YOU ALL CAN DO IT JUST AS EASY! YOU JUST GOTTA TRY!" - Said Mr. Hewhothinksnot
OKAY, I am sorry about the sloppy writting in this post, I am just not very happy with what is happening in a contest which I have been observing..and am currently a contestant in.
But here are some alternatives to comment based voting, if you have anything to add then mention your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks.
Instead of voting in the comment section..you could possibly have a link which leads to another website where the votes can be cast?
OPTION #2- (This is the best alternative in my opinion) Just make it a rule that all votes which have earned more than like $1 in upvote rewards will become void, AND make it a rule that when you cast a vote, ONLY SAY THE NUMBER OF THE ENTRY YOU WISH TO VOTE FOR IN THE VOTE COMMENT. For Example- I want to vote for number 25, so in my vote comment I say "25" and thats its. JUST say the number. which will help to make sure that there is literally no reason to like the vote comment since all it will say is the number which they want to vote for. Yes if someone likes your entry, you will probably want to upvote their vote, thats fine, as long as your upvote isnt worth more than $1. Lol. This will make it so NO BRIBERY WILL BE POSSIBLE SINCE ALL upvoted votes over $1 will be VOID.
Problem SOLVED.
The END.
Peace & <3
- kayaman
Oh, and sorry again for the crappily written post. Was not in the best mood while writting it so yeah, its not written very..properly. But it still makes some valid points which should be seen as valuable I would assume. If anyone can finish reading it without stopping cause my writing sucks so bad in it. Will edit and repost soon. If I feel like it that is. lol.