What adds value to Steem?

This is a response to @timcliff's post. Although many people joined Steemit to be able to earn cryptos, knowing how the ecosystem works and participating as a stakeholder is crucial if you want to keep on earning said cryptocurrencies. This will become even more apparent once SMTs and communities are launched.

image: Pixabay

What types of contributions do you consider adding value?

Value is added both by the developers that make this possible and the actual creators of the content within the space. The world is large and value is subjective: most things have value only within their relevant niches. Anything that is unique and original and not a rehashing of other sources simply for the sake of posting content adds value to some users. Just because I am not interested in gaming or vlogging doesn't mean that others aren't.

What types of things will you upvote/reward?

Content that is interesting to me: whether that is research or interesting and helpful information or advice or just entertaining or thoughtful windows on other people's worlds. Also content that might support community fund-raising, provided it isn't simply begging

What types of things will you downvote?

Spam, plagiarism, vote-begging and trolling. Content and comment farming that is purely for profit

What types of projects will you consider delegating SP to?

I currently delegate to a community bot which provides upvotes to members of the group. I curate my feed manually and there's no way to sort through the vast volumes of other content posted. I delegate to a trusted upvote bot to provide some support to @teamsouthafrica so that members get some encouragement to continue. I don't have the time, inclination or the SP to upvote everyone's content but if they have joined the community, I can help to support them with my delegation. I feel that these projects, which are manually curated, help real people get a tiny foothold on the platform.

I also delegate to a project that I'm personally interested in: @monochromes, part of the black and white photography community. My delegation helps provide upvotes to winning contestants in the daily competitions. Competitions encourage others to post well thought-out content.

These delegations aren't large and have tiny investment returns but I feel that they are an investment in the people who create the content. I would be happy to delegate to projects that do offer larger investor rewards but only if I am sure that I am not delegating to support spam. A lot of the current delegation systems permit all kinds of abuse.

I would like to delegate to future communities which function as discussion forums where members offer experience-based, useful information and advice and those who post good replies could be rewarded for it. This is something I would love to see on the Steemit blockchain