Now that your Vote Matters... YOU influence what content we see more of.

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Since a majority of the Whales have stopped voting (or reduced the percentage) the Minnows and Dolphins have a LOT more influence. I'd bet that just about everybody is really excited about this...I know I am.

For months and months I couldn't give a penny to a zero payout post or comment. The only time I got to see some pennies being added was when the payout was already higher..like at least a few dollars. On the flip side of things, curation rewards were so small, for me usually being in the hundredths or thousandths of a steem, it wasn't worth it for me to really care about either.

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My voting became Indiscriminate

To me, my vote was rather meaningless, outside of merely saying I liked something. WAIT A MINUTE!! Just saying I liked something...does that ring any bells for anyone? Facebook maybe? Where the 'like' button is just mashed rather liberally to just give a thumbs up to someone.

My point is that my previously meaningless Steemit votes felt like voting on Facebook. I didn't give any money unless someone else already had an existing payout (3 dollars at least)...meaning I really didn't 'curate' myself, but merely could hop on the band-wagon someone else had already curated. This is not meant as a complaint, but rather an observation of my own (and to some degree I believe others) behavior.

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The Problem with This

When the whales were voting, they were the driving force behind what posts and comments get higher payouts. These are the ones that got seen more by being atop trending lists (to some degree hot lists too) and would be seen by more people. Minnow votes had almost no effect, which dolphins having a minimal one.

On top of this, most people (understandably) tend to make posts trying to make some money, so there's a drive to create things you've seen to be 'popular.' Now, while it may not have always been noticed, many whales got flak when a voted up post was viewed by some to be of poor quality, having a disproportionate reward for what the post is, and sometimes had even been plagiarized.

With the whales (mostly) not voting now, the power of what gets payouts and hence what is shown on the trending pages, is in the hands of each of us 'smaller guys.' Now I understand that determining what is liked, considered quality and what something is worth, is subjective to each person. (Plagiarized is often more a clear yes or no.) I'm not here to tell you how to judge these criteria, but instead I merely ask that now with more power being in our hands that we try to give our votes in a more meaningful fashion. Try to have some idea of why and how much (meaning your slider bar) we're voting on something.

There is also a slight "self fulfilling prophecy" effect where things that get highly and frequently voted up, we get more of.

Over all, the trending page has been A LOT better with being rather diverse. But just as an example, two days ago @thedegensloth started a 30 day power-up challenge asking participants to have all post rewards go into their Steem Power. This was absolutely fabulous, especially given the recent bump in the price of Steem. However, what makes little sense to me is that his post, earned a little under $4. Then the next day, this post by @richman was posted to (I'd guess) say that he was taking part in this challenge, and it made over $95. It was an exact copy and paste into this template outside adding the link to the original post. I can easily assume this was done solely to draw attention to this initiative...but my question...Why not go vote the ORIGINAL POST?!?! Why couldn't this have simply been resteemed to have the same effect?

This isn't meant to be saying anything bad about @richman, but rather my question is "Did voters not realize this was a copy/paste to another user?" I have to assume this was completely missed by voters. **So my plea to voters:"

Look at the posts and determine who deserves the your vote. If you're so for this type of initiate, go to the original post where the idea and work was generated.
Think how you would feel if YOU had been the original poster in this scenario
Open and Digest Posts before simply clicking the vote at 100% button. (For instance, maybe give 10% vote to @richman for advertising the initiative and and 90% vote to @thedegensloth for creating it.)

How I'm Trying to Adapt my Voting from Here

Now that my votes actually have an effect of post or comment payouts, I want them to go where I feel it's most deserving. I like being able to give some pennies (sometimes more) away.

This means I will be making WAY more use of my slider bar, which I've not done in months. To achieve this here is how I'm going to be approaching my voting from here:

1. I vow to actually OPEN every post before I vote on them. No more voting on the thumbnail listing. It's hard to promise every word is read, but I will do my best to digest the content. This same analysis will be applied towards comments, which are just as important to reward and help filter the best to the top. (FYI: Where a post falls on a trending page is determined by BOTH post and comment payouts.)

2. If the post is an initiative, contest or challenge, I will at least in part split my vote between the post of the person 'entrant' and the initiative 'creator.' It takes time, work and effort to effectively setup and run some of these.

3. Applying varying vote percentages depending on the TYPE of post and content. While I like memes, personally I hold them to hold a different value from a well presented and worked out written piece or photo/travel blog. I appreciate things that have taken more time in thought, formatting and editing.

4. I will very rarely be giving a 100% vote to Steemit related content or topics. This ESPECIALLY applies to DRAMA posts which I refuse to vote for, at most I'll leave a comment. I do highly appreciate development work on applications such as @good-karma's esteem mobile app or @steepshot's instagram like app, which likely will be an exceptions to this.

Beyond this, I try to put myself in the shoes of somebody looking at Steemit for the first time. When they go to Steemit.com what they see are trending pages and make their first impressions from this. As ironic as it is to say here, considering this post is about Steemit and voting...
People don't go to Reddit to read about Reddit!
People don't go to Facebook to read about Facebook!

They are there to read and ideally interact on other topics, which they are interested in. There were some whales and guilds that wouldn't vote on Steemit related posts just for this reason (I believe.) It's important to create a wide array of content that make people find our posts in Google when they search on a topic...and these people likely aren't searching the word Steemit. Now that the power is more in the hands of the larger community here, please please please keep this in mind.

5. I am going to start downvoting content that I feel is outside the bounds of abuse, but I find to be overvalued. I realize that this is a hot button issue for people right now, but I feel it's an important piece for me to start being a part of. I thought about this yesterday after seeing the post I mentioned above, but didn't want to downvote simply because of all the recent drama associated with it. While I've now missed the payout period on that post, I am going to start acting in cases like these to state me opinion on it. I do promise to leave a comment on every downvoted post to explain WHY I chose to do so.

6. Largely I do rely on @steemcleaners to find plagiarism, at times I do wonder if something being presented is truly original. When this is the case, I try to go a google search for portions of text or reverse image searching an image. While it's hard to know if something is necessarily a problem or not, I may withhold my votes for things that don't seem to have some added value by the poster. Simply linking a youtube video with nothing else, while perhaps entertaining, isn't worthy of my vote.

I also want to ensure that I'm applying my vote where I feel it's value is most deserved (in my own subjective opinion.) But I will NO LONGER be indiscriminate with my votes!! I truly hope to see others attempting to do the same.

Now that We The People have influence over how rewards are distributed, WE hold the responsibility to be good curators. While it may not be the easiest route, I do feel it gives the best result for Steemit as a whole.

*How do you vote?

Are you planning any changes to your method now that we have influence over distributing the reward pool?
Are you going to use the slider bar more?
Are you going to upvote good comments more?
Are there things that you will be downvoting outside of abuse?**

Feel free to use the #howivote tag if you wish to make these easily viewable for people.