What do you do when you’re swimming peacefully out in the steemit sea and suddenly a whale attacks?
First off, “attack” is too extreme of a word to use here to accurately represent reality, but I was trying to paint a mental picture based on real ocean life, where a whale could (hypothetically) attack you.
Anyway, the real subject at hand is in regard to whale downvoting. Sure, many whales have done this for various reasons, and most recently @smooth has been attempting to level the playing field for everyone on steemit a bit by downvoting posts that have a sizeable amount of the total daily payout. By doing so, @smooth reduces the total payout amount of the post that was downvoted.
Basically, if 20 posts on a day each get 2% of the total rewards, then there are potentially 1000 or more other posts sharing the remaining 60% of the total rewards.
Are the motives of @smooth to destroy every good paying post and scare away users from the steemit community? I would have to conclude “NO.” In fact, it appears that the goal is to make steemit more user friendly by allowing for a greater distribution of the total daily rewards. Technically, that’s not a bad thing.
WHAT DO YOU CARE?
If you’ve watched how @papa-pepper interacts over the past months here, you know that I don’t jump into every “fight” or heated discussion here on steemit with two guns blazin’ and I have no intention of doing so now. Obviously, like many others, @smooth included, I have a genuine concern for steemit, the steemians, and the future of this community. But late last night, something happened.
@smooth downvoted a @papa-pepper post!
Yep, @smooth cruised over with a whale flag and dropped the payout of my post from over $50 to just below $30. So, now it’s time to post about how evil @smooth is and go all Captain Ahab, right? Well, that is an option and I certainly have the freedom to do so, but I do have other options as well.
OTHER OPTIONS?
Knowing that a real concern for steemit is the reason why @smooth has been downvoting, I thought that I would share a thought that I had in response. After all, @smooth left me a kind reply stating the reason for the downvote. Also, the post was still worth about $30 anyway, which is not too bad these days.
So, kindly and calmly, I replied, and made the following point.
Many of us do not get large payouts very often, so when we do, couldn’t a periodical larger payout just be making up for all the smaller payouts that we normally get?
I do think that if every post from certain users always get large payouts, then it can be a problem and not only tie up a lot of the rewards but also be very discouraging to others. In a case like that, I can see potentially good cause for downvoting to reduce the payout. Also, with extreme payouts that tie up a large portion of the total rewards for the day. However, I don’t think that this is what my post was.
Once I shared my thought with @smooth, the downvote was removed and the post payout increased from $29 back to $55.
Yes, the “Big, Bad, Downvote Whale” @smooth did that.
WHAT’S THE POINT?
The purpose of this post is not to run a negative or positive PR campaign for @smooth or any other whale. The purpose is to make a point. How you interact with others matters. I could have cursed @smooth and made posts complaining about what happened. (Everyone is free to choose as they wish, I’m just sharing that I’d rather not take those actions.) I could have used nasty and derogatory language against @smooth.
I could have quit steemit. I could have flagged every comment that @smooth made. I could have made a meme about it. But, instead, I chose to discuss and share some thoughts.
Rather than resorting to emotional, childlike, or negative behavior, I chose to have a respectful conversation with another adult, and @smooth chose to do likewise.
Of course I had no guarantee that anything would change on the payout of my post, and it didn’t even have to, but @smooth chose to. I understood the viewpoint of @smooth and @smooth understood the viewpoint of @papa-pepper. Not only that, we both concluded that the viewpoint of the other was valid. Also, @smooth now may have a slightly different perspective one this issue, which could potentially affect future voting and downvoting by whales.
THE STEEMIT COMMUNITY
Overall, @papa-pepper isn’t just concerned about @papa-pepper any more than @smooth is just concerned about @smooth. There is much going on here that involves a whole community, and it involves every one of you too. If you have thoughts on the matter, please respectfully share them below, and thanks for your time.
In case you are interested in seeing the full conversation between @smooth & @papa-pepper, the LINK to that post can be found HERE. Our discussion is in the comments.
Also, you may be thinking that it is easy to interact kindly and respectfully when things go in my favor. It is easier, to be sure, but even when things are hard, they are still possible to do! Plus, the current potential payout for that post is at $66.29 and although it will probably be dropping slightly (they usually seem to in the morning) before the first payout in 5 hours, there is still a chance that the payout could receive an "adjustment" due to a whale downvote. Whales certainly have the freedom to use their Steem Power in that way.
Regardless of what happens to me or my posts, at least there is a potential that whales will take your blogging history into consideration prior to adjusting a payout with a downvote. If it's your first big hit or perhaps making up for many low paying posts, maybe they will just swim on by! Either way, Papa cares, and I hope that you choose how you interact wisely!
STEEMIT LIKE YOU MEAN IT! (RESPECTFULLY)
FOLLOW
