Almost every Steemian is guilty of either under-using their Steem power or abusing it. In this report we will discuss this issue, the consequences and dialogue for a solution in the comment.

The problem of not much upvoting

Each day, every user can upvote atleast 40 times before draining down their Steem power's effectiveness. However this feature is the most under used and mis-used feature on Steem.

Several whales are simple too busy to read content or upvote anything while several others are even ignorant of the fact that by not upvoting they are leaving money on the table.

In another twists, there are those who only upvote their own posts and comments in an attempt to make as much money for themselves as possible while keeping their Steem Power at 100%.

How do we address the issue?

Is it even an issue at all?

Yes. By not upvoting you are under-using the upvoting feature; by selfishly upvoting you are mis-using the feature.

Either ways, you are not helping yourself or the community by leaving lots of money on the table.

How we attempt to address the issue

Curation trails

Most people simply use Steem voters and Streemian to automate the process of upvoting content upvoted for by other people they "trust".

Unfortunately, its all about the money more than about genuinely upvoting good content. People only set their upvoting rules on Steem voter to upvote content which is published by an author whose posts are known to make lots of money.

Again, they only upvote after 30 minutes of publishing to maximize their curation rewards. Curation is no longer about finding and appreciating good content, its about making money.

Delegation of Steem power

Most people have turned to delegating Steem Power to bots. This might be the most "kind" way of maximizing the use of your Steem power - provided you delegate to a good bot.

The main challenge here is that the process of delegating Steem power is quiet cumbersome for the average user.

Selfish whales

There are some whales who are always available on Steem chat, Discord and Steem and obviously have all the time in the world to read or upvote something, however they simple will not.

Instead they just blog and send all their time promoting their own post on Steem chat or responding to comments.

Self upvoting

People used to write as much comments as possible just to upvote it themselves and benefit from their Steem Power. However these days upvoting your own comment is under the threat of censorship by the @smackdown.kitty bot.

The case of @SpotLight

@SpotLight is a new project which awards 10,000 delegated Steem power to one winner for a week. Participants are selected by SpotLight and users vote by comment to support their favorite contestant.

We have voted in the recent event after being asked by a participant. However, our review of the services is that it is crude and not impressive.

Participant go about spamming and begging anyone for votes so they win, and when they win the simply use the delegated power for their own benefits.

While the project is one great one, it turns out that there is not much usefulness in it. How useful is it to delegate 10,000 Steem Power to one random user?

The winners are typically very selfish and only upvote their own posts to keep the voting power up. By doing so they waste the Steem power which could have been used to upvote the quality content of several others.

Of what use is that to the community? Why not instead give it to some useful project like;

@ScreenName - highlight the best quality but undervoted contents of the day!
@Bestof - highlight the best comments on Steemit!
@OriginalWorks - recognizes original content.
@MinnowSupport - support minnows on Steemit.
@SteemBoard - provides achievement medals to Steemians.
@Curie - curates great content.
@randowhale/ @booster - sells whale upvotes.
@promoted - upvotes promoted content.

The case of @Smackdown.Kitty

Right from the introductory post, we made it clear that @Smarkdown.kitty was not a great ideal. Just check the account of @Smackdown.kitty to see the amount of delegated Steem Power they have.

Instead of putting all the Steem power to good use by upvoting some genuinely good content on Steemit, DTube or elsewhere, we have over 101,053.512 Steem Power being wasted in a comment censoring campaign on a supposedly autonomous anti-censoring platform.

It does not matter whether or not a Steemian upvote their own comment, everyone has the right to comment and by flagging comments simply because the author upvoted it, is literally spelled; CENSORSHIP.

When @smackdown.kitty flags/downvotes comments, they are effectually hiding it while also reducing the reputation of the author - for no reason at all.

If you have a problem with how people react on Steemit, you either mind your own business, try to influence them(like we are doing in the post) or get off Steem. You do not make yourself the law and and go about censoring people on a Blockchain platform.

That 101,053.512 Steem power being wasted on the censoring @smackdown.kitty campaign could be better delegated to better and useful projects as already mentioned above;

@ScreenName - highlights the best quality but undervoted contents of the day!
@Bestof - highlight the best comments on Steemit!
@OriginalWorks - recognizes original content.
@MinnowSupport - support minnows on Steemit.
@SteemBoard - provides achievement medals to Steemians.
@Curie - curates great content.
@randowhale/@booster - sells whale upvotes.
@promoted - upvotes promoted content.

What do you think?

Are we not leaving too much money on the table by not upvoting 40 times a day?
How do we best deal with the issue of wasting Steem power?
Are @spotlight and @smackdown.kitty just wasting Steem power?

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