There can be found a beautiful clarity in the ever-confusing transparency the STEEM Blockchain has to offer.
As many of us know or will discover, there are many websites and services 'attached' to the STEEM Blockchain.
The transparency of all users on steemit, the publicly databased actions of all of us, is in place for a reason. By observing not just what users are posting and resteeming yet also what they are down or up voting, commenting/replying, etc. can assist all of us in properly promoting users and content which have the whole community's interests in mind (while also properly exposing and condemning the users and content which are clearly abusing the system).
Today I discovered "Steemit Account Outgoing Votes Info" (via this post by @stellabelle).
http://steemreports.com/outgoing-votes-info/
Please allow me to clarify here that I am not attacking any single user, what individuals choose to do with their time and money on this website is entirely their own business. I am just personally sick of seeing posts of a user eating lunch or swimming in a pool getting so much attention, sharing, and (the core purpose of this site) profit.
Oh jeez... I'm making a ham and egg pizza from scratch for lunch. True story. That's gotta be worth at least 50 bucks, right?!
And meanwhile seeing mediocre to great content users had obviously put much time and effort into getting little to no attention simply because they are "too poor" to gain any ground against many of these heavily-vested accounts here.
Some, being not just heavily-vested yet also older, have become relaxed or lazy. Others selfish and spiteful, while others go on going with the flow (minimizing self-upvoting, remaining active with relevant content beyond dipping their toes in some high-dollar resort's hot tub or something).
I would just like to see everyone aware of and participating in being sure who/what they choose to promote and reward, follow and praise, are worthy of such elevation.
Some of these older and/or heavily-vested accounts don't even need the rest of us to succeed.
What I consider a poster-child example for self-upvote abuse and collusion, one particular user who chooses to use the vast majority of their upvote power to profit mostly themselves (in the following example, self-upvote's value plus the remaining majority of upvotes going to their spouse total 79.5% of their total voting power over a little under the last 2 weeks!).
Currently @ 303M VESTS (146,808.463 SP) $16.42 Max Upvote Value.
And the combination of being popularly resteemed and upvoted, heavy on comments of little to no value to whatever the original post was ("you're the man", "go man go!" x20), adds to the perplexity of it all. Pertaining to the community, that is; garbage in-profit out stands to be the new economy if these types of patterns continue. And it definitely has just as much potential to succeed as it does to fail, so long as the masses continue to invest their hard-earned fiat currencies into it. Even if the market value falls more than rises, investing in it will most always keep it afloat.
Our time here is an investment. Who we resteem or interact with is an investment.
Quality is irrelevant.
IF we allow it to be.
A few of my other favorite Activity Monitoring sites are:
steemd
Essentially the core of the blockchain, a monitoring system for stats and to view anything printed to the system.
Created by @roadscape
https://steemd.com/
SteemNow
Similar to steemd, a monitoring tool to see stats on any user.
By @penguinpablo
https://steemnow.com/
Downvote Viewer
Live Time Downvote Viewer by @reggaemuffin
https://minnowshares.net/downvote.html
steemstats
Monitoring & Activities of accounts (transactions, witnesses, etc.).
By @jesta
https://steemstats.com/#!/
steemfollowers
Following, Followers, And Mute data on any account.
https://steem.makerwannabe.com/index.php
steemcharts
Post Data For Any Author (total posts, avg. upvotes, avg. payout, and more).
by @steem.engine
If you know another activity monitoring site, or any other tools relevant to the topic here, please share below.
Thank You!