Back in May I attended the EOS VIP Party, where I also met some very interesting and cool fellow steemians. At the party, there was also plenty of delicious food offered. However, I've gotta admit... those sliders were pretty darn delicious, and perhaps by far my favorite!
And that got me thinking... you know, everyone ought to have a slider, even little minnows. We all deserve at least a chance to try one, or two, or three of these savory and deliciously delectable delights! 😋
And now part of that "dream" has finally come to fruition... I'd like to introduce you all to my latest TamperMonkey script: 😁
- enables a vote slider for steemians with over 72 SP
- provides better upvote notifications
- easily monetize expired content past payout by targeting active comments by the author instead
Trying to implement all this directly into the current steemit.com interface has certainly taken me for a bit of a spin. But then again, I've been conceptualizing some of these ideas for almost as long as I've been posting on STEEMIT!
Part 1: Why can't I have a vote slider too...
Since HF19 was released, one of the biggest pains felt by fellow steemians with under 500 SP is that they can't access the vote slider. Before HF19, it really wasn't such an issue. Given each vote cost 1/2% vote power at the time, and you could vote 40 times a day before reaching 80% vote power, sub 500 SP users would rarely find much use for the slider anyway.
Post-HF19, however, each vote was now worth 2%, and those same 40 votes would knock you right down to 20% vote power! That's probably fine for newer users with under 100 STEEM POWER who probably don't vote all that much yet anyway. As you grow, learn the ropes, and integrate and interact more with the STEEMIT community, you also tend to vote more. You recognize the value of voting up thoughtful or appreciative comments as well.
I mean, in the virtual world, what better way is there to "spread the love", have a "fist bump" or two, along with a quick "thank you". Tossing even a few cents on a comment says all that and more in spades! As such, this becomes second nature for more established users. For those just starting out, those options aren't even on the table... until NOW that is!
While alternate STEEMIT interfaces such as @jesta's chainbb.com or eSteem Mobile App users have offered the vote slider to lower SP users for a while now, it's never been available on STEEMIT.com itself! Of course, you also have to be comfortable sharing your "posting key" with other services as well. With this TamperMonkey script, that all changes, along with much more as you'll soon discover (and it all works directly on STEEMIT.com)...
First, I just wanted to make one thing clear. Lately many low SP users have experienced bandwidth issues interfacing with the blockchain. While there are several initiatives in the works to alleviate some of these issues, be aware that the more transactions you make on the STEEMIT blockchain (ie. more votes, especially many very small votes) the greater the chance you may be rate-limited for a period of time. If this happens to you, just wait a little while for your account to recover. Also consider voting a bit less frequently, and with more vote power as well.
You can check your current "Bandwidth Remaining" on steemd.com, or if you're hanging out in one of the Discord Chatrooms such as Whaleshares where WhaleBoT "lurks", 🐳he'll🐋 show you the approximate bandwidth you have remaining along with your vote power (ie. "whalebot vp alexpmorris").
Part 2: Why can't I monetize after 7 days?!
Your sweat, blood, and tears. Your hard work, your videos, your music, your art... It's timeless, it's priceless, why can't you monetize your "art" on the blockchain... FOREVER?! Sorry folks, after 7 days it's simply... "yesterday's news". 😞😢
Now, I don't know about forever, but for now, unless the STEEMIT "powers that be" find reason to change this feature in an upcoming hard fork, you can continually monetize past works... through COMMENTS! While your posts may expire, post comment threads can continue indefinitely! I really started to think about this after HF19, when some comments I had written earned me more in payout than several of my earlier posts combined!
I still receive comments here and there on some of my past content, especially my more "popular" posts. And that's what the script looks to "monetize". In the example, you'll see that we missed the "opportunity" to vote on @nepd's "HairShares" post, as the active voting period had ended. However, there were still plenty of fresh comments by @nepd that had not yet expired!
As long as a post still contains at least ONE ACTIVE COMMENT, whether the post is 1 week or 6 months past payout, the "Past Payout Monetizer" will find and target THAT COMMENT for an upvote instead. And as simply as that, you can easily reward the author for their hard work, even if you've discovered it months after the first payout! Now, just for reference, this doesn't mean you should revisit all your old posts once a week with a fresh comment. However, back in the day when a video on our YouTube channel vlogolution went viral, people would continually leave comments on them, some even to this day!
I believe this dynamic will grow on STEEMIT as well, especially as more people understand the potential benefits. And if you still have people commenting on your past posts, there's one more incentive to leave a nice comment in response, even if it's just a quick thank you for appreciating your work!
SteemIt + YouTube = Steem...Q?!
Part of the reason I built this script was to also demonstrate a sort of "proof of concept". In order to really take this to the next level, I'll pivot over to @furion's recent post on his progress with steemQ and view.ly. In his post he states one of the key issues they face:
Fair and cost effective incentive system for node providers to store and stream content.
Now, I'm not saying I have every aspect of this completely worked out. But what if at least part of the rewards from a particular steemQ post (comments included) could be thought of as adding funds to a continuous faucet. Each stream provider could be paid some fraction of a cent per second of video or audio streamed. If the faucet "runs dry", viewers will be greeted with a message to that effect.
If the content is considered valuable enough, anyone can come in and add some more "upvote power" to a comment, even months later, and the video immediately comes back online again. In essence, it continues to produce for both content creators and content streamers, indefinitely! The power of that one vote may be sufficient to "keep the ball rolling", while supporting 1000s of additional views for others to enjoy.
The TamperMonkey Script
If you're also using my "Hide Resteems" script, be sure to update to the latest version. I made some additional tweaks to capture a few more edge cases. For both scripts, capturing all of STEEMIT.com's state changes is a bit tricky. While I believe they now catch 95%+ of the page changes and dynamic updates, some might still slip through. For example, if for some reason you're missing the RESTEEM button, just try refreshing the page.
If you plan to use both scripts together, also make sure that "Hide Resteems" loads first! I tried dealing with the conflicts (mostly jquery scope-related issues), but due to the implementation, this seems to be the easiest solution for now. If you happened to install "Hide Resteems" (HR) after "Steemit Post Vote Slider and Past Payout Monetizer" (SPVS), go to HR's "Settings -> Position", and make sure the order (position number) is lower for HR than for SPVS. If it's running in the correct order, when you click the TamperMonkey extension logo, this is what you should see:
For those who are already familiar with TamperMonkey and want to try jumping right in, you can easily install either or both scripts directly from greasyfork.org:
Script #1: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/31120-hide-resteems
Script #2: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/31619-steemit-post-vote-slider-and-past-payout-monetizer
You can also find both scripts on github.com as well:
Script #1: https://github.com/alexpmorris/HideResteems
Script #2: https://github.com/alexpmorris/SteemitPostVoteSliderAndPastPayoutMonetizer
For those unfamiliar with TamperMonkey, it's a very popular userscript manager, available for Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari, Opera Next, and Firefox. The scripts can easily be added to your TamperMonkey "Dashboard" as just another script to run, complete with source code as well so you can be quite certain there's no tamper "monkey business" going on! 🙊
TamperMonkey VIDEO HowTo...
If you're new to TamperMonkey, this terrific 2 minute video overview should get you right up to speed:
Finally...
So with that, fellow steemians, I leave this in your capable hands. I welcome you all to share your thoughts and ideas on what I've built and release here, and I hope these scripts serve to further empower you all along this collective journey into the "gift economy" we call STEEMIT. Just remember to stay humble and "keep it real" my friends!
"With great power comes great responsibility", or something like that, so "they" say...
Also just wanted to throw in this last little blurb... In my previous post, I had rudimentally compared the valuation of STEEMIT to FaceBook and SNAP. @knircky just wrote an excellent article that goes much deeper than my short bit towards the end of that post. He compares the valuations of STEEMIT, Facebook, twitter, etc versus active monthly users:
Steem: 250m / 100k = $2500
Facebook : 485b/2B = $243
Twitter: 14b/328m = $42.68
Snapchat: 17b/255m = $66.67
And remember, STEEM / SP holders are collective owners in the platform. If STEEMIT can achieve just a small fraction of these valuations... well, here's the link to "evaluate" for yourselves:
Link: The value of Steem and its users: 1 Steem user = 10 Facebook users!
Once again, it's always possible I've missed something, so if you have any issues, or even just to share your experience with these scripts, please be sure to comment below!
😊 And as always, I appreciate your upvote, your follow and all your comments! 😊