I have put together an overview with all 3 roles and what i think is reasonable etiquette and are reasonable guidelines. Hopefully this article will also give you a better idea of what the goal is for each role is and the best practices to make this platform grow to it's full potential.
DISCLAIMER: This is a rough draft, it's not the final version.
My policy
On SteemIt every action you take has a direct effect on the perceived value of the platform and therefore an indirect effect on the price of STEEM. You can be a content creator, a curator, an investor and any combination of the 3 in the same account. Let's go over what the responsibilities, expectations and guidelines are for each role.
1. Content creators
A content creator is someone who publishes posts, comments or both at least once a month. As a content creator you have the responsibility to create the highest possible quality content. The database is permanent, so make sure your content is worth using up database space. Any content that is below average could be considered spam, which makes the database needlessly large and all content harder to find. So make sure your content is good enough before publishing it.
General
- You are allowed to posts as many times a day as you want (and the network allows)
- You are allowed to 100% upvote all your posts and comments, although it's highly preferred to let others curate your content!
- Plagiarism, spam and fraud will not be tolerated so don't waste your time on it
2. Curators
A curator is someone who upvotes and downvotes (flags) content. As a curator you are expected to keep the value of the platform high by upvoting content that you think deserves more rewards and downvote content that you think deserves less rewards.
When you upvote content, you are using your share of the reward pool on 1 user. When you downvote, you remove rewards from 1 person and put it back into the reward pool for everyone to use again. The more STEEM POWER you have, the more responsibility you have when taking action. When using your full power as a large stake holder, you have to be absolutely sure your action is justified.
Upvoting
- Specifically searching for under-rewarded content is highly appreciated!
- On average you should strive for using at least 90% of your power on posts*
- On average you should strive for using at most 10% of your power on comments (that includes your own comments)*
- Consistently assigning more than 10% of your total rewards on average to your own comments could be considered spam and could result in loss of some or all rewards and reputation*
* The numbers provided are averages over a long period of time. Individual votes can be far away from your target average.
Downvoting
- You are expected to downvote all content that is over-rewarded as fast as possible (this includes cases like plagiarism, spam, fraud, below average quality content and above average quality content that is over-rewarded)
- It's highly recommended to leave a comment with your explanation for downvoting
- Downvoting will not earn you curation rewards, but will reward you by the preservation of the quality of the platform
3. Investors
An investor is someone that either invests time or money into the platform. When you invested in STEEM with "real" money, you are likely to be highly motivated and want to do everything within your power to increase the perceived value of a STEEM token. Below are the most common positive and negative effects on the future price of STEEM.
Positive:
- Actively promoting SteemIt
- Creating websites & apps
- Release quality content for people to enjoy (if your main goal isn't to make money with content creation, don't upvote your own content)
- Use your power to reward content creators appropriately
- Use your power to moderate the network
Negative:
- Lowering the payout of all content creators by removing rewards from the reward pool and placing them on yourself
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