I’m days-old in Steemit and have much to learn. What attracted me to this elegantly democratic vehicle was, in part, the foundational concept of “meritocracy.” Everyone in the community may contribute to the limits of their abilities and efforts and the community determines the value of those contributions… in a far more tangible manner than a digital thumbs-up icon.

Today, while reading posts, I happened upon a comment in which the author was aggrieved that some of us did not award the full one-hundred percent value of our upvote capability. The author, and a number of other responders to his comments, believed it insulting to receive less.

I found their reasoning disconcerting on a number of levels:

Fairness – When we award full value to an average or below average work, we cheapen the value of creation truly deserving the full one-hundred percent weighting.

Dishonesty – It's intellectually dishonest to overly reward average performance; it cheapens the reward concept within the community as well as deluding the contributor, robbing them the opportunity for reflection and continuous improvement.

Reputational Damage – When Steemians overly upvote mediocre content, it calls into question the values of not only the creator but also the upvoter. We are all aware of pundits to whom we ascribe little value regarding their opinions.

Pettiness – Some contributors suggested that they were fearful of awarding less than full value because a contributor might retaliate by downvoting or flagging or other malicious payback. Is this any kind of environment for evolving  standards?

In every topical tagline, there would be a "Gold Standard" body of work that critically thinking people consider as top-notch creation. Granted, that standard is individual and certainly subjective. It is against that individual standard that one-hundred percent value should be awarded. One would imagine in a global Steemit community extremes of subjective opinion would be attenuated and a consensus opinion would eventuate.

So, my fellow Steemians, if I review your creativity and it merits one-hundred percent – I look forward to fully upvoting. If, IMHO, the work merits an upvote of lesser value, I would hope that you graciously accept my upvote in good spirits and consider why I might have offered that award value.

Think of the analogy of a rising tide – as the water fills the basin, all boats rise. Sadly, the converse is also true. 

Namaste

![Truth.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmP3XSK5Pxrq6u2gumbdCfjjxV2BUnYLw86YaWfucdG6bP/Truth.jpg)