## A Humble Minnow's Perspective<h2>
<center>[![suggestion.jpg](https://s19.postimg.org/h3vnn16ub/suggestion.jpg)](https://postimg.org/image/64agbfgf3/)</center>

As a newbie and a minnow, I don't have any problem with the founders setting themselves up with significant stakes in Steemit. It's to be expected, in fact. I do not believe it's a scam or a Ponzi scheme, anyone who thinks that doesn't really know what a scam or Ponzi scheme really are. Steemit is a great opportunity and the future of social media.

The biggest complaint I'm seeing is from fellow minnows is that whales pretty much only upvote other whales (or the quasi-celebrities who sign up). This is viewed not as supporting quality content but as "keeping the wealth in the family".

Whales may be producing great content, but so are some other people that aren't whales. A single vote from a whale would probably give some users, in that single vote, more SP and SD then they've earned in the last month, even with 50-60 or even 100 upvotes on a single post.

SD and SP are actually LESS an indicator of quality than the NUMBER of votes is, but even stupid cat videos can get a lot of votes. I can buy SP, and mine it, and then I can give big upvotes to my friends. But if I'm buying it and mining it, it doesn't come from quality content. And my upvote could give more SP to a stupid cat video than a steemion doing superb photography, writing original poetry, or producing great news content.

You see how that works?  As a big stake holder in Steemit, and being friends and partners with the other large stake holders (whales), of course you're going to read their posts and comment on them. That's what friends do. It's what me and my friend do here too.

However, in creates a redistribution and creation of steem power that is not necessarily based on quality and certainly *gives the impression* (not saying it's real, saying it's the *impression*) that whales are washing each others' backs.

This needs to be dealt with somehow, because it is discouraging new users after short trials with the site.

Since I'd like to focus on solutions, here's some suggestions to play with: 
1. Limit or prohibit whales from upvoting other whales too much.
2. re-scale rewards program
3. assign groups of minnows to whales for for possible upvotes, help and comments
4. establish mentoring relationships between experienced users and noobs. This can be voluntary.
5. Find other ways to attract "celebrity" users like Bix Weir & Jeff Berwick than just big upvotes from whales
6. a *recommended board* where power users can promote quality work they come across from non-power users

There are six suggestions to get the ball rolling on how to improve/change the system so that new steemions might not get so easily discouraged and make sure quality content outside the circle of whales gets seen.

If anyone has any comments on my suggestions, or on my view of the problem, please share them below. I don't care if you disagree as long as it's thoughtful and leads to intelligent dialog.

Update: I notice my [post from 2 days ago](https://steemit.com/cn/@thornybastard/chapter-3-a-shaman-a-scholar-and-synchronicity) has 18 votes. At time of update this also has 18 votes. The post from 2 days ago paid out $5.55. This post so far is $0.04. This is presumably the same quality, if not better considering the time frame for votes, yet there is a substantial difference in potential pay out. This was Jennsky's point below.

Update: For those who think I'm complaing, I'm not. I'm just reporting the issue as I understand it. This isn't an editorial, it's reporting.  Just seems like something that needs to seen from another perspective and talked about. You can see from the discussion below this is precisely so.

Update 3: Well, I (we, minnows) may stand corrected. I just got a whale vote on [the post](https://steemit.com/cn/@thornybastard/chapter-4-the-giant-monkey-of-wutong-shan) I put up after this one! And I believe one of the commenters below did tell us it's known to happen. Keep pluggin', steemers.