Yeah, one of those "This is why I'm pro this publishing platform and you should all upvote me!" posts. Hah, okay, not really. But I am pro Scorum, though. I'll just try to have something constructive to offer, still.

Some of you may know about the news that broke some time back now that Steemit, INC. is forced to lay off 70% its staff. And there are questions being asked right now about how the chain is even going to survive in the long run.

I've all but given up on Steemit, myself. After two years of dedicating a lot of time, effort, and money into it.

This lead me to think of some of the reasons why, and what I'd like to see Scorum do differently.

When I joined Steemit, I was absolutely a holder.

I bought STEEM with my own fiat, I powered up what I earned.

Because I believed in the project, and I felt that the community was very nice at start. Yeah, a little fake, for sure, but still welcoming enough for me to enjoy my stay.

A positive community that engaged with you and rewarded you built loyalty. And that loyalty then lead to me showing that loyalty off by buying and holding.

I was like that for a considerable amount of time.

Eventually, however, things started to change. I was noticing users on heavy autovote lists being in constant dumping mode; immediately dumping their earnings to the markets, adding sell pressure on the token. This never affected the autovotes. They were some of the most heavily rewarded authors on Steemit - yet they were the ones doing the most harm by their dumping.

It was a little disheartening to see, little by little, how it was all about the "Good Brothers" club, and being in that club. It didn't matter how much downward pressure you added to the token, being in the right Club assured that a significant amount of daily STEEM was allocated to you.

This was usually the result of "Scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" type of vote trading. The short-sighted type of "This money tee is going to dry up eventually, let's take all we can and fuck everything else" profit-seeking.

And hey, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with profit-seeking, but that type of short-sightedness has, in my less than humble opinion, contributed to the downfall of STEEM. Even though people want to only talk about the general crypto downtrend, STEEM has also gone down in BTC terms, and that only happens when more people dump the token than buy it.

So, it's not the profit-seeking I have a problem with, it's the short-sightedness. There's a way to make sure everyone makes more money, but it takes work.

People respond to incentives. Whatever the incentives are in any given environment, will shape the way the people within said environment behave.

That's why it's paramount to pay close attention to the incentives on a platform such as Scorum.

I'd like for the whales of Scorum to really keep in mind that what you reward, you get more of. Every single time.

I'm especially curious as to what is going to happen when and if liquid payments become a part of the platform. We will more than likely see a lot of dumping at the beginning. And hey: people selling the tokens they've earned is part of the game, absolutely. But I really do feel that constant dumping should not be rewarded by the whales.

Dumping, like I said, adds downward pressure on the token, and that's not good for anybody's token. The constant dumpers dump, exit, take the profits, and run away laughing to the bank, while the community is left licking its wounds.

And soon, we will be looking at a Steemit-like situation.

Content quality should matter when giving out upvotes, but since I'm planning to power up myself - as well as generally hold what I earn - and become at least a quasi-significant stakeholder here, I will surely be looking at people's dumping and power down behaviour before handing out upvotes.

And I'd like to see more of that.

No, it shouldn't be a thing where if you've sold some tokens, you're blacklisted in the community - that sort of stuff just breeds poisonous attitudes and shit talk - but someone who never does anything but breeds for upvotes and dumps everything he earns, I have no interest in upvoting.

Hell, I may even flag for disagreement of rewards.

As for me, I really love the site, but a funny way that it shows with me is the fact that I haven't posted that often yet. It's simply because I care about the quality of my posts, so I only want to post something when I feel it's good enough. I've kinda missed that, honestly, since content quality became such a non-factor on Steemit.

I'm also in the fortunate position of getting good support on my posts. This makes it even more important for me to focus on the quality of the stuff I put out since I feel that the bigger the support network, the larger the responsibility of a content creator on a site like this.

The bigger the user, indeed, the larger the responsibility in showing new users and potential investors what to expect.

I personally am not a believer in the concept of "free", and while it may seem free to provide content on a blogging site in exchange for upvotes, the cost mechanism is, in fact, that level of responsibility which reflects on the value of the token used to reward you.

If you neglect that responsibility, it will come back to haunt you sooner or later.

I have high hopes for this platform, so I'd like to see it avoid some of the most obvious pitfalls Steemit fell down many times over.

The reason I'm very much on board with Scorum is because the community reminds me of what Steemit used to be, and had the potential to be, back when I first joined it.

It's built up the same kind of loyalty in me that I once felt for STEEM.