No, the pictures aren't of a red pen but, if someone is old enough, they know the dread of getting a school report back and seeing *red*. I just spent about 3 hours trying to get my head around something which required some numbers but, I screwed it up somewhere, it is late and I can't work it out now. It reminded me a lot of school. 

When I proofread customers work (especially those who think they don't need the proofing) I use a lot of red in markup to point out where the mistakes actually are rather than just correcting them. A lot of my customers are older than I so it still has an emotional effect on them and draws their attention as memories of a bad test come to mind. 

https://i.imgur.com/YHJaUrE.jpg?1

The thing I was working on was trying to get my head around Vested stake and how it effcts the pool. I am not great with numbers and  it helps me to be able visualize what is going on. I have been here for over a year and I think I should havea a clear understanding of some of the things. Here is a basic part of  it. Is this basically correct for Steemit?

<blockquote>

The pool is 100 dollars

Scenario 1: There are 100 voters and each have 1 vest of access.

All vote at once on themselves. All get equal access to the pool, all get a $1 dollar return. If all vote for someone else, it is the same result, all get $1.

Each stake is worth $1 dollar.

Scenario 2: 99 have 1 vest and 1 has 51 vests making a total of 150 vest access to the pool and again, all vote once. 100/150 = 0.66c per vest. 

A person with 1 vest gets 0.66c returned, the one with 51 vests gets $33.66 dollars returned. 

</blockquote>

I am trying to just build a network in my head of little examples so I can have pegs to add to when needed or be able to turn to quickly for reference and reminders. By playing around with various scenarios I can build that web relatively quickly but, I want to make sure that I get the foundations right. Tonight, lots of red pen. 

A pretty big waste of three hours work but I guess there are worse ways to spend a Friday night than dong simple math problems and getting them wrong....

Btw, I am trying to also build my VP back up so I won't be voting until tomorrow evening except on comments. I vote on worthy comments because it takes time for people to read and comment and I would like to reward them for their effort. I would rather do that than send SBD to a bidbot and buy a prize.

Ever thought about that? People buying their own reward? It doesn't even really matter how good the content is, it is kind of pathetic. Yes, I do understand the advertising 'eyes-on' idea although that is actually nonsense. But, people are actually buying their rewards. It is like playing solitaire and buying myself a trophy or worse, a participation award. 

In a comment I made on one of @fyrstikken's posts tonight after he mentioned the fall of Nokia in regards to the degradation in content quality and general lack of quality:

<blockquote>

This is a community and it requires community engagement and recognition for it to be strong and lasting. It requires social glue and connection. The paying for votes is creating islands, not bridges.

You mentioned Nokia, their slogan was 'Connecting People' and they lost their 60% market share because they kept focusing on the tech rather than the people. Apple came in and gave people the feeling of being part of a community.

</blockquote>

This is what is missing here, the real feeling of community. There are bots and optimizations, talk of blockchains, cryptocurrencies and governance, there are hidden members, blind voters, spammers, scammers and everything else but, the community aspect is missing *on* the platforms. Perhaps an interface or SMT will fix that in the future but at the moment, engagement is hard without that real sense of community, that sense of, *'we are in this together'.* 

At the moment it feels a lot like many are only in it for themselves and those who are looking to build community are not going to get much help and support to do so. And quality content? What is that? People talk about it being subjective but, is it *so* subjective?

Perhaps people are just so used to getting participation awards for coming last that they haven't realised the work it takes to come first. Now that they have the power to judge, they rate quality on what they themselves produce. When you see your own post getting rewarded consistently, you might actually start to believe it is worth it, even if you bought your own trophy.

More red pen is needed. 

3:15 
Goodnight. 

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]