This post explains what 
@we-are is and what it hopes to become. @we-are supports content creators with free community-based upvotes. @we-are has been running for over 18 months.
(Source: Pixabay / cegoh CC0)
STATUS: Currently upvoting 1500+ users with 20+ voting accounts that collectively control over 12000 SP, 4700 PALPOWER and various other steem-engine tokens including LEO.
@we-are helps wants Steem to become a place for vibrant global communities by providing a suite of tools for community members, community leaders and donors.
Community members
If you are participating in a community that @we-are watches, then @we-are will provide a free daily upvote from one of many voting accounts that watch your community. Members can be in more than one community.
In future, @we-are will prioritise members who demonstrate good engagement within their communities.
Community leaders
@we-are already provides a robust automatic community upvoter. If you want community member posts upvoted then @we-are can handle that without you needing to deploy equipment or have technical skills. If you have an existing community account, then @we-are can manage upvoting for you with nothing more than a posting key - so you maintain complete control. Community leaders can also manage their membership by sending a steem transfer with a specially formatted memo command. There is also a special account (
@we-are-community) that upvotes posts by community leaders to thank them for their service.
@we-are is currently building tools to assist community leaders to track the health of their communities on the steem blockchain. Current development is available at http://rdvrnwcyrrewfqra.onion/ and requires a TOR capable setup, such as TOR Browser.
Donors
An issue on the steem blockchain is that communities and people come and go so it can be hard for SP delegators to track that their delegations are still being used properly. @we-are solves this by having accounts based on region and topic that will upvote communities relevant to those accounts. Donors can delegate SP to a @we-are account knowing that it will be used for its intended purposes even if the underlying people and communities change.
For example, the #venezuelan_ community on @we-are attracts upvotes from 
@we-are-ve, 
@we-are-samerica, @we-are and 
@we-are-one. The system @we-are uses is flexible to make delegated SP work according to the donor's intentions. For larger SP delegations, say a few thousand or more, we can set up something more specific for you.
In future, @we-are will develop more reporting so that donors can see the positive impact that their delegations are making.
So many accounts, how is Voting Power managed?
Rationing. Whenever the voting power hits an upper amount in any voting account, then @we-are calculates how many posts it can upvote and then randomly selects suitable posts. If there are few posts, then they are all upvoted at the maximum strength set for that voting account. If there are too many posts, then some posts are dropped until @we-are can give a minimum sized vote. Also, each steem username will only be voted upon by an @we-are voting account once in 24 hours. But, any post from the 36 hours is considered for voting so that posters don't need to worry about scheduling their posts.
Members can increase their chances of being upvoted by setting their post to 100% steem power payout.
Lottery
An example of @we-are's flexibility is the 
@we-are-lucky lottery account. Lucky has 5000SP and upvotes at full 100% ten times per day. Upvotes the size of Lucky's can provide significant motivation to new Steemians.
What about the hardware and software?
A Raspberry PI clone, actually a NanoPi NEO2 from FriendlyElec, running Debian. This little beast is plenty powerful enough to run @we-are for now.
@we-are runs on Node JS is coded in TypeScript (javascript) and uses dsteem. The codebase is not super tidy, but it is quite stable - often running for weeks without intervention. The codebase is easy enough to start up on alternative hardware if needed.
There are no plans to move @we-are to a cloud platform because that would increases costs and we'd rather powerup the @we-are instead.
I hope this was an interesting introduction to @we-are. If you have any questions, then please ask in a comment below.
Together @we-are,
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@eturnerx
