Let's Talk About Our Curation Problem
For a long time the community was part of a curation initiative that allowed us to nominate good posts to receive higher rewards, this lasted several years. During this time, we all worked day and night to get people's posts seen and curated. As part of this initiative, the community account @moviesonhive was not allowed to directly profit from the work we did. This was an agreement based on fairness. A result of this, however, was that once the support came to an end, our community account had very little Hive Power to curate people. Since Christmas I have been ensuring that all posts from this account are set to have their rewards to 100% HP, and from time to time I allocate my personal account's rewards to the community account to contribute to its growth. Already there has been quite a nice amount of growth in the HP this account holds, and I'm quite proud of how quickly some of it has developed. There are no intentions to power any of this down, nor are there any intentions to change the current 100% rewards structure alongside the current posting habits, as well as future ones to come. I have quite an aggressive stance on building this community account and improving the community curation all around.
That said, as of late I have been noticing some unfortunate circumstances. This is a community in which many of its posters are doing incredibly well at the lucky support of certain large curators. Now, this is a great thing for many, especially given how little HP we have going around to curate the posts in the community, we do want to see people fairly getting rewarded for the great posts they share. Though, if you look at our stats, you can see that we hold a rather decent amount of active users. And in terms of subscribers, this community is one of the largest on Hive. It's quite astonishing how large this space has managed to grow! But the problem remains in the other numbers: interactions and weekly pending rewards. These two are ridiculously low for the size of the community, and there's only so much we can do. A community is meant to mean community efforts, and I'm not really seeing that in many of the people that post here. As a recent example: it came to my attention the other day that one particular poster manages to make between 30$ - 50$ per post in this community, having accumulated a whopping near 30k HP over their time here on Hive, yet their total curation history came to LESS than 100 HP. That means they almost never curate other people's posts. Their excuse? Their HP is low and their vote is worthless. This isn't true, low accounts can curate even with little rewards distributed per vote. It all adds up, especially over time.
Now, this isn't a complaint that people sell off their rewards. We all have lives and things to deal with. Hive can be a great platform that does contribute to the little expenses we all face in our day-to-day lives, and sure enough we all sell off some of the rewards we've accumulated, especially with market cycles where prices are quite attractive to do so. Instead, this is a complaint that the curation is nearly nonexistent. Another poster in the community has accumulated 25k HP in their time on hive, having ONLY distributed 5 HP. Does that sound reasonable to you? It certainly doesn't to me. Now, I'm not sure what the criteria is for those larger curation accounts is for them to pick and choose certain posters to get those hefty votes, but there's a genuine problem here when many of the larger earners are neither commenting, nor voting on anyone in the community or elsewhere on Hive. The whole point of a platform like Hive is that we shouldn't be relying on specific parties to maintain the platform, it should be decentralised down to the curation aspects. Which means people voting people, not relying entirely on whale accounts to curate. One look at the community shows there is a massive reliance on whales here to do the curation, with most people being lucky if they can break a single dollar in curation rewards on a post without that more centralised support.
With this discovery, I am going to be changing how we curate the posts in the community, with a more laser-eye-focused effort on people's curation efforts, not necessarily within just this community, but on Hive itself. If you happen to be one of the lucky ones that gets constant whale support but can't be bothered to upvote a few other people's posts throughout the week, you will no longer get any support from us. And that includes the future as we scale, if I don't see improvements in the curation efforts. Alongside this, some of you may notice a new implementation: member tags. If I stumble across someone that has insanely large historical rewards compared to totally disproportionate curation rewards, then you win yourself a fresh new member tag that helps us keep an eye on you in the community. This tag basically tells us to avoid you. You'll also get a message from our community account informing you that your curation efforts are abysmal and should be improved. If there are improvements over the months, then the tag is removed and the curation from us will continue. The tag also serves as a reminder to those who aren't curating or perhaps event are: do you want to support those who don't take the time to support you?
Sure, this may seem like a rant and a drastic action, but it's one that's necessary. We need to address this problem as a community, because curation is a community effort, not a single party's obligation.
It is a fact that in this community there are many spoiled, as well as preferred by the whales. I have seen them, publish in only one language and don't even answer the comments, they don't interact in the community as such, and within less than an hour of their publication, they already have 30$ made easily.
The truth is that I do not know if I fell into that group you are talking about but since some time ago I have also noticed many changes in here.
Now, my question in this situation is, wouldn't it be better to make a purge of these users? Once done, if they decide to return because they are passionate about writing here, they are required to collaborate through a delegation of Hive Power or become part of the trail.
Or I don't know, you could also modify the rules so that people here post once a week like is done on Vibes.
Maybe my suggestion is more radical, but if you want to tighten the pants to stop the abuse of certain users, it seems to me that it is quite reasonable.
Before I finish, I want to emphasize that I am only giving my opinion, if that is what the post was made for, of course. Greetings! 💕
You don't. You even have a lot of votes throughout the week: 267 votes and 4.43 HP in curation rewards over the past 30 days. Given your account size and historical author rewards, it's not bad at all. Naturally author rewards tend to be higher than curation rewards, but it's when there's a massive difference that is bothering me.
That doesn't sound right to me. I don't think we're in a position to be trying to punish those people in a way that stops them from posting here. That'd be stretching a bit too far with the power I have. I don't want to be doing that. I do want the space to be open to all. And to try to profit from it (even if it does lead to benefiting the community account and improving our curation power) doesn't really solve the problem. Especially if it means the curation remains centralised just on my end. I think the best course of action at the moment is just to not vote them with the community account, and instead tell them their current behaviour isn't really welcome.
Good for them for somehow getting that support, whether it's deserved or not is another question entirely as that side of things is subjective. But yeah, some people here are making insane amounts and as you said, just not even bothering to comment, reply, or vote on others. It does bother me when I see someone has made 25k Hive over their duration of time here on Hive, but they've only curated others for an amount of less than 100. That just speaks of people most of the time posting and leaving immediately after.
I don't think people should be forced to hold their rewards, but I do think the people making those significantly larger amounts than others should at least be voting on other people's posts. If they were making 30 - 50 dollars per post AND voting on other people's posts, this post wouldn't exist. And having seen this pattern unfold for too long, I just think it's time to start talking about it publicly. If we all continue down this path, then Hive dies as we rely on whales to curate select few, while everyone else gets nothing and then leaves the platform.
You are right. And I admit it, my suggestion was quite extreme lol but according to what you say, besides making it public I think they should then modify the group rules. Let's see if they take them more into account over there, besides asking for only one post a week like they do on Vibes.
It is not to compare both communities, I say it is because they also have a lot of traffic of users who interact and had to take that measure to prevent them from monopolizing the rewards. It's just a matter of taking the example or failing that, talking to someone from another community to see what they could suggest as a solution, who knows how to do it from your same point of view and authority.
I am just one of the many users here in Hive where one of my favorite communities is this one, anyway, I hope my words have been supportive, whatever decision you make, I will be aware of it. Thanks for sharing this news. 💕
I remember that when I arrived to HIVE 4 years ago someone recommended me to comment the publications of other users, he told me that it was an excellent way to make community and I have been doing it in fact I have a personal goal of commenting at least three publications within the community in which I will upload my publication, some days due to extreme fatigue it is difficult for me, but I try to do it.
Now, I notice for a while, with concern and amazement that there are people who do not have the delicacy and education to respond to the comment that someone left them, that for me is serious, because I have seen it even in community leaders and others seem to respond only to those who are their friends and the rest of the comments are ignored.
I particularly, I comment and if by chance they do not respond a first time I let it go, but if I visit another publication of the same hivers and it leaves me again without response I never comment again, because it is a lack of education as I mentioned especially if the comment is something that looks took effort and makes you know that they really took the time to read the publication, so I totally agree with what has been raised in the publication.
I think it's really telling whether someone is just busy with life and not commenting/posting/curating, or whether it's a more intentional outcome of just not caring. Sometimes we do see moments where we get more caught up in our actual lives and can't commit a lot of time to Hive, and that's perfectly fine. In regards to comments, it's even fine to just not comment if you have nothing to say, but still curate other people's posts.
This isn't even a community problem specifically, it's a larger problem across Hive where too many people rely on larger curation guilds or whales to reward them, and thus they just don't care to interact in any other way with others, they just know they'll get the votes either way. Even if your vote is 0.01, it counts for something. It shows you're an active member of the community of Hive. It shows you have an intent to communicate and distribute rewards.
I agree that many times we are busy and don't have the time to respond, but as you say we can vote on that comment to let whoever wrote it know that it was read and appreciated, we can also visit their blog and leave them a comment and/or vote, on their last post the theme is to not be indifferent, to give it a name, to other users within this community and on HIVE in general
Yeah exactly! Voting takes no time whatsoever, so there really isn't an excuse for not doing it. Commenting is understandable: either nothing to say or not enough time in the moment. It happens.
I don't think, it is malicious. The problem on Hive is, that many users have delegated their HP to large curation-accounts and are not voting manually. I can imagine that many writers think, no one reads their articles, when 150 votes come through at a time.
For a social platform, Hive is not optimally geared towards social interactions. I don't know, how to fix this, and you are correct in lamenting the fact of someone not responding to a comment, but the Hive experience can be quite isolating sometimes and many people will possibly just do the bare minimum as a consequence.
You are absolutely right, it is not geared towards that, but I think it is a matter of wanting to do it and yes sometimes the experience can be isolating, especially at the beginning, if you think you will have input right away, it is something that takes time, it takes effort it is a matter of discipline perseverance and even luck and that is why I think many people limit themselves to doing the minimum as you have pointed out, thanks for stopping by to comment.
Thanks for your kindly reminder @moviesonhive 😊
I think we all need a little reminder sometimes. Some though, they need a bit of a kick haha.
Exactly @namiks It's dark but true...
Wow. I wonder why they keep getting big votes 😃. One parameters for curators, IMO, should be the engagement level.
I totally agree and inspired by your decision to focused on those who don't get constant whale support. I hope all hive accounts will do the same, no matter how much their stake is. I hope everyone is curating others 🙂
It's genuinely a mystery. It's clear that accounts like appreciator really focus on certain authors. They can post whatever in any community and they'll get the support. Then for others it can be a bit more randomised. There's some structure there but it doesn't quite make sense.
Anyway, it's not really a matter how much others make, it's the fact that some of these accounts are making a stupid amount but contribute nothing to the rest of Hive in the form of engagement. Votes are everything and if the top earners aren't bothering to curate anyone, and the top curators aren't bothering to curate anyone else, then all that's left is death for Hive as people earn mere fractions of a cent and then leave.
We've been seeing this happening for over a year now as communities see less activity. Naturally rewards decrease as the price does, but I've noticed some of the biggest communities are lucky if they're above 200 active users. And very lucky if they're breaking above 1k in pending weekly rewards. The reality is, so few are curating. So people are just not posting so much.
Curators/curation guilds definitely do a great job, there's no doubt about it. But I think we're just constantly pushing into too much reliance on that side of things. Every cent vote counts for something, really.
That's perfectly reasonable. Simply support only those that are invested in giving back somehow. Interestingly, "giving back" is also profitable, yet many don't realise.
By all means, please do. That'll hopefully educate some of us.
The tags, however... Yes, you can add titles to roles, but wouldn't that give a kind of negative perception? Mobile users usually do not see the role titles, so just seeing someone who is not "doing so great" on Hive and/or in the community with the tag seems uhmm...you know. Just wondering. What do you think? I don't have a better solution either, though.
Yes. However, I am beyond caring at this point. The tag is reserved for those who I feel are genuinely going too far with it. The people that get insanely large rewards from curators but have in their entire time on Hive barely curated anyone else. It's not for people that could do a bit better. It's for those who need to get their shit together at this point.
If you're someone with like 1k HP and you're curating throughout the week, then it's fine. It's not a matter of how much HP you hold.
The tag is partially for me to keep an eye on those people, to see when they post and then take a look and see if there have been improvements. So they appear for me and the mods to take into consideration to simply avoid curating them. It does also have a negative connotation with it. And that's a good thing, it should be telling others that these people have no interest in giving you any support, or anyone else on the platform, so are they worthy of your time? Would you curate someone that won't make a single vote throughout the month despite being active almost daily?
Makes sense. Clarified. Then I guess there'll be a purge for it to work well.
By the way, I saw you mention "number of posts curated..." How do you check that? I'm curious.
https://hivestats.io/@namiks
Shows historical author rewards and curation rewards. As well as current votes throughout the week. Really useful tool. I don't like leo stuff, but that I can say is a useful and well made thing to have around.
Oh, yeah. Thanks!
Namiks "doesn't like Leo stuff." I wonder why. Things are way different now, like the frontend where you can do film microblogs.
I have both personal and general reasons that I'd prefer to just refrain from posting here as to avoid all the potential drama. But if I see a good tool I'll admit it and support it.
That's alright. I understand.
Greetings @moviesonhive and @namiks
I have also observed it, and people who only receive without giving anything in return are very selfish and bad feelings, one can be in a hurry, tired and without much hp but you always have to think of others.
I comment at least 3, and I vote for more than 3 in the community, if you came to post and did not comment immediately is by some chance event, power outage or something like that, and as soon as I can I come back and comment.
Everything he wrote I support him and I think he is right.
Yep! There are times where we're busy, life gets in the way. We can't allocate so much time to Hive. But if you're going to post, it doesn't take much effort to quickly roam through 3 or 4 posts and curate them too.
It's sad, but Hive won't last or grow if this behaviour continues. We have to decentralise curation more.
This person is missing a lot of opportunities with using his HP correctly.
Some users are not even aware about curation rewards — so it's probably one of the reasons why they do not curate.
I like this initiative, I think I should post movie blogs since I love movies.
Yeah there are people that have low HP and assume that their vote isn't worth anything so they don't bother, but I think that's a less common instance. Even without taking into consideration that you get rewarded for it, curating other people is a fundamental part of Hive. There is no Hive without it. We can't be relying on whales to curate, especially when it's evident that they have flawed curation structures leading to this problem in the first place.
It seems to me that the topic of promoting the community to the participation within the community is a bit right and it is because it seems to me that this is a community that lends itself to generate massive comments as well as interaction and it is because of the topics that are reached to touch here.
Yes, I think the idea of supporting and supporting each other is right, because this growth belongs to all of us.
In my case, well, I may be failing a little, but I think that along with other users, we have taken the liberty to participate with threads about movies or series and of course, selecting this wonderful community.
I think you're doing fine. It's a fair amount of curation to earnings. You aren't one of those high earnings and you are curating people. Even if it's outside of this community. It counts. Don't worry about your own performance. :)
Hive in general is all about the interactions, every single one counts. If you can't always comment, that's fine. If you can't always vote because of time, that's also fine. But there's the problem of those who earn so much but have never really given anything back. Those are the ones that need to change.
If there is something easy and gratifying to do in hive is to give likes, this applies to any platform and I think it is positive to encourage that because beyond the monetary value of a like.... each person has a moral value which is linked to give like and thus motivate, encourage, demonstrate appreciation for a content or a content creator for the creations he makes and the effort he puts into them.
What you have raised I hope they don't take it the wrong way and deflect the message because what I read in the post, I see it positive, it is correcting behavior towards something that is right and I agree with it @namiks
If there is something in hive that is a genius is the algorithm concept of the Trail, the person can motivate other creators without even being on the pc, so I understand what you mention because there is no excuse for not releasing the like worth what it is worth.
Hive is currently a platform where I think the vast majority of users are content creators and I think we are waiting for sometime in the future to achieve that portion of the missing pie which is a massive amount of users who consume that content arrives soon (it is the portion that if youtube etc has where they have users who exclusively consume content and nothing else .... and they are voracious and are many in number), I do not know if I'm wrong in that idea but I guess that's why they do all those marketing efforts and whales on the platform and just for the latter is that the content creators who make life in the ecosystem is necessary that we get likes.... because a content creator without likes dies and if the creators perish so does the platform.
While that massive amount of users who only consume content arrives, I think content creators should support us as pillars to not leave all the hard work to the whales when we ourselves can collaborate by giving our bit because in order to continue on this difficult path of creating content, that is achieved with the Buhonitos, blessed and wonderful Likes....
I for example when my posts are supported only by the Trail of Likes of the community and by my muchachones who are my people, that motivates me to continue because we are on the right track in what I like to do... my beloved reviews 🤗
I have always considered super important to comment and vote the publications of others as this is a symbiosis and I was very sad to see that it was not applied simply gave votes and positive votes to people who did absolutely nothing to comment or curate the publications of others which made no sense because we were becoming steemit again, and that really sucked and made me walk away completely because it did not value the effort that one did as I commented up to 20 or 30 publications a day and booted them all with the same percentage of vote.
So I praise this initiative and I consider it something super important because it is necessary for one of the largest communities to continue growing and remain stable and there are no people who take advantage of that.
Oh yeah, such is what's going on here. Can't blame you for feeling such. Thanks for letting us know of the changes.