One thing that's been bothering me as of late is seeing some projects that still operate in a way where they focus their curation based on who delegates to them.
I've made countless posts over the years discussing things and let me pre-phrase this by adding that you can curate authors based on many different metrics that are generally acceptable by the "community". I have biases as well, some friends I vote extra compared to some others who may be dishing out content of similar if not higher quality and matching their social activity and other requirements we as curators may place upon authors. I don't think there's anything wrong in doing so as long as that author's rewards they're getting are generally accepted by others and not seeming overrewarded. If the case that I were to overreward certain authors and the community rightfully points that out and adjust the rewards to the downside with downvotes I should not take it personally or become defensive about it as long as the reason for doing so is primarily the overrewarded point - I.e. if I've been pushing my bias too much in favor of those few authors. That is how we protect the reward pool and don't end up like other copycats where proof of brain/curation is merely a figment of their imagination.
To make it even simpler, here's the reason I upvote certain authors quite often.
- They produce not only great content of high quality in text, photos, etc, but are generally active socially and drive engagement to their posts even without my votes.
- They may be producing valuable activity towards our platform in ways that don't directly show on-chain and aren't obvious to people quickly glancing over their accounts - this could be sharing their posts on web2 to drive or at least attempt to drive traffic to their posts/our platform, building tools, communities, other things of value that will generally make this a better place for others longterm and lastly, they don't just constantly sell everything they earn. This last one isn't my most important point but naturally as people we do look and judge such actions over time because when hive leaves the blockchain it goes into the unknown and whatever you say may or may not be true about what happens with it. I say this because I know some people may need whatever hive they earn here for their day-to-day but that could also just be an excuse because they'd rather wanna bet on other currencies/stocks than believing in the hand that feeds so to speak.
- Having said that, if they're putting in extra effort with their free time and it is showing I generally want to reward that. The beautiful thing about this place is that you can contribute in so many different ways and we can make sure to reward that effort, time and contributions if we're around to notice it (yes that's kind of a diss to autovoters).
Alright, so what is it I find should not be accepted which this post was meant to talk about?
Curation to me means rewarding someone for many of the factors I talked about above. It is a beautiful way to reward work which many other chains just base it on close to useless calculations or only based on however much stake that account is holding. It should not matter if I know that person directly or if they're also rewarding me with their votes and the latter is where most of these projects tend to fail.
Let me give you another couple examples from my own projects.
@ocdb accepts delegations in exchange for sending the curation rewards as liquid hive to delegators on a daily basis minus a fee. One of the most asked questions lately from new users has been "if I delegate to your project will I get votes?" and that answer is and will always be no. That's because we curate authors on many of the factors mentioned above with stake from other users who are either too busy to curate themselves or don't mind the fee to delegate to us because they know we're putting it to good use. If we were to curate users who delegated to us it would quickly end up as a form of vote trading or excessive self-voting which I've also posted often about and is one of the main problems with these smaller but growing projects I've seen lately.
Vote-trading and excessive self-voting is bad because it ignores the factors mentioned above and focuses most of the new hive inflation back to those who already have the stake based solely on quid pro quo or stake. The content itself doesn't have to be amazing and can be minimal and often leads to authors neglecting the effort behind it in an effort to just collect the daily rewards while ignoring new users who may not have stake but are trying to contribute and grow a presence here. In many ways it also causes for centralization of stake since other users aren't receiving any of it even if they're on par in terms of effort, post quality, etc as those receiving votes.
Yet a lot of projects base their voting solely on who is delegating to them and ignore others. Sure they may add some kind of blacklist that if someone truly is abusing, posting plagiarised/AI generated/other form of abuse content they may block them from receiving votes even if they are delegating but since they profit off of that delegation in one way or another it's quite obvious that they would prefer not to have to blacklist people as much as possible. Much of that content and votes also does not get supervised because people generally enjoy earning passive rewards even when it comes to curation without any effort behind it. Who doesn't love free money while you're sleeping, eh?
Anyway, to not make this post too long, I'd wanna re emphasize that it shouldn't matter how much stake you have, how much delegation you give someone, how much tokens you hold of a certain curation project, etc, etc, to affect the votes you get. Sure we all may vote people based off of different things they say, things they stand for, things they do, etc, but it shouldn't be based on self-interested in terms of gains. I.e. if I vote this person he might vote me back - if I vote this person, he might buy my tokens with part of the rewards - if I vote this person, he might delegate HP to me/my projects. Naturally it's something we may think of at times and in desperate situations but HP already has many amazing usecases for us to go that extra mile to have to use it mainly in selfish ways imo.
Either way, what's your thoughts on this?
Curation is probably one of the most powerful features we have on Hive to attract new users and increase users retention. It may also be the most powerful one, to be honest.
The ability to earn thanks to your interactions with the communities/projects/people you like is something (almost) unique and in an era where a huge slice of the population uses social media platforms AND often looks for alternative source of income, well, Hive seems almost to good to be true - if only people were able to notice it 😅
However, besides not using DHF funds at their best to properly market Hive outside Hive itself - it's something that blows my mind off seeing projects being funded for tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of dollars for years without delivering almost nothing and without clear explanations on how they used/use those funds... -, we also - or at least I - often see people misusing their voting power. Which is something that seems odd to say, because it's their voting power and everyone should be able to use it as they like... if not that how we curate affetcs everyone else, and that's why I think there should be not rules, but guidelines on how to properly curate. And people should be encouraged to follow these guidelines.
And I agree on what you said about what shouldn't be done with your voting power: it's a tool to reward others, encourage activity, boost engagement, not a way to maximise your rewards no matter what.
Yet, I believe that the main issue lies beyond some projects using their voting power to attract new users.
I'm not saying this is good, just that, imho, this is a symptom, not the cause.
The cause should be sought in how everyone acts when they see really bad curating patterns: what does everyone do when there are users self-voting themselves with relevant stake? Or when there are posts with huge payouts and zero interaction (exluding that of those looking to be voted back)? Or when the reward pool is misused, abused and thrown away like Hive was a faucet to be exploited as long as it works?
And if the answer, for 95% of users is, "nothing", well, it shouldn't come as a surprise that some projects might start to use their voting power in a more selfish manner, or more people might vote-trade or selfvote, and so on.
If bad practices aren't discouraged and look profitable - at least short term - what prevents people to do what others are doing? And are they to blame? Or should the fault be sought in a system that more often than not doesn't do nothing to show people that being selfish doesn't pay on Hive?
This got out of my hand 😅 sorry for the long reply!
EDIT: this isn't an attack to anyone, just to be clear. I'm among those 95% users who don't do nothing and simply look elsewhere. I just believe that if we had some clear guidelines and a working system to reward those following them, that would be a way to make the chain a healtier place and more people would be working towards that shared common goal.
Thing is that being one of those getting in the way of bad behavior is not rewarding nor favorable. No one goes and tells the downvoter good job on making this place better if they've been using it well because they don't want to get involved in unnecessary drama and potentially in the sights of the downvoted user looking for retaliation.
The fact that downvoted rewards go to everyone is not something everyone notices because it's so small. If it was just us two posting on Hive and I'd self downvote my posts because I felt they're too rewarded compared to yours then the amount I'd downvote would directly go to your posts, thereby increasing your pending rewards by that much. However this is not something people notice due to the very limited amount of rewards that do get downvoted in general.
Just a few weeks ago I went and downvoted a user that was posting 2-3min clips of one event she performed on to make it last for 2 posts per day for 2 weeks all getting the same voters to a sum of $30-60 in rewards with 0-3 views per clip on youtube, 0-3 genuine comments per week on her posts and 0 comments of her own in over a month and all I got back was hate and drama and some people losing their minds in my posts about my actions. Why should I spend more time protecting the reward pool if there is nothing but drama and a bad reputation to gain from it even if uncalled for?
That's one of the big solutions we have to fix without making it so that people start overusing their downvotes for personal gain.
That's why it's crucial to address this issue, because discouraging a bad behavior must be rewarded and looked favorable. I guess that lots of other users are tired to look elsewhere to avoid drama and/or retalation.
And that's also why there should be public and generally approved guidelines, because none likes to be downvoted without knowing the reason, while most (reasonable) people understand a downvote if the downvoter shows them that there's a reason (which can be checked and it's not someone's very personal opinion).
We might even use something like the proposal system to write some guidelines and have them approved by the stakeholders: if they get above the return proposal, that would be the proof that the community approves them. If they don't get there, that means that they should be changed to meet the expectations of the community.
Maybe there are even better solutions, but right now it's very easy for a lot of people to ignore Hive-etiquette, as it isn't officially written anywhere. It's also easy to get angry and make a lot of drama, because downvotes can easily "feel" personal if none can point the downvoted author to something written and approved by the community clearly saying that he/she shouldn't be doing something.
Also, to avoid retalation and/or people feeling uncomfortable downvoting someone - I know what downvotes really mean, yet I admit I would still feel "bad" for downvoting someone: maybe "downvote" was a poor choice as a name or maybe we all tend to link that action to a dislike - someone could create an account whose purpose is exactly doing that: not nuking to zero rewards or acting like a sort of police (we already have that), but acting like a curation account.
You self-upvote? You might get a downvote equal to your own upvote. You vote-trade? Same as above: you get a downvote that counters that action. You are clearly splitting an event/argument in 20 short posts to reap 20 times the rewards? You might get a downvote to remember you that this is discouraged on Hive. Of course only if this actions are considered "wrong" by the community, not only by me and 3 others.
You are right and that's why this is a "battle" that should be fighted by the community as a whole, not by some lonely brave users who "sacrifice" themselves for a greater good.
Your comment is upvoted by @topcomment
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Thank you for your great work in the curation game, My delegation has always gone to Ecency by default when I wanted to earn Liquid hive with my Hive power, I hadn't really considered other options.
Delegating to @ocdb account is correct one right?
Thanks and no worries, diversifying delegations into curation projects is also a good option as long as they curate well so best to keep an eye on that to make sure your delegation, no matter how big or small compared to the whole of a said account - is being used to grow the platform!
Yea @ocdb automatically sends rewards out twice daily and also includes some niche returns like reward.app and beneficiaries and soon even @distriator kickbacks to delegators so some times you may even get some hbd which is where that's coming from!
Everyone has their own perspective on curating, and very few whales are making a handful of authors to be rewarded so heavily. I have explored some interesting facts that I would not have expected, and after all of these, I have stopped diving deeply and ignore everything now. Some curators only vote for relatively higher-reputation authors blindly but less for new authors despite having excellent content. There are a handful of authors who don't power up their rewards but lend a lot of HP, and they just interchange their votes among themselves in each post; I don't find any wrong here as they have made their own strategy to build up their portfolio. Even for me, I would vote for those authors first step who vote for me on my post. Still, there are many good curation trials like ocd, curie, block trades, appreciators, and others that support quality content, but many others follow their own strategies most of the time with less support for quality content. The good thing is that everything is diverse here, and everyone has the freedom to do whatever they like.
if you find authors you connect with its all good to share votes with imo, the issue is when some just do it based solely on the vote strength they receive back even if they have nothing in common with that account. If it becomes all about just getting as much rewards on the posts it ends up as abuse imo and should be adjusted down a bit.
Personally, I like to think about how a post benefits the Hive ecosystem... is it likely to drive traffic to Hive - could new people find the blockchain through this post and then want to get involved because there are other valuable posts here?
I know that Hive can be lots of things to lots of people... and can be useful for lots of different groups on the internet - but I'm not always sure what Hive should be known for. We think of social media as immediate information, Reddit good for help solve problems or answer questions, etc etc. I personally use Hive to catch up on what the friends I've made here are up to, but I do try to vote content I think would drive traffic here too.
There is a difference between personal curation and a curation service.
I try diversify my upvotes with my personal account to distribute them among a larger group of users. I mostly use the communities feed for that because that are the posts I'm mostly interested in.
But when my VP is high I often fall back to upvoting people on my following feed. And then it will be mostly the same group of users that frequently makes quality posts.
But when you run a curation service you need to diversify your votes.
With our @topcomment curation service I've set up scripts to find quality posts and also allow people to nominate comments their selves.
PeakD Analytics (https://peakd.com/me/analytics) has an overview of both your incoming and outgoing votes. This can be interesting to check every now and then.
As everyone has different ways of thinking and different view points but having high voting power means having high HP will cause you to get more curation on your post..... And i think the option of self vote should be banned on hive because i see many with high voting value vote themselves on their post which isn't good
I quite honestly didn't even know self voting was allowed lol. I know the button is there but I never clicked it on my own posts solely because I thought it wouldn't even go through... because why would it?
So yeah knowing now that self-voting is a real thing I think it should be banned as well. But also giving yourself a little kickback isn't that bad... within reason but I doubt the majority of people are using it in moderation though :)
Yes but some people use this button in the wrong way for their own purpose
It's kind of pointless to ban it cause people can just go around to create alt accounts if they really wanna do it.
Most self-votes aren't bad, 1-2 per day is not the end of the world. It becomes bad when they delegate their HP away to receive 10x back in a vote from other delegators on that project which practically makes it 10x daily selfvotes just concentrated in one post. Projects that solely curate those that delegate to them are encouraging these 10x daily selfvotes while taking a fee from the delegations so the higher the delegation amount grows the more they earn so they don't care to actually curate users not actively giving them delegations aka profit.
I wasn't aware about this. For now, i am not going to use this service.
I don't especially look for quality post and vote. It depends on other factors too. And i don't self vote.
I am part of good curation trails, but i do manual curation.
I think those are very good points to go by when dealing with curation, Good content and being socially active is what brings more people here.
I think it's part of human nature, in an ideal world, it would be like you say, with all the good points mentioned, but then our nature kicks in, as you say you tend to have some bias with friends, as for projects, they want to have more and more HP delegated so they have more vote power, so they earn more and what you need to do for this? Vote who delegates to you (not declaring it explicit), so you don't lose the delegations and others see and delegate to you to get the vote too and you earn more because the HP keeps increasing... In the end it's like in real life, we are humans, we are greed
The problem itself is very complex, and the situation is somewhat similar to DPOS. In Internet content, there are still some problems, especially content ranking. At present, in the hive community, several major clients have not been able to solve the problem of content sorting and display.
As someone who is newer to posting on Hive I will give this opinion to add to yours.
Curation is NOT well defined or explained to new people. It took me about 3 weeks of posting here to realize that Curation meant I could tip a article and then earn part of that posts earnings. And that some accounts are specifically setup to "curate". I was amazed that at least on PeakD I could not find in the settings or FAQ a good detailed explanation of it.
I was only voting on topics or content that I liked and wanted to reward the author for the effort. And to be quite honest initially I was only tipping accounts of people that I knew from other chains or projects because I was trying to just find more accounts that posted quality content. Obviously since I have expanded to follow and watch community posts and such and then also people I follow who reblog and all that other stuff kind of just compounds over time to get more exposure.
However, if person 1 decides to upvote only articles of people they like or know. Who cares? I can see where some people may get upset. Let's take Holozing for example.
If I delegate say 100 HP to Holozing right, I am earning ZING passively each day for that. THAT is why I would delegate to the Holozing project. I am not delegating to it expecting a automatic upvote on every post I post or even on every Holozing post I make. I think that is unrealistic and unfair expectations.
Like you said some projects/accounts will pay out HIVE rewards for delegating and if that is clearly stated then that may be why you delegate to that account. So unless a account specifically calls out that they are going to upvote all your posts if you Delegate to them, how can you be upset if they don't?
I don't know I guess people a lot of times just expect things when they shouldn't or have unrealistic expectations on things and then choose to be hurt over that and think that life isn't fair or something like that.
But, like I have to tell my kids nearly every day. Life isn't fair. Nobody in the history of the world has claimed that life IS fair so get off that high horse and live in the real world with the rest of us.
If someone is delegating to a account and that account doesn't auto upvote every single one of their posts... then undelegate your HP if that upsets you.
Hive is a free blockchain to do with what you want with what you own. So yeah if a project has thousands of HP delegated to it and it is only upvoting 2 accounts with 100% weight, it would look weird and it could rub a lot of people the wrong way. Well then those people should undelegate and move on. Projects live and die by their community and their users.
TL;DR is everyone is free to do what they want with the HP they have or the HP they were delegated. If someone doesn't like that then stop delegating to them. Easy Enough. Projects require a user base and so projects need to do right by those people but that doesn't mean give everyone a handout either!
I think it's definitely hard because groups that want to curate and make it worth it need to have that delegated HP to really have it not be a waste of their time. As you said, there are certainly other ways to do it, but I can see why many of these projects follow the model they do. Unless you have some whale benefactor in your back pocket you are basically living off those delegations until you get to a certain point.
I think your posts are very educational. I became aware of the rewards extraction in Splinterlands contests from your posts. While it is not perfect, Splinterlands community changed the rules of the contests and worked hard to improve the stuff that was going on. I think it is much better now.
This issue of delegating in return for votes is new to me. I like to read and upvote posts myself, I learn a lot over here on Hive, less than a year ago I didn't even know that it is not OK to upvote your own comments and now I am not even upvoting the best of my posts.
Anyway, I am not delegating to anyone because I am 100% focused on building up my Hive stake. I used 50% of my author rewards in the past to buy SPS, but after I refocused on building up my Hive I am 100% power up. I also bought Hive with fiat to replenish my Hive that was spent on SPS and bring down my KE ratio down to 0.74 meaning that I have more Hive staked than I have received via author rewards. You can read more about KE ratio invented by Azircon and check your KE ratio here: https://beebalanced.streamlit.app/
I notice that OCDB rewards my quality Actifit posts, which is nice they also don't award the short posts that I make to just keep track of my fitness progress and I don't expect anyone to vote on those. And I never delegated to OCDB so it works as it is supposed to. I know some people consider Actifit posts spam and a lot of the posts are, but there is no option in Actifit to set the tracker to post in Ecency waves or PeakD snaps, I wish there was that way users wouldn't spam posts and can do simple tracking of activity without "shit posts"
Hive eco-system is very large and there is a lot to learn about it, it can easily turn into a full time job if you are trying to do multiple things, so sometimes I just don't have enough time to do everything I want.
Yup. :) I am much happier now that I changed how I feel about getting ANY rewards from either posting or commenting, curation, etc.. hive is just awesome despite any particular, single reward.
and yea, it's like u said.. there might be another reason for the rewards (or lack of) rewards that is not always obvious to us..
👊😉🤙
I delegate out to spread my vote out (their vote value is higher) and grow my stake. The service may be voting on something I am not going to vote on myself but helps the platform grow beyond what I'm interested in. I use to delegate more than 50% because it earned me more HIVE than what I would get from my own vote, then I discover @apis.hive which has a requirement of less than 30% delegated to use their service to grow your account.
People who have more stake are taken more seriously and people who self vote or join voting circles are a little selfish. As long as they are producing good quality who cares, if you don't love yourself, who else will...
Must admit, I have a slight tendency to be bias towards posts which have cats in them 😹 on that note, how is Mew doing?
!PIZZA
Hive.Pizza upvoted this post.
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Please vote for pizza.witness!
An interesting read, your insights are always to me a bump up the learning curve, when I first entered the hive my guru on here advised me against doing certain things, one of which was self voting, something I understood and have stood by. I guess there are those on here like life in general who believe that they are entitled and can act as they want and see fit, outside the tent pissing in as they say.
I personally do not see the hive as a cash cow, I just enjoy being here and meeting people so remote from my own lifestyle that I would not know even existed on this great flat earth!
There may come a crisis one day where I need to cash in, who knows, if it doesn't happen then when I pop my clogs my kids can take over and do what needs to be done.
I occasionally get downvoted and it does piss me off LOl, again my guru winds my neck in and calms me down. What would pacify me and others perhaps, is that if to "downvote" someone then a mandatory comment must be made on the post explaining why, something like " I think you are a twat, or this is plagiarism or, you have been over rewarded"
I do prefer the simple things in life!!