A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...
People across the Hive community seem to have a pretty wide range of interpretations of what exactly this ecosystem is.
Much as some folks might want to disagree, Hive's backbone seems very much to be the social content sites. However, it feels like the social part used to be a lot more active some years back than it is today.
Which is a bit sad.
Of course, there aren't as many active participants as there once were — which is also a bit sad — but it could also be that people have grown more attached to creating than to actually socializing. And maybe we simply grow complacent and stuck in our routines, after a while.
And yet? It is typically the social engagement that provides the lifeblood of venues like Hive. And active social engagement is pretty essential to presenting a public front and at least the appearance of a thriving community to potential newcomers.
Pitching what looks like a dead community is a pretty futile endeavor!
So... This is New: CommentRewarder!
So this brings me to one of Hive's newest initiatives: @commentrewarder, a project that's actually making me feel hopeful that we might finally see the engagement level in our community rise a bit.
CommentRewarder is a collaboration of @hivetrending (of PIZZA fame) and long-time Hiver and @holozing creator @acidyo... in an effort to boost engagement in our community.
I have to admit this is the first time in a good long while I have felt truly enthusiastic about a new Hive growth initiative!
So Why Should You CARE?
Very short version is that @commentrewarder is a rewarding tool that allows creators to set the utility as a post beneficiary, after which the designated payout will be split among the "approved" comments on that post, at the time of payout.
You can read more about the program in this post... I won't go into a lot of detail here, just encourage you to give it a try.
Anyway, I have made @commentrewarder a 25% beneficiary on the payout of this post, as a bit of an experiment, to see if engagement increases, at all. Hopefully it will!
A Few Thoughts and Reflections
Who benefits here?
It seems to me that the community does.
- Hive activity increases.
- People with lower HP can reward good comments without losing to the "dust" threshhold.
- If you're using PeakD, you'll get an icon by your post indicating the post rewards comments.
- That, in turn, might increase your readership/following.
- Gamification works. People enjoy doing things "competitively."
- More engagement on your content, leading to more followers.
- Effectively, it is "costless" promotion. You're just giving up a percentage (as little as 3%, although I'd recommend 10% or more) of future rewards.
- Perhaps the biggest: Incentive for content consumers, not just for content creators.
That last one is important, and perhaps a little personal.
In my earliest days here (beginning of 2017) when I was completely invisible on the site, it was active engagement with others' content that largely built the first six months worth of my account.
Hive (or its predecessor, as it were) was a lot more fun then! It would be nice to get back to that... we also had a lot more engagement during the years of @abh12345's "Curation and Engagement Leagues" which was another great example of gamifying the engagement process.
Anyway, if @commentrewarder sounds interesting or worthwhile to you, why not give it a try? Spread the word; give it a try and write your own post about it... or you can just reblog this one, or the original intro post!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your weekend!
Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! 25% of this post's rewards will be redistributed to people who leave good comments! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!
Greetings bloggers and social content creators! This article was created via PeakD, a blogging application that's part of the Hive Social Content Experience. If you're a blogger, writer, poet, artist, vlogger, musician or other creative content wizard, come join us! Hive is a little "different" because it's not run by a "company;" it operates via the consensus of its users and your content can't be banned, censored, taken down or demonetized. And that COUNTS for something, in these uncertain times! So if you're ready for the next generation of social content where YOU retain ownership and control, come by and learn about Hive and make an account!
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly and uniquely for this platform — NOT posted anywhere else!)
Created at 2024.10.12 17:39 PST
1231/2487
I have been using the new @commentrewarder service for about a week now and as I am new to Hive it has helped me to give out some extra rewards to people who make the effort to comment on my posts. As my stake is quite low, despite already buying around 800 Hive and powering it up, it means I can't give out a meaningful vote by way of appreciation for comments on my posts.
This is exactly where @commentrewarder can step in and help out. It's been a really helpful service. It means that despite having a low stake I can still give out something a little more valuable as a reward to commenters of my posts. I now always put at the bottom of each post: This is a Commentrewarder engaged post. Comments on this post will receive a tip on post payout.
I do this so it's very clear that I am using @commentrewarder. However, I have already had what I think might be comments on my posts designed purely to grab some extra tips. So you have to be careful when liking comments to ensure spam or tip grab comments that are meaningless and not constructive are not upvoted, and therefore don't get the tip.
But that's the great thing about @commentrewarder you are in control of who gets the tips. So long as comments are constructive in some way then they'll get a vote from me and therefore a tip when the post pays out.
You can't reward comments because you delegate almost your entire stake.
We've had this conversation already and I have explained why.
Welcome to Hive!
In some ways, you're the perfect candidate for using CommentRewarder because you can offer an incentive for engagement even though you might not have the Hive Power to upvote comments.
This used to be a lot easier when we had $1+ Hive, but times have changed, so this seems like a viable option until better times return.
I checked some of your posts and your relative fluency and comfort with the platform suggests that you have brought a fair bit of social media and blogging experience with you, here?
In terms of blogging experience I had a short period on Steemit back in 2017 but Hive is a different creature that's for sure, I can not believe how different it is to Steemit.
My writing has been fine tuned probably as I have a law degree, write various academic texts and am a passionate scriptwriter for television and film but can't quite crack the industry. I also can't stay away from politics - sadly!
I may or may not have missed the @commentrewarder period, as I think it's 3 days, but whatever.
I've been trying out @commentrewarder myself. I like it so far. Although I wouldn't go so far as to enabled 25% reward. I'm still trying to rebuild my account after a long hiatus and having to sell my Hive to pay bills.
I hope that it will help with getting engagement with posts. I haven't seen that much so far but I may just need to slowly rebuild my account as many of my followers are likely inactive now.
Even though it's likely only a few pennies, it matters. People play a lot of those pay to earn games for pennies at a time. I wouldn't mind a bunch of minnows interacting if they can provide proper engagement.
I'm also gonna try to interact with more posts myself. Try being the key word.
I think you might have missed the deadline, but have an upvote anyway!
I can relate to having to sell Hive to pay bills; had to do a major powerdown about 18 months ago to pay a property tax bill. Hated doing it, but this IS here for a reason, and my reason was to avoid a tax foreclosure.
So far, I have been fairly impressed with the turnout... especially with the fact that so many OGs have suddenly show up, which lets me know people are still here, even if they are quiet. it has been a long time since I have had 50 comments on a post... probably have to go back to 2018-19 for that. The bot recently posted that 17 people will get a reward, so that's not too shabby.
25% won't be an every time occurrence, but I will definitely use the service again.
Honestly my esteemed friend @denmarkguy. The truth is that I have to confess that I've been a bit surprised and a little confused by your positive and optimistic appreciation and review towards @commentrewarder if it really is about fulfill each one of the bullet points in your post.
I dunno, perhaps these are just things of us the older and more decrepit chaps like me. But I wrote an article about this same topic two weeks ago and whose link I will give it to you only if you are really interested in reading it. But in my opinion, trying to forcefully gamify in this way a perfectly healthy and normal "social network" with a traditional organic community of actual persons and a collective human experience whose personal, conscious and organic activities and interactions should occur fluently and naturally among living human beings without coercion, blackmail or bribery of any kind, these initiatives and projects seems to me to be completely wrong and out of order.
The "commentrewarder & reblogrewarder" projects seems to me to be absolutely toxic, harmful and counterproductive to establish true relationships, interactions, engagement and activities of authentic quality and trust in a "social network" between humans.
I don't know about you bro, but I'm certainly not interested at all in meaningless chatter, smalltalk or annoying flattering. Nor that I have to waste my time and attention answering their babbling and nonsense to an army of parasites and brainless leeches who only come to comment on a post exclusively in search of an upvote. As was already mentioned by @peaceandmoney above when he said: "I have already had what I think might be comments on my posts designed purely to record some extra tips"
Well, to tell the truth, I'm actually pretty sure that you had already considered all of this that I've told you here. But for whatever reason, I see that you've been inclined to just outline a more positive view. :)
Cheers!!
Exactly. I agree with you.
Interactions should be (and on a properly working social network are) natural, real, genuine, and not forced and competitive.
Very sad that nowadays this is the rarest thing on the Hive blockchain.
Most Hive users focus on the monetary aspect so much that they forget (do not even care) about the contents. Often even as a so called content creator/author, let alone content consumers, which currently are only a very small percentage of the Hive blockchain users.
Most Hive blockchain users focus on their own posts.
Most Hive blockchain posts are ignored/overlooked because of the above mentioned fact.
This is how people ruin an otherwise technically revolutionary platform.
I'm probably as much of a cynic as you are, and I don't for a moment think that this is "the answer" to anything.
It is, however — at least from my perspective — at least a tiny light in the murk that can perhaps remind people that Hive is a social site, of sorts.
Of course there are going to be those who will try to just harvest some rewards from this... but isn't that the case with all walks of life, everywhere? Someone will try to take advantage of the system.
And I certainly wouldn't by writing about it if there wasn't a provision that only the comments that are upvoted by the OP actually qualifies to share in the reward base. And so, those posting "just to get some extra tips" are easily enough excluded by simply not upvoting their comment (it only has to be 1%, btw).
Should you find your way back here, you might notice that most of the engagement on this post has actually turned out to be pretty authentic, and much of it is coming from people who have been around for a long time.
As to the whole engagement issue, it is definitely true that many people are too busy "keeping an eye on the money," but I expect they would be a little less concerned if we currently had $1.00 Hive, in turn meaning that you could still upvote a decent comment with just 10% and get above the "dust threshold." CommentRewarder is likely most relevant when the price of Hive is really low, like it is now.
As for Hive being a "properly working" social network — as per @xplosive — I fear that ship probably sailed 7-8 years ago when everyone was so busy promoting this place on the premise of "join our community and make money, money, MONEY!!!"
We tend to get precisely what we advertise for...
Thanks for reminding me about commentrewarder. I'm going to try it for the first time in a post I'm planning. I like your comprehensive list of commentrewarder benefits and I agree with the ones you list.
I've been here 8+ years and I did reply a Lot more back in the early days. Most of the people I was interacting with in the comment section have left. I reply a lot less but sometimes I do a reply with many more words than my normal posts.
Regarding rewarding commenters, I have UP voted many/most of the comments people have left on my posts, to reward the engagement. I suspect some people comment on my posts because they know this, and would not otherwise reply.
I like commentrewarder because the rewards come from the author and not the reward pool.
There is something similar going on for over a year at @tokenfaucet. Replies are rewarded by private funds and not the reward pool. Their last post from 9 days ago got 308 replies. Many are just the !TF reply that triggers rewards but there are also fun conversations that spontaneously arise.
https://peakd.com/giveaway/@tokenfaucet/higher-rewards-tokenfaucet-giveaway-is-now-bigger-and-better
Anyone can check it out if they want. You'll need to have a reputation of 30+ to get a reward. That's the only gatekeeping that goes on. Anyone with a rep of 30 or more gets something for free. Unless there's a major run on the post and the account's tokens run out!
Let's see how your experiment goes! Feel free to try the @tokenfaucet experiment. Have a nice weekend! :)
I hope it works. I hope something works!
Thanks for the @tokenfaucet reminder... it's one of those that briefly slid across my radar, and then vanished into the mists again.
I try to reward good comments, as well, but it's tricky for those who like having engagement on their posts, but lack sufficient HP to upvote a few comments above the dust threshold without burning through all their voting power.
Gamification of the whole social sphere does seem to have an impact. Asher's Curation and Engagement Leagues sometimes generated as much as 6-8% of all Hive curation activity during a given week... and people were very loyal to it, to the point where it became a subcommunity within the community.
Every effort shall be made to make my comment not only civil but gentle as well. It seems like we both agree that the STEEM pre-HIVE days were more active, engaging and all around more exciting than the present state of the social media aspect of the blockchain.
There is no python generated pie charts for me to factually and statistically prove my point, yet taking the community and splitting it asunder by approximately 20 self centered individuals that did not want to loose control of their asset printing press might have had something to do with HIVE's present state?
The fork also highlighted the flaws in the PoS governance system and that one would be just as safe leaving their tokens in an exchange wallet as one that the same grubby (approximate) 20 individuals have control to edit upon will. Who would even think of buying HIVE as any kind of crypto investment with that grubby bunch ready to abscond your funds at will?
At best it is a utility token and the social media element will be soon seen (if not already) as just another Dapp, with gaming and other Dapps eventually leaving the social media users in the same light as we might view loyal AOLers. They still exist to this day!
You will find me posting almost daily here, so this is not a hater talking. There are people here that mean as much or more as folks known in RL. But let's call a spade a spade and see this as the failed "experiment" as the creator who walked away from it himself called it.
Anything that brings out meaningful engagement gets my upvote.
Thanks for stopping by; I do remember you from "way back when."
I'm not going to pour energy into railing against what's already in the history books... I can think of a myriad reasons why things have turned out the way they have (from "first mover advantage" to excessive fragmentation), but I am primarily a blogger/writer and not a blockchain politician.
I will say this, though, excess "addiction" to decentralization isn't always ideal because you end losing certain benefits (scale, among them) when you break things into too many bits.
I have never been a huge fan of PoS governance precisely because someone can just buy their way in, if they are stealthy and cunning enough. That said, I am yet to encounter a perfect solution... maybe aside from all of us being sovereign nations of ONE, and that also seems less than ideal, so then it stops being perfect.
You're likely quite right in suggesting this is becoming more of a utility chain, and I'm sort of OK with that, as long as those who build here actually develop some dApps that are of interest to the greater world. Perhaps it's a bit of a stretch to compare, but Ethereum is pretty lame and useless *on its own," but what runs on Ethereum is anything but. If we'd bought ETH at $10 when Steem started... we'd be pretty happy today, if we still had it.
As for Dan, I'm not surprised he moved on... because that's his MO. He's a creative genius who creates, but soon gets bored with nurturing his creations. A lot of creative geniuses are; they typically end up with a lot more patents than millions.
I'm not far from 8 years here, myself... and plan to keep plugging along as best I can. Because I just enjoy the "social publishing" aspect of it, and it beats the heck out of places like Medium.
With my disappointment of the HIVE/STEEM fork my tokens were powered down and shifted to ETH, hoping that they may do a better job with the PoS fork they were talking about at the time.
Those grubbies mentioned should be thanked for motivating my powering down. By early July of this year (about 4 years later) those same ETH had 10X'ed. They were cashed out just before ETH's moderate crash against BTC this year. The funds were taken to purchase a 36' blue water Cabot-36 Cutter in Toronto, ON. It was then sailed through Lake Ontario, the Thousand Islands, the Saint Lawrence Seaway, to Montreal, Quebec and down the Saint Lawrence River to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, then to Prince Edward Island and at last, 6 or so weeks later, returning to the province where my journey started; Nova Scotia.
Hell yeah it feels pretty happy to me. 🏴☠️
That's pretty awesome how the journey turned out for you! It's always good to hear that crypto "worked out" for someone.
Nice boat!
Only about 22 hours out of Halifax NS, in a small town called Port Hawkesbury, awaiting winds to cool down to finish the trip home. All thanks to HIVE/STEEM in a convoluted way.
A properly working social network is not competitive, but natural.
It is based on actual, real, genuine interest in the content/people.
For example Facebook groups (even the smallest Facebook groups, for example with a few hundred members), and YouTube.
The approach is very different on the Hive blockchain.
Most people focus on the monetary aspect so much that they forget (do not even care) about the contents. Even often as a so called content creator/author, let alone content consumers, which are currently only a very small percentage of the Hive bloy users. Most Hive blockchain users focus on their own posts.
Most Hive blockchain posts are ignored/overlooked because of the above mentioned fact.
This is how people ruin an otherwise technically revolutionary platform.
I agree that would be the ideal, but it's not necessarily the reality.
You address something important in pointing out that Facebook groups work this way. It was always my hope for Hive that communities would get more traction... it makes more sense to have someone join a gardening/writing/gaming community on Hive than just have them "join Hive."
People typically don't say that they are "on the Internet" or "on Facebook" anymore... it's about what they do and belong to within those contexts.
One of Hive's weak points is definitely that it doesn't have much of a mechanism to make its content of interest to people outside Hive's walls... and even when that does happen, it's a complicated and even daunting process to get an account just so you can engage with someone's content.
And so, we end up with this current situation where most are creating ON Hive for people ON Hive... no external expansion.
You kind of ponder, "What is Hive? " To me, it's number 1 use is s a blogging tool. Here is a place to write something and it's there immutably into the future. That can't be said about a blogging website. Plus you might earn a couple of rewards.
This is how I used Hive for the first 2 or 3 years, as a one way thing. And that's fine. But as you say, it wasn't until I started interacting that my follower account started to grow. That's the key to follower size and getting rewards.
As far as content rewards, it's got to be a good thing. Incentives yield results. Now I just need to remember to do it when I write.
!LUV
That's pretty much how I saw it in the beginning, as well. I was tired of hosting sites just shutting down and losing hundreds of hours of work because it just vanished overnight.
People do respond to rewards... sad as it may seem, "money talks." Even if someone just ends up with a few Hive cents, it's still an incentive. And it turns out to be more than someone with low HP upvoting comments with 20%. There's only a couple of thousand accounts with enough HP to "afford" to regularly reward comments in a meaningful way... so this is a good alternative.
@denmarkguy, @crrdlx(1/4) sent you LUV. | tools | discord | community | HiveWiki | <>< daily
I'm planning to experiment with commentrewarder on my next post. I just need to make sure a certain spam farm is excluded...
If I understand it correctly, the rewards will only go to comments you upvote (even 1%) but if you don't upvote a comment, it'll be excluded.
That's how I read it, too. I'm running a test now to see how it works in practice.
Hey thanks for giving it a try!
I have quite a few more usecases lined up for it to revive a few communities in the past that'll fit perfectly for commentrewarder, will post about it shortly!
I really appreciate the fact that you keep trying different things to get activity boosted here!
We definitely lost something here when Asher stopped doing the Engagement and Curation Leagues, so anything that could potentially fill that gap would be helpful; I'm quite hopeful about CommentRewarder... just hope enough people use it so it gets into broad circulation in the community.
I set commentrewarder in one of my posts but it seems it wasn't seen by readers or people are not yet aware of this initiative. My engagement did not improve. I'll try again in my next posts to see if it works.
If I understand correctly, the most recent iteration includes @commentrewarder following anyone who uses it, and creating a reblogged feed of all those posts. Should help with visibility.
Can't disagree with this. Users are mostly write and publish then leave until it becomes a cycle.
I usually comment and reply to make sure the engagement alive. Sometimes I feel that I want people to read my content than receiving a huge amount of upvote.
I'm open to the fact that different people want different things. I'm a writer/blogger first, and everything else is just a bonus of sorts.
Agree with you, nothing beats when someone appreciate and read your content.
My comfort level is commenting on posts that I choose to read (for the most part) and not so much in content creating. I like this initiative though, and will give it a go when I start writing posts. Something so mutually beneficial should be a draw for everyone involved. It really seems like a step up for newcomers and they need all the encouragement they can get in order to stay involved. It seems really, really tough for newbies.
That makes you a bit of a rarity in the world of Hive... most people here are content creators not content consumers.
Of course, it would also help newcomers if it were easier to understand the whole signup and working within this environment process.
Agreed...the learning curve is so steep as to be off-putting to some of the new folks
Also...your pics are wonderful..love the landscapes
Great pointing out the benefits that the Comment Rewards brings to the Hive blockchain and I believe that it acts like an energy drink: everything is taken to the next level and people are engaging more. This is the way!
Even if this particular initiative doesn't turn out to be the end-all solution, at least it's a step in the right direction.
And if there are more than a few posts that get substantial engagement, it at least sets an example that might encourage more.
I got started in early 2017 too. Things were more socially active back then (even when you ignore all the "Nice Post" comments you had to wade through to get to genuine interactions). But a whole lot has happened since then and Hive still has a community, or multiple communities, and massive potential for growth. Sometimes it can feel like there isn't much point to commenting, especially when not everyone responds but I can envision comment rewarder making a difference over time.
As much as anything, I am just hopeful that an initiative like this will remind people that this is (allegedly) a social network, and it's a good idea to be "be social."
It's a little tougher for the introverts (like me) to be consistently social but incentives do help. That's something I'm sure about.
@commentrewarder sounds like a great project and initiative on Hive!
Curated, upvoted, and reblogged for exposure
I thought so... and at least worth a mention and a plug!
This @commentrewarder is very friendly. I have benefited from it
Commentrewarder is great tool for engagement
@tipu curate 4
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 15/75) Liquid rewards.
Hermosas fotografias
I think commentrewarder is a great initiative to stimulate engagement on Hive.
When comments get rewarded more people will have an extra incentive to engage more (although I doubt if a financial reward is a good incentive).
A 'shortcoming' of commentrewarder is the fact that a post needs quite a bit of author rewards in combination with a higher percentage for the commentrewarder beneficiary to result in a payout for the commenter. As you might know values under $ 0.02 are considered as dust and will not be paid out.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think commentrewarder will work for new Hivers.
I'm also working on an idea to improve engagement on Hive. As soon as I have more details I will publish a post about it 😊
Hi, @denmarkguy I have used it in all my posts and it works well,
I recommend it.
@denmarkguy, you're rewarding 17 replies from this discussion thread.
Cool beans!