I remember back when I was in middle school I started to realize the friend group I had carried over from elementary school wasn't exactly the best fit for me. It was hard, but eventually I found a new friend group that I carried with me on through high school.
I mention all of this because in my three plus years here on Hive, I have found that a similar pattern holds true. It is safe to say that I have drifted in and out of countless communities here on the blockchain in that time. I think many of us have.
One of the cardinal rules in crypto is DYOR (do your own research). If you do not, you have no one else to blame but yourself when you jump all-in to some crap coin or project. On the same token, I feel it is important to follow the same principle when you are considering joining a community.
As I said, in 3+ years, I have had plenty of opportunity for missteps on Hive. I can count on at least one hand (if not more) the number of times I have started supporting an individual or group only to find out that they weren't exactly what they seemed.
In some cases it was as simple as the leader of the group being quite mentally unhinged. In more obtuse cases, it has to do with someone doing something with their account behind the scenes. Those are usually the ones that get me. I don't typically take the time to do a deep dive into the voting or wallet habits of the leaders of a group or community.
I would venture to guess many of us don't do that when we are kicking the tires on a new community.
Unfortunately, not doing your due diligence can have serious repercussions on your future Hive success.
Like I said, I have had a ton of hits and misses over the years. I can recall a couple of cases where I was regularly upvoting and commenting on a couple of accounts. Their content seemed pretty top notch, it didn't appear to be plagiarized and they were actually response and would engage back with you in conversation if you commented on their posts.
Come to find out, they were doing some voting that other members of the community didn't agree with. Suddenly I find my self in a very sticky situation. Do I keep supporting them and therefore become guilty by association? After all, if they are inspecting the account so closely, they will surely see I have been voting and commenting on the account. In turn, they may also see that the account has been upvoting and leaving comments on my posts... Does that now make me collateral damage?
Now, this is the point where I have to do a little confession and be brutally honest... Many of the instances that have put me in this precarious position were thanks to my own greed. Does that mean I deserve whatever consequences may come my way?
Here is one final example:
So I noticed members in a certain community (shall remain unnamed) were getting pretty decent upvotes. It seemed to be a fairly catch-all community so I felt my ever changing content would likely fit well in there. I joined the Discord and submitted a post or two only to be addressed in a DM on Discord that I wasn't following the beneficiary guidelines.
Fair enough, you have your guidelines, I don't necessarily agree with them, so I will stop posting via your community. I failed to leave the Discord server, but I had by all rights washed my hands of said community.
Then the kick in the gut came...
Said community came under direct scrutiny over the same policies that led me to cut ties with them myself. Unfortunately, because I was still in the Discord or because I had posted on the platform in the past (who knows) my account got tagged in the back and forth between the community and the people calling them out.
This led my account to be muted by @onealpha. If you have been hanging around Leo for very long, you surely know the benefits of our favorite whale seeing and liking your content. It doesn't happen all the time, but those occasional visits put a nice pep in your step. If you are muted though, that means it is unlikely your content will seen, let alone voted on.
I reached out to @onealpha and he was very understanding. I explained my situation and everything resolved amicably. You can see though how not doing your own research and falling in with the wrong community could have a serious impact on your growth on the Hive platform. While profit may not be the main goal of everyone here, some form of growth should be.
Of course then there is the debate about who is actually right in the whole situation. The community or individual usually claims they are being bullied and what they are doing isn't wrong. Is it wrong? Is it frowned upon? Who is actually right? If you really care about the community shouldn't you support them in the face of the accusations?
This is getting long, so I will leave those questions for another day or the comments if you so choose.
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All a good lesson, but let me point out that the onealpha you tagged is not the known onealfa whale you speak about :)
Tiny typo! Glad you got it sorted because if you already left the community it's pretty said they dragged you into the back and forward tagging game.
Probably just as well. He has enough going on he doesn't need to be bugged by me. I have a feeling most people knew who I was talking about :)
lol, yeah I don't think he really checks his tags :)
It can be scary out there. I think Hive is better than the internet in general but the Hive has more control over your account. How would research uncover this? Thanks for sharing.
These are some valid and great points to consider, especially for some of the newer individuals from ListNerds.
!CTP
Thanks for sharing your experience. Yes - my grandma always said "showme your company and I tell you who you are". I tell the same to my kids now as well. For you unfortunately they were not your company - I am happy things got resolved.
Thanks, I appreciate it!
Some really good points here. Thanks for sharing in ListNerds. Good for a newbie like me.
I am observing one community for several months now. Though I observe that most Hivers I follow don't use the tag of that community, however, since I know next to nothing about the past, I don't have any basis to get out from the community. I was actually planning to un-stake all my tokens starting last week due to lack of engagement, but suddenly I stumbled upon a recent update, which to my mind looks very promising.
That's exactly the reason why I stopped using one tribe tag. I didn't know their guidelines before. I only came to know it after some time. Since I don't agree with their rules, I stopped using their tag. But the problem is I am still receiving their tokens. Perhaps, because I am still upvoting content using their tag.
Yeah that's probably why you still get the tokens. Also if you have some staked.
I already un-staked my tokens from that tribe.
There are definitely communities out here that are more welcoming than others... while it is the community prerogative to stablish their guidelines and make it followed, there are indeed cases when being a whale (thus having a really important weight upon community calls) can be used to influence general decisions. I don't mean this in a bad way, but c'mon... we're still just humans.
I would definitely love to see Hivers being more friendly and welcoming as time passes by. There's so much to learn, that we newbies sometimes find it difficult to go through.
!PIZZA and !HBIT for you my friend, and thanks again for being welcoming yourself (:
- EvM
Success! You mined .9 HBIT & the user you replied to received .1 HBIT on your behalf. mine | wallet | market | tools | discord | community | <>< daily
Thanks and no problem!
Leofinance would be totally different without @onealfa. His presence weighs heavy and he's definitely a level headed person.
So far my favorite community has been Leofinance and it's the members that make it great.
I have tried quite a few communities before settling to this one.
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Yeah, I am really happy with Leo as well. Many of the people here are fairly level headed which usually has me leaning on their side when disputes do come up. I've seen nothing so far to make me doubt the intentions of the community at large here.
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DYOR always matters and in every feild.
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Indeed it does.
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Yup with what you said about coins that are behind the curtain are sometimes like stocks they can be a bummer
Yeah, for sure.
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When it comes to those it's like the lottery
I think it works everywhere. Obviously we don't know whether or not a community is a fit until we give a try though. Some things just don't work as we intended but since the remaining communities are ones that I think work for me, I think its great. I always try to do at least some bare minimum research to see what fits though.
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Yeah, I think doing a bit of research is important. Sometimes it can be had to see all of the stuff that is going on behind the scenes and that is what can trip you up.
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I prefer to simply listen to Warren Buffett and Charlie Monger on this. They aim to steer people in the right direction.
😁😁😁😁
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greetings at hife for a change
Thank you.
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the same greeting to you best of luck
I have always followed the principle of DYOR in buying and selling crypto but I never considered it in terms of joining a community here on hive., Will put this in mind hence forth. Its nice to know that your issue was settled without much stress
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