Retention and Entitlement
Today I was having a discussion with a newly formed community on this blockchain, and I was asked a rather simple question:
What do you think are the main threats to our community?
For a second I hesitated, which is not normal for me. I typically say this straight rather quickly, the reason for my hesitation was simple. It is necessary to face the truth for a new community early? I do not know the answer to this question, but I will wing it.
Here at hive and/or splinterlands, every discord server is a community. Some of these discord servers are true community at the hive blockchain. Meaning in PeakD or any other front end, if you click on the community name, that particular one will show up somewhere. However, others are just a discord server, maybe a guild, maybe just group of like minded people for some common cause. Whatever the case maybe, they form in the hundreds around here; some survives as long as I know this blockchain exits, while others disappear in thin air in as little as a couple of months. Yet others, which showed promise in the beginning may be just a mere weak shadow of its distant past. All these variations and their infinite permutations are possible.
So with that introduction; what were my answers? Obviously my title: Retention and Entitlement.
Retention
Retention is a major threat to any new community. Everything starts nice and dandy. People are happy. As this is related to a play to earn game Splinterlands or a blogging platform which pays, Hive; there is money involved. If the community get some connection to get promoted it is not hard to get noticed at hive. This is because hive itself is a relatively small community.
After the initial traction, which for some communities is hard, for others were relatively easy. Whatever the case may be, soon the community may get the early recognition and traction. In the blogging platform of hive that usually translates to getting noticed by curation guilds. At Splinterlands, it is usually translates to getting supported by a player with large asset or a guild.
After this initial phase, usually there is growth of that particular community. More new people flocks to it for rewards, exposure, etc. But the trouble is, reward pool being constant, as the size of the community grows, the segment of the reward pool that was supporting the community get stretched and eventually taps out.
This is the time community members starts to complain. It can be amplified by a bear market, which is long and common in crypto. Community members do not earn as much as they used to or expected. So they eventually get 'salty' and give up.
Point is, this phase is inevitable. One way or the other, this phase of 'salt' will come. It is the duty of the leadership to navigate through this phase, and potentially mitigate it with some innovative means. What exactly, is highly variable and the success depends on the quality of the leadership.
Entitlement
Entitlement is a common thing in hive blogging platform. I see this everyday, day-in-and-out, older memebers to new members. Entitlement happens when you start to get rewarded/recognized, for either your good content, or your connections/networking. At hive, majority of the votes are automated, so once you get into auto-vote, especially large auto-votes, it is very easy to earn 30-50 hive in rewards. Then if one or more curation guilds notice you, you can have a situation called vote stacking. This happens when multiple curation guilds or multiple large stakeholder votes the same post. In that case the post can pull 100 hive rewards, and can be in 'trending' posts. More late votes can come after that.
Soon the individual feels he/she can do no wrong. Whatever, she writes, good, bad or ugly; hey maybe even using Chat GPT, everything will be voted! This is called entitlement for rewards. I see this at hive quite frequently and at all scales at virtually all communities.
This is a real danger for the individual concerned and the community which supports the individual.
At hive, rewards can be given, but they are not yours until day 7 at payout. They belong to the common hive reward pool. During the 7 days, potential rewards can be adjusted too via downvotes. People who upvotes, usually do not give explanation for the upvote, people who downvote, doesn't need to give any explanation for their downvotes. They can just adjust the rewards as they see fit.
This usually triggers people personally and instigate dramas. Hive is very well known for all kinds of dramas. However, one thing for certain, as the entitlement increases, and effort decreases; both the individual and the community will suffer, sooner or later. It is a real danger, and it is inevitable, unless caught early and fixed by the leadership.
Entitlement is the worst for sure. It is almost tied into the quality of the individual. There are those that post and care about what they write and there are those who pretend to care and post what they think is the minimum acceptable amount to get what they feel they are owed
Then the effort becomes less and less, often with a doubling or more of posting frequency and boom. Cheating shortcuts and instable insanity when the downvotes arrive for being caught. it's almost predictable.
So yes, those are the greatest dangers!
Yeah, so many cases we have seen, boomy! So many salty battles! All for what? A fistful of dollars?
Sigh!
We have seen oceans of salt!! And that's the thing, as you say, it comes down to dollars. A fistful or less and people will expose their worst for them!! There will be no end to it!
@meesterboom I just wanted to say I enjoy reading your posts, they are very entertaining and if you read in between the lines, super meaningful. I am a Brit so I get the humor. Thank you for Sharing and I look forward to seeing your future posts.
Cheers mate! I always think a Brit will probably get more of my nonsense than most!
Yes, I told @azircon that I appreciate your content. My actual IGN is mangomayhem but I also run the new start up curation account for TeamPH. I look forward to seeing your new posts!
I have seen your name about actually, it is quite distinctive! Azircon is a fine chap!
Yeah like you @meesterboom... You use to post around every three days... Now... Well now im lucky if I see something slipping out of your blog every three months 😂😂😂🍀
Laughs but on a serious note it take up a lot of effort to start and keep an community running... ALOT
😂😂
!LUV
I used to post daily! Without fail every single day. With the auto votes I get though it became a bit much. On saying that though, I am going to go for an unprecedented two posts in two days scenario today!!
LAUGHS, you do get a lot of auto votes, but your content is great.. it's really immersive.
I am trying to post daily just for the yearly author badge😅 but I am thinking of letting the badge go, sometimes it's hard especially after work and such, but I'll see what happens.
Cheers man!!
I think posting daily is great to start or kickstart all amount but man, as you know, it can be quite the grind!!! Especially when you are working!
@meesterboom, @technicalside(1/3) sent you LUV. | tools | discord | community |
HiveWiki | 
NFT | <>< daily
I get some nice auto votes, but I never take them for granted. I would actually rather see some other deserving people get more, but I don't necessarily have the influence to make that happen. My own votes are mostly manual, so I try to target them where they can do some good. It's not about paying people back for supporting me if they will do okay anyway.
Communities are important. Having that group support can make a big difference, but they ought to care about quality and what is good for Hive in general. We've seen plenty of voting rings who just try to milk the rewards. Of course quality is a matter of opinion. I've seen people driven away when someone else thinks their posts are 'over-rewarded' and those little dramas break out. Getting the right balance is not easy.
Hive is tiny really, but still does great things. I want to see it thrive.
Well, you are here for a long time and are a key piller of the community. There are folks like you who are out there so that this place haven't become a total failure yet. I like that a lot, because otherwise we would have wasted a whole bunch of time for nothing! Thank you for what you do!
I think there are lots of good people here who want to build exciting new stuff, but we get the grifters too. It's all part of the fun.
Thanks for what you do too.
It's true. I've seen this in many aspects. On one hand you have the smaller, littler members complaining where the big dawgs spend their votes. I see it often, recognise it even more now with brofi - there's definitely a line to tow for whales to keep in favour with communities.
Not dissing it though, it's good that there's an element of (at the very least) social pressure on whales, because if not, god knows what we'd get up to.
It's why I like hive. I've seen wallets on other chains decimate projects because there's no repercussions. If they don't join the communities they can act with impunity and crush without care. It's a bit different here. There's actual consequences for most people on the chain were they to act selfishly.
But on the other hand there's the entitlement -- you see it from low effort people complaining that you got $100 and they only got $0.01. Then you slide into their blog and there's like 1 post a week, and they've really not made an effort at all!
That's not aimed at anyone, but in reality it's what I frequently see.
Oh man, retention is quite possibly the hardest thing to do on blockchain. I remember BRO being instantly successful. Then, immediately, after the hype died down.. what now? Keeping that engagement going and during the bear and the bull keeps me on my toes. That's for sure.
Luckily we still have lots of legs left! We are still building :)
Wow! A rare comment from you at my post! Appreciated! How are you doing?
Agree with everything you said up there. I have seen it soon many times. Since I point these things to people, I have not been well liked all the time, but I am okay with it. There are so many times I have these unpleasant conversations with many individuals. I even have this conversation with @livinguktaiwan yesterday!
But yeah, we are still here. I am still here and will be.
Thank you for what you do.
Conversations, even unpleasant ones are good and healthy for chain growth, as long as they don't turn abusive as we've seen from some maniacs in the past
Of course, F2F is even better as so much can be lost in translation sometimes making things even worse. Sadly, that is not possible most of the time
Certainly it is important to have the conversation. I believe in 90% of time, if the individuals are normal, simple humans, like most of us are, it solves the problem easily.
You'll see me more often. I've made the conscious decision to go out there and say hi to our token owners, the projects we like, and the rest!
I got a bit dejected with writing for many years, but I think I'm over that now. Plus we are growing quite large, it's probably a good thing that we start saying hello to our holders and other people!
I appreciate that! We all go through funk, we get into it, and then we get out of it :)
I learned this today from Finland travel website
https://www.visitfinland.com/en/find-your-inner-finn/
It's true. I bet if we all dropped our screens, started climbing trees, walked more, talked with each other, built in-person bonds, and played games on the grass again -- depression would disappear overnight.
One thing I read, which I hadn't done before, and it actually makes lots of sense is to take your shoes off and walk in the grass! It decreases depression :)
yes, I have heard that too, actually
I try and avoid the drama if I can, but sometimes my principles just won't allow it. Sometimes it is rather entertaining to watch, though. I'm glad Splinterlands has a nice curation trail. How about this new !KOG reward ehh? Go Hive Go!
Drama follows me! :)
No idea about KOG tips. Will find out
View or trade
KOGtokens.Hey there, Champ. You took a pretty hard pounding from our member, back there, on the battlefield. Present this token in any Kingdom of Glory guild glory hole to redeem your complimentary aftercare.
@ducecrypto, you successfully shared 0.10000000 KOG with @azircon and you earned 0.10000000 KOG as tips. (1/3 calls)
Use !KOG command to share KOG! More details available in this post.
Entitlement, so far, is the most common threat to this chain although there are other things too, notably indifference to engagement and networking. However, entitlement is still a major problem that (might) upset the newbies when compared to the rewards earned, given the content quality being equal or even close.
Another issue that creates a thin line of conflict between the entitled users and newbies is the frequency of posts, no matter how great one can write, I believe posting too many times (3 or more) a day surely has a different intention than purely helping the community to grow or honest contribution to the chain. You might want to call it milking. And to be honest, there are milkers everywhere; either in disguise or notoriously exposed.
There might be another factor working behind entitlement; networking, which typically favours the people either connected in the real world or virtually; e.g Discord community server. And when you have good relationship with some heavyweight users here, they won't mind giving you a big chunk of vote regardless of content frequency or quality. After all, you get some when you give some; for free of course.
I was talking abou hive, but same is perhaps true in real life as well. I always feel hive is a scaled down version of real life
I am reflecting on it. "there are no guarantees"
Yes, your questions triggered this post.
never looked into this, but if community understands how things work should not that community grow in rewards (or at least stay on the same rate). Because if community members stake hive and don't cash out everything, the voting power of the community grows with time. ( i simplified it, i know it is not the exact math...)
Yeah, trouble is even at a low growth rate, community-growth will outpace stake growth by probably 2 orders of magnitude, at least in the beginning. Then its poof!
Dear @azircon I am convinced that the right to rewards should always occur when the publications are very well analyzed to check if they are in accordance with the requirements of each community, likewise if the aspects dealt with are important, in view of the topic dealt with, it is a criterion very personal. Dear, if I'm wrong, you, as more experienced and reputable than me, can clarify it and give me some recommendations. One of my goals is always to learn from you. I take this opportunity to express that once I read your post, I consider it very important. successes
Mostly I prefer people to explore themselves, as this is a personal choice and journey.
That is correct dear @azircon , in any case your guidance will always be welcome.
Spot on! I find it super sad to see when users post rewards increasing and receive some or similar rewards on each post they publish, their efforts decrease. Some complain, others don't. But in general, I see reducing of effort in posts by those that have constant high rewards (talking 20/30$ upwards). Even sad to see many of those users take a significant step back in engagement. Maybe they are still responding to comments to their own post, but rarely go out to visit and interact with other users' posts. That said, we even see users constantly being at the top of reward lists who don't even take the effort to respond to comments to their own posts. Or just drop a 'thank you', the lowest of lowest effort responses IMHO, since one doesn't even have to read the comment itself, just drop the 'thank you's. Sad to see. But the net effect of having a monetary system as we have here at HIVE with to little we can do about it. Sure, when running a community, some tools are available. The MUTE post is one I use when a post isn't on par with the minimum required for the community I'm co-running. Fortunately, I have never seen users feel entitled to the rewards. I hope this is because we (moderators) try to explain why we use the MUTE button, or do something else that lowers the exposure of the post or reduces the rewards on the post (or not add additional rewards).
Ah! No point in being sad! Be Happy! Visit Finland! :)
https://www.visitfinland.com/en/find-your-inner-finn/
Though some users' behaviours on HIVE are 'sad', I always try to improve my happiness levels. The baseline isn't too bad, being part of the 5th happiest society on our planet, the Netherlands. Can't rank it, but I feel I passed comfortably the 7 on a scale of 0 to 10 (with 10 being the highest possible level) 😉
Been to Finland once. Some time ago. less than 24hrs though. Was a business trip. Am very happy to return for a less business-oriented stay. Nice, this crash course of finding our inner Fin. Sadly (darn, there is that word again), am kinda fully booked in June this year. Working on my inner Fin at two multi-day festivals (almost a week per festival). Music, Art, Good Food, Good peeps. One in my own country, a small one which is kinda an offspring of the big Burning Man in California. A none currency festival where we care for and share all we bring with one another. Next is a little less sharing only, but still a lot of carrying 😉 Somewhere in northeastern part of Germany. So much looking forward to these events 💯🎶🙇
NJOY your weekend 😉
Is there somewhere a document or guide for hive communities development?
I'd like to have my community recognized by 3speak, but I'm allergic to Discord ;)
There isn't any to the best of my knowledge.
However, others can chime in.
Without discord, there will very little headway you can make unfortunately. Consider taking allergy medication :)
I just realized that it happens, the connection or networking thing. It is one of the reasons why I chose to minimize my exposure to blogs, although I'm always willing to make a lot of effort to present my content. I feel like making not that many engagements and making efforts to articulate your thoughts are not the only way to survive. We also need a network to stay motivated. God, I wish I won't feel this feeling again where I would face my laptop to start writing what I think is worth sharing and don't need to mind the value of my upvotes and emotions. I remember hearing from some of my virtual friends who also joined this blockchain that Hive is just a connection thing. Nevertheless, Hive is still a good platform and one of the most sustainable communities I know. By the way, thank you for those authors who upvoted some of my blogs with their connections.
Hey @iamboring, nice to see you. Remember me? Maybe not, so let me refresh your memory. Remember when I told you how important engagement is on Hive? You were new, I saw you posting constantly, getting very little or no rewards at all, not really engaging with others and I thought it worth a try to mention anotherway of doing things on Hive. You had genuine content and it was visible you could use some guidance. You said you'll be more active once you finish your exams.
The truth is, it's easy to drop your post every day and wait for votes to drop but that's not what happens on Hive. Content creation is essential but content consumption is just as essential.
Keeping a community growing is a common effort, both the admins/mods and community members should work together to achieve groth.
This should not be an obligation, should happen naturally and trust me, there are so many interesting posts every day, so many interesting people to meet, so many new things to learn about everything in the world. But you can only discover that if you start engaging with others, which potentially leads to getting more engagement on your post, which can lead to more rewards as well, and can lead to community growth as well.
Hive is much more than that.
Just my 2 cents.
Happy blogging and I hope to see you around.
Thank you for this encouragement! I remember you, of course. Maybe I just need to focus more on making engagements although I feel like it was a chore. I can't help to feel sometimes that my posts are not good enough. Nevertheless, Hive is still a good platform!
In life I have always thought that rights must be earned by fulfilling one's duties.
Given that I write for passion and I do it on hive as well as on my personal blog, I believe that in order to have the right to vote it is necessary to fulfill one's duties of quality in writing, the contribution of value with what is written and also the development itself of the community, if this does not happen no right exists.
Obviously this is my thought and I know that many will think differently; it is useless to deny that everyone likes rewards, I too would like many more eh eh!
But I confess that I don't want undeserved rewards, obtained only for automatic votes given to a post I wrote in a disgusting way, that would be degrading to me.
!LUV
@azircon, @juanvegetarian(1/1) sent you LUV. | tools | discord | community |
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I do agree with your take on retention.
I personally find the misaligned incentives and intent more of problems within communities than entitlement.
Entitlement is like a mass shooting. It shocks. It creates drama. It creates strong emotional response.
But misaligned incentives and the intent of individuals in a community will decide its long-term course.
Hmm, as a stay-at-home mom who never sees a lot of people now that I am living in a new country, I enjoy leaving comments on any blogs that I find relatable. I am still a newbie here on Hive. There are times, it's frustrating when my blog doesn't have a lot of upvotes. I'm happy when one of the articles gets an upvote. But I love to read and to engage, or make friends virtually. Reading someone's blog is my way of getting to know the person.
Thank you sharing that with us in person, I feel it is important for a Community to understand the potential threats early so that we may formulate a plan of action. I keep thinking about the Good example and the Bad Example that you shared where the lady had made a business out of Peakd, extracting all that value, having others write articles. She lost her reputation, I feel that was bigger than the Money she had made.
Thank you for the answers here, azircon. That question was very important and your answer was just as insightful.
Retention is probably by far the hardest to do as it's always a day in - day out kind of thing in the community. Keeping the community engaged is the most important thing and I think a constant reminder of why the community exists and what the goals are should always be reinforced so that the members don't lose sight of the goal.
For entitlement, I think it goes both ways. There is also potential entitlement for newer members especially if they don't know any better and it's up to us as a community to make sure to remind them that nothing is guaranteed and that you also have to build yourself and your reputation.