Even the tiniest barriers at signup will prevent a huge number of people from completing it. When I joined because of the Gods Unchained competition, I remember the pain of learning about hive keychain, need a code, etc. I was highly motivated because of the competition, but I would never have jumped through those hoops otherwise (I’m glad I did!).
Is it possible to have a web2 front end experience? Free account with the usual captcha bot prevention. Keys associated with the account that can be exported when the user is ready for that? Maybe X free sign ups per day paid for by some endowment of HP.
This next part might get a bit controversial, but content is heavily skewed to crypto/finance. At least it feels like that. What seems missing is controversial topics. Politics/relgion/etc. Posting controversial content/opinions feels like a great way to downvote town and never being able to earn anything. Much safer to post about the next moon token or game you’re playing. People don’t farm engagement on Twitter with safe statements.
It’s also a little odd because hive bills itself as uncensored. This is where you’d want to be able to post something that might currently be out of favor with the majority, and if you don’t care about earning hive, you can. Its just too risky. Ocd won’t curate it. Etc.
I also agree with you that we reward long content and don’t give enough love to short content. We could scale down rewards to match effort, but encouraging short posts sounds like a good idea.
Quite the coincidence, but I'm just watching a "how to get started" vid on splinterlands. They offer the exact web2 experience I was describing. Username/password + captcha account creation. Then you can request your keys and they send you an email.