What are your thoughts on projects that solely focus curation based on who uses their platform?
This has been something I've noticed happen a lot lately, and while I do try to spread my own votes not based on self-interest, we're all human and are drawn towards things that do maybe benefit us somewhat in one way or another.
For instance, I have the scrobble keyword tagged on the FRIDAY bot, initially to check if people were reporting bugs, but when I see something interesting like a new user I haven't seen before using it and creating short form content through it I do open it up specifically to give it a vote as a welcome. I'm not purely curating people just cause they use the site however, most of my votes are spread out between my feed, posh shares and then other various things like scrobble.life reviews or hive gaming posts and some other various things here and there. I don't for instance check the snaps feed and only vote on the scrobble snaps.
There are however some that solely focus their votes on whoever uses their services, and some of them for direct financial benefit.
A week or so ago I ran some analysis on voting patterns for a few accounts, one of the projects that stood out was leo which would either vote delegators, token holders or the rest would go towards users posting through the site, which does often ask you to give it a 5% beneficiary. (I heard if you wanna skip it you have to remove it every time you post rather than set it and forget it, which if true, does feel quite predatory) Where those 5% go or what they're used for is unclear. Scrobble.life does have a beneficiary setting as well but I've been open about what it's used for and there's weekly reports and transactions going out for half of it towards an experimental consumer reward system. The more you read/interact/use the site, the more rewards you can earn weekly, sponsored by beneficiary rewards. I earn some hive from there myself but it's not like I'm using the site too much myself at the moment as I'm actively developing and mainly testing things.
Anyway, out of curiosity I did some more digging today, this isn't meant to point fingers or create drama, we all have our quirks and do things differently, but the numbers were quite interesting. Before I get into it, however, let me share some more info on my own activities.
With ocd we have generally used a prefered front-end over many years, @peakd, and that isn't for any selfish reasons, like, peakd doesn't pay me, I'm not a partner or equity holder, etc. It's out of convenience and what they offer, they made account switching easy early on and added features that we found helpful so over time when curators were nominating posts, since most of the people voting on the posts would also use peakd, we'd ask nominators to drop the links in peakd links to save us some time. Other than that we've never really "looked" or cared where posts are posted from and it never changed our decision if we voted the posts or how much. That's your general front-end-neutral outlook I'm sure most users share as they don't care about it. It's also refreshing that peakd has never attempted to "bribe" people with votes in the past that I know of, people have been drawn to it because they wanted to use it, because its features/speed/design/other have won them over.
Then I decided to look at @ecency which is a front-end which does have a delegation program and curators and what I found was something I can't say I'm happy about considering the amount of funds they've received from the DHF to work on their front-end, the inhouse tokens they have as gamification to encourage people to use it, etc, which has at times been a gray area as they can spend them on direct votes, etc.
Looking at their last 1000 votes, 78% have landed on posts being posted through ecency. That number alone isn't staggering, I'd say it even looks okay-ish. Not too focused with still a lot of room for other front-ends with the rest of the 22%.
The weird part is however this, when we look at the vote weight.
It makes you wonder how the curators are instructed to curate. Do they receive alerts on which posts are posted through ecency in order to give them bigger votes? How most other non-ecency posts only get 3% votes?
It's hard to note judge these numbers as some kind of bribery to make users use your front-end in exchange for votes and make the curation more about that than the actual content/user activity/etc.
Now it's not all bad, it's just a first impression when looking at the numbers, ecency maybe created their delegation program for this specifically. OCD started for retention/onboarding of all kinds/apps.
It is a bit "meh" however and worth pointing out I think. While there are similar projects being way more open and in your face about their max milkage, some are a bit less obvious that they focus on their own users rather than curation as a whole. Along with all the "this post got an ecency vote" comments, it makes you wonder if the 3% votes are mainly an advertisement campaign to try win people over from the other front-ends.
Why not just offer something unique that makes users wanna use you over other front-ends?
Now, I'm not completely innocent here, we do vote quite a lot of posts who use the scrobble.life front-end and community, but there's a reason for it. It offers something unique where you also generate a custom json tx to logging the movie/tv show/book/podcast so that data can be cross-referenced, compared, tracked, etc. The beneficiary system could also count as a bribery for people to use the site, although it was mainly meant as an experiment since there's no rewards for consumers nor has anyone ever tried it before that I can think of. The point is it brings a unique reason to using hive and posting through it, whereas posting through peakd, hive.blog, ecency, leo doesn't differ in any major way.
There's also votes going to curators if we have extra voting power, maybe bigger votes to users who've stuck around and not sold all their stake, etc. We all have biases, but these stats seem quite systematic and intentional, like going out of your way to ignore or only vote 3% on other posts while focusing on users posting through your front-end. There's quite a few stakeholders I've noticed doing similar things lately, to the point where they fully automate the "curation" process for their front-ends that don't really offer anything new/fresh.
Again, I'm not trying to be overly negative here, this can technically be a good use-case for hive power, at least if the project has HP of its own and now with vibecoding becoming more popular with everyone having their own front-ends soon.
I'm just curious what people think of such activity.
Another question, what if ocd started voting only on posts posted through scrobble.life for instance? What would that make you think about the project?
Honestly Leo is totally useless for hive, it only hurts, pay to get votes with the premium charge, upvotes any kind of abusers blindly as long as it pays premium and uses inleo
I don't like ecency policy to upvote basically only whoever uses its front end, it's hive, we are all here, projects should curate regardless of the front end used
I see what you are talking about, but this is not as focused as Splinterlands curation:
https://seattlea.z5.web.core.windows.net/steemmonsters-curation-dashboard.html
Take a look at their weekly top rewarded author 😀:
I'm a guest curator for Ecency, not a permanent one. From what I've seen, a bot in the Discord shares Ecency posts, we are told to vote the posts in that channel. And curators take turns voting from there. The voting power seems fixed, so the rewards are usually around 0.280–0.300+, though I'm not sure of the exact amount.
After each turn, the curator shares the last post link in the chat so the next person can continue from there. My internship ends in a few days since they usually pick two people each month. That's pretty much all I know 😅. I've never done curation before, so I was excited to try it with Ecency.
Good observation, but I think in every project self-interest is normal and every curator has biases but the numbers are still interesting though. :)
I've had peakd posts that were upvoted by eccency curation team before. It was a nice little benefit.
Honestly, even if they were only up voting stuff posted via Ecency, I wouldn't have a problem with it anymore than I would if there was a scrobble.life official curation thingo. The purpose of curation is to highlight content that meets certain criteria, and it's up to the people who have made the effort and investment to have a curation account to use it how they best see fit.
I also don't really see eccency points as a grey area. They're a reward for using the platform, can't be traded for hive(but can be bought), that allows one some minor benefits like promoting a post.
I also love ecency's Decks. I swap between peakd and ecency since I like Decks a lot for quickly checking what's going on in multiple places. But for posting I vastly prefer PeakD's interface. And now I do reviews and read on scrobble.life so I'm using three different front ends lol. It's a bit silly but each has distinct benefits.
I agree with you that each has its advantages. Ecency, Hivesuite, and Snapie have supported me regardless of where I upload content and are very advantageous.
I'm obviously familiar with Ecency, and I've heard of Hivesuite, but not familiar with Snapie. What's the advantage there?
Let me add a little to what @zoe01 said. Yeah, I also got a chance of being a guest curator, probably at my early time in hive (though it was steem back in the day you know).
So like Zoe said, a bot in a private room of their discord shares Ecency posts only. And their voting bot auto-follows the curator. Now when a curator votes a post with their own account, the bot follows. Only thing I understood at my time was that the bot votes posts published through their frontend higher than others. Their curators doesn't have option to choose or change the voting weight. Maybe some elite curators does as you showed 30-100% votes for 23 posts, which shouldn't be the case for all curators.
Yes, you're right. I can't control how much they receive, the amount is fixed for us. I think only a few people have access to adjust how much they can vote. I’d love to give bigger votes but unfortunately, I’m not eligible for that.
This will have been implemented in ecency because a guest curator who abused the votes system giving big amount to his girlfriend. He is always in the leaderboard but I don't see anymore the girlfriend. Maybe was always a alter account .
I completely understand both points of view.
On the one hand, I understand the developers and projects behind platforms like Ecency or Leo, and others I've seen. Creating and maintaining an interface, as I've read, requires time, infrastructure, and resources. For them, using their Hive Power to vote for those who use their site or delegate content to them is a logical marketing and retention strategy: it's their way of building user loyalty and ensuring the sustainability of their project.
On the other hand, as a curator who doesn't have an interface or vested interests, my approach is different. When evaluating content, I don't focus on the platform it was published on, but rather on the quality of the content. I believe that if we limit ourselves to voting only for users of a specific interface, we risk fragmenting the community and excluding valuable creators simply for not using the "right" tool.
Ultimately, Hive's freedom allows both models to coexist: platforms that use their Hive Power as a growth tool and independent curators who seek valuable content regardless of its origin. Both perspectives contribute to the ecosystem, but finding a balance will always be key to avoiding isolating new users, and we must prioritize retention above all else.
I think ScrobbleLife's curation approach is spot on, especially because of its transparency and the value it places on interaction. Perhaps other projects should be more transparent and accountable to ensure everything is as clear as possible.
It's always good to look for the best way to build a better and more equitable place for everyone.
Ecency is the best!
That wouldn't seem right at all. I don't really know a lot about how OCD operates, but my impression was that it was a curation project designed to find and encourage good content across the blockchain.
I don´t like this at all. In case of LEO I knew it, but Ecency? As you say, they anyway get DHF-money, so they should be more neutral in terms of platform usage.
I'll admit I'm biased and curate my own community first to grow it, but I will not curate posts that violate the rules. I also don't even look at who stakes my token when voting. It's not an easy choice, but I feel it makes the votes more meaningful regardless of the amount of HIVE behind it.
I've curated for Ecency as a guest and at least for guest curators there is no instruction for who to give higher votes to. There's a system to flag potential spam, if someone is on Spaminator's blacklist, etc., but the actual percentage of the vote is hard coded for guest curators and can't be influenced by them.
I am in favor of trying to seek out low KE, established users and rewarding them if the content warrants it. I try to do this myself. I know KE isn't a perfect metric, but it's better than nothing.
I have no issues with projects first voting on those who post in their community. Where it gets questionable is when those who delegate, own/stake a token, etc., are given preferential treatment regardless of the quality of content.
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I see it as being little different than most Communities who only curate their respective niche for a few different reasons. One being the limit of their stake to spread around meaningfully. That being said, I take issue with any promotion that offers profit or votes for simply delegating stake, because it is no different than the vote buying that was shut down in the past over ethics and it hurts curation on Hive in general
2- If OCD decided to concentrate on scrobble.life content only, retention would go way down or scrobble would become the dominant frontend or even both. It would cause more centralization, which is the opposite of what was intended. Also, OCD made their stake on the promise it would be used for Hive and I feel switching gears like that would be seen as a betrayal in some way. OCD would probably never have grown to what it is today if it were more niche concentrated
It's interesting to read about this now, actually. I don't know if it's for any particular reason or what, but talking about the reward system that Ecency currently offers is rather curious. According to what I just read in this same comments section, Encency has been doing all of this that you show us here for quite some time now. I think that, in a way, it's a good method to attract creators or users to their front end and thus motivate them in a certain way. Well, at least at the beginning if you were a new project.
But Ecency has been around for years, as have InLeo and PeakD. I've only been here on Hive for a little over two years, but from the beginning I've noticed that these three Fronts are the most popular and used. The most curious thing about this is that PeakD is the only one of the three that does not need a rewards system to be at the top of the Fronts with the most active users. I completely agree with the idea of offering something good, something useful for users and creators.
But hey, the topic of "gamification" or whatever they call it is nothing new anymore. Guided by most projects such as the aforementioned Encency and InLeo or even others like 3Speak, Liketu and even Actifit fall into this same theme. Of course, these last three will not be as noteworthy since they require certain things before rewarding those who use their own Fronts. But this has been repeated even in more recent projects like Snapie, HiveSuite, etc.
As a content creator and frequent user of this great ecosystem, I admit that I have fallen into the "provocation" of wanting to receive those "benefits" that those Fronts provide. A few months ago I used InLeo, and I still use Ecency, but currently I'm more into the convenience and usefulness of the different front-ends I use. Aside from the voting issue, Ecency also has its good points regarding development and utilities. You could even say that it competes very well with PeakD and even has more advantages thanks to the Mobile App which continues to work very well even now, after the cuts they have made.
But anyway, I like using Ecency because of the app, the notification system it has, the ease of accessing and interacting with it from my cell phone, etc. But that doesn't mean I don't also really like PeakD, at least as a very useful blog and front end for curation and other things. There's also HiveSuite, which, although now stricter when it comes to "rewarding" its users, has a very attractive and useful front end with certain features that I really like.For example, there's a feature called Inbox where I can see all the comments I haven't answered yet, so I don't miss any.
I think it would be good to balance all of this in a way that helps the vast majority and not just a small section. Being stricter isn't always bad, but it all depends on how it's approached. For example, all the work you've been doing with Scrobble along with the OCD team is quite admirable, and I understand that they have their reasons for doing things the way they do. Perhaps Encency and the others also have their reasons, who knows, I think there's also a need for more communication and camaraderie between leaders and developers of the different front ends and projects. But something I do have to admit is that users and creators also have a responsibility to use these fronts and tools intelligently.
By this I mean knowing where and what to choose and publish or use. I think that, with the exception of InLeo, where most users only post spam or low-quality content, most front pages serve more as tools than a means to gain votes or rewards. In the end, I can't make the mistake of speaking for all creators, but just as a personal case I confess that there are very few curation projects that remain as impartial as possible in Hive today, as is the case with OCD. However, for new or inexperienced users, it can be very helpful to see that sites like Ecency offer such benefits. With this in mind, I believe it is more important to teach and guide these users (as well as the vast majority) so that they can learn more about Hive and what it offers. It's not enough to just focus on development, votes for those who use their Fronts and that's it.
On the other hand, and to conclude this, there are still projects and communities that are doing a great job. These are the projects that continue to be developed and worked on despite the current situation where a programmer cannot earn a salary in a volatile currency, especially if it is not done as a hobby. Those are the projects that need to be supported.
Sorry for the speech I just gave here. 🥴
I could write a book on this (really!), but I’ll stick to a simple answer (one that might even seem like a "cliché" to many people): when quality comes first, the front-end used to publish the content becomes quite irrelevant.
Thanks for the analysis, important discussion to have. Your vote counts are accurate, so let us fill in the parts the numbers cannot show, starting with where this model came from.
Until the end of 2023 our votes carried no front-end weighting at all. On chain: June 2022, 5.0% median on Ecency posts and 6.0% on everything else. December 2022, 5.9% and 7.2%. Posts from other front-ends were getting larger votes than Ecency users. The weighting came in around the turn of 2024, a year after the January 2023 thread where you wrote "I'd be fine if for instance ecency were to ignore people who post on other front-ends". Ref. We disagreed with you then and said so: "Why this is better? People like to use other apps, why limit them". Ref. What we ended up with is between those two positions. Everyone still gets curated, posts published through Ecency get a larger vote. Today it is about 6% against 3%, so other front-ends now get smaller percentage. Curators do not set that weight, the bot applies it after they vote, which is why the numbers look so flat.
No vote is bought, sold or guaranteed. @ecency curates with 2.6M HP, 2.54M of it delegated by about 1,400 people, and every cent of curation it earns is returned to them daily, the full yield of the stake. We keep none of it. The DHF proposal pays 100 HBD a day, down from 396 and 300 in earlier years and it funds development, not votes.
None of this was hidden either. Our curation runs through a guest curator program anyone can join, two new people every month, and two of our curators are answering in this thread. That is the point of running it that way. If the multiplier itself is what you object to, say so plainly and we will discuss it in the open. We can do some other experiments as well and analyze...
I started my journey with ecency but later I became a fan of Inleo. I think they developed the Inleo quite well by their intention was evil. I think I was one of the most active person of Inleo and grabbed many votes of leo.voter.
The 5% benificeary suppose to buy LEO or burn LEO (I can't fully remember) to boost the price of LEO. Removing 5% beneficiary was a hassle and I used to forget to remove it many times.
Leothreads was good while snaps or waves were not so developed like now but Leotherads used for the publicity of Leostrategy and grab the money of Hive user. They introduced TTSLA,TGLD, type token including SURGE and ACE which actually harmed HIVE because huge amount of HIVE were converted to those token and when they exhaust the investors, they just stopped giving the yield they promised and dropped the price of those token close to zero.
So, it was a grand scheme of Khaleelkazi. After the leostrategy scam, the leothreads became a place of garbage and very few pepole are active there. I left Inleo becaue I thought I should not support a frontend that actually made for scamming and I came back to ecency and this time I am impressed how ecency improved.
In Inleo, those people who are saying aginst them, those users threads don't show up in threads feed even it's user with higher reputation. It means those users account were muted for the frontend which is somehting new. Whatever, Inleo is a platform of ghost and it was expected after scam of leostategy.
If I keep talking, I have lots of things to say and can make 50+ posts easily but I don't want to waste my time for trashy people like Khaleelkazi.
So, why I am saying those things here? It's because, I think people should know about the scammy frontend and the scammer Khaleelkazi as he always try to come back with new schemes and he is so shameless thay he can do it with full confidence. I want to say all the new users to stay wary from Khaleelkazi and what he comes up.