Curation
To understand what I believe is the roll of content curators on HIVE, let’s explorer what an art exhibition curator does.
Okwui Enwezor in 2002 as he prepared the exhibition “Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945-1994,” at what is now MoMA PS1. The work of Samuel Fosso is on the wall. source: NY Times
The conceptualization of an art exhibition is not a random thing. He or she doesn’t just grab whatever is trending or whatever new artist is on the scene.
The curator has to develop the theme of the expo as well as select the artists he or she wants to present. The curator also selects the target audience.
It’s the curator’s function to give access to culture and produce art history, so curation must be an activity done with great care, reflection and responsibility.
Curation on HIVE
Doesn’t it make sense that curation on HIVE should carefully seek to promote and give preference to content that elevates visibility, understanding, value, use-cases of our ecosystem?
I’m not saying that content about a meal I ate today or a random thought that popped into my head shouldn’t be upvoted. There’s also value in that because it helps content creators see that there is a way of earning cryptocurrency with activities they are already doing for free on web2 platforms like X, Instagram, Reddit, Facebook or Tik Tok. Please give an upvote to these types of posts too.
But in my eyes, there’s a little bit more value when a shop owner makes a step-by-step guide on how to create a HIVE account for his clients, followed by instructions on how to by items at his shop using $HBD they’ve earned from posting and then showing how he’s spending $HBD on salaries or supplies for his shop at other businesses that also accept $HBD.
I think this type of content elevates visibility, understanding, and use-cases of our ecosystem, and this should have a little bit higher vote from curators.
Dan calls it
Incentivized coin distribution.
This, in my opinion, is the kind of content we should be incentivizing folks to create and curators to upvote.
I personally give preference to these types of posts:
Curating for businesses
I Promote content that shows businesses the benefits of using a KYC-less method of receiving a stable coin such as $HBD. Show them how they can spend their $HBD and also how they can build a HIVE-hub like those in Cumaná, Venezuela by showing their customers and suppliers the value of $HBD.
Check out this video by @manuphotos (edited by @crptogeek) at a restaurant in Cuba called La Flor de Zapata who he's taught how easy it is to accept payments in $HBD using the @keychain dapp:
Here's another beautifully produced video showing someone paying at Cafe de la Fonda in Rosarito, Mexico:
~~~ embed:1725317251522347262 twitter metadata:Q3JwdG9HZWVrfHxodHRwczovL3R3aXR0ZXIuY29tL0NycHRvR2Vlay9zdGF0dXMvMTcyNTMxNzI1MTUyMjM0NzI2Mnw= ~~~
And yet another one me and @starkerz filmed while in Guatemala, showing how easy it is to use the Keychain dapp along with @v4vapp to pay at shops that already accept #Bitcoin over Lightning:
Curating for developers
I Promote content like the hackathon that happened for Crypto Blockchain Week in Caracas, Venezuela on October 24th. En event that not only connects various web3 projects, it allows developers to use and get familiar with the tech and maybe they’ll see the value in using the framework to develop new solutions.
Look at these guys' faces. Not only are they stoked to be on stage like a team of rockstars, they also had an opportunity to play with the SPK Network testnet and resolve bugs, make security and infrastructure improvements and understand mining.
This to me is the definition of "Value for value". I couldn't have come up with a better term.
Up-voting for the sake of extracting value for yourself
Up-voting can also bee seen as a source of semi-passive income to some. After all, you can easily earn an easy 8% APR (or more) on your Hive Power just by casting an upvote on whatever shows up on your trending or hot feed.
Easy as pie, right?
But is that adding value to our ecosystem?
You could argue that it’s helping spread the token far and wide. fair enough.
But is it really extending Hive culture or educating potential projects or individual users on the available technology on the HIVE blockchain? I have my doubts.
I'm of the opinion that this is a less valuable form of curation that is even used by well-known self-voting abusers from the past to keep earning $HIVE to dump on the market at whatever price.
Could there be a way of incentivizing creators to make more content that is valuable to the ecosystem and curators to give priority to this type of content?
It's probably not a priority to further align incentives so that valuable content receives more rewards than less valuable content.
Maybe I’m just talking crazy talk. It’s not uncommon for me to do that. But I do think there's a difference.
I'd love to read what you think.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
The thing is no one really does any real quality curation and there's a lot of back rubbing that still happens to this day. However that's to be expected in a decentralized world as it's human nature to hold grudges and so forth. I mean heaven forbid you think differently and have another viewpoint as someone else and you wind up getting muted by a whale and so forth. It happens and it happens a decent amount just based on that it's happened to me lol
Hive is in a bad place in terms of it ALWAYS promotes value extraction. It's Always promoted as come place your content on here and earn. But it doesn't generate any revenue from that to be able to pay these people thus a constant value extraction happens. The only thing that really keeps it from falling apart is that half of the rewards are auto powered up and locked up for 13 weeks.
Well then we have a problem of misaligned incentives by design.
I had a conversation with a Bitcoiner who explained that miners are incentivized to source the cheapest electricity and highest computing power to increase their probability of mining a bitcoin block. The economic incentive drives up the hashrate also makes the Bitcoin network more secure in the process.
I am in resonance with what you say, more of this content should be pushed and shared inside and outside of Hive.
Of course, without detracting from other types of content: interesting, informative, funny, sad, educational... because that's what it's all about in the end, creating content that attracts the masses.
I must emphasize that I am not the person in either of these two videos. I just recorded and edited the first one, where @manuphotos and @herlopab (the business owner) appear.
The second one I simply shared because it is visually stunning and highlights how easy and quick it is to pay using HBD.
Thank you so much for pointing that out!
I've hit @manuphotos with an up-vote on his video and will update my post to give him credit 👏👏👏
Perhaps, there is a need to distinguish between two kinds of curators: those that focus on the value contributed by content creators and those that invest capital to earn from curation. I think both are giving value to the Hive ecosystem though in a different way. However, as for those who want to earn from curation without increasing their HP, I doubt that they can go a long way.
You can always earn from curation, that's built into the mechanics of the blockchain. You can earn just as much from giving preference to posts that contribute to building a middle class and make our ecosystem grow, while still voting on content about cats and pancakes.
The emphasis of the first kind of curator is more on the value that the creators give to the platform through quality content. The second on the other hand is not much on content quality but the return on his capital. I think both are built into the system.
You keep talking about two kinds of curators. What I'm saying is not mutually exclusive.
The same curator (let's call him "Ed", lol) can vote on
Ed is one person, one curator, but he gave preference to a post that helps build visibility, understanding, value, and use-cases of our ecosystem.
Well, that's how I reconcile the way I read your article. Anyhow, thanks for clarifying Ed's preference. No problem with giving an upvote of 50% for those micro posts. I am thinking more of the second kind that just extract value from the chain without regards as to the quality of the posts and yet they still give 100% upvotes. Though that's not ideal, all we can do is share our thoughts hoping that they will be convinced with our reasoning.
Good comparison, Alex. 👍🏻
thanks. Sunday thoughts, I could be writing nonsense, but hey 🤷♂️
Well I'll be honest with you, the money factor is a thing for me. That much I won't deny, of course we all want to grow our accounts, right?
Although I love the idea of it, being a crypto blogging site. And there is much less negativity being shared on Hive than any other social media site 😂😂
!BEER
Isn't it for everybody?
We can earn from giving larger upvotes to content that elevates visibility, understanding, and use-cases of our ecosystem. By doing so, we also incentivize content creators to create content that adds value to the ecosystem as opposed to... less valuable content.
You are totally correct!!
I support all kinds of activities and initiatives that promote Hive and bring more users to it, and I like a lot of your posts because they are like that. Of course it makes sense to upvote all kinds of content, but as you say, posts that add value to the community and Hive should be valued more. And I'm not just saying this for you, we should respect whoever is bringing traffic to Hive.
Couldn't have said it better myself! 🤝
View or trade
BEER.Hey @alex-rourke, here is a little bit of
BEERfrom @technicalside for you. Enjoy it!Learn how to earn FREE BEER each day by staking your
BEER.So many people are actually joining the money factor which I believe hive should still work on if there can be more genuine factor on ground that can make people join
Maybe we could develop a way to incentivize curators to prefer more valuable content. It's a bit tricky because it's so subjective, but I'm sure we can discuss it and come up with some improvements.
I totally agree with all you pointed out, imagine people get rewarded greatly for spreading Hive on web2, because in all honesty these people are marketing Hive and new users get to join.
I applaud ocd posh for upvoting Hiveans who take their time to make good tweets on Twitter and also Hive data who run regular call to actions. People can’t join if we do not spread the word.
I can agree with a lot of what you said but I am conflicted on the curation as extraction. I personally curate posts manually. I try to follow people that I find interesting, and topics that I like. Curation is Hive's way of 'mining' the tokens apart from creating posts. I don't really see that as anything bad. If you curate to extract, I think Hive is great at being able to solve that on its own. By extracting value, removing it from your account and converting it to Fiat, your HP and curation value will not increase. If you curate to increase your HP and curation value, I don't see that as a bad thing. People have different interests, and we shouldn't control it. Hive is a social platform, food and travel posts might not be too beneficial to the Hive ecosystem as a whole, but most posts don't have to be.
Only I didn't say food and travel posts are bad. In fact, I said
My point is posts that elevate visibility, understanding, and use-cases of our ecosystem should have a little bit higher vote from curators.
I never said that you said food and travel posts are bad. I don't know where you got that. My wording was "might not be too beneficial... don't have to be"; they are still beneficial, just not to the effect that you want. I just used them as an example because those are the posts I like.
This part of the reply was also in relation to your other statements:
And I will again repeat what I said more specifically. People have different interests and we shouldn't control it. Hive is a social platform. Not all posts need to add value to the ecosystem or educate others about Hive; generating conversations and sharing interests is still beneficial. Let the people and curators decide what has value based on what they like.
Yes, people have different interests.
Yes, not all posts need to add value to the ecosystem or educate about HIVE.
Yes, people can decide what has value.
We agree on all points my friend.
I (Alex Rourke) choose to carefully seek to promote and give preference (with a higher upvote) to content that elevates visibility, understanding, value, use-cases of our ecosystem. I believe this builds culture.
Yep, as the first line in my first comment says, I agree with a lot of what you said. There were some confusion, but I'm glad we sorted that out.
As for what you want to happen for those specific posts, I would suggest creating a group or make them use a tag, create a curation trail, and have them upvote those types of posts with the tag. This is similar to how other communities do it.
You’ve got a pint and I’m even glad that you corrected me the last time about the percent at which I vote
I already adjusted it so that the author and I can earn
Awesome, glad I could help.
Yeah, voting below 0.002 is below the dust threshold, neither curator nor the author will get rewarded. It's basically just throwing votes away.