Hello, I would like to express my thoughts about Hive Watchers. Over the past few weeks, I've been reading and watching the Hive Watchers Discord channels to see what is going on. I think everybody should. Here in hive we are a community and we should support each other in every way. Even if this means criticizing our friends. I would like to share some of my thoughts about the Watchers.
This is by far the weakest point of the Watchers. There is no effective way to inform users and public about what is going on about the blacklisting process. Many of the effected users - including wrongly accused ones - waiting for days to get an answer to their questions. When they get an answer it is usually not pleasant. The way staff approach to people is very rough and rude. I understand that they are working with good intentions and try to keep hive as clean as possible. But this is not the way to do it. You can't just treat everybody like they are notorious criminals. People , even though they made mistakes, deserves to be treated like human beings. You can not treat a new case based on your assumptions on previous one. You need to treat every person with open mind and willingness to help. I think this is where most improvement can be done. The one who speaks to the users should be a calm and kind person who does not allow his own personal opinions interfere the case.
This is the second big problem about the Watchers. Anybody who spend couple of days reading the appeal channels can say that majority of people are looking for information about their situations. They are often left in the dark and they have no idea what to do. This leads to others problems for them like writing other irrelevant channels to seek help or writing other users to help them. This results the appeal time to be elongated. Hive Watchers comment on posts are informative about the situation but it is not enough to explain everything. In addition to that , because everybody lives in different part of the world, one person can not answer every question or request in the channel. The time difference won't allow this. This leads more people to stay in the dark and feel ignored in the process.
This is the another issue I find that causing problems. There are not enough staff to handle the cases which grows everyday. Watchers need at least one person for each hemisphere. This way everybody can find a person to talk to. People are searching a human to explain themselves, get information, or at least to be heard. Instead they get banned, ignored. I must say there are certain cases that , sufficient explanation is given to the user many times but they continue to spam the channels.
This is the only thing that I can not understand why there is a such rule. Everybody should has a right to be defended by somebody. Maybe the person who is accused are not in a mental state to represent themselves, maybe their English language skills are not good enough to express themselves . Maybe their social skills are not that good to talk about in public. Everybody should have a chance to be heard and defend themselves. We are an international community here and language barrier is a true problem when it comes to explain certain things. This rule is not logical and should be abandoned.
Here is my recommendation for improvements.
Proper information about each case to public and users
I cant stress this enough. The information and evidences about a case should be accessible to everybody who are interested. I want to know why a certain user is blacklisted and what are the evidences. How the decision to permanently blacklist a user is made. What criterias are considered. How is the appeal time is determined? What is the rules behind all this process? Who writes the rules?
Better customer service
The person currently handling the cases should be replaced. The attitude towards users are at best rude. There should be a calm and kind person to talk to people even though they are criminals. Judges in courts are the one who speaks calmly and according to rules. They wont allow their emotions interfere the case. There should be a system and rules about relationship between user and Watchers. When you send a ticket to a customer services, you expect them to return to you in a specific time and there are rules to regulate the process. In this case Watchers discord is a mess. Nobody get the help they need.
Who is watching the Watchers?
We are proud of the community in hive and we talk about it every chance we get. Lets use this community to form a body to watch the Watchers. Right now, everybody trusts their judgement and good intentions. But this is not how it should be. What is source of the power of the watchers?
Making a chart the explain the punishments
I see in the channels Watchers can determine a result of the case based on his own opinions in some cases. He changes and bend the rules around his own will. Sometimes he change the punishment of a case to another thing, sometimes adds to the punishment. There should be a chart to determine the punishment of certain act. If a certain act results in permanent blacklist, everybody should know this transparently and every case should receive the equal punishment.
Everything written here is my own opinion. I appreciate the effort that put in to make the Hive a better place. This can be achieved if we better ourselves before we look others. If everybody look in the mirror today, they can be a better judge tomorrow.
For those who are following me for art posts I am sorry this is not one of them. You can watch my latest painting in my youtube channel. And follow me on instagram. I post the finished piece in instagram before I upload it to youtube and post it here.
