It has been over five years on Hive for me and one thing that has persisted in conversation, are the challenges around curation activities. Of course, on a platform where there is the chance to be rewarded, people want to be rewarded and, because curation also gets a portion of the rewards, there is incentive to curate. However, there is also incentive for various kinds of abuse.
Curation or Not?
When I first joined, I would see some very rewarded posts in what was Trending, but didn't understand why. At the time, I had no idea about anything here and when I first joined, didn't even realize it was a crypto platform, but soon after, I started to pick up on the various mechanics and the community. Back then, there was a lot less potential for automation and what happened was a small group of people were given a very large stake to vote with and suffice to say, it was very much, "1 for all of you, 15 for us" and this happened for a long time.
And I won't even get into the bidbot era, which persisted for around two and a half years before it was able to be driven out through code and the activities of some of the community.
Taking Initiative
But, one of the oldest curation initiatives on Hive is Original Content Decentralized (@ocd) and while it was founded by @acidyo, it involves many people and they have been doing it for over five years. They also run a Top 20 witness. Originally, it was a small group of volunteers and then paid curators, who would scour the feeds and tags, looking for under-rewarded content to vote. Yet now, they have grown into a whole range of activities, from onboarding initiatives, Twitter engagement-based rewarding, Reddit and a whole range of support for many communities, from helping them grow in their initial phases, to supporting the best of their content as they become more established.
All of this happens through their Discord, which is a very active group, with several mods and curators, supporting newbies and incubation programs for communities, sharing links of great posts that will get voted by @ocdb (10M delegated stake support), Proof of Share (POSH) activities which also has a token attached to it to earn, onboarding team members, P2E gaming support and curation, new user curation and a list of about 50 Hive communities that they support.
Spreading Distribution to People & Content
With a stake that distributes almost $3000 worth of HIVE a day, it takes a lot of people to ensure that it is distributed well, evenly and fairly. Because of this, the curation of most posts are manual, with trusted curators from the communities themselves performing the role of curator. This improves the curation distribution as it incentivizes building a strong community and it does come with some reward, which I believe is brought in through the transparency of curation posts, that are all on chain and, it is possible to see the rewards on each that go out to the various curators for each post. What is also does, is decentralizes process and curation decisions and spreads the rewards out not just to individual members widely, but a large range of content topics too, which gives the opportunity for less visible or subscribed communities to get rewarded also.
Beyond the manual curation activities, there is also some automation to help make sure that distribution is happening without putting too much burden on individuals. This happens in various ways, which if interested to know more, ask in the comments section and someone from @ocd will answer :)
The Harder Parts
And now, one of the other things that they do is anti-abuse activities, to make sure that the content they are curating is original and not just some sockpuppet account set up in order to take more than is deserved. Essentially, all curation initiatives "should" have internal anti-abuse measures in place, however, very few do. And dig a little and you will find that some of the initiatives themselves are running sock accounts to curate themselves more than others, or multiples of the same "friends and family", narrowing the distribution severely.
Most don't dig though, so it goes unchecked,
Most don't know this, but @ocd was an instrumental force in curbing the bidbot activities and breaking apart some of the largest voting circles on the platform. It came at a price and wasn't the most enjoyable part of curation, but as a result, the curation environment is far healthier than it was a couple years ago. However, it is one of those "remain vigilant" things, because when there is value potential, there will always be people looking to maximize for themselves, any way they can. It is the nature of the platform and unfortunately it isn't going away.
Trusted Projects
Building trust is important in this community and what I have always liked about @ocd is that they are transparent in their activities where they can be and the curators take their roles seriously. Not only this, the curators are also active in the community in other ways also, as well as spending time in the discord with a large cross-section of Hive users.
Obviously it is important to have multiple curation projects on Hive and across the Hive ecosystem with the various secondary tokens. However, if not careful, large amounts of newly minted HIVE ends up in narrow groups of people who aren't interested in building, or those many socks of "friends and family" that some of the initiatives have facilitated and continually enabled. And the larger the stake, the more people should be involved, as it brings in more variation of content types and, spread the rewards for curation activities to more people involved, as well as limits the potential for large-scale abuse.
Never-ending Controversy
HIVE and its distribution is vital for the platform in many ways, which is why it is such a "controversial" topic, with so many opinions around it. However, for the chain itself, there has to be enough solid stake to ensure longevity and, enough distribution to reward and encourage content creation. I believe that a healthy curation initiative not only supports content, but also supports the ecosystem by providing services and encouragement to grow the userbase and help them build the skills and understanding so they become hive builders, not just reapers.
Over the years, I have seen @ocd support so many people from the beginning of their journey or picked them up some time after, who have gone on to become Hive builders and continually develop themselves on Hive. Some of the communities would have never got off the ground without the support and, so many of the curators might have got frustrated and left, but here they are daily, doing a job that is often invisible to most people and thankless, even from those who they help.
So, just to finish up, this post is mainly for those who don't know what happens in the background of some of the curation activities and hopefully helps people look out for what is healthy and what might be a less so. The Hive ecosystem is far from perfect in regard to curation, but it is continually getting better and there are a couple very good projects that have built up trust over the years and continue to provide huge amounts of value to the Hive ecosystem. @ocd is definitely one of these and if you see those curators on your post or those of great content you find, thank them, as it isn't always easy.
And lastly, for those who are interested in checking out OCD on Discord to see if they can help you and your communities or you them, here is a link which should work: https://discord.gg/VGEEtKft
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]