What It's Like Working for OCD [Happy 2nd Cake Day OCDB!]

Okay. Take your time. Appreciate that cheap-ass gif I made just for the occasion. 😂

Happy Birthday OCDB!

Hello Hive!

Today marks the 2nd year of @ocdb. This calls for a celebration! For those who live under the rock all this time, @ocdb is the account where delegators can delegate their HP to be used by @ocd for manual curation. The delegators will then receive a daily payout from the curation rewards based on the amount that was delegated. This is run by @acidyo together with the moderators, curators, developers, and community leaders that make up the whole @ocd team.

I am the newest Alien in OCD's Discord. I was promoted a few weeks ago for reasons I don't know. 😂 Maybe because I am involved in all OCD curation initiatives. And by all, I mean I every single curation effort. To think that I have been officially in the team just October last year, maybe I'm just a hustler because I became an Alien in just 6 months.

Before I become part of the team, I have enjoyed the consistent support of OCD. Before there was Curie, and now there's OCD. I mean I am always grateful for the support of the two meritocratic systems that made me believe in Hive. When the future of the previous platform was blurred, I was able to focus on content creation because of the support of OCD.

As an author, I was able to appreciate how the curators were able to find my content and I was always grateful. And now as a curator, I love the job of finding content to recommend for an upvote. I know the feeling of a post going from less than a dollar to two or three digits because it was upvoted by curators. I know that feeling when you saw your post on trending.

I was actually tasked by @acidyo to write a post for OCD on how OCD does its curation process in all of its curation initiatives, but I set that aside because of the mounting compilation posts and of course, because of this post. That post will be for OCD's transparency and accountability to its stakeholders. It's also for authors to be guided on the rules and even nuances of curators in choosing content to be recommended for an upvote. Maybe I'll have that post within the week.

I always say recommended for an upvote because the curators will not be doing the upvote themselves. It was @acidyo who single-handedly upvote hundreds of posts per day. This is for the argument that @acidyo is just sitting pretty while OCD's curators are doing the hard work. No, he's also working hard day and night. He's often buried in curation work that I sometimes remind him he's behind in other curation initiatives.

I now consider curating and managing OCD's curation initiatives as my job and I take it seriously. For those salty people who always say that having a compilation post is just "extra" or unnecessary, I have a vested interest in those compilation posts because I'm the one posting them, except the OCD Daily. And it's not easy. It takes hours.

If you're attacking those compilation posts, you're not only attacking OCD, you're attacking me and I take it personally. If you say curators should not be rewarded for their effort, you haven't tried manual curation. As @minismallholding put it aptly, "If they've got time to post several times a week, then they aren't doing much curation and can afford to do it for free".

OCD Curation and Moderation Work

I was initially part of the OCD Incubation Team where we direct authors to appropriate communities instead of posting in OCD. It was not easy either because some authors got really defensive and attack us instead of being thankful that we are helping them to have their post find an appropriate audience and possibly become appreciated more.

Then I became part of OCD Daily or the original OCD curation, but I don't actively involve myself much in that curation initiative because I was tasked to manage @acidyo's ideas. That's when I got really busy. I think all of the new curation initiatives are his idea and I just execute them. He had this idea and I'll be the one drafting the rules and guidelines before opening it to other curators to fine-tune the whole initiative.

With a lot of new curation initiatives and possibly a lot more incoming depending on the man's idea, I am always busy, but I enjoy doing it. I love to micromanage. I can still do the things I love because I have no specific deadlines, but I take it seriously when the compilation posts are mounting. I don't want to be delayed because it means delayed compensation for the curators.

OCD is not run by a dictator. I'll be the first to leave if that's the case. You'll know me and my principles if you see my tweets. I'm always for a democratic, fair, and transparent process. And that's what I see in OCD. Ideas and opinions are always open that discussions are heated at some points, but in the end, a common ground is always reached.

OCD Curation Initiatives

I already talked about OCD Daily so I won't give much detail on that because I'm not really that involved except in occasional dropping of posts there for an upvote. Just wait for the OCD post because I'll be detailing the whole curation process there.

The next is OCD POSH Curation. I think this is the first initiative where I got really serious. When I noticed the number of posh links kept on increasing, we added @traciyork to the mix to provide a new perspective as well as fresh eyes on poshed content. We thought she's fit for the job knowing her overwhelming presence and reach on Twitter. That woman is relentless! So far, I love our dynamics. Her personality is so fit for the job. This initiative is the most lucrative for me compensation wise, but it's not easy checking 150+ posts per day.

The third initiative is the OCD Contest Highlighting Communities. This is just once a week, but I think this is the riskiest for me since I'm the beneficiary of the rewards and I'll be distributing them to the winners. I have to be very careful in setting beneficiaries as well as sending the rewards to the winners or else, I'll end up compensating them from my own pocket. This is always in coordination with the community leaders. I initially involved myself in curation, but I give them the liberty to curate as they're more suited for it. I can also focus on other curation work without worrying much about the curation of the contest.

I ignored @acidyo for months regarding the contest because I couldn't think of a good mechanism especially in rewarding the winners. He always mentioned about having a contest that would highlight communities, but I know I would be the one facilitating them so I set it aside for months until I was ready. I didn't expect that the response was that big. I mean we're talking about 3 to 4 digits percentage change in subscribers and engagements!

The announcement of winners was supposed to be my compensation for facilitating the contest. To be clear, I wasn't mandated to share the rewards as it was said that the increase in subscribers and engagements in the community is already enough for the community leaders, but I decided to share them with the community leaders especially with those actively involved in the curation. It's always fun facilitating those contests.

The fourth initiative is the Other Niche Communities Curation Support. This is somewhat similar to OCD Daily, but the community leaders are also involved. They will just drop posts from different niche communities outside the OCD Community Incubation Program and I'll be the one compiling them. The rewards of the compilation post will be split to the curators, which I included as the one compiling the post. Its purpose is to promote other communities and also encourage authors to post in appropriate communities.

The latest curation initiative is @lovesniper. It aims to reward introduction posts. It's the most tedious of all initiatives, but also most rewarding for me. Not compensation wise, but I can feel the effect of the rewards on the newbies. I mean 90% of the newbies' introduction posts are not really rewarded. My intro post before was $0.04. Having a couple of dollars on the intro post will really make a difference to those newbies as it sets an impression about the platform itself. It means there's someone who cares about their first or intro posts.

I'm really grateful for the commitment of those six other curators who are involved in @lovesniper as the job is not really easy. We are talking about hours and hours of curation time per week just to comment as well as recommend the intro posts for curation. For me, this is the most fulfilling curation initiative so far. To those salty and myopic people out there who criticized @lovesniper's rewards, try commenting on all of the first and intro posts for a day.

The last and perhaps the biggest curation effort is the Community Incubation Program. OCD is currently supporting 30 niche communities. Just imagine the number of posts that needs to be upvoted per day. The average number of posts recommended per community is about 5. That's 150 posts per day on average! And we're planning to add more!

I am actively curating for Haveyoubeenhere community under the incubation program since I'm also a @pinmapple curator. Sometimes I curate for Toys on Hive and one time I tried curating for The Anime Realm community. Now I basically dropped posts in different communities, but only in those I'm confident to be curating. For art like Alien Art Hive and On Chain Art and architecture like Architecture & Design community, I leave them to the community leaders who are well suited to curate.

What It's Like to Work in OCD?

It's tiring but rewarding. As I execute most of @acidyo's ideas, I have to be on top of things. I also have to be present virtually all the time. From coordinating different curators from different time zones to answering questions and clarifications, I had to be there.

I witnessed all kinds of drama, both internal and external. I was even involved in some of them, but at the end of the day, it's fulfilling work. It's not always appreciated, but it's fulfilling work. Sometimes I get pestered by questions about why they're banned from the server when they clearly violated the rules and didn't heed the countless warnings.

I thank @acidyo for the trust! A few times I accidentally voted a post thinking it was my account, but I really haven't logged out @ocd's account after posting the compilation. He never bossed me around. Most of the time I consult him regarding curation rules and dynamics, but he trusted me on many changes implemented especially on the contest.

Lastly, I may be busy most of the time, but I can still do the things I wanted to do without getting hungry. I can now afford the things I only dreamed of before. Not everything though. 😂

I'll just leave you this tweet from last month:


Kim Ybañez

Welcome to Kim's small corner in Hive. He is a chemical engineer by profession, but a blogger by passion. He is a wanderlust and an adventure seeker. Join his quests as he visits secluded destinations, climbs mountains, tries new and exotic dishes, and explores his country (The Philippines). He's also a trying hard photographer so stay tuned as he shares his photos and his thought process while creating them.

If you like his content, don't forget to upvote and leave a comment to show some love. You can also reblog if you want to. Also, don't forget to follow him to be updated with his latest posts.

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