#curation

Focused curation

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?

Comments · 14

@artofwar74(55)· 50m
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
@artofwar74(55)· 59m
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
@seattlea(77)· 1h
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 😀:
@pizzabot(60)· 2h
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@bulliontools(75)· 2h
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.

!BBH !PIZZA !ALIVE
@stayoutoftherz(80)· 2h
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.
@agmoore(76)· 2h

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?

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 curate for the Inkwell community and 'get nothing' out of it, unless you consider encouraging people and helping to keep Hive dynamic. That's true for everyone on the team. I don't even publish in the community anymore because that would just give extra work to my fellow team members (curating my own stories would be very peculiar indeed).

If all curation worked like that, without self interest, more people would have faith in the system. In the Inkwell we spend hours, many hours, every week reading and curating merely because we want to encourage people to write and because we want to give people a place to publish content.
@ryosai(66)· 3h
Ecency is the best!
@cositav(73)· 3h
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.
@davideownzall(74)· 3h
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
@lazybug(73)· 3h

It makes you wonder how the curators are instructed to curate.

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.
@artofkylin(66)· 3h
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.
@theworldaroundme(76)· 3h
Good observation, but I think in every project self-interest is normal and every curator has biases but the numbers are still interesting though. :)
@zoe01(71)· 4h
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.

Comments · 14

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