New Rules for the Social Media Challenge - Where am I at on HIVE?
Prologue
In order to support those players and writers that actually support the HIVE-Ecosystem by staking their rewards and keeping them on the chain, the @splinterlands team has decided to apply a new rule into their challenges:
Participants who demonstrate an investor mindset by holding and growing their HP are more likely to be rewarded. Those who consistently extract all rewards without reinvesting into the ecosystem may not be eligible for prizes.
There was a really interesting #rant a few days ago that also refers to this, done by @acidyo - Click here for the Value-Post and after reading that one and engaging a little into the discussion, I think it's very good move by the team.
EDIT: It would be good to know what the exact limits for the new rules are, and who is excluded - only writers who take out 100% of their rewards? 90%? 50%? What time frame? Some open questions there, that hopefully will be answered in the future 😊
The Problem in a nutshell
Upvote-Farming
The Splinterlands-Channel as well as many other channels have Auto-Vote bots, that will automatically put an upvote on ANY post made - no matter the quality. That can lead to over-rewarding low-quality posts (based on one's own value system, of course). Those can be regulated by downvotes, but that again can cause feudes and anger - as discussed in the Value-Post, there is no solution, just compromise.
The Strive towards Average
In the challenges hosted by the Splinterlands-Team, they try to curate everything and are doing a great job - but it's usually around 150 entries per challenge, and I can imagine that it's hard to really read carefully through everything.
THIS IS NOT A CRITIQUE TOWARDS THE CURATORS! Shouting that out just in case someone interprets my text that way. I think they do a very good job.
When both high-quality and average-quality get rewarded (low quality not, when detected) - then the providers of high-quality might think: "Why go through all this effort if I can get the same reward with less energy input, creating an average post?" That leads to a strive towards the most efficient way of blogging, leading to average (which then pulls the average down as a result, and slowly the whole quality degrades). The most reward for the least input - and suddenly we're on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and all those platforms that provide low quality content and are striving to get lower. A downward spiral that we can currently see all over societies and cultures, but that's another topic.
How the new rule helps with that
Having a new rule that as by-product serves the ecosystem can help to slow that spiral down. If I understand correctly, it will run the posts through a filter before curating. That reduces the workload for curators in the beginning, giving them more time to then value the posts more carefully, hence helping to uphold the quality of posts.
Got an opinion? Please engage!
Just comment below what you think about his I'd love to read some other thoughts on the topic. I actually read throught most of the 130 Comments on the Value post, so I'm not afraid 😃 I'm sort of a newbie here, too, so by default I have to learn a lot.
Where am I at on HIVE?
Hive Power (HP)
Around New Year, I wrote a article for the community challenge about my Splinterlands goals for this year, and included the goals I have on Hive. This was the Status Quo only one month ago:
Here's the now. As you can see, my account grew by 100 HIVE-Power which is great for a month of work - I was spending a lot of time thinking about good topics for articles that are actually interesting, like the content that I personally like to read on the channel, and browsing through other channels in order to see what else would be fun to blog about.
The goal for this year was to get to 500 HP, which seems very likely to achieve. Hence, I'll push myself a little and see if I can get to 1000 HP by the end of this year, and 500 HP by end of May.
Hive Backed Dollars (HBD)
I did take out around 80 HIVE in order to do some shopping for cards and other things within the HIVE-Ecosystem, for Splinterlands mainly. The surge in price for HIVE token facilitated that. I get rewarded by 50% HIVE-Power which I always leave staked, and 50% HBD which I sometimes convert, sometimes put into savings - depending on my current milestone that I'm working on. Currently, I'm trying to convert around half of my HBD-Rewards into SPS in order to stake more, and/or into DEC to buy more cards.
Even though I spend some of the rewards, I was able to grow my stake from 50 HBD in December 2024 (Here's the post when I hit 50 HBD) to 65 HBD - that's 30% growth. I'm quite happy with that. The goal for this year was 100 HBD initially, but if I can keep up the pace, I might be able to get to 200 HBD, while still being able to fund some new cards on Splinterlands. Now that I write it, I should start saving for Conclave...
Conclusion
The discussion led by @acidyo really got me thinking a lot. Even though I think that my content is usually quite good and I put in a lot of work, I can still improve - mainly by forgetting about the HP and HBD goals that I have, and just focus on the posts themselves, and the value that they contribute to the community. See trap here, the one that I wrote about? I have goals that I want to achieve, but I have to set myself some rules in order to achieve them in a way that is coherent with my values - aka holding myself to a high standard.
I was also thinking about how my posts can help to grow the community. My last post for example was not a complex battle analysis, but a more cheerful post on how I spent my Glint-Rewards with my daughter while doing her hair. I usually refrain from publishing pack openings since I deem them kind of boring, but my thought process was - if I had a lot of fun doing this, maybe someone out there might get interested as well by reading something that includes the family into Splinterlands, as well as everyday chores (ever tried to comb curly hair? 🤣 ).
Value to the community is not only what I find interesting, but also what might attract new players - and opening packs and rewards is definitely one of the fun parts in the game.
Please excuse my excessive writing today!
I was somewhat inspired and caffeinated, and the topic of values and the philosophy around it is just one of my favorites to think about. So, to all that made it through until here - huge respect to you! I hope you got something out of the time spent here...
Thank you very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it at least as much as I enjoyed writing :-D If you have any comments or feedback - please let me know! And don't forget to leave your own posts for me to curate. Thank you very much!
If you don't play the game yet, you can use my referral: Click here for referral :-)
Thank you!
@splinterboost is an example for an auto-vote - I have just published this article, and already got a vote from it. It's not huge, but it occurs without review - nobody can read an article that long in 20 seconds :-D I don't know if they have algorhythms in place that help against abuse.
Another part are voting trails - one can follow a trail of a person they trust, and automatically vote on the articles that person is curating. I do that, too, because it also leads me to interesting articles. As example, I found the value post by following a downvote-trail which lead me to downvotes on comments from someone who likes to insult a lot, like really a lot. That rude person now tags me regularly in rant-posts about downvoting trails, which is interesting to read since it gives a different perspective.
@splinterboost is awesome. I have about 1400 HP delegated to them and they pay me in hive every day (usually between 0.3 and 0.6). I don't know their algorithm, but they do have one. In the past I know that they didn't give upvotes for posts under a certain word count.
Thank you for letting me know! I have 100 HP delegated to them, which is a lot - I was thinking about undelegating until my own stake grows more, but until now, I haven't decided on it yet :-D
Delegate Tokens and HP to Fallen Angels to earn weekly rewards!
Delegate | Join to the guild
Thank you!
Congratulations @beelzael! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain And have been rewarded with New badge(s)
Your next target is to reach 5000 upvotes.
Your next target is to reach 600 replies.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPI tell you that this is horrible for the ecosystem in the saddest possible way.
Except for those who do Power Down, that's a real HIVE Leech.
I have engaged in this type of discussion before, since this has been a trending topic lately. Let me start by saying that I have over 3000 HP. I never powered down, but I also never powered up, except for a bit at the beginning, when I was always running out of RC from renting using Peakmonsters.
To me, the post in itself is a contribution to Hive. The rewards are for each person to decide what to do. It shouldn't matter if someone takes out all rewards, stakes everything, or even brings a huge amount of outside money. That should not affect the upvote. However, people are free to upvote as they please and have their own criteria.
Since people are free to have their own criteria for upvotes and not voting is throwing money away, it's understandable that auto votes are used. Not everyone has the time to read a lot of posts. That's why I'm so against downvotes except when they are used to combat exploits or abuse. Downvotes shouldn't be used because you disagree or dislike someone. However, it happens and has already happened to me. It's especially bad because whales can do that without consequences, bullying people as they please.
Anyway, back on using upvotes however people like. Contests are not different. They exist for a reason. In particular, Splinterlands contests were created because the team thought it was better than letting their upvote unused or setting some type of auto vote, which would have been easier. To me, there are 2 reasons. 1) Promote the game within Hive and increase activity in the Splinterlands community. 2) Increase the chances the rewards from their curation go to Splinterlands players who are more likely to use them to buy SPL assets.
With that in mind, it's much more beneficial for Splinterlands if participants use all the rewards from their posts to invest in Splinterlands than any other type of split, especially when compared to powering up everything!
With that in mind, why would they opt for this recent rule change where participants need to keep at least part of their rewards in Hive? That could have only happened because there was pressure from people who put Hive's interests above Splinterlands'. That is not good. Ultimately, the team is free to be influenced by who they choose. However, part of the vote is from the DAO, using DAO assets, which should follow the SPS holders' wishes, not some Hive whales.
Another complaint I have is that the rules are very vague. "Specifically, we will review past rewards earned and currently held Hive Power (HP) as part of the selection process." "Participants who demonstrate an investor mindset by holding and growing their HP are more likely to be rewarded. Those who consistently extract all rewards without reinvesting into the ecosystem may not be eligible for prizes." What am I supposed to do with this? By default, posts pay half in HP (staked) and half in liquid form. That's what I keep mine at but people can change this percentage all the way to either side. Is 50/50 good enough, using all the liquid rewards as we please? Or will that be punished too?
To conclude, I'm not against these rule changes. I am against how they were changed and how vague they are.