I always enjoyed curating for Pinmapple because I get to travel virtually around the world to see so many interesting places. My geography has improved so much over the years without even stepping foot in many places. I've seen a lot of Argentina and Venezuela and Cuba, places very far away from me and on my to go list. There seems to be no end to the beautiful beaches in the Philippines, the tranquil villages in Italy, the stunning mountain regions in India, not to mention the Rockies in Canada. I have followed the footsteps of some of my fellow Hivers when I go on holiday, in particular my recent US trip, and the many European city breaks.
Curating for Pinmapple not only brings me self satisfaction, I enjoy doing it because know I can also contribute to help the travel community. Through the great work we do (and I'm not blowing our own trumpet here, because I'm sure many will agree with me on this) we have gained the support of whale accounts who trust our work and judgement and follow our curation trail. This makes a massive difference to the authors we curate. That, plus vote stacking by other whale accounts who don't officially follow Pinmapple's curation trail means when Pinmapple curates a post, the post can potentially get anything up to $50 or $60 or even more upvotes. To be honest, sometimes it can be quite a pressure to curate, knowing there could be so much riding on my actions. I needed to make sure I stay true to my job, and curate quality original content only.
The Bad of curating for Pinmapple
The potential of high rewards always brings out the opportunists. Abuse and plagiarism have been rife in the Pinmapple community for a long time and dealing with it can be a job in itself. I have personally muted nearly 150 accounts on the Pinmapple community for abuse, and I make no apologies for that. That's what community mods do if you want to manage a good community and for it to stay true to its genre. Funny enough, some say the Pinmapple community is unfriendly because we mute accounts. I guess we all have different standards, I'm not here to support abusers or please those who sympathize them.
In the pre AI days, it was easier to catch abuse, but then it still relied on a a lot of manual work and help from the wider community. Since AI became more widely available about a year ago, things have gotten worse. AI generated content is very difficult to detect, making anti abuse work much harder. For example, would you trust the accounts who post this? You'd be surprised how many did and still curate them.