Our blockchain is a new one, was born a few months ago, but the vast majority of the users are not new to this, they are from the other chain called Steem. I wish I had statistics about the onboarding, to see how many have registered to Hive, without being part of the old blockchain but I haven't.
Anyway, the old users have come with the experience they have accumulated on Steem. Some, the early adopters have up to four years of experience, they know every little detail about how this works.
While on Steem the main concern was the excessive use of bidbots and the over rewarded posts on trending page, on Hive there's a new way of milking the reward pool and I don't see much concern about it. This is done knowingly, they know exactly what they are doing but probably think it's under the radar.
If you are reading posts on a daily basis you must have seen what I'm talking about. I see over rewarded posts made by old users with relatively high reputation, close or over $10 that are of questionable quality. Now you can argue that quality is debatable and it is interpreted differently by everyone but when it comes to comparison, you must be blind and in denial not to see what's going on here.
Posting three photos, sometimes of poor quality, five sentences and a long repetitive footer which is copy paste each time I wouldn't say it adds too much value to the platform to be rewarded with $10. Just because those users have been here for a couple of years and made friends with high stake value, it doesn't make it right to get double or triple of what those extremely low quality posts deserve. The more these posts get (unjustified), the less the other good quality posts get. It's not rocket science, anyone with half a brain knows that.
I'm not the only one who thought, or better yet, was hoping the new chain will be different. We had the chance to create a new home for ourselves and do the right thing. We also have the experience, knew what's not right and had the chance to eliminate the bad. Yet here we are, rewarding those who are knowingly milking the reward pool by shtposting and everything is ok. These people's accounts are growing nicely, they are posting more sht every day and happy they are respected and appreciated.
While you can argue that users can do whatever they want with their stake, there should be a line somewhere that should not be crossed by anyone. Good, quality work should be rewarded, old members should know better, they should be a good example to new ones and not the other way around.
Imagine what it looks like to new users. If they see what kind of posts are rewarded here (I'm talking about these low quality, over rewarded posts), they may think it's ok to do that and you can't argue they are wrong as reality proves they aren't.
It is totally disappointing and sad in the same time, no matter how you are looking at it. People learn, time and experience should make them better but in this case I can't say that's what it's happened. They have learned how to milk the reward pool and have got accomplices helping them to do that. Having a higher reputation and friends is license to milk the reward pool it seems. Try to motivate new users who are struggling to get a few cents, try to explain them why these users are getting so much for posting sh*t and their good quality post that took hours to create gets a few cents!
I'm starting to believe that rewarding quality content will never be the main focus of the platform. Rewarding quality content is just a saying, important to some, while others are here to milk as much as they can. It's a shame though as we could finally make this place great, have the home we've never had.
There should be no control here, no downvotes, no flags, no blacklists. Each of us should know what is permitted and what is not and should act accordingly. It's our responsibility! Posting sh*t just because you know you get votes anyway should never happen. It's like at work, when no one sees you, you get lazy, do nothing because you know you get paid anyway. This mentality should change once and for all!