Despite the numerous interactive and immersive opportunity that are abound on the hive ecosystem, writing is still king. Yet, it is the most undernourished form of content creation in the ecosystem. When i say this, i mean little or nothing has been invested into encouraging quality writing beyond curation.
Curation is awesome. It is the bread and butter of many an account in this space but it is not always, and i say this from the perspective of one who has been writing and posting here for a while, a true measure of quality writing. For curation is financial in its concept and this means there must be guiding principles. For instance, if an account is considered to be too big either in reputation or wallet balance, it might find it difficult to get organic curation from the different curation trails like curie or curangel but it will have, as is mostly the case, loyal upvoters who do not care as to content or quality. There is also the consideration that most curation projects are stretched too thin and as such their upvotes may not always give equal measure to their enjoyment of a piece of content.
That being said, aside from upvote, which can be manipulated due to its financial character, what other criteria can we measure quality writing with? Interaction? Most creatively written posts get little or no interaction in the comment section. The times a post gets interaction are:
- When the account is noted for upvoting comments.
- When the post is about governance issues or from the account of a notable personality in the space.
- When a post has been curated and those who actually read curated posts have been able to read and they enjoyed it.
- When a new account is opened and drops its introduction post.
- Posts within a community that encourage members to interact with each others posts.
Besides these times, most posts get nothing in terms of conversations. So you have a post with over 1000 upvotes yet the comment section is filled with bots, if at all.
Money affects human beings in strange ways. People change once money becomes a part of the play and i am no exception. If Hive was a platform like say X (fka Twitter), where i am sure people buy followers and utilize bots to service their needs, how often will some posts get likes, reposts and generate engagement the way some posts do here on Hive? But if i make a post and upvoting my post assures you of some huge benefit financially, you will upvote even if i am writing the most insane things.
The issue is so many people here do not read. So many people do not interact with a piece of writing unless there is something to be gained from it. Recently, a witness and one account brought their differences into my posts. I know for a fact that neither of these two gentlemen bothered to read my content. While one upvoted as a means of utilizing his voting rights, the other downvoted as a means of denying the former their voting benefits. In the middle of this fracas, i stood, watching content i had scraped from my brain cells get drained of its rewards, whether justified or not. This could happen because there was money involved. If upvotes gave nothing beyond a feeling of wellbeing, neither accounts will be in my posts. In fact, since the upvoter stopped upvoting, i have not seen the downvoter anywhere near any of my posts. It was never about me. I am invisible. It was all about money.
I do not think the hive system is wrong anyway, no matter your takeaway from my above rant. I believe the system is as good as a human being can make anything. What i think it lacks is a more human face. I think it has turned its back away from the mainstream media space for too long and its pride is affecting adoption. I think also that friendships and following should matter. And in all honesty, i think i need to do better in how i interact within the space.
There are those who make out time to interact, to be a part of someone's content and growth on this space. I am not one of them. Most times, i make a post and disappear for weeks on end. I am not invested in the day to day conversations around this space. I therefore do not have the right or nuance to discuss what is best for the Hive ecosystem. But writing, i can talk about. Writing continues to be the major product users offer on this platform and as such it should be taken seriously.
I for one advocate for more comprehensive project structured around a magazine that makes it its duty to give quality reportage, interviews, features, articles around content creation, project development, governance and creative art industry news which can become the face of Hive for the outside world to enjoy. With such a project, we achieve several things:
- Transparency: content creators outside the hive ecosystem get to see the work going on in-chain.
- Marketing: the Hive chain can sell itself to potential users as being more than just a get paid to write gimmick.
- Relationship: create avenues for other chains to build relationships with the hive chain which will open doors for more use cases for the hive protocol.
- Competition: show to the writing community that there are quality content creators in the blockchain space who can compete favourably if they choose to, in mainstream publishing. A selection taken from different curation/top community selections can help with this.
This not the only way this can go. A podcast on any streaming service is also a good system of getting attention on what is going in Hive. Places like Spotify and Youtube can still serve these goals very well.
Hive remains my most recommended blockchain project. I don't care for Bitcoin or Ethereum, Binance smart chain or the different chains leveraging off Ethereum smart chain contract model. I think the hive chain is under utilized and though there are several active projects on the chain, they are not independent enough in their thinking and design to truly pull towards a more diverse economy.
In this era of decentralization, a chain that has been applying decentralization albeit limitedly, seem to be invisible. In this era of cheap and speedy transactions, that a chain that is notably fast and cheap is not even considered is an anomaly. We have considerable resource and tools at our disposal. There is so much to be achieved if we can just move away from the money a little bit and focus on the products.
This is a long ramble which i am certain will pass unnoticed. I just feel like ranting this morning. Ignore me.