I read an engaging and thought-provoking post the other day from 
The poster rightly stated that Hive developers had worked hard and smartly to improve this platform. The long-term thorny issues of account creation, spam posts, and identifying good content have primarily been addressed. There's undoubtedly more improvement available, but we've seen significant progress. Cheers to everyone actively involved in these efforts!
Curating For Good
The active curation services and their trails do a great job of finding and Upvoting good content. Newer users, who are not savvy enough or unwilling to ingratiate themselves with the larger Hive-Powered accounts, benefit mightily from the curator's unprejudiced support. These curation trails provide hope and encouragement to new and long-term users alike.
Attracting new users is essential. More users equate to more content. And more content ultimately contributes to the growth, breadth, and stability of this platform. New users bring vitality, creativity, and evangelism. But they also serve as an essential conduit to the outside world.
New users likely deliver more new users as their initial enthusiasm is high. They recruit friends, family, and other acquaintances to participate. One user will often bring in two or three different users soon after their arrival, and they work in support of one another.
This new blood - this energy - is undoubtedly crucial to everyone's long-term enjoyment and success.
Bee A Friend
However, most new users posting their content are in for a rough start. With few or low-staked friends, there's not much gain to be had. Getting started in any of our communities is difficult, too. Being unfamiliar to the regular members of those communities, it can be equally hard to find support. And without backing, their no value to low-value post rewards isn't much incentive to continue for long.
This difficulty in becoming established isn't new. And to a large part, it should be expected. Nothing worthwhile comes easy. But it IS a challenge. New players won't play for long without any skin in the game.
So this reality brings me to this thought: What good is there in acquiring new users if many give up after a month or two? Aren't our efforts to attract new Friends gone to waste if we can't keep them?
What to do?
There's no easy or quick answer. Complicated changes to Hive's voting and curation protocols are unlikely. But that's ok. Complex solutions are rarely the answer.
Besides, why ask Developers to create solutions for problems all of us could quickly address?
But there's more we could do.
Advice and Support
New authors need more than just Hive Power. They need advice, coaching, and development. Those of us with a bit of blockchain savvy could leave a short but specific comment with helpful suggestions bundled with a bit of encouragement.
There are many helpful posts out there to guide newbies. However, I'm not sure newbies even know which advice to seek, let alone take. Sometimes guidance needs to be delivered directly to people to provide context and meaning.
I think comments are a vastly overlooked aspect of Hive, in general. We all appreciate folks Upvoting our posts, but how do you feel when someone takes a moment to leave you a comment? Not just 'Nice post!' But something meaningful?
I am excited about receiving comments. And I've been around a while. What might the impact be on someone who's been here only a few weeks? Engagement? Encouragement? Sincere comments from real people build community and connection. If those kinds of links don't bind newbies to our platform, a few drops of Hive likely won't, either.
365 Support
I think I'll take a little bit of my own medicine. I'll try to identify one new user to support with my Hive Power each day. I'll leave a comment on their post with a scratch of encouragement. And perhaps some friendly advice, too. That's 365 new users that I can potentially positively impact throughout the year.
This approach isn't complicated. It won't take much time. And it might create an optimistic mindset in a few of our next generation of Hive Blockchain users. It could offer a glimpse of hope for success in an otherwise tricky first few months here in our community.
It doesn't require new proposals, complicated processes, but it will require a Hard Fork. I need to fork over a little bit of my time and effort to share some of my enthusiasm with another human being. But that can't be too hard...
And who knows? I may even make a few more friends along the way.
Thank you to
Perhaps all of us do.
Cheers!
Source: Photo 1 - Mary Oloumi
Photo 2 - Sharon McCutcheon