30 Hive improvement ideas in the books. I'm following through on my end of the bargain. Just 70 more to go (gulp).
Hopefully more people start to take notice so this does as much good as possible and I feel like I'm not talking to myself.
Please appreciate the larger purpose and not be critical if an idea isn't worthwhile or suitable to you. These are simply brainstormed suggestions, and I'm hoping that I can get a couple of solid ones that could be taken to the next step if people agree.
On the contrary, if something jumps out as clever or exciting, let me know. I could use plenty of kicks in the ass to get through this exercise.
Since I mainly use Hive.Blog, most of my feedback is from that perspective.
Brainstorm Round #3:
21. Wallet Transfer Blacklists/Warnings
's
experience on Steem is precisely why. Known spam accounts should be BLOCKED from receiving wallet transfers from accounts they don't control, or a pop-up WARNING needs to be developed at a minimum. This is a huge gap that has cost people lots of money over the years because of trickery and typos.
22. A Feed Post Matrix To Reduce Scrolling
Trim down the intro text and have a 4x4 or 6x6 display of posts we can more easily see. This will increase curation efficiency by being able to scan more authors at once, thus exposing more that normally never get reached before curation effort is done for the session. Let our eyes do the work, not our fingers.
23. Fix The SMT Whitepaper Link
https://hive.io/hive-smt-whitepaper.pdf is currently blocked with "AccessDenied." Not professional or transparent. ABC's here.
24. Define Hive Communities On Steem.Blog Homepage
We see lists of "Trending" and "My Communities," while also being able to "Explore." For new users or prospects, a common question may be about what the heck a community is. It can't hurt to provide a link entitled "Communities Defined" in the same section to quickly educate.
25. Notifications Column Enhancement
I have no idea what the variable small red line near every action in this section means. I literally can't even guess. Why have this there if it's vague and undefined? Put a header over that column! Easy.
26. Wallet Memo Send/Transfer Instructions
There should be a link for these in the wallet section. Only those who understand the chain and have prior experience are going to remember how to do this top of mind. I've used this feature 2-3 times over the years and can't even remember how to do it!
27. Fix Last Active Time
This is never accurate. Either fix it or remove it. It's not valuable when I'm using the platform and it says the last time I used it was an hour ago (current example). This makes no sense and could be giving people the wrong info that might influence their behavior or engagement in some way.
28. Following Analytics!
I'm following 636 accounts, but most aren't active anymore. A tool that could show the last active date of each account and other salient details could help me trim down inactive accounts for some housekeeping. It's not hard to conceptualize, and the data should be easy enough to import into a table by account owner request.
29. Reputation Level Attainment Breakdowns
I currently know that it takes "forever" for me to gain a level in reputation. It'd be nice to have a matrix or chart of how much cumulative voting SP or weight is needed to get from level to level to manage expectations. Why not explain as many black boxes as we can to help people understand the mechanisms and set goals?
30. Fee Transparency
The HIVE/HBD currency market should display how much of a fee is being taken in each transaction. Simple. Common sense.
Remember these are pulled out of thin air as I'm writing this post, so not all will be zingers. It's the effort to think critically and try to identify improvements for the community (big or small) that matters more.
Brainstorm Round #2:
11. Ability To Swap Communities During Drafting Of A Post
Perhaps I'm doing something wrong, but it seems that once you select a community to post in, you can't switch to another community. This is annoying and I have to copy the text and start over. You may be able to switch it to your blog, but not toggle between communities. Sometimes a community seems to default as the destination, but it's not easy to notice, and I've posted to the wrong ones a few times.
12. Select "Top Friends" To Be Featured At Top Of Feed
On Hive.Blog, we can currently make our feed "My Friends," but following a lot of people makes it hard to notice the ones you're keen on browsing first. Akin to voting for 30 witnesses, a form where we can select our top friends to be prioritized in our feed would be nice (while also having the option to lower others without unfollowing them).
13. Community List Sneak Peak
When you hover over a community in the list on Hive.Blog, a popup akin to a Microsoft Excel comment with a high level snippet would be helpful. Yes, you can click the community to get more info, but more info accessible on the home page is better for new prospects.
14. Easy Access Tab For Links To Common Hive Tools
If you don't already know of them from Steem, new users have to dig around or stumble on sites like hive.supply, hive.vote, BeeMe, etc.. Many are very helpful, so why not promote them as a value add while we're super low on dApps? There were tons on the Steem chain, and I'm not even sure what's been migrated or created anew here. Let's get a simple tab with approved tools on it.
15. Profile Setting To Allow Alt Account List
Outside of changing your banner to include it, some people may want to readily share their other alt accounts. In our profile settings, why not include an optional field to populate? It could only help people connect more dots more efficiently if people want to share.
16. Next Hard Fork "Steem to Hive" Account Name Change
Yea, having built up
to 69.5 rep without bots took a lot of effort. Now I'm steemmatt on Hive and it feels stupid. A true social media disaster. It's like twittermatt being on Instagram. For a future hard fork, why can't those who really are affected by this get a one-time application/review/pass to rectify this? Obviously, conflicts would be screened out, but if none, why not merge old with new? Is it possible or not? That's the question, not if people without the issue don't think it's not worth it.
17. Add Other Social Media Handles To Profile Settings
Much like with the option to include Alt accounts, include a profile field to optionally add Twitter or Instagram handles, etc.. Think less annoying self-promo spam in posts and then breathe a sigh of relief.
18. Add Receive Bitcoin/Ethereum/LTC Addresses To Profile Settings
Same logic and relief as above. Consolidate and give people less reason to plaster all of their posts with 10 addresses pleading for money or donations. Less spam!
19. Private Key Safeguard Reminder Messages For New Accounts
Experienced crypto players know the drill to safely secure their keys. Outside of the warning at account creation, there isn't much more formal guidance to ensure that people maintained good form with their key storage. Perhaps for the 15-30 days, a Hive account can occasionally auto-reply to newbs until they confirm a second time that their keys are safely stored, i.e. not lost after quickly stashing them the first time when making their account.
20. The Hive Developer Project Management Tracker
If people are going to start lining up for daily HBD payments for development/work, are we just supposed to trust them? Perhaps a shared and Hive-accessible project management / time tracker is a good idea to encourage accountability and monitor. Most people aren't going to scour Github. This is broad, but some type of metrics should be figured out since the $xxx HBD per day for xx hours a week someone says they'll do feels crazy to me. The least we can do is track some of the higher level activity to have some proof of work/progress.
Brainstorm Round #1:
1. The Hive Lottery!
On a set schedule, a pool of Hive or HBD collected in a non-profit fund account will be awarded to one random Hivean that bought their "ticket." Depending on the price of Hive, entries may be capped at $1 to keep it fun and responsible. One entry per account. I'd imagine that one drawing per week would be a good place to start. Furthermore, there could be a mega lottery from another TBD source once a month or quarter to really create some extra buzz/new adopters. If there is no profit taken, perhaps this doesn't trip on any legal or regulatory red tape.
2. Personalized Hive.Blog Webpage Skins
The ability to be able to upload a personal skin that integrates with the current web layout would be a nice touch to feel more like home. It's 2020 and we can do better than black and white. Desktop backgrounds can be very motivational or calming, so let's marry the two.
3. Optional "Are You Sure You Want To Post This?" Confirmation Step
We've all been there. Somehow you hit the post button when you were not even close to ready. Scrambling to edit and finish before people write it off can be a bit of stress and ruin the value you meant to bring. In your settings, you can opt to have this safeguard on or off. This doesn't seem difficult or problematic to integrate.
4. Showcase Pages
If I want to quickly find the best artists, musicians, gamers, or fitness gurus here, etc., prominent marketing showcase pages for key disciplines can help. As communities may be confusing, complex, and clunky to newbs, this would be ideal for those scouting Hive to see where they could fit in. It could also be a quick way to meet and assimilate with their kind post sign up. Lastly, the vetted influencers on display could get far more exposure, and maybe even feature custom Hive-inspired works.
5. Disincentivize Auto-votes
Yes, I said it. This system as it's often abused, milked, and cannibalizes organic engagement. I don't know what's possible, but we learned that bid-bots were harmful for our overall growth after far too long. I feel the same here. Perhaps we can have a 10% penalty for an auto-vote or set some type of parameters that are designed to combat the abuse.
6. Optional Upvote Confirmation Step
Imagine how much SP has been cumulatively wasted on a small vote left in the slider that is immediately revoted to what was intended. If people have a habit of doing this, make it an optional setting and save the SP!
7. Industry Relationship Management Repository
There are a lot of people who have relationships with key entities or people in the crypto space. Some may be with exchanges, blockchain professors, or crypto influencers, etc.. If we kept a tracker of who knew who, we could leverage it to make the most out of our relationships as a team. This would also help us efficiently lead with the best contacts and be unified in our approach.
8. Abusive Behavior/Language Penalty Box
If someone is being violently offensive, threatening or hurtful in comment sections, I propose a system that they can be escalated to who can review the extent of the complaint and potentially restrict their commenting ability via high-powered flags for a brief period of time. This would help with prevention, and victim protection, as well as let situations cool off once off the rails.
9. Equal Wallet Visibility
From my experience, it seems that some upper-level accounts have their wallet activity suppressed or hidden from the public wallet view. If this is the case, I don't agree with this concealment as it raises an eyebrow of funds flowing that people don't want seen. If everyone can't have that perk, nobody should have it. If true, perhaps this was a Steemit thing, but I really don't think we should have that on Hive. Wallet activity is important public info and should be easily accessible like it is for the rest of us.
10. Comment Nudging
If you make a badass comment you were really hoping someone would see, but fear it got overlooked/lost in the shuffle, I like the idea of an option to ping the recipient one time with an alert to check it out. Some people get an onslaught of replies and could honestly miss a a bunch, or get behind on them, but to the commenter's relief, they could have one more chance to draw their attention. I'd imagine that there could be a cap per recipient or overall for this for a specified period of time so it's saved for special occassions.
30 down and 70 to go.
Please let me know if you like any in particular to help with motivation. This will only get harder. Perhaps reply with your favorite 2 or 3 by number???
Please try to save your own ideas for the end since I'm going to have to reach to get to 100, and will need all of the opportunity I can get.
I'll keep tabs on the hotter ideas for a final report at the end.
Thank you,
Matt
I made a 