Let's say you have the privilege to reward your community members more rewards for their posts, would you be motivated to just hand out those benefits if you were given an essay that users didn't show effort at all?
Rewarding people in the community isn't easy as it looks. On one hand, you want to hand out more rewards so that people could be more motivated to show up some activity in the community, on another hand, people will eventually get used to the idea that each time they share something here they get instant $. Put a little more time in the routine and you'll see some slips in the quality people make because it's unrealistic to expect that each post would be better than before.
Eventually people would get lazy and put lesser effort in their writing but expect to get the same treatment. This is how entitlement catches users on the platform without them knowing it. You keep rewarding users a constant supply of votes and they'll start expecting it. When the votes don't come, they start to wonder whether they did something wrong or favoritism, most of the time there's nothing wrong, it's just that votes here come with a limited voting power and curation community accounts like @ocdb is stretched across different communities.
There's also the reputation levels especially users above 70 which makes it hard for some nominations for votes to push through. I know reputation levels don't really mean much here except they show a badge of tenure on the platform. If an account has reached this threshold, it just means they are expected to know that rewards don't come often as they used to because curation communities would favor new users with lower rep starting out.
So if they still want to get rewarded, they either step up their game or just be consistently good and active in the community much more than the average lower rep user because that's how it works when you're trying to give chance to other users that want to grow on the platform.
While it's generally nobody's business to tell you what you do with your rewards earned from the platform, at some point everyone should've considered leaving some portions of their earnings staked so that they can still earn something from their accounts despite the lack of votes on their posts.
What else is there being factored into the curation? each curator has a different way of determining whether the post gets nominated for some votes so that answers some inconsistencies in the voting patterns. We're generally looking for people that are active in the sense that they do more than just post, they also interact with other users too.
If you believe that loyalty can't be bought, then I think we're in the same wavelength if I say love bombing a user with upvotes isn't going to make them stay active in the community when the well dries up.
If running a community were that easy, everyone would be doing it if they were aiming for a decent community build. As an admin of the community page, it's not just picking post for rewards that we do, we also need to come up with ways to keep activity going to a certain level to remain eligible for support by OCD and show proofs of accountability.
You check a post, does it look nice? did you read about the context? was it written with AI? is it plagiarized? prove it? does the author deserve only a small vote or a large vote? recommend it or no? is the author actively engaging on Hive? in the community? has this author been tied to shady activities in the past? what else has this author been doing? are you sure it's not someone's alt account trying to game the curation? is the author doing a community hoping spree where they shift posts on different communities regularly to maximize exposure and fish for votes? how often are these authors rewarded? what's the personality of this author? do you think this is someone you'd want to be in your community?
So many questions on the checklist per author and per post, and repeat it multiple times over and over for the past weeks, eventually you end up being worn down especially when some authors are caught abusing your goodwill or just give up because they didn't get a damn vote for their half-baked essay. It's easy to make a post about an anime you like, say a few lines here, put a picture and links to sources and what not, then you're done.
We're curators, we also know the drill in the routine and we know from your point of view how it can be frustrating when you don't get some votes for your effort.
Sometimes it's not your post of you that's the problem. Sometimes it's just your success.
We can see the pending rewards for the account over the week and tell if the author has already been well rewarded. This makes it hard for a nomination.
Sure, anyone can tell us subjectively what is well and under rewarded but if your post is earning an average of 1$, you're doing far better than more than half of the accounts on the platform but you'll still feel bad because it potential payout for your effort didn't mount enough to meet your expectations. But that's just it, if we keep recommending the same accounts that are doing well, that also defeats the purpose of incentivizing other users to participate on the platform.
And it's not like each post shared here in the community page is valuable, how many authors here can actually claim that their posts has reached at least 30 views per post on the platform despite having more than 10$ displayed on the payout.
Those curation compilations we published isn't only a means to reward the admins for running this community, it's also a community receipt on which post and authors were supported. If anyone else noticed the names on the reports, you'll see recurring ones because who else would this community prefer to reward but the people that frequently show up to be active.
As for the engagement part, while it's encouraged, you can't expect people to relate to whatever you're into when being passionate about a show you like. I know Naruto, Demons Slayer, Attack on Titan, and probably about the show you're featuring on the post. I don't need listen to what you think when I can formulate my own opinions about the show and am probably not interested in the review post, this isn't to say you're at fault here, it's just that if you're talking about some mainstream content, everyone already has an idea and they'll value their own take over yours.
You can make the best post about Naruto but I'll still be uninterested because I'm not into the show or already watched it. It's not you. It's the content you're dishing out that lacks novelty and you're likely not the first person to post about a review on Naruto or how great one character is on a popular show. And put yourself into your reader's shoes, would you also be interested in hearing the same thing you already knew about? so why do you think this kind of content really draws in value? - adamada.
@wittyzell, @musicandreview and my account @adamada can just do fine on our own without this community existing because there's more opportunities to be made with our time than be tied down to curation and community organizing here. It's an extra chore but we do it for kicks and giggles because we like anime and having a community about that on Hive would be nice. The Anime Realm had a phase when it was abandoned and collected dust.
Let's try to keep the ship floating and put more activity in the place.
Thanks for your time.