CURATION ON HIVE - What is it and how to do it? (+ How I curate)

over 3 years ago (Edited)

Hello Hive community and everyone outside of Hive blockchain who might stumble upon this post.

I am here to tell you about one of the most important tools on Hive blockchain - Curation.

For those who are not familiar with this term; Curation is simply tipping (upvoting) someone with your stake (amount of Hive Power in your wallet).

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Curation = Tipping/Finding content
Upvoting = Tipping/Liking content
Hive Power = Determines how valuable your upvote is (more HP, bigger upvote)
Curation rewards = Rewards from upvoting content

It is simple to do it but if you don't know about the details of how it works, you will surely lose on your curation rewards.

So, let me set an example:

Person A creates a post on Hive blockchain. Person B and Person C upvotes (tips) it.

The first thing we need to know is how content creators are rewarded.

When you create a post, for the next 7 days community can decide how much it's worth. That means that people can upvote your content but also, they can downvote it for various reasons.

After 7 days, you get rewards for your content. But, content creator gets 50% of total rewards while other 50% goes to content curators (people who upvoted/liked the content).

This might seem odd for people outside of Hive blockchain, but this is a system where you are rewarded for creating content but also for finding it. It is a system where you are incentivized to engage with other members of the community to create a better and more friendly eco-system.

I know most of people are used to get rewards only for themselves, but growing together through engagement and support yields much better and greater results, especially in a long-term period.

Getting back to our example.

The post is created by Person A, upvoted by Person B and C, 7 days have passed, and post earned 10$.

That means that content creator will get 5$ and other 5$ will be shared among content curators.

But, not every content curator will get the same amount of $. This means that Person B will not get the same amount as Person C. So, how it works?

3 ways to get more curation rewards is to have more Hive Power, curate content on no less than 5th minute, or curate before others.

If Person B have more Hive Power than Person C, it will most probably get more curation rewards because its upvote brings more value to that content.

Also, if Person B upvotes the content on 5th minute, it will not lose on curation rewards. But, curating before 5th minute will land a curation penalty. So, upvoting on 1st minute is not worth at all.

And last but not least, if Person B curates content before Person C, it will get extra curation rewards because it is seen as Person A found the content that might be valuable to community and got it more visible with his/her upvote.

This is a great way to incentivize people to find great content first and make it more visible for others. It also incentivize you to find valuable content, not some low effort content that will not be upvoted later.

Also, you need to know!

Every 100% value upvote removes 2% of your upvoting mana. So, every day you have 10 upvotes of 100% value. Of course, that doesn't mean you have only 10 upvotes per day because you can set how much your upvote will have % of value.

We know that every coin has two sides and ''curation coin'' is no different.

On Hive Blockchain, you can manually curate but also, you can set auto-upvotes.

Manual curation is a holy grail. It is seen as way superior tool than auto-voting. Manual curation brings real genuine engagement and sense of affiliation to community. It is also time consuming but overall results are much better than auto-voting results.

With manual curation, you will get very nice curation rewards, you will be in a position to curate more great posts on 5th minute and also curate before others.

Source

But, the real value of manual curation lies in engagement. It is a foundation of every great social platform, especially on Hive. Also, you can find more great content and enjoy the diversity of Hive community but also find those witness posts that will get you more educated on how Hive works and how we can make it better.

On the other hand..

You can set auto-voting on authors you like or ones that will get you more rewards. This is a good thing if you don't have time to manually curate but BIG downside of auto-voting is that it lacks engagement and it can be seen as a greedy move, especially when it's set to vote on 4th minute (in some cases 3rd minute, just to curate before others no matter how big are curation penalties).

So, it is up to you to do what you want and how you can. You can go fully manual curation, full auto-voting, or you can go both ways at the same time.

Just enjoy it and don't stop upvoting :))

HOW I CURATE?

In the past, I've curated for a couple of big comminities but after it ended in some weird ways, I decided to auto-upvote for some time. Since, it doesn't bring much value to our community I stopped to do it as soon as I was able.

Now, I am in full manual curation mode and I must say I really enjoy it for all the benefits it brings to me. I am getting great curation rewards but most importantly, I am engaged in the community and following what's going on with development on Hive.

Spacely sniping good posts :)

I use my alt-account @loveprevails to vote on the content and after 1 minute, my main account @whack.science follows with 80% of value of my alt-account.

The reason I do this is to incentivize others (who don't have time to curate) to follow my alt-account curation trail and get more rewards since my main account will vote after 1 minute with much bigger stake (remember: voting before others).

I already have a few accounts on curation trail and according to stats, they're doing really great.

I am daily sharing great posts on Twitter to get more visibility and potential rewards.

Also, every couple of days, I am searching through my curation history trying to find very good/great content that was missed by other curators.

After I find what I need, I create a post to highlight these contents in a hope to get them more rewards.

Just don't get me wrong, I am not doing this to get more curation rewards. Au contraire! I am doing this so that content creators that created very good content don't feel demotivated because they were somehow missed by bigger curators.

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Check out the latest post of my NO GREAT POST LEFT BEHIND curation initiative.

BTW, I only set auto-upvotes on a few communities to help them grow and show them my appreciation. Those communities are @curangel for their great curation work and @vimm for always staying true to their Hive community and developing slowly but greatly.

YOU WANT TO SUPPORT MY WORK?

If you want to follow my curation trail, feel free to. I am manually curating almost throughout the whole day. Yesterday, I set my own record of 16% Curation APR and 150% Efficiency. You can check it on my Twitter profile.

If you have small amount of Hive Power, the best to do is to follow my alt-account trail @loveprevails, but if you got a lot Hive Power and want to support my work, you can follow my main account trail @whack.science.

This all being said, I hope you will choose to curate manually. I don't expect everyone to go 100% manual curation mode but if you can invest a bit of your daily time in manual curation, the whole community will appreciate it.

I know I have been vocal against auto-voters but that doesn't mean those people suck, it is their curation that does. :))

Thanks for reading!

Peace yo,

Mr. Spacely