The News

As usual I will start with a price chart.

HIVE$ is much the same as it was a month ago. Everything seems fairly stable for now, but we get the odd spike. I think we need steady growth. There have to be reasons for people to buy $HIVE, such as needing resource credits to be active.

I was happy to see that @splinterrents is active again. Their service was stopped due to changes in how Splinterlands rentals worked, but it is back.

The next HPUD is in a few days. If you power up as little as 10HP you get a badge and may qualify for the prizes.

There is discussion of the future of the SPORTS token. We have so many secondary tokens on Hive and some lack utility apart from being able to stake them for voting. I have used their tag for years and bought some, but the value is still not much. I wonder what it takes to make such tokens more valuable.

@ssekulji completed his first rally in the Hive car. This gets the brand in front of millions of eyes. We need to be ready to welcome curious newcomers.

Friday Follows

• @radioliquorice puts together a show of music by a community that I helped start in a local pub. They are open to guest artists if you want to submit some songs for next time.
• I just saw that @bozz hit 50k HP. That is a nice milestone. He has a little further to go to qualify as a Hive Orca. That is based on the VEST tokens that underlie the blockchain. You can see what you have on the @hivebuzz site.
• My friend @anna-newkey has been busy with open mic sessions as well as daily walks with her dog Mia. She just got a treadmill so she can get extra steps whilst working from home. She is active in the Hive open mic challenge.
• Another friend @steve-o2023 departs next week on his much delayed motorbike trip to distant parts. He plans to do posts and videos along the way.

The Doghouse

I do find myself defending Hive a fair bit. Much as I love the platform it is imperfect, as I often say. It can seem unfair and unfriendly to some. We need to do our best to improve on that.

The latest incident I saw was around @cast.garden. This is a service for publishing podcasts that was created by @kencode under his @agorise brand. I found it when looking for an alternative to commercial services. You can upload episodes that can be subscribed to with any 'podcatcher' application (I use Pocket Casts on my Android phone). You can also consume them within the Cast Garden site that looks a little like some of the video sites. Podcasts can be video if you want.

All the podcasts appear on the feed from @cast.garden. This is not really how people would consume them, but you can upvote them with 90% of the rewards going to the creator and 10% to the service. Creators can share these posts to their own feed or communities for more visibility. Recently some of the posts have been downvoted to nothing by the @hivewatchers accounts with no reason given. I could guess that it could be due to the content having been posted elsewhere or that there are too many posts, but this is pure guesswork. I know some people have had concerns about projects @kencode has run before, but he is building useful apps on the blockchain and there ought to be ways to make that possible without fights breaking out.

I have noticed that some who use Cast Garden are not actually using Hive. They do not comment and do not even seem to collect their rewards. They may earn in other ways from what they do. They will not even notice the downvotes. Others will and feel it is not justified.

It is not my job to defend Hivewatchers. Their actions can be very divisive, but they have done a lot to stop people earning from unethical behaviour such as plagiarism or impersonation. The project gets funded via the proposals and so I think they do need to be accountable to the community. That includes making it clear why people have been downvoted. Those affected can appeal via Discord, but this needs to be a fair process that encourages rehabilitation or forgiveness rather than just punishment. Their web site is not too helpful. You can look up some people who have been verified and report abusers, but it has not been updated in a long while. There is a big list of blacklisted accounts that you can download to use in your own scripts, but it does not give reasons.

Hivewatchers come in for lots of abuse with some 'victims' trying to dox those who downvote. Some whales and other big accounts will get involved to help out, but that does not necessarily mean they are trying to drive away small accounts. Some say they want to keep the rewards for themselves, but if they make Hive an unattractive platform then they stand to lose on their investment.

I know some people delegate their HP to curation accounts, including Hivewatchers, or follow up/downvote trails. I think you need to be careful in this as you lose control of how your voting power is used. The big curation account concentrate where the votes go and I think they need to be spread more. If you do not have time to vote manually then I think it may be better to follow the trail of someone you trust. I do downvote, but it is always manual so I know exactly what impact it has.

People will suggest improvements such as expiring delegations or a need to comment when downvoting, but these need to get witness approval and so discussion needs to happen rather than making threats. I think most people would favour minimising the restrictions the platform puts on us and then it is up to people to deal with bad behaviour. That does allow bad actors to be unkind, but freedom is important.

I find it frustrating when elements of the community are fighting amongst themselves when we need to be building an attractive platform. If you scare people away they tend to spread bad vibes. I am not saying we should tolerate abuse, but we need to find ways to work with projects that can add value.

The End

I needed to get all that off my chest. Feel free to give your opinions in the comments.

I always that I encourage others to support the community. #FollowFriday is one way I do that, but it is not exclusively mine. I also do the #BritList with a fresh edition next week. I hope to see more people active around the UK. We need some dormant accounts to come back.

Hive five!

The man behind:

@tenkminnows: Helping good Hivers level up @proofofbrian: A bot that checks for tag typos #BritList: A monthly list of Hivers in the UK