LeoFinance: Make Commenting Fun Again!

When I decided — a couple of months back — to have an account dedicated solely to a single community, my core intention was do this as an experiment in engagement.

This happened at the very front end of the community's drive to increase interaction through commenting, and I was originally inspired by just a few posts talking about the value of engagement.

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Remembering Better Times...

Whereas my motivations may not be the same as anyone else's, promoting engagement made me think back on the times on "old Steem" and the earliest days on Hive where the interaction between users drove much of the overall activity.

Don't get me wrong, rewards are certainly nice, but I think we all like to get underlying enjoyment from whatever we participate in. Consider this... if you purely become a doctor to make "lots of money," chances are you're going to be a horrible doctor, because your heart isn't in healing people, it's only in your bank account!

And quite honestly? Whatever they may say, few people are actually that mercenary.

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Anyway, what I found myself thinking about was that the primary thing that made me stick to it on Steem, and then Hive, was engagement. Absent the 15-20 comments per post, I would most likely not have stuck around for the $1.00 (or less) per post reward!

But WHAT Makes Commenting "Fun?"

Even though I am a pretty small "fish" (or is it "kitten?") here on LeoFinance, part of the enjoyment is that I can actually offer a meaningful upvote to a good comment! And so can a lot of other people.

The key word here is meaningful.

I can't do that on Hive, because my vote would fall below the infamous "dust" threshold.

I don't care who you are, there are very few people who are willing to participate in anything that feels meaningLESS beyond a very short and temporary time.

What the LeoFinance community is succeeding in doing is making commenting FUN again!

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Maybe it sounds like a rather frivolous and "fluffy" thing to say in the context of a financial community, but a large part of the reason the gamification of social content works as a motivational tool is that we get an intangible reward from the feeling that we are doing well.

Part of what Hive has perhaps lost is that the majority of users end up feeling like their contributions are either unseen or not meaningful.

When that happens, we end up with either dead accounts, or some who put their engagement on autopilot, and the actual social part of the community dies. Or, at the very least, goes dormant.

Wake Up, Hive!

CuratorCat out... 13 NOV 2020 14:02PST
All photos are my own

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Sometimes a simple meme is meaningful. Tbh the only community that got me more engaged than this one was musing. Since then I haven't commented that much.

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Yeah, I remember Musing, although I never got that involved in it. Much of my original inspiration for engagement came from @abh12345's engagement leagues, back on Steem.

=^..^=

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i totally agree with you and i remember myself trying this out multiple times, especially when i first joined steemit and for quite long time since then.

To tell you the truth at one point though i stopped and only commented on 2-3 posts from the 20-50 i did each day, as it was both time consuming (cause i would actually read the post before i make my comment) and i couldn't see if this motivates them to comment as well.

I will give it another here in Leo and see what will happen, maybe it would be different who knows...I think i start small tough with 3-4 comments and then i will increase them!

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It doesn't have to be on a huge scale; even if everyone who uses the site leaves 3-4 comments a day, that is a huge volume of activity; some people will be more active than that, and some will not... and some will simply create top level posts and only interact with the comments others leave for them... but in the end, it all adds up!

I must confess that I always read the posts I comment on, and sometimes I end up reading posts where I can't think of anything of value to say, so I choose not to. For me, engagement isn't just about filling spaces with words... but about starting and maintaining conversations with people.

=^..^=

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I can't think of anything of value to say, so I choose not to.

haha true and i also wanna add that after a while making posts, all the authors can easily distinguish by the comments who actually read the post and who just read the title and commented :P

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Congratulations @curatorcat.leo! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

You received more than 200 upvotes. Your next target is to reach 300 upvotes.

You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP

Do not miss the last post from @hivebuzz:

Project Activity Update
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Engagement seems to be legitimate good in everywhere, the exposure it allows you get is pretty stunning and you never know how it might helped you get more visibility for your blogs and best of all, the excitement never stops

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It seems like engagement has come to matter even more in these days of social restrictions associated with Covid-19... a lot of people just enjoy the interaction.

On a greater scale, though, you're quite right that it adds a sense of "excitement" to content.

=^..^=

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Comments makes the post more lively and add a opinion of reader about the subject.
Multiple opinion give the post more dimension and start giving more value to the original post.

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Comments on content — particularly quality content — does add a dynamic feeling to the reader's experience. Text goes from being merely "information" to becoming an interactive conversation.

=^..^=

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Yeah! We need to look beyond just earning tokens to enjoying the platform and making friends. Engagement is the life of every Platform.

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Precisely! And I think that's also important to keep in mind when promoting LeoFinance to potential new members: It's a community first, and a place to earn from creating content second.

=^..^=

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Exactly! Sadly, a lot of persons think of the space as a money-making site first

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LOl was it ever not fun? I've been a comment monster for ages now, killing it in the engagement league. I'd like to see more LEO's get in on the engagement league

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Why yes, you are a "comment monster!" According to HiveBuzz, ranked 150th in comments left on Hive/Steem... which is impressive, given how many of the top 100 are bots.

I think Asher was actually considering prototyping a LeoFinance Engagement League... which would be really cool.

=^..^=

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What the LeoFinance community is succeeding in doing is making commenting FUN again!

This is soooo true!
It was obviously amazing to see the 40+ LEO rewards on comments straight out of the gate when Initiative 10 was brought to life, but even though the crazy & amazing hype about Initiative 10 seems to have settled a bit, people are still making comments. We still see increased engagement across the platform, with- or without rewards. People still make comments and that is most likely due to the simple fact that people have been longing for engagement for a long period of time.

onealfa and taskmaster was literally the perfect duo for setting this up, and this would probably not have been possible on another community than LeoFinance..

  • The best part is, that others have followed suit and we are engaging more and more.

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Which brings up something important that maybe gets overlooked in our greater "addiction" to decentralization: These things happen (Initiative 10, LeoFinance itself) because there is Leadership.

To me, the possible "Achilles Heel" of decentralization is that many shy away from the idea of someone "steering the ship" because it starts to look like centralization. That's a fine and noble ideal, but a rudderless ship without a sea chart doesn't GO anywhere.

There are aspects of centralized structures that work, and we should all be a little more aware that sometimes we have a tendency to throw the proverbial baby out with the dirty bathwater...

=^..^=

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Thanks for sharing. After reading @jaki01's post at, a lot of comments there, and espacially @anggreklestari's comment at, I now have read three or four more posts and finally ended here with your's.

I did not knew that leofinance makes a difference in curation distribution. I feel like this topic on the one hand is becoming more and more complicated and on the other hand more and more diverse with lots of different frameworks.

I wished someone shares some easy to grasp overview posts about all this stuff. Looks like experience has gathered that has not been there one or two years ago.

By now I leave you more confused then I was yesterday, when all this was hidden to me. Looking forward to explore new horizons. @tipu curate !invest_vote !BEER

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The topic occupies me. Having a linear curve looks to make sense. I hope we're seeing a trend here. And why not leaving it to the author to select a curve with their audience in mind? I guess it's a topic I can talk about till I'm blue in the face.

Here's what I found on my way (and it's not on Leofinance; that's what I don't like about those front-ends. Well, tribes are ok to me, yet with every front-end one need to reference outside the tribe for good content that is on the same chain. Anyway)

https://hive.blog/tribe/@stmdev/curves-and-reward-distribution-across-author-and-curators-for-the-tribes

https://leofinance.io/@leofinance/leveling-the-playing-field-leo-is-switching-to-a-linear-curation-curve

Here's another pick I have found just before posting this comment:

Even if [a linear curve] was considered as a big disadvantage the next solution would be to distribute the curation rewards to the users after 7 days from the date the vote was cast. The author payout might happen before but the curation reward alone would be locked and distributed after 7 days from voting. This can create a little complication to the current reward distribution model. But if this needs to be implemented, then technically it shouldn't be a problem.
But people feel that if the votes are not time-bound, people might make use of this opportunity to grab the rewards towards the end of the post lifecycle and get benefitted easily. Though this is seen as a disadvantage by many people, I don't think this would harm the system in anyways. But yeah maybe there are also other factors to be considered. Maybe experimenting with this and discussing in detail can prove if this system is reliable or not. -> Source

I always liked the idea of not being "time-bound" in general. What's the difference in finding a great post in a year from now?! And those who don't care about content would be seen by their deeds even more, then they already are now. That's when downvoting in the long run could make sense not only for personal vote-vendettas.

Again, I guess it's a topic I can talk about till I'm blue in the face.

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LeoFinance recently simplified curation by doing away with the "you must vote as close to five minutes as possible" system of Hive, and the curation reward "curve" is now flat. You upvote a post you like, whenever you like, and you earn full curation rewards regardless.

It serves to stimulate engagement because manual curators can now just focus on finding content they like, in their own time frame without always "watching the clock."

From my perspective, that is as it should be... LARGELY because it is simple and that matters as part of the greater objective of attracting new users from the "outside" and not confusing them with a system that seems almost incomprehensible to a non-technical person.

And yes, it's sad to see @jaki01 throwing in the towel. She is one of the major contributors to the German community on Hive.

=^..^=

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Interesting. I noticed many people creating dedicated accounts for Leo but I never really thought about why they are doing it. Maybe it's time for khazrakh.leo...?

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In my case, it definitely made sense because my primary account mostly posts cat pictures! And that's not really financial...

That said, my LEO stake gives me about a 0.23 LEO vote when 100% charged which is enough to spread around on top level posts and comments, while my HIVE stake (+/- 1500 HP) gives my about a $0.009 vote "over there" which would be useless for upvoting comments since the payouts would fall below the "dust" threshold.

The functional result is that my main account upvotes only good top level posts on Hive, while I can focus far more on post engagement on LeoFinance.

=^..^=

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(Edited)

the very least, goes dormant

There are many dormant account in hive. The most reason is simple. Not getting significant reward. In leo new but old members are coming because earning on leo is better than hive. We should be honest that upvoting little power to comment will motivate more people to engage

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Yes, there are lots of dormant accounts in Hive.

In the early days of Steem, engagement mattered, and you could sometimes make almost as much from active engagement as from original posting. As a result, "active conversations" with 30-50+ comments on a post were not unusual, even on relative newcomers' posts.

=^..^=

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Don't get me wrong, rewards are certainly nice, but I think we all like to get underlying enjoyment from whatever we participate in.

THIS. That's why I can never force myself to make comments. I just let it happen naturally. If it isn't fun then what's the point is my philosophy.

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Pricisely @johnhtims!

And I think it speaks volumes into precisely that, that so many of the (often large) stake holders on Hive automate their curation. They don't really care about enjoying the community, they just want to "keep the cash dispenser running."

=^..^=

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So many people are stuck at home and still can't get off their butts to be more active on Hive! I'm guilty of it as well, so I'm not just pointing fingers at others.

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Yeah, the "Covid Effect" is a very interesting beast... you think you have all this extra time, but actually you end up letting a large chunk of that time be frittered away with reading the latest news stories on whether there's anything new with the spread and the economy and other stuff.

Plus, a lot of people who are used to a structured office enviroment aren't necessarily very good at managing time when it's all their own, at home.

=^..^=

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I read posts all the time and can't think of something to comment on too. Then I read the comments and find something there to comment on. I used to be a Yahoo finance junkie until they did away with comments. They were the best part, people ragging on the lamestream authors made me laugh all the time!

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I definitely know the feeling of not wanting to become overly redundant in the process of engaging with content... I quite often find myself reading all the comments and deciding I really don't have anything of value to add. And that's OK, really.

=^..^=

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Good stuff @curatorcat.leo. When I started on Steem I was not a blogger by any stretch but I was defiantly a commenter. Commenting was my bread and butter and by reading and commenting I did get that personal interaction which, in turn, helped me feel confident enough to make full on blog posts.

Even if I knew nothing of the subject matter I could find something in the post to ask about or comment on and if all else failed I can be good at making a quick joke or pun, which also is usually well received.

Even now when I do not have an idea or substance for my own post I will roll around here and try to comment on posts of people both familiar to me and not so familiar.

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Thanks for the comment @summertooth!

One of the points I often like to make is that we need both consumers and creators of content... and those of us who are more comfortable engaging with existing content are more on the consumer end of the equation.

My LeoFinance experience is really more about learning on the financial side than pretending I "know a bunch of stuff" worthy of making original posts over.

=^..^=

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