The Unwritten Rules of Hive: The Results

almost 2 years ago

After leaving the comments open for a week, I am finally ready to share the results of the Unwritten Rules of Hive. It all started after I read a baseball article covering some of the unwritten rules of the game. That led me to write this post asking what some of the "unwritten rules" of Hive were. I got a ton of great replies and I am going to share some of those with you.

The Written Rules

Probably the most interesting thing that came to light was something that was gnawing at me as I reading the replies. It wasn't until @jfang003 specifically pointed it out that I realized that is what had been bugging me.

It would appear that pretty much all of the rules of Hive are Unwritten. I tried to do some digging and I wasn't able to really find anything that specifically listed the rules. I guess that makes a little bit of sense for a censorship free decentralized blockchain.

If I had to pick out a couple specific things that are a widely accepted universal rule of Hive, they would probably look something like this:

Don't plagiarize
Don't scam

Pretty simple right? You do either of those things and you are likely going to get hammered into oblivion by the rest of the community. It's just bad form and do you really want to be "that person"?

The Unwritten Rules

Pretty much everything else is open for interpretation. While doing some of these things may not technically be in wrong, it is pretty bad form and will most assuredly label you as "that person".

- Don't beg for upvotes or complain about lack of upvotes

This applies both on the platform and in Discord. I've had to warn several people lately that there is a good chance they might get banned if they keep begging for upvotes. If you were around the days before Hive, you know that follow for follow and vote for vote comments were pretty common. People were hoping to trade follows and votes to grow their account as quickly as possible. A much better option is just to write good content and interact with other people.

Thanks @toofasteddie, @taskmaster4450le, @joetunex, @whywhy, @markkujantunen, and @dswigle for that one.

- Don't upvote your own comments

This was a bit of a sticky one. Some people bundled it together with "don't upvote yourself" which I don't necessarily agree with. Personally, I don't upvote my own posts with my main account, but I don't have a problem with someone who does. It is their stake, they have the right to do that. What I think everyone can agree on is the fact that you shouldn't upvote your own comments. That's just petty and usually a pretty clear sign of abuse.

There are some people who write comments long enough they could be considered actual posts, but for the most part, comments are comments, spread your voting power around to some other people and don't bother wasting it on yourself.

Thanks @steevc, @stayoutoftherz, @skylinebuds, @joetunex, and @metzli for that.

- Don't abuse tags

This one happens a lot with newer users of the platform. If you are writing a post about orchids, it probably doesn't belong in the Leo Finance community. It's funny sometimes to see how people justify their tag abuse instead of just saying "oh yep, my bad, I won't do it again". A good rule of thumb would be: if you have to justify to yourself why you are using the tag, then just don't.

Your post is likely to get overlooked by the community and you won't really gain any benefits anyway.

Thanks @steevc, and @tokenizedsociety for that one.

- Don't tag a long list of people in your post

I know I am kind of verging on that with all of the people that I am tagging in this post, but I just want to do my part to give credit where credit is due. What this unwritten rule is specifically talking about are those posts that tag pretty much every user on the platform because they are trying to get attention. What it really does is ensure you are going to get muted or even worse flagged into oblivion.

Thanks @solymi and @pregosauce

- Don't over post

This is another one that happens to a lot of the newer users. They join the platform and get really excited about putting out as much content as possible so they can get as many upvotes as possible. There is no hard and fast rule here, but it is pretty widely accepted that anything more than two or so posts a day is bordering on abuse.

Worst case your content is crap and you are just trying to rape the rewards pool and posting just to post. Best case, you could really be putting out some great posts if you focused all of that effort into fewer posts per day. I always tend to feel a bit guilty when I post more than once per day with the same account. Right or wrong, that is just the way I see it (as do a lot of other people).

Thanks @antoniojoseha, @cryptictruth, and @epodcaster

Finally, the last unwritten rule is

-Don't spam comments

This one probably could have bundled in with "don't upvote your own comments" and just been considered "comment abuse", but I wanted to give this rule its own space. I think many people on Hive can understand the aggravation of writing a long post and having people stop in just to say "nice post". I'm sorry, but it's trashy. Don't do it. If you can't string together a couple of sentences into a meaningful comment, then just move along. Some people on here get hundreds of comments per day. Having to filter through those nonsense ones is a huge time-suck.

Thanks @steevc, @stayoutoftherz, and @crypictruth

Final Thoughts

There were some other really great comments that I would have considered more "advice" than "unwritten rules". I didn't include them here, but they are definitely worth reading, so make sure you jump over to the original post and check them out.

Additionally,

Several people touched on the point of properly using sources and using non-copyrighted images. This should be pretty cut and dry and fall into the same category as plagiarism, but I have seen several people argue this point over the years. Most specifically with images.

Just my two cents, but you need to do your research and make sure an image you are using has a creative commons license to use it. Simply grabbing an image from Google and then saying you grabbed the image from Google in your post isn't good enough.

You likely won't get any criminal charges pressed against you, but don't be shocked if one of the anti-abuse groups on the blockchain calls you out for it.

Trust me when I say being apologetic gets you a lot further than being defensive. You've got no one else to blame but yourself if you scorch the earth around you.

Finally,

I think @bigtom13 summed it up best with his initial comment:

"Don't Be a Dickhead"

Thank you to everyone who participated in this initiative. I hope that it can be useful to some others here on the platform. I apologize if I didn't specifically name you, know that I do appreciate you and the time you took to give your feedback.

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