Our onboarding program needs more active onboarders!

Hey everyone!

We've had our onboarding program set up for quite a while now, over time it has been evolving and improving and we think we have a nice setup going currently that makes onboarding not just easier for vetted hive members but also improves the retention and experience of new onboarded users. Only thing we're lacking now is more experienced and trusted hive members to join the onboarding efforts.

Although these stats are a bit outdated in terms of activity since it's not easy to manually check each and every onboarded accounts latest activities (we're working on automating it), it gives us a good representation of how many users have been onboarded so far through our program.

Let me give you a quick and simple walkthrough of how you can become an onboarder and what the activity entails once you're given the trial role.

How does the onboarding program work?

1. You apply for an onboarding role in our Discord server in the #onboarding-application channel
2. We let you know if you get invited and you receive the onboarding role

Once you have the onboarding role you'll be able to see a few more channels

In the general chat you'll be able to read some info in the pinned messages of how the onboarding works, certain restrictions and limitations.

In the onboarded-curation channel you are able to nominate posts of your onboarded users for curation.

In the other-curation channel you can nominate posts of users you've onboarded but it wasn't through our program: the #invite-links channel.

#invite-links: once you've registered your username here you are able to generate unique 1-time use links that'll use @ocd's account credits through @hiveonboard but bypass the SMS verification. This means that whoever you are talking to to onboard on Hive, will receive an invite link to a free hive account that they can use once and without the need to verify.

Why the onboarding program?

There's always been that one complaint of stakeholders: "I invited some people over but I didn't have the stake to curate them and no one bothered engaging with them so they didn't stick around". Of course things are very different now with communities, the @lovesniper initiative, our community incubation program and many other activities and projects outside of OCD that have made for far better user retention than in the past.

Our program solves quite a few of those problems, so let's talk about which those are exactly and how we solve it.

The problem of not having stake to support the newcomers. Though it's natural that new users need to show effort to start seeing rewards, things are a bit different on Hive because curators and stakeholders here are incentivized by the power of the same coin in the ecosystem effecting everyone if more users join and stay active. Thus we see a lot of introduction posts "curated" or at least rewarded, often blindly. This unfortunately leads to a few bad actors trying to take advantage of said rewards by creating fake intro posts, stealing the ID's of other users from different platforms, etc. The way we solve this is by trust and strict rules surrounding the onboarded users and curation.

Being an onboarder gives you a ton of advantages, not just that you can "spoil" your onboarded users in the beginning but also a lot of financial rewards we provide either through us directly or the reward pool, here's a few ways onboarders can earn extra rewards for their activity:

1. When you generate an account through us, the posts of the invited user will automatically send you 3% beneficiary rewards. Though this is not mandatory and can be removed at any time from the user, many don't initially because without the user inviting them they wouldn't have received those rewards in the first place. Along with being able to nominate said users for curation and in a way guarantee that 3% won't be nothing, given the post is original, has effort and quality, etc, it can scale quite well if you imagine someone onboarding hundreds of users and they're all active and earning and not removing the beneficiary cut to their onboarder.

2. 1 time compilation post of introduction posts of users you've onboarded. In the @ocdb account we frequently create compilation posts of new users that have been onboarded through our program. This means that for every user you onboarded, and they created an introduction posts, you'll earn the post rewards of said compilation posts through beneficiaries.

3. Delegations from @ocd-witness based on active onboarded members. As a final reward not just for your onboarding but the efficiency of onboarding, guiding and keeping users active so they can learn enough about Hive to stick around, we also offer (currently 100 HP per active onboarder) delegations. These will stay with you as long as you are in the onboarding program and active.

Rules, limitations and why we have to be strict

Not having identity verification has always left a lot of leeway for abuse, this is one of the reasons we can't just give anyone the chance to become an onboarder because many who don't have a lot of stake or reputation (or something to lose) would attempt to take advantage in different ways.

Trust.

It all works on trust, if we know you're a Hiver applying for our onboarding program who not only is quite active with posts and comments but has been around to understand Hive well enough to teach others quickly the do's and don't's, you'll most likely be a good fit and given a chance to onboard through us.

The important part here is to make sure the users you invite are aware of what they can't do on Hive, and especially if you're about to nominate their posts for curation you need to make sure it's not plagiarised content. We have a very strict two strike rule, if your onboarders are caught plagiarising more than twice on posts you've nominated for curation, you're out of the program.

This is to prevent onboarders from creating sockpuppet accounts with no effort content/plagiarism/etc and trying to double-dip on post rewards. This of course doesn't happen often and that's why onboarders are rewarded well for their onboarding efforts so they wouldn't have to stoop to these activities to even consider jeopardizing their position. Some times though their onboarded users go out and plagiarise even though the inviter has warned them against it, so it's important to make sure to curate the posts before submitting them for our votes. (Some times we catch the plagiarism when we're about to vote on the posts as well)

Limitations

To not make it so that new onboarded users are given too much curation attention compared to say users who've been here longer, we have certain limitations in place. Early on new users can be nominated for curation about thrice per week and each month they've been on Hive it is lowered by 1 time per week until they "graduate" from our onboarding program and should know Hive well enough to be picked up by communities curation activities on their own or other curation accounts on Hive. We've found this to work quite well so far.

Another important limitation is that they make an effort in being active and engaging, not just on their own posts but connecting with other hive users, growing a genuine following and being social. This is a general rule we usually have for all authors we nominate, if they're being valuable community members who don't just look out for their own self interest they usually are more keen to receive curation from us.

Other

This of course doesn't mean that you can't invite people on your own accord. We're currently offering account credits to @hiveonboard which means that if you invite people using your referral there or your @peakd referral you'll still be using @ocdb's account credits and the invited users will give you part of their beneficiary rewards. With the way we have set up certain initiatives you may not even need our onboarding program's help to make sure the users you onboard have a great starting experience on Hive. @lovesniper and our community incubation projects will surely assist you and your onboarded user to get where you want to go so they get the hang of the place easier and find the authors and niche's they're interested in to stay active.

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Ending words

If you think you could do a good job onboarding and would like to try it, we're here waiting for your application. Keep in mind that we do prefer users who've been around a while so if you're new to Hive yourself you may have to wait a bit longer but being active, learning Hive and growing your audience will surely be a great way to get your application approved in the future.

I think it's important for us to start onboarding new users and show them what they've been missing out on. With our program, our focus on improving communities and the general curation and how well it works on Hive compared to our forked "competitors" there should be no excuse as to why we aren't onboarding more people we either know directly or would like to see and support on Hive. Social media networks need users, it's up to each and every one of us to invite them so we can see this place grow and scale to what it can become and how it will change monetization, immutability, ownership and censorship resistance for everyone involved.

If you have any questions please feel free to ask here or contact us in our Discord!

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