The Ins and Outs of OCD Curation

Hello everyone!

Manual curation in Hive means a lot of work and by work, it even extends to checking the background and credibility of the author. It means countless hours spent by curators in checking not only the post but also the history and association of the author. Seasoned curators can already detect that something's amiss by just scanning the post alone. It requires instinct that is honed by months and even years of curating content.

OCD has been at the forefront of manual curation that ROI is sometimes sacrificed for the sake of upvoting worthy content. In the spirit of transparency and accountability, which OCD has been trying to uphold since its conception, we have made this post to serve as a reference for authors, delegators, followers of OCD trail, and to everyone who are curious as to how OCD works.

In this post, we will lay down all the inner workings of OCD curation. This will help new authors to get acquainted with all the curation initiatives that OCD has been maintaining to upvote a wide range of content. For those who take the time to know how OCD works properly, you might have an easier time being seen or noticed. Just provide quality and original content you'll be considered for more curation support.

Alright! Let's start with OCD's first and oldest curation initiative, the OCD Daily:

At the time of this writing, OCD Daily is at its 759th Issue. That's how long OCD has been striving to showcase undervalued posts and help provide an audience to users who put in extra effort in creating original content.

Premise:

A curator will find a post typically from new users and submit that post to the OCD team for scrutiny. Scrutiny is by means of voting from all involved curators. This is different from Hive votes. Voting within the curators usually happens within 24 hours and then the curator votes are tallied. The posts with the most votes are included in the compilation post. The post with the highest number of votes will become the top nomination of the day. The voting period (24 hours) is also the time to discuss each nomination and what makes the nomination worthy of an upvote or not.

Goal:

To reward and highlight undervalued gems provided by relatively new users and to get those users acquainted with different niche communities supported by OCD under its Community Incubation Program.

Curation Rules:

These are the rules that serve as a guide to curators during the curation process of OCD Daily.

(1) Find a post that's considered 'high quality'*. Then ask the question: Is this post under-rewarded**? If yes, then determine if the user is relatively new*** in Hive. If the user is relatively new, then you have a post to curate.

(2) Pick posts that are not too old. A remaining voting window of 36 to 48 hours is ideal to give ample time for deliberation and voting of the post.

(3) No nomination of fellow OCD curator.

(4) Make sure that there's no plagiarism in the post.

(5) The same author cannot nominate the same author within one (1) month whether or not the author is included in the compilation post.

(6) If the author was included in the compilation post, that author cannot be nominated for one (1) month. If the author was nominated, but not included in the compilation post, other curators can nominate the author after two (2) weeks.

(7) No politics, no religious posts, and no crypto-related posts.

(8) No NSFW or low-quality content.

(9) If the post is a repost, skip it.

(10) If a nominated post is found to be plagiarized, raise the attention of other curators.

(11) An OCD curator is expected to be active. Not active for more than a week without prior reason being given for the inactivity or there's no good excuse when they get back is considered as not having an interest as a curator and will lead to possible removal from the team.

Notes:

* Although quality is subjective, it's easy to identify effort in a post.

** Under rewarded means below $10 as pending payout, but the value is not fixed, it's just a loose guide for curators. Common sense and curator judgment is the ultimate guide to determine which posts are under-rewarded and which are not.

*** Relatively new is again depending on the curator's judgment. Sometimes reputation is used, but it's usually the length of time that the user has been on Hive and if he/she has been earning decent rewards.

OCD started to be a community of its own. Because of its working curation, many users started to post in OCD and other similar general communities regardless of the type of content. This was good at first, but eventually posed a problem with content management. OCD became a jumbled mess because users are competing for attention in a community with no specific topic while the niche communities became a ghost town. To mitigate the problem, it was decided to abandon the curation within the OCD community.

OCD then collaborated with community leaders in different niche communities so that users are encouraged to post in appropriate communities. It turned out to be the best decision OCD has made because niche communities under the incubation program are continuously growing. There are still users who post in OCD especially for those posts that don't belong to any community, but OCD's curation is no longer focused there except the OCD Daily.

Premise:

If there's a new, unique, and genre-specific community that has the potential to raise a lot of activity, provided that the community has no existing similar community within the incubation program, the leader of that community can apply for OCD's incubation. You can apply by writing the application in the comment section of the OCD Communities Incubation Program Update or by contacting us on Discord through the #community-incubation channel.

Discussions within OCD will then commence tackling the merits of adding the community to the incubation program. The final decision rests on @acidyo whether or not the community is accepted or not. The leader of the accepted community will then be given a Community Leader role and a special channel that is specific for the community will be created. The community leader can start curating posts in their community by dropping the links of the post on their special channel.

Goal:

To support communities, help them grow, and allow users to find the right community spaces to interact with like-minded individuals. Users then gain through the focused curation done by community leaders.

The community incubation also rewards community leaders, curators, and moderators who are involved in the community by voting their curation reports if they choose to do them. This is fundamentally due to the lack of more options for communities to raise funds and be incentivized for their efforts and work. Community leaders can choose to reward their partners and collaborators by setting beneficiary rewards, raise funds by using reward.app to liquidate part of the post rewards that can be used for tipping within the community. Tipping either on posts that are not good enough for OCD nomination or to reward users who have good engagement in the community has been made easy in peakd front-end.

To further support communities, OCD also delegates to the community curation accounts depending on their number of subscribers and encourages others to delegate as well through our weekly incubation reports where all of the community accounts are listed.

Curation Rules:

(1) Community leaders will choose posts within their community and drop the links of those posts in their specific channel in Discord.

(2) It is expected that community leaders are competent enough to discern quality content in their own niche.

(3) Voting is usually done within a day or a day after.

(4) Voting strength or percentage depends on @acidyo's discretion, although some community leaders opted to recommend a voting strength.

(5) While not mandatory, community leaders are encouraged to have curation reports that will serve as a reward mechanism for their efforts. Curation reports are also upvoted by OCD. Part of the rewards will be used for community engagement such as contest prizes or tips while the rest goes to the community leaders.

Notes:

(1) The arrangement between OCD and the communities under the program is merely a partnership or collaboration with the ultimate goal of helping the community grow. Community leaders are not doing the curation for OCD. OCD is just accelerating the growth of the community by adding more incentive for users to post and engage in that community.

(2) Community leaders are given all the liberty on how to run their community.

(3) Collaborations can be terminated anytime, but with proper notice and reasons will be provided including but not limited to: (1) community is large enough to maintain its growth and engagement, (2) community leader is proven to be abusing its privileges as a community leader, and (3) community leader is inactive or not able to manage their community.

Premise:

Contests have been proven to drive up engagement and increase subscriptions in the community. Since OCD is at the forefront of supporting different niche communities, OCD is now facilitating weekly contests.

Goal:

To further help communities by highlighting a specific community under the incubation program for a week.

Curation Rules:

(1) Curation efforts from other communities will carry on while the community that is highlighted in the contest will have the privilege to curate all the posts that qualify in the contest.

(2) This is basically a community boost contest because other communities have certain limits on how many posts are curated per day, but the highlighted community can drop as many posts as they can within the contest period.

(3) All the rewards of the contest post will be used as prizes for the Top 5 winners chosen by the community leader.

(4) Users are required to subscribe to the highlighted community if they wish to be qualified for the contest.

(5) They are then required to post in that community.

(6) Entries of the contest should be replied to the contest post for easier curation.

(7) All qualified contest entries will be upvoted by OCD. However, plagiarism attempts and other forms of abuse will be dealt with accordingly.

Notes:

(1) Community leaders within the highlighted community are barred from winning the contest. While they are not stopped from joining the contest, they should not be allowed to win to give chance to other users.

(2) For the distribution of rewards, community leaders are discouraged to choose winners from previous contests.

PoSH Curation is considered as a community in itself within OCD. This is in line with the posh token distribution. Sharing your posts on Twitter will not only increase your chance of getting curated through PoSH curation but will also let you earn posh tokens. The number of tokens earned is proportional to the engagements of the tweet (likes and retweets). While the PoSH token has no value yet, future plans about the token have been shared by this this post. You can find more about the token on the website, as well as information on how many others are registered and are sharing Hive links daily. Instructions on how to register can also be found on the website. Supplemental information about the registration can be found in this post.

Premise:

All posts that are shared on Twitter and Reddit are promoting Hive.

Goal:

To incentivize users to share their posts on Twitter and Reddit.

Curation Rules:

(1) Posts must be shared to Twitter or Reddit and the link must be shared to the designated channel in OCD Discord server.

(2) Posts must be of quality.

(3) Make sure that the tag usage is appropriate. Relevant tags should be included. For example: If your post is about photography, #photography must be in one of the tags.

(4) Author is encouraged to engage in OCD Discord and not just drop their POSH links there. Engagement is also considered in the curation.

Notes:

(1) Sneaky attempts to get curated such as sharing the same post link again and again will result in getting banned in OCD Discord server.

(2) Quality is very subjective, but the curators are trying their best to spread the upvote to a wide range of content.

(3) Curation will happen a day to 3 days after the post. This will give way for communities to upvote the content.

(4) POSH curation serves as a sweeping curation. This will enable deserving posts to be curated.

(5) Technically speaking, all posts that are shared on Twitter should be rewarded, but because voting power is limited, it's also limited to quality content based on curators' discretion.

This is an extension to the communities incubation program but on a different premise.

Premise:

Different communities are existing outside the incubation program and those communities also deserve to grow, so curation effort that will highlight those communities will go a long way.

Goal:

To encourage users to post in appropriate communities and to promote different communities outside the incubation program.

Curation Rules:

(1) OCD Curators and Community Leaders are to find under-rewarded but quality posts from communities outside the incubation program.

(2) Posts must not be from OCD or the author's blog. They should be posted in a niche community.

(3) They will then drop the links in #other-niche-comms channel. This is a special channel for this curation initiative.

(4) They are then evaluated if they're from a niche community or not. They will be rejected if they are posted in a general community or not posted in an appropriate community.

(5) To prevent monopoly of nominations, a limit of 5 nominations per curator/community leader per day is imposed. Those 5 nominations per curator must be from different communities to encourage curators in finding lesser-known communities.

(6) A compilation post will highlight the author and the community where the post is located.

Notes:

(1) Curators and community leaders must engage with their nominated authors especially in the comments of the compilation posts.

(2) Unlike in the communities under the incubation program where curation is focused, this curation initiative is spread out.

Premise:

An introduction post serves as the first impression both on the author and on the community. Getting to know the author and rewarding them in their introduction post will increase user retention and engagement.

Goal:

To promote and reward introduction posts in Hive.

Curation Rules:

(1) Once a first post is created by the new user, the bot will notify the curators through a special channel in OCD Discord.

(2) The curator will evaluate the post. If it's not an intro post, the curator will drop a comment to encourage and guide the author to make an introduction post. If it's an intro post, the curator will also drop a comment that welcomes and congratulates the new author.

(3) The introduction post will then evaluated if it's worthy of an upvote.

(4) Once deemed worthy of an upvote, it will be dropped in a separate channel for the compilation post.

(5) Those intro posts that ended up in the compilation posts will be upvoted.

Notes:

(1) This is the least strict of all curation initiatives because we believe we shouldn't judge the newbies in their introduction posts. However, not all introduction posts are to be curated, depending on the curator's discretion.

(2) Curated intro posts should be written in English or bilingual only.

(3) While this is a very lenient curation, intro posts should be decent enough that eliminates the doubt of sockpuppet accounts or possible attempts of abuse.

All OCD curation initiatives are done manually and they all require time and effort from the curators. OCD got those efforts of curators covered by doing compilation posts that set the curators as beneficiaries. The rewards from the compilation posts serve as compensation to the curators who worked tirelessly in making sure that deserving authors are rewarded. Having compilation posts is also important for authors and posts that may be overlooked by other stakeholders. Curation projects having compilation posts also keep the retention high because it makes the author feel seen and even drives engagement.

While OCD has been doing its best to reward content creators, they must realize how important it is to participate socially on the chain. Just creating content and then wait for OCD and other curation initiatives to upvote it is not sustainable and efficient. Don't just post content, go away to create another post, and then come back to post another while expecting the previous one to be upvoted. Engage with the people who are leaving comments to your posts and do the same to other content creators (means you also have to leave thoughtful comments to others' posts). There are also other ways of contributing to the ecosystem other than just posting.

Let this be clear: If there are two equally great content and we will only choose one to upvote, OCD will always favour that content from the more active author. This is because the author who is more active and involved socially on the chain is more likely legit and not just a sockpuppet. Also, great content exists everywhere on the internet and anyone can create it with enough effort. The key difference is that content on the internet is not rewarded the same way as on Hive. Always remember that here on Hive, some people are actively looking to reward great content. Some have already even made this their full-time job.

We value a lot more on the content that is produced by users who have an active history on Hive than those just sharing their content and not being as invested either by stake or activity.