Unpopular Opinion...

Just like you if I do write a comment, it is a genuine comment. I don't care if they comment on my posts or not. And depending on the content I do appreciate a reply.
I also don't comment to score an upvote. I could write comment on some authors knowing that they do give juicy upvotes to genuine comments. But I do need to have time or have some interesting to say about the post or topic.

I am not going to frown on you if you do. It is your account and you need to nurture it as you see fit. I don't have yet enough stake to have people chasing me. But can imagine it wears on you.

I quoted below three things that resonate with me:

Of course, there is always an ulterior motive for commenting, anyone who tells you differently is lying.

Yes, I agree that personally, I find it insincere to deny such an "ulterior motive." If they are really here on Hive not for the incentive but purely for the connection, then I think Web2 platforms can do that. Yes, I love the connection, but I don't have all the time to engage in every post of the accounts I am following.

I guarantee half of my followers only follow me because they think they are going to get a big upvote from me. In fact, I can't tell you the number of times that someone follows me, comments a few times, and then eventually unfollows me because they realize they aren't going to get the upvotes like I did.

I think that is obvious too. I share such an intention, but at the same time, I am realistic that no one owes me attention to my comments. I have seen a few accounts unfollowing me, perhaps because of my content, lack of engagement, and lack of support in their posts. At least, as far as I remember, I haven't unfollowed anyone yet, despite the reasons that I mentioned above.

As I said, I took a look at their wallet and I noticed that pretty much 100% of their staked HIVE was delegated away to some other project. Which means even if they did start to visit my blog and vote on it, the vote would be virtually nil.

Yes, that is disappointing. I realized that you cannot expect everyone to return the favor you are giving them. A 50/50 perhaps is more commendable than a 0 voting power and a 100% delegation. Nevertheless, I also made a little adjustment in my HP when I accepted that no one owes me an upvote. At least, I retained 56% in my HP to vote for content creators.

I have a post drafted about comments (a novel actually) and still not sure if I should post it as some people are too sensitive, when it comes to hearing the truth from someone else (not that I care).

I know plenty of people who would fit your description and I know what you mean. Some people are really "funny".

I try to keep 2/3rds of my VP for personal VP and the rest is delegated to progects that I support-mainly Ecency. I love the passive income I receive. It makes my account grow on the days I don't get around to posting and it also makes the Ecency curation vote bigger, which I appreciate when I am curating and commenting on Ecency posts!

I built my account up by commenting as I didn't have anything special to 'sell' here. A lot of people now know who I am, but I know I'm nothing special when it comes to content.

I try not to judge anyone when they comment on my posts and I almost never check on their wallet, but I do get some who comment on most posts with low value comments. I can see that they comment a lot in hope of some rewards, but I am unlikely to look at their posts. I am busy enough with my feed.

I get that people will try to earn in any way they can, but not leaving yourself with any voting power seems dumb and may get you less support.

I suspect we are likely to see more 'AI' comments in future. We will have to decide what value those have. It may feel safer just to engage with people we know well.

I believe humans are naturally selfish. They only do things for rewards. I don’t mean only financial rewards I also mean emotional rewards. If you get enough emotional (you feel good communicating with them), mental (your brain is stimulated by interacting with them), or financial rewards from interacting with them, keep doing it. If it is completely one sided then that is not a very healthy relationship. Just my two cents.

There's no doubt that one of the reasons that people post (and comment) on Hive vs other social networks is the hope of making a few bucks. However, I find it's only worth it to post and comment regarding stuff I have a genuine interest in. Otherwise it's too much like a job...and any minimum wage job pays better, lol.

But yeah, getting votes on Hive isn't especially easy and if you aren't looking for stuff to comment on and curate then you are probably doing it wromg.

I don't comment nearly as much as I used to but I try and make up for it by consistently supporting people who comment and support me. I totally get what you're saying. I know of a couple of accounts like that and feel the same. Its like an account with very high rep and almost zero hive in their wallet. You know those folks are just cashing out every penny as it comes in. Which is fine, but its not good for Hive long term.

Im with ya Bozz, some things like that annoy me too. Its nice to meet people that give some energy back, ive increased my following through comments too past few months. Im due for a post as well haha, and glad to battle with you in the guild.

!PIMP

KE has nothing to do with Delegating away your stake. I don't like delegating my stake as I like to control and grow it :) Heck I even rented 10K more HP myself :)

The Balanced Curator badge is a way to find folks who don’t do “too much” delegating.

I know I don’t comment enough. It’s a growth area. 😎

The people I started following over the past year on Hive create blogs about many different subjects. Some have stopped posting in the communities which was the reason for me to follow them in the first place.
A lot of times I just don't have any feeling with the subject or has 'everything' already been said in the comments.

"If you don't have nothing to add, you'd better say nothing at all"
I don't know whose quote it is, but I think it's a good one.

I try to visit the communities I'm interested in (which are photography and cycling related) and comment on the posts that trigger me, regardless of who the author is.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't comment on posts hoping that maybe the author will start reading my stuff and eventually upvoting it. That's just the way this whole thing works.

Good point! Hivers with a high stake get more comments. I think also because they often upvote the comments. A financial incentive motivates people to leave comments.
That is just the way it is.

That's why I started the Topcomment initiative over a year ago. We curate high quality comments, regardless who the author of the blog is.
This way we want to encourage people to engage more and not only with the whales.

You can even nominate a comment for an upvote yourself by mentioning topcomment by the way.

Funny you approach things very similar to how I do. Do you use autovoters or all manual like me?

I simplified it long ago to to an equation of Content + Networking + Time = Success here. any one of those missing and people will soon come and go. I think you are referring mostly to the Networking in my equation which is connecting with other folks, supporting them with comments and upvotes and monitoring the return on investment of time and curation. I am a social business guy so I combine the 2 here to balance my social activity and spend it in the right places for me.

I have seen some of the dapp developers and other platform champions delegate most of their stake to those platforms. I do the same thing when I seen one of those upvotes come in at lower than expected value and check the wallet for power downs or delegations. From humble beginnings to equally humble stake now, I don't worry about it and try and cherish the network connection knowing they invest their stake in the community in different ways.

Starting out in 2018, I simply found my blog game and spent time commenting to find the people who valued engagement and rewarded them with upvotes. I would engage meaningfully and often reply with enough effort, content and images many would put into a post of their own. If that effort would be rewarded with crickets a few times, I chose to spend my effort elsewhere. Along the way, through repetition, I would subconsciously curate knowing the approximate stake of the people I follow and how much they valued engagement, and prioritized my effort and upvotes to those people. Partially for return on investment and increasingly from the value of the conversations and community building.

I think you were among the first people I followed and have since. I can't recall any $.34 upvotes on my Pulitzer posts ;) recently now that you mention it but I don't think of that as much as how you are one of the folks that constantly keeps the lights on here, like me, in your own way.

I have a vague recall of a tool built that allows you to see, comments vs upvotes of users. Allows you to see peeps behavior and sus out real motivations. As you pointed to, most of us have some aspect that is motivated by the finance. But im with you in that i dont like it to be all about that.
lol, this is one of hive issues… how to remember where these tools people make even are.
I think it may have been a tool by slobberchops

@tarazkp is basically the gold standard for engagement because he replies every single thing he reads.

Nice self reflection there. I think we all act like that, very few are totally altruistic - which is fine. I have the same relationship with Taraz, I read a lot of his and we exchange comments frequently, but it's rare that he comments on my posts - which I totally get. Same with you and other legacy accounts. But when I get a comment from Taraz or any of the others, I'm always double happy about it.

But it is also true that I read and curate more of the people that genuinely comment on my posts. There is always some nepotism and bias. And it's fine, as long as it's natural and not vote trading or such.

I think I may be the outlier :)

I do look at rewards, but not my wallet. I translate the amount of rewards into approval. The dollar value of that (in my wallet) is almost immaterial. That's the absolute truth.

I was hoping I'd leave something to my son in my wallet, a few dollars to give him a lift when I kick the bucket. However, that's just an aside. Like buying a few numismatic coins in the hope that they will accrue value. Sometimes I think, what if Hive went up to $3.00? or $10.00? Then I could pay for my granddaughter's graduate school tuition. But that's like fantasizing about the lottery. I don't actually think it will ever happen.

Why am I here, 8 years down the road? Why do I comment?

For one thing, I deal with a lot of low value accounts through my community curation (Inkwell and LMAC). I find these communities an efficient way to support low-value accounts. They take up a lot of my time.

For another thing, I have 'friends' who do not have high-value accounts and I regularly read their blogs and comment on same.

I do have high-value accounts I follow and comment on, but if I note that my comments are ignored or the respect is not mutual, I fall away.

Hive is fun for me. I'm looking at a 79th birthday in almost a month. I'm not going to get rich here. I certainly am not going to waste my time. I don't have time to waste.

I like your blogs. You are friendly, engaging, and entertaining. Always a positive vibe. I like your family pictures, your travel pictures. I first noticed you when you lost your dear pet. That post was endearing. You and your wife have heart.

Yes, I delegate, but only to accounts I respect. These are all positive actors on the platform. And no, I will never delegate so that it significantly affects my VP. I like voting. I like making a difference.

Well, that's a long comment--reflects another thing I like about Hive. I love to write.

With my new job, I've not had much time to write (or read) but the morning train does see me skim through people's posts.

My motivation is always that of social connection. Some content provokes discussion that is interesting to me, others gets an "approval" (a vote) but the vast majority gets a stroll on by most of the time.

Your words made me reflect on the old world of blogs and the like. The author is the attraction the cake, if you will, and the commentators come to take their slice and discuss the cake.

We each bake our cakes. Some consume more than they bake. Others just want people to gather around their own campfire.

Sorry for the strange analogies, it's the best I can do at 6am on a moving train :p

On board with you with this one as delegated stake is like abandoning your community who you have been helping grow. There is only so many active users on HIVE and if everyone delegated their stake away it would screw us all. I started out trying to get the 1c vote so at least it would reflect when i voted and it seems that others do not feel that way and would rather grow themselves through delegating their stake elsewhere. I think we used to call these types of accounts island accounts or something where they expect you to visit them and never visit you as it has similarities and to be quite honest they have no future growth really.

I have not really paid enough attention to this and maybe I should, but these days work commitments leave the times a little stretched.

That's exactly why when I started @apis.hive last year to support small accounts, delegation out is one of the metrics I used to determine if they would get my support. If users delegate out a big chunk of their own HP , there's no way @apis.hive is going to delegate and support them

I took a look at their wallet and I noticed that pretty much 100% of their staked HIVE was delegated away to some other project.

Well.. no votes from me then, it's one of my bugbears. Anyone can do what they like, but you and I.. have the reins of our own votes.

I agree that it's not a great practice to delegate out all of your HP. It leaves no vote to share with others, and in the end we are here to earn something. I guess I used to care more than I do now, the rewards really are pretty small for those of us here in the US. We most certainly won't be financing any new vehicles off of Hive any time soon. I find it's fun to interact with others, some people I honestly enjoy hearing their thoughts. You are one of those, which is why I try to stop by pretty much every day.

We'll see where Hive is headed down the road, at the moment it's disappointing for certain. Awesome choice in pictures for today by the way, now you just need some west coast pictures to round out the selection!

I want to give my take on that as I have delegated most of my hive, but it has gone to other hive users via hive engine. I just calculated that it's better for me as I have almost no voting power with the small quantity of HP I own. Passive hive coming on my way daily and it brings me more than what upvoting does. But I totally see your point

I’ve been on this platform a very long time as well, I’ve been through it all. I use to spend hours reading and commenting on posts hoping to build a following. Never happened. I still read far more posts than I probably should at this point. But people i follow I read. I don’t comment anywhere near as much, but I still read.
I’ve lost faith in the chain. I think that I do it more from habit now they care. It’s unfortunate because I’ve made some good friends on this platform and have met several in person. The powers that be don’t want it to be a successful chain they just wanted a money grab. The current activity level and Hive price say it all…..

This post has been manually curated by @steemflow from Indiaunited community. Join us on our Discord Server.

Do you know that you can earn a passive income by delegating to @indiaunited. We share more than 100 % of the curation rewards with the delegators in the form of IUC tokens.

Here are some handy links for delegations: 100HP, 250HP, 500HP, 1000HP.

_{100% of the rewards from this comment goes to the curator for their manual curation efforts. Please encourage the curator @steemflow by upvoting this comment and support the community by voting the posts made by @indiaunited.}

I get that what I write is not everyone's cup of tea - we lead very different lives. Your life is so crazy different from mine that it's hard to find common ground sometimes, so we probably scroll past each other a lot. I've watched your commenting over the years and many times have wanted to add to the conversation, but once you said you find it hard to do that as you feel as if you're jumping in on someone else's conversation uninvited, so I've been reluctant to do that since. But I've sure appreciated you as part of the Hive Ecosystem - you always engage beautifully with the people whose content you are interested in. Most of the time I enjoy writing more than commenting, so I envy you that!

I don't know, I don't think your opinion is unpopular - we all have our habits here, and so long as we're contributing that's good. Sometimes people aren't that good at writing or social relationships, they're more observers.

My biggest issue is with those that don't even TRY to move outside their social circles or interests, which means some communities and some content gets more support than others - and of coruse the groups where they're all just upvoting each other and not going wider to support other people so that they too feel like they are valued and want to hang around on the platform. And I think it's sad how if you post in some communities you dont get whale votes as the whales might not be interested in that content - like literature/stories or Ladies of Hive. That's problematic as the content here gets weighted to where the votes are, and then from an outsiders perspective, they might not want to join as they don't see their niche area being supported or encouraged. I hope that makes sense, I'm not sure if I've explained it right.

This year I'm doing a couple of things - vowing to comment on a few little guys more, and to talk to others I've seen around here for EONS and not really engaged much with. Hive is a social platform, so you shouldn't be just hanging out in your own pond. It benefits everyone if you spread the love. I do rarely look at wallets though. I'm interested in interactions. Of course I care about upvotes, and it annoys me that the same people get the same upvotes for not doing that much, but the less I care abotu that the more I enjoy myself here. Seven odd years and it's very much part of my life.

These opinions too might be quite unpopular!

Hi. I am a starter in hive blog. I never thought that engaging through comments and upvotes would actually help me through the system. Writing never comes to my mind cause I'm really not good at it, but I tried, so far I have two posts. Anyway, just like you said, others delegate their hive to other projects. But what can you say about the likes of me who actually don't have to any to stake yet? I need help. HAHAHAHA

Hi. I am a starter in hive blog. I never thought that engaging through comments and upvotes would actually help me through the system. Writing never comes to my mind cause I'm really not good at it, but I tried, so far I have two posts. Anyway, just like you said, others delegate their hive to other projects. But what can you say about the likes of me who actually don't have to any to stake yet? I need help. HAHAHAHA

I get your point, to me it bothers more who extract like 90% of his stake, like 30000 earned and 1000 current, I'm not gonna reward that... Delegation i think it makes sense to support a project, but should leave you room to upvote others, so a fair way would be like 30-40% max delegated out

Yes, tarazkp blogs are nice to read. I agree with your points. Just recently, I read the post about "humans' selfish behaviour" by @hanshotfirst, and that totally fits here.

You hit an interesting topic.

Commenting is indeed a way to go. It is kinda marketing for ourselves, when we leave interesting comments to the post creator. Whatever this is for such a creator, I don't know. I just know my comments can become a small to middle size post, espacially when I try to be thoughtful. This in itself, including reading the post thoroughly (not glance, but read it), the whole process takes much time. For high post earners, the time spend on reading and commenting is far less profitable than to write the next post and take in higher double digit $, to reading 10 to 20 posts and spend the time to write good comments, whatever good is. Though I sometimes feel a bit annoyed by such users, I usually look at things in a different way, a positive way. I like good posts, posts with content, posts with thoughts by the author. I like to read them on a mobile app, but I don't like to comment using a mobile app, simply due to the fact writing on a smart phone is mucho more slow to writing on a laptop with a great QWERTY keyboard. So I seem to add time between reading a post and commenting and always hope I keep remembering the posts I want to comment to. This post was one of them, I yes, I read yours yesterday, and today I remembered I wanted to respond.

Anyways, in the above, I didn't address your question. I try and do that right now and here 🥳

In my utopia world, all those authors doing good for HIVE content library, conversations and engagement, I like to see them spending a few minutes extra of their time to use their entire HP for rewarding as well, in a manual setup. Does it annoy me when they can't use all their HP because they delegated this? Not really. Ok ok ok, I may lie a little here. What I do know, any annoying feeling I have, I have to bin in the deepest bin I can find, since otherwise I will not stay active at HIVE. HIVE is GREAT, but it is far from 'fair'. Attention wise, money wise. One thing I can influence, which is attention. So I go for such. Money thingy, I cannot influence, so I try and not to think about that part.

Interesting observation you have with followers who unfollow quickly when they notice you wont came to their blog, or wont vote for their content. I see the same, not because I have much HP, but at least I control a button that can give others about 1.5$ on their post (Curie vote train). Happens with me as well, users follow and unfollow. Because of this button I control.

You know what annoys me most? Users who posts a lot and hardly comment. The K/E value we have, I dont look at. I have my own ways of identifying users and posts I give Curie votes. This included a lot more than just K/E. And executing already for 8 years. Time consuming for sure. Ever since I received the Curie powers (though a tiny vote value rather than a big one), I feel it is my responsibilty to give $ to the right users and posts. Whatever 'right' is. I can tell you, it is hard to give only votes to posts that I believe is right, while at the same time not upvoting the same user over and over again. So I change my rules almost daily. I mean, at days when I have more time, I spend more time searching for new users, better posts. Days I have less time, I go by a list of users I know quite well. For 8 years I hope someone would create a GREAT curator tool in which I can put all the parameters I for, and gives me the lists of posts and users that comply with my list. But no such tool. THAT ANNOYS ME THE MOST! No Dev being able to figure out what manual curator in fact needs! This is not a whole swarm of human post searchers and proposers, with some form of manual process for someone else to ok the post before landing a vote train, but great tools! These days, AI would be of great help, I think. So I need to spend time myself trying to create something for my needs, I suppose.

I don't know if it's unpopular or not, but it sure has proved engaging, eh? You drew a ton of comments here!

You definitely are the commenting king. I wish I could keep up with commenting even half as well as you do. My "Hive" time is so limited, but I do try to peck at it here and there.

Yeah, I see where that bigs you, and it bugs me too. I often don't notice it because I rarely visit peoples' wallets. Just no time. I don't mind a high KE score. We all have to survive after all, and if people need to use their Hive income to do so, well, so be it. But something like 75-100% of their HP being delegated out, especially if it's to things that pay them, well, that's kind of bogus.