Hello!

This post will be broken into three separate parts. The first part is previously published on the chain, but I'll repeat it here in the interests of transparency and for the record.

Who the hell are you and why are you here?

As the clock changes, so do people. I've been blogging on a blockchain for many years now, safe in the sound knowledge that everything I've ever written here may be audited by any individual with the willpower, effort, or curiosity.

I recognise that it is impossible hide anything I've ever uttered in the past. I can safely, and openly state, that over time, my opinions can morph and change, just as the hair on my head and chin gets longer, greyer, and more ravaged by left over particles of food.

By blogging on a blockchain, I've entered the closest form of immortality that I can achieve as a mortal husk of flesh, on a planet. Even if I were to go and extract slabs of marble from the earth, and etch into them my thoughts and opinions, these too would fade.

Digitisation and duplication, and then, distribution of my thoughts and opinions provides them with the best chance to survival when the vital functions that sustain my consciousness end. Whether that's in thirty years, or the next week; I've "seeded" a brief history and anecdote of my life, opinions, and creations over the course of recent history.

Who is @holoz0r?

I am a human male who lives in Adelaide, South Australia. My past consists of an education in Visual Art and Design, having obtained a Master of Visual Art and Design at the University of South Australia.

I am presently employed by a company on a full time basis, and my job involves enhancing process, updating internal knowledge, and generally, making life easier for customers, and the staff who serve them.

I am a creative, bearded individual.

I'm a photographer

I create images. This is an image of Holly, captured recently in my small, basic photographic home studio.

I'm a gamer

I've worked in the past as a professional video game journalist, and I love role playing, strategy, first person shooter, and games that tell fantastic stories. I was the community manager for the Australia and New Zealand region for a video game called World in Conflict.

I love a lot more games than that title, however, among my favourites are:

The Civilization and XCOM Series
Final Fantasy(s)
Dungeon Siege 2
Path of Exile

I'm currently playing through my Steam game library in alphabetical order, because I have no better way to determine what I want to play next. Indecisiveness otherwise holds me too close to its warm bosom.

I'm a writer, and a reader - and a bit of an academic

I like words.

I like stories. I like telling them, experiencing them, and discussing them. I like dconstructing data from multiple sources and coming to my own conclusion, and sharing the outcomes with others, might that they see a different point of view than what is presented from a single source.

What do you want, @holoz0r?

I want to enable content creation to allow the typical archetype of the "starving artist" flourish, earn a fair reward for their efforts, and for others to bask in the output of their creation. History shows one thing - artists, musicians, writers, and all other creatives will continue to produce work - whether there is an incentive to do so or not.

Us demented, creative types tend to treat the act of creation itself as a reward. The endorphins produced by such efforts are not able to be exchanged for food, energy, goods, or services, but I would like to imagine a future where they are.

I want creators to need not worry where their next meal materialises from - I want abundance for all, and rigorous, open discourse.

Why are you here?

There's a few dot points that can answer this:

To support others
To meet and engage with people I wouldn't normally encounter in my day to day life
To receive compensation that is additional to the endorphins I generate through the act of creating, articulating, and documenting my own thoughts
To ensure that there's some etched curiosity, and some evidence of my existence (a feeble attempt at immortality)

What does hive mean to me?

It is a chance for a fresh start, and a new age for content creators. It's an opportunity to change the behaviour that many have followed on Steem in the past.

So, what's your curation policy?

I've made a number of comments about this on various people's posts, and following the publication of this post, (and the quotes of what I've said in other places below), I will be enacting the following:

I will downvote content that is about the platform that is taking a large portion of the reward pool away from creators.

Witness and Devs have their block rewards and the DAO to obtain funding for their infrastructure and development activities. If this is not enough, then there's something wrong with the price of the token, and we have an unsustainable eco-system.

I will upvote and support quality content of the following nature:

I want to upvote and support those who create and share their art and photography primarily. I will be doing this through the following communities:

I will also be supporting work by writers and reviewers who publish in the following communities

Finally, I'll do some curation in "new posts" outside of these communities, as well as people that I've come to support on an ongoing basis who publish in these categories.

If you get a downvote from me, I'll be leaving a comment along the lines of:

By downvoting this post, I return to the reward pool an increased share to content creators. Please read my content curation policy [link] if you disagree.

I will also include remarks about the content itself, and I will endeavour to always justify my downvote with a comment as to why I've taken the action I've taken.

I want content creators to get a fair slice of the pie.

Comments I've made in the last few days:

Comment 1

I plan on focusing on curating content on Hive. Curation is a mixture of upvoting and downvoting. I will be making more comments in the coming days (and a blog post) to outline my views and my downvote policy, but I've been saying this a lot lately.

We go to social places and social media pages to engage with content and information about things that interest us.

Reddit, Instagram, or Imgur would not be interesting places if all I saw on their front pages were statistics about how many posts were published, how many active users there were, how many new accounts were created, or fifteen different people shouting at me about the fact that some new feature was added a day ago.

I want to see a Hive front page where the most rewarded pages are content, and not content about the platform.

Witnesses and Devs have the DAO / Proposal system / Witness rewards to fund their endeavours.

Content creators have the rewards pool. By planning on down voting content about the platform that isn't content, I'll be supporting every other post on the chain a tiny bit.

I anticipate I'll receive a few "revenge flags", but I'm prepared to be stoic, and stand by my ideals that content creators should be rewarded in a proportionate manner compared to devs, witnesses, and those who write about the platform, who as we saw on Steem, took the majority of the rewards pool, which contributes to the exodus of genuine content creators from the platform, as there is not a return on investment for their labours.

Comment 2

I'm going to be publishing a post soon (when I think more about it) in similar vein to everything you've said here - particularly about the distribution going to a larger number of users.

In particular, I also want to focus on content - not content about the platform, or that feeling you get when you've had an enormously satisfying meal.

I tire of seeing posts consistently rewarded most when they're about the platform, or a service on the platform, or part of the eco system. Yes, this stuff is important as an advertisement of what people do to keep the place running, but I'm fairly sure I wouldn't enjoy reddit if the only content on reddit was about how many posts each community got, how many lines of code got written into its database, etc.

I'm fairly sure that sort of stuff would make me leave, as a content creator and also as a content consumer. This is why I like your posts and ramblings - they're about the nature of life, and not just the current craze of "look at me, ma, no steemit inc!"

Comment 3

I'll make a post outlining my curation policy in more detail in the coming days.

I am so glad you share the same opinion that we can't have trending content being about the platform.

That would be like going to reddit to see information about how many posts each sub-reddit had in them each day.

I want to go to a network, be it on a blockchain or not, to go and engage with (and create / share) content that I enjoy, not to see its front page lambasted with a circle jerk of how great the platform itself is.

Support content, not content about the platform!

Redo: Who am I? What does Hive mean to me? What's my Curation Policy?