So you've come to this awesome platform to write and earn money? Awesome. We're sooo glad you are here! Hive is innovative, community minded, and has so much potential. Your voice is even heard a little bit more than on your conventional blog, right, and you're sure earning more than a Facebook or Instagram post? You've even had a few comments on each post, and what's more, a post you earnt last week earnt you 45 HIVE because some whale with a lotta HP sauce came and upvoted you. Those upvotes are waaaay better than Facebook likes, right? They are actually worth something! You refresh every few hours (or minutes, if you were as obsesssive as me when I first started) and the excitement from seeing people engage with you and upvote your content makes you feel valued and all gooey inside. You're pretty much hooked.
And then the dreaded downvote.
How that buzz of joy fizzled when we see that broken heart on our posts. Gutted, right? Sometimes you feel it in the pit of your stomach. What have I done, you ask. You click on the user name and they haven't written a post - who is this guy? Why doesn't he like me? Was there something awful about my content? Did I break some rules? Does this affect my reputation? Or sometimes it's a huge downvote just after you got that huge upvote and you can't understand why - your post is beautifully formatted, you worked for hours on it, the content is great - what did I do wrong?
Okay, here's the rub: you have ONLY done something wrong IF you have done one of a number of things, in which case, go sit in the corner and think about your value as a human being on HIVE (and I'm not even joking here) - or, sort it out and do better, and we'll all forgive you:
- Plagiarised content - that is, copied it from the internet and passed it off as your own
- Reposted your OWN content to earn AGAIN on something you've already earnt
- Shitposted the most awful post ever just for rewards
Now I know that people argue that it's 'their' blog and they can do whatever they like and no one can tell them what to do. HIVE is also meant to be free from censorship, right? But here, we call that 'raping the reward pool' - a violent expression to express something many of us feel strongly about - that if you're earning for plagiarism, someone else who wrote something awesome is missing out. And that's unfair, no matter how you look at it. People work hard here to make this place awesome, so it's unfair that you're getting money for essentially nothing. Try not to be the kind of person that's going to be upset about being downvoted for doing the wrong thing. And if it doesn't bother you, go right ahead - someone's always going to be downvoting you to reduce your rewards and you just have to live with that. You might even end up on the HiveWatchers blacklist and then no one's going to support you, so you may as well give up. You can try to start again with an alt, but a lot of curation groups on HIVE talk to each other and we find you out, eventually. You have to ask yourself if it's worth the effort. Get a job, get a life.
Okay, rant over.
What if you're a really good person and you got downvoted?
Well, some people aren't nice people. Sometimes people just want to bring others down because they're hurting themselves. Maybe they are jealous. Maybe they're in pain and want others to suffer. Maybe they are devil's spawn. The trick is not shrug and move on. Look at your upvotes on balance. Did you earn considerably more than the DV? Then don't worry about it - shrug and move on. Remember how excited you were when you got upvoted?. Hold onto that. Don't waste energy on a mosquito downvote.
But won't other people see the downvote and stop voting your posts?
Not if they understand how this works. Most people understand that a downvote isn't personal. It's not really a reflection on you or your content. If it's @spaminator though, I'd look twice. Therefore it really depends on who is doing the downvoting. Some people will tell you why, some people won't. If you want to find out, don't have a massive hissy fit and write a post attacking them and downvoted then with your 0.001 HP- send them a small memo politely asking why or contact them on Discord. And if you can't, or they don't respond, let it go. Or better, be humble and realise maybe you plagiarised, or maybe your content isn't as great as you think it it is. Look at what other people are doing and try to be better.
One of the other reasons you might be downvoted is that your post has been upvoted by a whale so that it gets a huge reward, but it's not really what it's worth, especially in comparision to others on the platform. Sure, maybe you've worked hard here for ages and think you deserve it due to blood, sweat and tears, but sometimes it's not about that - it's about that single post you wrote with three paragraphs that really shouldn't have got 100 HIVE because, if you really look in the mirror, can you say your post was better than the other ten that day that wrote fantastic, original, note worthy posts? Surely they deserve some of the reward pool as well? Sometimes your high rewards are only because some whale came past and thought they'd get some super curation rewards off you, and - don't get offended here - they made that judgement without even reading your post. Ouch. That hurts, huh? And then another whale will come along and think - hang on a cotton picking minute, this isn't THAT great - it aint 100 HIVE great - why should THIS post be in trending? And in the interests of HIVE, they'll reduce your rewards. Without naming who does this, I know for a fact it's in the best interests of the platform as a whole, and if you look at your rewards on balance, you've probably NOT been downvoted more than you've been upvoted, so you'll still profit from your rewards.
I think the whole point is not to get frustrated, upset and irrational when we get a downvote. Hey, I've been guilty of crying into my coffee and bitching about it, and going on a detective mission to find out who that horrible person might be. But it's not worth my energy. I just focus on the good, and realise that sometimes, downvotes are good - they were designed to serve a purpose here, after all. And sure, they're open to abuse, but then so are upvotes - and we don't complain when they come along, do we?