Hello friends! There have been lots of posts explaining the technical side of Hive for new members, but I don't think I've seen much on the etiquette side. Like all communities, there's a culture here; several cultures, actually: an overarching group culture and several sub-cultures. While I obviously can't speak to all the smaller sub-cultures on Hive, I've been here on the chain since before it was even Hive, so I thought I could write a small guide with some tips for newcomers about the overarching etiquette that has emerged and stuck around here in our larger Hive community. :)

People are more likely to interact with you if you interact with them

There have been plenty of people over the years who come in, post their posts without reading, commenting, upvoting, or otherwise giving anyone else any attention at all, and then they get mad that they didn't become a crypto billionaire or a famous influencer with thousands of followers. That isn't generally how it works here. This means:

• people are more likely to comment on your post if you comment on theirs
• people are more likely to read your post if you read theirs (meaning, your comment should show that you actually know what they wrote about, and not just generic "nice post" written on 50 posts a day)
• people are more likely to comment on your post if you upvote comments (are you going to earn beaucoup curation rewards doing this? no. are you going to encourage comments on your posts? yes.)
• people are more likely to upvote your post if you upvote theirs

Don't indiscriminately reblog too much

I have unfollowed lots of people because they reblog any damn thing 25 times a day. I didn't follow all those other people, I follow you. If my feed is overrun with half posts from people I don't follow, I'm gonna unfollow whoever is reblogging too much. I'm not saying you can't reblog at all, but people do it a lot and often it's content their actual followers aren't interested in.

Say for instance, I followed you because you post in the #needleworkmonday community, and I like seeing people's craft posts. But you reblog 20 #leofinance posts about crypto markets, which I am not interested in. I will unfollow that person, because if I wanted to see 20 posts predicting crypto markets, I would subscribe to the Leo community (no shade on Leo at all, finance is just not really my interest).

You can reblog your friends and cool posts and whatever, but I would limit it to a few reblogs per day or you run the risk of losing followers.

Also, read the thing you are reblogging. I belong to the #saturdaysavers community and explicitly say "please don't reblog this post" on my updates there because it is unsafe and strange to me for people to share some other stranger's financial goals, and I stopped putting the post in any community, only on my blog, and still people reblog it sometimes. All this tells me is that person doesn't read anything and decide that they like it and want to share it, they are just randomly reblogging because they think it will get them gratitude votes or something? Does anyone even follow those accounts that are nothing but random reblogs? I sure don't.

Don't lick the boots of whales and then get angry that they don't reward you with massive upvotes for spamming them with praise

I'm pretty sure that they didn't put real money into Hive because they wanted a bunch of people puckering up to their butt. Interact with them like you would with anyone else, and they might interact with you like they would with anyone else. They're people, not Santa Claus here to gift you with upvotes.

And on the flip side...

If you run afoul of Hive Watchers, and you don't understand why, ASK THEM

Hive Watchers is a group that downvotes what they consider to be problem content, such as plagiarism. If you start getting hit with downvotes from them and you genuinely don't know what you did wrong, you can pop into their Discord server and ask, and they'll explain it to you and tell you exactly how to get off their blacklist. Don't write a rant post about how everyone is evil and terrible and out to get you, it won't fix your problem. If there's a genuine misunderstanding, they're pretty good at communicating what to do to fix it. Their whole goal is to stop people from being rewarded for plagiarizing and spamming and whatnot, so the people who are genuinely making good content can get their rewards (there's a rewards pool, so if a chunk of the rewards pool is going to copiers, there is that much less going to people doing real work). They want people who are genuinely trying to be rewarded!

There are lots of languages on Hive, expect some translation errors

Hive is truly international social media, and a lot of people are using some translation software like Google Translate to help with languages they don't speak (or don't speak well, ahem, I am that person that knows a smattering of a few different languages but isn't fluent enough to not need a dictionary, lol). Sometimes that translation is going to be, shall we say, wonky. I feel like those of us who have studied another language or used translation software know this, but sometimes people get upset over what is obviously a mistranslation. Cut people some slack and don't assume malice; the odds are good they weren't trying to insult your mother but Google Translate is off it's rails sometimes and you just need to ask for clarification. ;)

Read a community's rules when you post there

Generally, communities on Hive have their own sets of guidelines, such as, only post about certain topics there, or posts should be at least so many words long, things like that. You can find their rules usually on the right hand side of the screen if you are using Peakd, or in a pinned post at the top of the community page. If you ignore the rules, you might get muted or downvoted, so check them out and make sure you are posting your content in the best place for you!

Did I miss anything? Do you disagree with any of my tips?

Let me know and let's have a discussion! :)