Your Hivean Bias is showing
For weeks at this point, I’ve been torturing my dear wife with incomplete ideas rattling inside my head. She’s helping me sharpen them up, polish them, like only she can. Maybe I’m on the verge of something, maybe not, but when I’ve tried to bring some of these conclusions to big stakeholders, I get mostly brushed aside. This post is an attempt to understand why.
Survivor Bias
Survivor bias is a logical error that occurs when we focus only on the surviving or successful elements of a group while ignoring those that failed or were eliminated, leading to skewed conclusions. It happens because the “survivors” are more visible or available for analysis, while the “non-survivors” are often overlooked or unavailable.
This thought comes to mind often. It seems to me there’s a parallel to draw here, even though it might not be obvious. But please stick with me for a minute or two.
I’ve talked about user retention issues on this blog of mine almost from year one. I’ve been trying to help with this issue, also since year one. These days, @helpie may not exist anymore, but I keep on being interested in solving this problem. So, with ten cups of coffee circulating inside my body most days, I write down these ideas for later discussions.
The following could be a good representation of a generic conversation I might have with another Hivean—possibly a witness or a big stakeholder.
MenO: You know what? I think it would help if we could have a stronger indicator for reputation. Yes, if the number next to our name actually meant something.
FriendlyWhale: Yeah, it means little. But what do you need to know about someone? It takes me a minute to see if they are good.
Message transmission failed.
For one, I wasn’t talking about myself. One would hope that someone who’s been here for eight years can figure out if someone “is good” or not. So, it seems like I failed to even land a single punch on the face of the problem yet again.
Now, I know the FriendlyWhale doesn’t mean to brush me aside. It’s being sincere. It’s even offering to help. One of them provided me a tool, which I appreciated, but again—I wasn’t talking about myself. I was not confused.
It’s most definitely a bias of a kind—Success Bias. But for the sake of keeping things thematic, I’ll call it “Hivean Bias.”
Hivean Bias
Hivean bias is a logical error that occurs when we focus only on the remaining or successful users of Hive, while ignoring all the ones who left or got pushed away, leading to skewed conclusions. It happens because active Hiveans are visible and available for analysis, while the ones who quit are overlooked and unavailable.
Why am I bringing this up?
I don’t know exactly. You could say this is an open letter of sorts. A mirror for self-reflection, for deep self-analysis. Are we able—you and me—to put ourselves in the shoes of the little guy? The confused user? The hungry user?
Because if we can’t do that, or if we refuse to:
How are we ever going to make this place any better?
MenO
I've been very passive with my blog on hive myself for I was lost like I can't find my kind of people/users. I can't find common ground so I just float around and eventually just let blogging slip out of my system.
The best creative moments are never forced...
The same way we make anything better, by being kind and helping people.
Thanks!
That is a good answer!
What does the Little Guy say? Do we actually hear the little guy, or are we suffering from a sort of "cognitive blind spot" that drowns out what is really being said?
The vast majority of people I have tried to introduce to Hive have said "this is far too complicated!"
The vast majority of people operate at the "log in with Google" level, and then you're pretty much ready to go.
What Hive lacks and could potentially help itself a lot with is an internal message system that works.
"Yeah, but you can use Discord!"
STOP. RIGHT. THERE.
Let's circle back to "this is far too complicated."
You don't need a Discord group to use Facebook. Or X. Or Insta. Or Tiktok.
And the infrastructure is there, now, in a way.
Like a PeakD "Snap," except the thread "belongs" to just the two people having the conversation. In case there are actual rewards they default to null, so messaging isn't abused as an income source, but used for actual messaging. The "cost" to use it is resource credits, just like everything else.
Or threads that belong to a community, where you talk about the community with the mods and other community members, and get help... any rewards could have the community auto-set to the community account.
Why does it matter?
I get someone to come on Hive, and I would actually be able to TALK to them; to send them tips and encouragement and suggestions. User retention, right?
Second: Communities. How do people use the web? How do people use successful web properties?
Nobody just "uses Facebook." Or "uses eBay." People typically head to the specific interest they have, and likely only interact with 1% of the available content: Gardeners with gardening; teacup collectors with teacup collecting; counseling self-help with psychology forums. And so forth.
I don't think Hive's "issues" can be solved at the macro level; there are 100's of micro solutions for different niches.
Just thinking out loud...
👍
great input, I have to say. This is the kind of stuff I want to read about. Make me thing more and more.
We should care, its step one into moving towards any change.
Thanks for this comment. Your points are loud and clear.
By presenting better usage of this place, and not just earning potential. Right now, writing blogs and earning is probably the major usage, but its getting better with more gaming apps, short form contents coming on the chain. So some spontaneous use cases would help attract more people and retain them in the longer run.
I do believe at some point in time, users will live in silos of a kind. Most people won't even know about blogging, although there will still be thousands of us over here talking to each other.
Hey, it might be that "our win" is becoming a highway of sorts for commerce. VSC could do that. And, we are just a colony of birds that lives in the same forest.
This is why I am interested in a lot of the stuff that Azircon is promoting that is built by beaker007. It really lets you get to see under the hood what a person is like based on the data we publicly available. I am hoping that perhaps we get to a point where there is a unified number or something that replaces reputation and can be introduced into front ends. I would be happy if KE was that number but I know some people want more than just are they an extractor or not.
I had a great conversation with @moeknows - I think the dude cracked the code. Soon, we are going to do a special podcast with his idea.
I do agree the tools azircon is promoting are very useful.
Cool, look forward to finding out more!
I think there is a reason that places do exit interviews when people choose to move on to other jobs and things like that. The information can be very valuable should the powers that be actually choose to do something with it.
if there was a way to do this here... that would be great. Eco has this idea of doing a survey of sorts. Getting a little more exact on our guesstimations. I'm sure the idea will get ironed out soon.
Sounds like a good plan. I am sure you will get a lot of BS answers and some people that don't even bother, but if we can gather at least one good tip from the info, it will have been worth it.
My interest got arises with that phrase “those who left or got pushed away”
There may be a lot of reasons for people to leave
Maybe lack of passion to keep blogging
No supports
Got some interest elsewhere and etc but I don’t really know of being pushed away🤔
Pushed away?
there's a recent case of a girl who didn't know it's not well received to use images that don't belong to her without citing sources.
She got downvoted. I think she's not gone, I think we intervened (some of us did) and she got some support now, and is probably going to stay. But Hive has a sometimes overactive Immune system.
And as it often happens with us humans, we can be terrible at reading the manual.
That’s a pathetic state but there should have been leniency first by giving her a warning first or simply pointing it out, it could just be a matter of ignorance and then actions can be taking on repeated violations..some persons do not actually read like you said
There's always room for everyone to be better, to be more human.
Hmmm, great points here.
We were talking about creating a survey for the surviving hivians and what made them stick… but yeah, maybe simultaneously we should create a survey and try to get it out to those who left. I have access to a handful of folks….lol, it’s a larger pool of non survivors so we can probs get a similar numbers of completed surveys from both camps.
🧐
Time for the 4 I’s
Ideation – Generate ideas freely and expansively.
Investigation – Evaluate and explore those ideas critically. What’s viable? What has potential?
Implementation – Bring the chosen idea to life in a practical form.
Iteration – Refine and improve based on feedback, data, and real-world results—then loop back as needed.
I like the survey ideas a lot butt... I told eco the same. Lets!
Your comment is upvoted by @topcomment
Info - Support - Discord
First of all you you've got an awesome wife man. Second of all, people could end up leaving because Hive feels too complicated. A simple messaging system could help new users stick around longer and hopefully for life. A strong point about fixing small things instead of big changes. Nice one Meno
https://x.com/lee19389/status/1910055794864795997
#hive #posh