Newbies Task 2: Knowing Hive Better

“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.”
— Carl Rogers

Welcome to the second task of the Newbies Initiative First Edition 2023...

This week we were able to learn about the Do's and Don'ts on Hive (Hive guidelines), Markdowns and their usage, and finally the use of Canva in designing our thumbnails.
It was indeed worth it👍

Just like the teacher gives assignment to make sure you understood what was taught in class, here I am answering the questions following the tutorials to show that I understood what was taught.

_{Designed using Canva}

As a Hivean, What are things that are expected of you? What are the things which are not expected of you to not do?

Things Expected Of Me?

Hive is a large Community that above all things has monetary rewards and as such, there are some basic things required of us to make sure we progress and the Hive Community prospers too....

• Quality Posts:

Not everyone is here for the blogging aspect but most persons I will say are here for this and as such, it is not just good that you wake up and start battling with your keyboards making noise as you tap them when you are making up posts that are not Quality (Standard).

If I'm asked, Quality Post entails posts that obvious efforts were made by the author to ensure;

Readability

Great content

Proper title

Good use of Markdowns

We are not all grammarians but less grammatical errors will count also

Not too short (I guess that's why most communities peg their acceptable posts at 500 words)

Long posts with great contents

I have no problem with long posts at all provided they are really nice and captivating.

For weeks now, I've been reading a series post from @vcelier and you won't really know when you finish the post and crying out for him to post the next episode because they are so so captivating.

Bearing all these in mind, it is expected of me as a Hivean to strive so hard to make sure my posts attain those standards.

• Quality Engagement:

On Hive, this is the second most important thing according to what I learnt from the tutorial.
It gives you visibility on the platform.

For Engagement, I will divide them into two;

• Engagement On Hive:

This is the one that requires us reading posts from different authors of different Communities.

As a sign of reading from them, it's always nice that we leave a comment.

In the words of @starstrings01,

Not the regular comment newbies leave, like "nice post", "great post" and others.

We should leave comments that actually prove that we understood the message the post was trying to send across.

• Engagement Outside Hive:

Hive uses Discord Server for most of her activities outside Hive.... Some Communities also use WhatsApp, Twitter, Twitch and the rest.

This is the Engagement that involves you to be active in those various platforms discussing with people.... Just casual discussions, making friends and joining beautiful topics of discussion like you do on your WhatsApp and Facebook

The #HiveLearners Community has something like this already called

where they discuss different topics.

What this does is that it makes us gain friends on hive...

In the words of @starstrings01 again...

Friends will upvote the post of their friends first before looking for post of strangers to upvote.

It is expected that I should do my best to be active on Hive to the best of my ability.

• Correct Sourcing:

This is yet another aspect on Hive that should be taken very seriously...

There are free websites where one can easily download free pictures (Pixabay, Pexels, Unsplash e.t.c), It is expected that whenever I get pictures from these sites that I source them properly.

It is also important at this point to note that the fact that you are using your personal pictures doesn't give you immunity to sourcing

No one will know if you don't tell the community where you got the pictures from so it's always nice to atleast source your personal pictures with:

N:B: All Pictures Are Mine

Or any better way you deemed fit.

• Hive Power Up:

I didn't learn this one from the tutorial but I think it's also something required of me.

Hive is a platform that runs most of her activities based on the Hive Power quantity you have.

It will really be nice when we also try to give back to Hive just the same way Hive has been giving to us by Powering Up once in a while when our situations permits us.

This way, the Hive Blockchain will keep running and stand the test of time.

• The Right Thumbnails:

I picked this out to expand on it a little...
A quality post should also have a good thumbnail.

According to the tutor @ksam, he said and I'll quote;

Your thumbnail should say a lot about your post...
Looking at it alone should send 60% of the message the post is all about.

That is to tell you how powerful it is when we write post with creative thumbnails.

As a hivean, it is expected that I try my best to do my homework well before picking a particular thumbnail to publish my post with.

Things Not Expected Of Me:

These are for our own benefits...
Remember we just had our goals set for the next two months of this Newbies initiatives, we won't reach those goals if we continue doing what is not expected of us as they have negative impacts on our profile and the monetary reward that comes on Hive also.

• Plagiarism and Improper Sourcing:

On Hive, plagiarism is a no no at all.
In the words of @starstrings01,

Plagiarism Is Stealing!

Plagiarism can come in various forms starting from when we copy people's work without permission to when we don't source the pictures we use for our posts.

It is expected that I always make sure to cross-check my source links to ensure it redirects me to exactly the places I got the pictures from and try as much as possible to be unique with my blogs.

• Begging For Votes And Followers :

Unlike other social medias where we do the popular follow for follow or like for like,
Hive frowns at these activities.

Same as when we go around with our post links leaving them in comments of other authors begging them for Upvotes...
It's a No No on Hive.

I am not expected to engage in these acts from what I learnt in the tutorial.

One good aspect of Hive is that when you do what are required of you, you will definitely get those followers and Upvotes without begging for them (Quality Engagement and Quality Posts)

• Unnecessary Tags And Mentions:

I will say this is a modified version of vote begging where you try to draw the attention of someone who you feel should upvote your comment but might miss it because he or she might be busy..... Hive is also very much against it.

I am expected not to tag other authors and curators especially the ones I don't even know just for the sake of tagging, worst still when the tags aren't necessary.

According to our tutors, this could have a negative impact on our account by way of downvotes.

• Substandard Posts:

As a blogger on Hive, it is unacceptable when I publish posts that are substandard.

Posts that have no good content, poorly titled, too short and others....

I am expected to deviate from such acts as they bring bad name not only to my profile but to the Hive community as a whole.

• Self Votes:

Again, I didn't learn this in the tutorial but I feel it's something I should say.

It is not entirely wrong when we publish wonderful posts and feel like Upvoting ourselves but because of my recent experience, I will say Hive doesn't love it or let's say, everyone on Hive doesn't love it.

So I'll say it is expected that I use my HP in curating other authors rather than curating myself.
Just my thoughts

Your thumbnail should be made with using Canva, show us the steps you took to make your thumbnail.

You can't start cooking if you don't have foodstuffs, hehehe.

In that same way, you can't be talking about designing from Canva when you don't have the Canva App or use the web atleast.

• I have the Canva App, so I launched it for a start...

• I pressed the "+" button below the home page, just after the projects you're seeing to enable me select picture to use for the designing.
  You could see my pictures from where I selected one of them for the designing.

• I then went to the photo dimension option to change it to the desired dimensions I would love to work with.

• Here, you could see the dimensions I chosed... 200width by 200height... It's perfect for me and I pressed done.

• Here, you could see the result of the resizing I just did.
  Then I pressed the white button below to make use of Magic designs to get a magical work, hehehe.

• That is my magical work in progress.
  At the end, I am expected to see Various templates as would be suggested by the Canva App.... So magical indeed, hehehe.

• Now, my magical design is ready with various templates and I'll have to select my most preferred template to work with.

• I just selected one out of many that I was provided with.
  So I will be working on it to provide my best design so I pressed on "customize this template".

• It redirects me to my working board with the template I've chosen to further edit it to my taste and here is where the main work of designing starts...

N/B: I had to switch to Light mood from Dark mood so all I would be explaining would be clearly seen

I was going around looking for a suitable Font I will love until I decided to use "Montnapha medium"

• I also felt it would look more beautiful by using bullet point feature in outlining the three Tutorials we did and went to the "Format Option", there I saw everything I needed and bolded it also as you can see.

• Then I felt it will be more beautiful making use of a different font in writing my name on the work.
  I continued searching until I found "Alegreya"... It was perfect for me also.

• I also went to the "Format Option" to italicize it to see how it will be.... It turned out well and I love it, hence, I left it that way.

• This was how the whole work was looking like... I edited out everything I didn't need and replaced them with the wordings of mine as related to my post.

• I have noticed that some persons work who use Canva isn't accessible when you click the links they used in sourcing and it is because they don't change their link's setting.
  To avoid that, I clicked on the share button above like you can see, then, click on share link.

• Here you can see the "Only you can access", click on it and you will see an option for "Anyone with the link"

Now you can see, "Anyone with the link" under the people who can access the work and copy it out so that whomever clicks on your work will see it.

• Then click on the download button to get your work downloaded and saved in your gallery

• That is Canva App doing the magical work it knows how to do best to wash away the stains in your work and come out with a perfect work.

Then finally, you have my thumbnail as was used in the beginning of the post😍

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I won't fail to appreciate everyone who is making efforts to see that we have a fruitful learning within this period starting from the organisers to my team leader @justfavour and to a very great extent, my personal teacher @merit.ahama 😍

Thanks for reading till the very end👍