RE: Curator Cat says: The Name of the Social Game is... ENGAGEMENT!
Thank you @curatorcat!
There is certainly more than comments and up-votes by way of increasing engagement and retention, and one of these aspects is gamification. You are spot on with the assessment that people like to see how they are doing in comparison to others, and a little friendly competition never hurt anyone for sure.
When I started out with 10/15 names for my first ever curation league, I never expected to now be holding over 500 accounts (350 active last week) in a database, who have willingly put their name forward to be a part of the leagues.
For many, they are no longer there for the chance to win a little STEEM, but use the data as a gauge to how they are doing with both curation and engagement. Some compare to others, some compare to their recent history, both are sound approaches towards self-improvement as assistance to find a sweet spot here on Steem.
As I stated in my reply to you on this weeks' Leagues post, I've taken a bit of flak recently as a witness, and in reference to that I quote:
[@steemcommunity] doesn’t really have a function.. it doesn’t contribute really to the community in anyway on its own. It runs a few contests that are sponsored by other people and that’s it.
And so when I read posts like this, my motivation returns as I read that members of the community do see value in what my account (as one half of the SC witness), @paulag (as the other half) with the Redfish League, and the SC witness account itself provides.
Thank you very much for your support, I knew there was a reason I favoured cats over dogs :)
Gamification has a lot of value in social media simply because it helps make a venue "sticky," and when you're part of something like your Leagues... there's also a building sense of community there... you feel like you are part of something.
I know you give away prizes every week, but that really hasn't been in the picture for me... I don't have the social media time to be competitive in that (I think the highest I have ever finished — so far — was 28th), but I still love checking in to see who's leading, and whether we have any "hot newcomers."
I believe the @steemcommunity witness does add value; I would suspect most of your critics have technical developer blockchainiac leanings. My response to that would be "What good is a smoking hot blockchain if nobody's out there pounding the pavement to get actual USERS for it?" As I may have said before... that's akin to building a souped-up Ferrari in a small village in Alaska that has no paved roads.
=^..^=