Curation through Community Consensus

The Dynamic Voting Relay for Curated Relay Feeds

Relay feeds have recently started to gain some traction on Nostr. This is the perfect time to go over what we have been doing with relays.land/spatianostra. The relay itself serves multiple purposes: to serve as a simple example content curation on Nostr, to create a welcoming space for new users, and most importantly to exemplify the ingenious idea behind it: fiatjaf's Dynamic Voting Relay.

Lifting Out the Pieces

Nostr's wide-open data has proven to work well, even to the extent that many users seek less openness. People that are new to Nostr, in particular, can easily get overwhelmed by topic saturation and content that they may find distasteful. While it is in the spirit of Nostr's censorship resistant qualities for some clients and relays to adhere to the Wild West method of content exposure, it's also important to acknowledge that the majority of the world is already overwhelmed by too much online stimulation. The digital demigods of yore created an environment where any enjoyment and ability to focus is stripped away and replaced with apathy and a constant need to find the next better thing, while also capturing users and the content that they consume. The beauty of Nostr's openness is that it allows for many methods of curation to happen, without cordoning off data or a user's ability to access other data sources. Curation can easily happen at the relay level and the first true examples are starting to come to fruition, in relays such as wss://relays.land/spatianostra .

Planting the Seed

Setting out at the beginning of this experiment, there was a clear need for Nostr spaces that new users could browse to experience what Nostr has to offer without getting caught in a barrage spammy bots and distasteful things. We also wanted to create a space that reduced the topic saturation and discussions that new users may not understand or have interest in. With that in mind, we set out to create the Spatia Nostra feed. It has so far proven to be a welcoming and neutral space that is not flooded by any particular topic. Right now, a handful of users guide the feed with their own interests and likes... literally. Overtime, that handful of users will expand into many and the feed will become even more lively and diverse.

The Dynamic Voting Relay

The overarching concept is simple: members of a group vote for content that will appear in the feed. The Dynamic Voting Relay moves beyond that, to create a curated feed that is not owned or controlled by anyone. The membership base expands organically and the voting rights are constantly in flux, hence the "Dynamic" part of the name. Each instance is seeded with an intitial set of voters who are each assigned a number of shares. That number is determined by whoever is setting the relay's policies. The number can be small so that voting rights are distributed throughout the voting pool quickly, or they can be set large so that the initial set of voters maintain a guiding hand for a longer length of time, as was chosen for the Spatia Nostra feed. From there, the voting process begins to happen. Any note that is authored by a voter is considered as a nomination for one's own content. Any note by any user that is "liked" or reposted by a member of the voting pool is also considered a nomination for feed placement. Each action is considered as voting with all of that member's available shares which are measured both numerically and in percentage. For a note to qualify for placement in the main feed, it must garner 25% of all available shares (the default was 30%, we did tweak this a little in the beginning to increase activity in the feed enough to act as proof-of-life for viewers). This voting action can be done from any Nostr client on any note that has been publicly published. Once a note meets that threshold, its author gains one share and the note is displayed in the main feed. If it's author was not previously part of the voting pool, they then become a contributing member and voter.

Through posting more content that other voting members enjoy, an individual author can gain heavier voting weight. Over time, the feed will shift away from any guiding voters having anything resembling control, to a feed that is purely community-led. We assume that by the time control shifts away from the Spatia Nostra feed's founding voters, that its members list will be a rich and diverse group that is creating, sharing, and liking a wide array of content. The hope is that eventual content saturation can be avoided and the feed can take on a life of its own without becoming a "topic" feed. Only time will tell if that will work. So far it has done well.

No one in the voting pool has to do anything differently than they do anyway when engaging with Nostr content, which makes this a simple, user-friendly way to curate notes and develop loose social groups around interactions with each other, which is by far the most naturally human experience in any social media space. For those that want to take a hands-on approach to voting, the relay has a restricted area available only to those that are currently in the voting pool where they can browse content that has been nominated by their fellow voters and cast votes via like or repost. This not only creates the opportunity to be part of something meaningful; it also exposes active voters to other users and content that they may not have seen otherwise, acting as another layer in the community building process.

Retaining What Matters

I've had a hard time detaching myself from this concept in a way that I could write in a semi-neutral state about it. The whole process has been a lot of fun, and being part of something meaningful is always a good feeling. It is particularly exciting when it is something with such huge potential. Nostr users could benefit from many forms of open curation like this, including other instances of this relay's dynamic voting process. The voting action has made me consider more closely what I find important or interesting enough for others to see. How do I want to welcome people to the digital freedom that Nostr enables them to enjoy? The answer for me is gently, compassionately, and with no restrictions. I hope that after the Spatia Nostra relay feed grows beyond it's founders' guiding hands, that it can act as such: simply one of many portals to the wide openness that makes Nostr so elegant and beautiful, and a place where anyone can find something that resonates with their desire to connect with a world beyond their own.

See this list for Nostr clients that enable relay browsing.

Easily view the Spatia Nostra relay feed here: https://jumble.social/?r=relays.land/spatianostra

To view its voting pool, go to: https://relays.land/spatianostra

Learn more about other types of customizable relay here: https://relays.land/

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