Shedding Light on Fantastic Curation Initiatives: Vol. 1

in #promo-steem7 years ago (edited)

Since I joined Steemit, I have made an effort to support quality content across the platform. There were many great content curators who helped my posts get off the ground, so I want to do that for others.

Unfortunately my life as a PhD student affords me little time to do manual curation, and I've become more busy lately due to research collaborations and paper writing. So I've turned to alternate curation methods.

I've made several posts about curation trail bots, so you can read Part 1, Part 2, and the follow-up article about a modification I made to a bot if you'd like more info. I have been using these bots to trail the accounts of some fantastic curators that I've discovered. I know that I am casting my votes for content that is excellent and represents the best the platform has to offer.

I want to showcase those curators for you in this post so I can draw attention to their efforts. I highly recommend checking out their blogs, and I'm sure if you have some spare SP to delegate, they would certainly appreciate it. Here they are in no particular order:

@mitneb: Encouraging Non-Native English Speakers

The Mitneb Motto:

What would you attempt to do if you knew you wouldn't fail?

I recently came across Steemit user @mitneb, who does daily curation posts where he actively engages Steemians who do not speak English as their first language. She takes the time to upvote their posts and encourage them to improve their skills by posting more blogs on Steemit.

She's also great at picking out new users and upvoting and resteeming promising introduction posts. I always appreciate efforts to scour the depths of new posts in the introduceyourself category, and @mitneb has even more rigorous selection criteria than I do. Kudos to her for supporting Steemians and encouraging them to keep going.

Check out her blog for his daily curation post where she shares her thoughts about the posts she's curated for that day. I applaud his efforts, and my account is happily trailing hers, adding a 5% vote from me to all of the posts he votes on.

@carlgnash: Promoting Quality, Original Content via @r-bot, @humanbot, and @thehumanbot

I first encountered @carlgnash on a Discord server, and I can't even remember which one it was. He encouraged me to submit a reply to a writing contest and to try to outdo his entry, which IIRC took the story in a direction where the characters fell through a cave and ended up on Mars. Anyhow, I digress. Carl is a fantastic curator for @curie. He consistently submits great content for their account to curate, and he has begun a few side projects of his own.

Carl is passionate about promoting content that is not just original in the sense that it's new for that person, but original ideas that are not commonplace on Steemit. Right now, he's using the account @r-bot to promote such content, and more recently he started the @humanbot initiative, where he hands out "badges of originality" to posts he (and his team of curators) deem as truly original. I can definitely appreciate this, because Carl works hard to reward posts that may not pick up much attention from whales, but took much time and effort on behalf of the user.

It's my pleasure to trail these efforts, and I encourage you to do the same. Carl is also looking to recruit new curators to his initiative, but you need to have a history of curating posts that fit his criteria. My account provides an additional 5% vote to each post that both @r-bot and @humanbot vote on. If you're interested in trailing his efforts, you can trail humanbot on SteemAuto!

@gogogadgetupvote: Providing Rewards for Discovery of Great Intro Posts

Inspector Gadget, as I know him, has been in the game of promoting new Steemians and quality intro posts since I first came across his efforts on the platform. He's now stepped up his game by offering daily bounty for other users. He encourages his followers to go browse through introduction posts that are between 12 hours and 3 days old. He's not looking for fresh accounts, but rather accounts that have had some time to mature. I think it's a good way to determine if a user shows interest in maintaining a presence on Steemit. He only considers rewarding posts from users who have interacted with others in the comments, or who have gone on to post another blog to follow up on their intro post.

The Inspector has gone from scouring introduceyourself by his lonesome to recruiting scores of other Steemians to help his cause via his daily bounties. This means that you right now can take parr in his efforts, and you may even get a reward out of it! Check out the rules here, and go follow his account for tomorrow's daily bounty post!

@mikepm74- Promoting Steemit Retention

It seems like every time I join a new Discord server, @mikepm74 is already there. He's an ever-present asset to almost every group, and he has some great ideas for curation. His most recent initiative involves retention, a concept that has jumped into the forefront of many Steemians' focus, as it is becoming increasingly difficult to recruit new users to the platform and actually incentivize them to return for a second post.

Mike, or DJ Mikey Masters, as he's known on Discord, has set out on a brand new initiative called "The Daily Five." Based on SteemSQL queries developed by @carlgnash and a database maintained by @arcange, Mike queries the blockchain looking for posts that have low rewards and are less than 24 hours old in the introduceyourself category. He picks five posts a day to spend high percentage upvotes on. His goal? Provide more reward to entice these new users to return for more blogs.

Retention is a goal we all should work toward. The more users we recruit to the platform and keep on Steemit, the higher the value of STEEM will get. There are many different ways to accomplish this goal, and I believe Mike's effort is a step in the right direction.

If you want to get on board helping retain new Steemians, I'm sure @mikepm74 would love to hear from you!]

Final Thoughts

These are just a few of the efforts that are working to promote quality content, new users, and user retention across the platform. I would love to hear about initiatives that other Steemians have come up with. If you have an initiative that you'd like me to check out, please let me know in the comments. I'm always looking for new efforts to trail!

Alternatively, if you have a post that you believe falls into any of these categories, please share it in the comments, and I'll pass it along to the appropriate curator!

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Images are courtesy of the accounts mentioned in this post.

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Really awesome post @ethandsmith and I am honored to be in such great company! I should mention that @r-bot has a curation trail on steemauto as well as @humanbot. There is some degree of overlap between the two, but in general @r-bot is more focused on upvoting posts that are currently undervalued (subjective determination of curator) while @humanbot is only upvoting posts awarded a Badge of Originality; the focus there is more on the original and truly creative nature of the posting and not so much on pending rewards/post valuation.

Much love - Carl

Hey Carl,

Thanks so much for stopping by this post! I really appreciate your curation efforts, and I'm hoping that this post will get you some more support.

I've started to see your badges pop up on posts, so I know you're doing a great job. I wish you much success as your bots continue to grow!

Very nice collection Ethan! Thanks for the mention.

While I do try to hit the intro posts with a good high value upvote, my hope is that more people will see those folks in my Daily 5 Digest and choose to visit them as well, and increase their followers organically with people who share similar interests. Organic growth of your follower base is way better than services like Steemfollower every day of the week.

I do follow each and every one of the accounts I list in my digest to see what they are doing. Some will be Steem success stories, some will leave the platform, that's natural when you are adding 5 accounts a day. But if my small efforts can improve the retention rate by a fraction of a percent, they are worth the time and effort.

Thanks again! Oh... and another great curator of the introduce yourself tag is @theaustrianguy who runs @welcoming. This is more geared toward resteeming intro posts, but he and I often find ourselves curating the same new users.

Nice to find another like-minded individual, mikepm74! I'm following you now.
Cheers!
@mitneb

Thanks for dropping by, Mike!

I certainly hope that you're helping get more attention for the posts that you curate. We want to see people succeed, and I believe that your efforts will definitely help retention given enough time.

I actually stumbled upon @theaustrianguy yesterday as I was going through some intro posts. @welcoming sounds like another great initiative that I'll consider including in my next volume of quality curators!

Thanks for this amazing write-up, @ethandsmith! And thank you so very much for including me in it. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your encouraging words and your support of my curation efforts. It is making a difference to have you trailing my work, and upvoting it.

I love how each of these other curators is targeting a different group, and for a different purpose. The symbiotic relationship between members like this is a powerful force that is going to help the platform grow as a whole. It's great to be one little part of a bigger team, and articles like this help us see that there really is a team effect going on.

I'm going to take some time to explore the blogs of these curators.

I've upvoted and resteemed this post. I found the link for it in #unmentionables.

Thanks again for the support, and including me!
Cheers!
@mitneb (who is a she :D)

Got the pronouns switched. I'll be sure to remember that in the future, haha thanks for clarifying your gender since it's hard to tell sometimes.

I'm glad to feature your effort as part of this post. I think it's important to make everyone aware of the other curation efforts that are going on around the platform!

All of the curators are pushing toward a goal of making Steemit a better place and improving the value of the platform and its content! Keep doing what you're doing!

No worries, @ethandsmith. It doesn't help that my name is Tim and Ben, the names of my two sons, put together backwards, and sounds masculine because of that.
Cheers!
@mitneb

Great share ethan. @mikepm74 and same with @carlgnash. Will have to check out @mitneb, but like the idea of encouraging non native speakers to keep on trying.

Hey there Jason! Thanks for stopping by!

I've always appreciated good curators, so I'm happy to be able to support them. @mitneb has a great thing going on, so I know he would appreciate your support.

I think curation is the most overlooked aspect of the ecosystem. Not everyone is a writer or good at posting long well written blogs, but everyone can curate and putting effort into helping others succeed on the platform will only help the whole community grow

Nice post! I know a few of these characters, but a few are new to me. ;) Thanks for passing them along. I'll try to check them out! I didn't realize you were doing PhD work! What is your focus? I don't know the right way to ask that...

I hope you'll be able to support many of the posts they curate!

Yes, I'm a PhD student. My field is chemical engineering, and my research is in polymers, membranes, and surfaces. I hope to do some steemit posts about my research once I get done working on my first research paper.

Thanks for stopping by as always!

Ok! Interesting. I thought you were a master's student for some reason. PhD is big time. ;) What do you plan to do with that degree? Sounds like some interesting research. I would be in the dark on that one. I'm sure there is something in your past that made you really be into "polymers, membranes and surfaces" though. ;)

My intent when entering grad school was so that I could pave the way to be a professor. My opinion on working in academia has shifted now, though, so it's more likely that I'll seek jobs in industry working in research.

Surprisingly enough, I knew very little about my research field before beginning my graduate studies. I'm happy that I'm working with the things that I do. I'm hoping it will lead to some journal publications soon!

Thanks for taking interest!

Nice! It would be cool to see your name in print...other than on Steemit of course. ;) Sounds like you've got a good plan and are headed in the right direction! I'm sure writing research papers is tons of fun. My major in college was Spanish. I only had to do one research paper in Spanish - thankfully! :) But plenty of shorter assignments. It's always good to enjoy what you're doing.

Yes. This my first attempt at a journal article, and I'm already worried about the data I've collected. haha We just need to find the right journal. My adviser is helping me out, though, so we'll have it done in the spring at some point.

I suppose you still get to put your college degree to good use though!

Yes, that's true that I NOW get to use my degree. ;) My parents commented on that when they visited (although they'd rather I was still in Texas not using my degree than here using it). ;) Hopefully you get a journal to pick up your article! That's pretty cool!

Upvoted! It is hard to curate being so busy with life but thanks for taking time to do what you do!

It is very difficult because quality curation takes much time and effort. I'm glad that I can automatically support efforts like the ones in this post because I know they're voting on quality content!

Thank you for your vote and for your response. I really appreciate it!

Awesome writing, Ethan! Hope everything is well with your studies! Have a great holiday! @ethandsmith

Thanks so much! I hope you have a great holiday season as well. Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I hope you'll check out the efforts by all of these great Steemians!

I am new here. 1 week old and really want to grow as a community instead of growing selfishly alone. Stumble upon this and it is eye-opening to me as well as helping to look further in a big picture. Thank you for sharing :)

Welcome to the platform!

Glad you found this post. It's always great to get some perspective, especially when you're just starting out. Please let me know if you have any questions about Steemit. I'd be happy to point you in the right directions!

This is a great article and thanks for sharing. Highlighting these people and getting their name out to others is awesome.

Definitely! Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you'll check out all of these accounts!

@mitneb is really doing a great job, helping steemians whose mother tongue is not English...
Very nice post indeed @ethandsmith

Thanks, @xabi! Do you have an introduction post yet? If so, please send me the link. I'm following you now, and would be happy to curate you in my project.
Cheers!
@mitneb

I just got done leaving you a comment on your article, @xabi. Unfortunately it is past the date to upvote and resteem, so I couldn't do that. I will still include it in my daily curation project report on 09 DEC 2017. It's a really great introduction post.
Cheers!
@mitneb

Yes! I think he's doing a fantastic job of welcoming users to Steemit! Thanks for stopping by my post. I hope to continue to support @mitneb's efforts!

It would be my genuine pleasure...
I am a non native English speaker... Do I look like one??? I learnt a lot from steemit.

I'm glad you've learned so much from Steemit! Pretty soon no one will be able to tell that English isn't your first language!

True! I appreciate what she does for everyone. Especially us - the newbies in this platform. Thanks, @mitneb!

You're welcome, @yourlovelyness! Thanks for the shout-out.
Cheers!
@mitneb