If You're Planning On Writing An Article For SteemSTEM, These Tips Are For You

Picture By Nick Youngson - The Blue Diamond Gallery (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Hi guys,

Before I start preaching about some of my favourite article structures related to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) article, I would like to point out that, this article was meant for educational and might be, some entertainment purposes only. It is in no way reflects the opinion of steemSTEM management, fellow curators, honour members (mentors, engagement officers or complaint room moderator) or any of the veteran STEM author in this platform. I wrote this article as a fellow STEM author, not a steemSTEM mentor. Let's get on it, shall we?

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Consider this scenario:

You have a blog. You have decided to blog something related to science and in order to make it looks premium, you bought a standalone domain "something.com". Now, you have been blogging for quite some time. You have registered with the google ads for some revenue, struggling to increase your page views per day in order to make it "reasonable" for you to provide advertising services and you did quite well.

"Good job someone, you deserve some ice-cream", you said to yourself.

Well, after 3 years trying, you've become frustrated. Your blog followers stay plateau, no one wanted to register with your advertising services, people rarely clicked the Google ads which equate to less revenue and your Alexa ranking, have been declining since then. You started to realise that this will go nowhere without investing any money so you spend some of your revenue on the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) services. They did a good job, brought you ten of thousands more unique visitors per month compared to usual but it cost you a lot. Once again, you became frustrated but the difference now is, you quit.

2 years later, some of your friends introduced you to a platform, a blogging platform which is unique and quite different from the other blogging websites and you became excited. Finally, this is something I have been waiting for all this while! You started to register and 4 days later, poof! You are one of the official members of Steemit platform. You started to blog about STEM-related content but to no avail.

Picture Source - Pixabay

"Nevermind, I should work hard every single day, producing an article and someday, someone might notice me"

You scrolled down the #science section and suddenly you saw something. Some post which has been made by a dude called "steemSTEM". What the hell is that? After clicking on a few links, you've become restless. Finally, you will be able to get paid for producing STEM-related content!

"This is a moment that I have been waiting for."

Two weeks later still no upvote. You started to doubt yourself. Why is this happening? Am I producing a bad content compared to the others? Well "something", let me tell you why.

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Why I haven't got an upvote?

Picture Source - Pixabay

SteemSTEM community has been growing day by day and I'm excited by this. In my opinion, there are a few potential reasons why you are not getting any upvote from steemSTEM:

• You have produced a bad content
• You have violated the law of using copyrighted material
• You didn't cite any of your article references
• Your articles look confusing and sometimes people didn't understand what you are talking about
• You did produce a good quality article with proper citations and image's attribution but curators missed your article amidst thousand of articles.
• You have been blacklisted for plagiarising or any other specific reasons
• etc. etc.

There are so many potential reasons why you haven't got an upvote and I can say that the majority of STEM author which has been using #steemstem tag have some technical problems with their article. This is not an easy-money-getting scheme. People were hoping for @steemstem support but they often forgot to give something back; abide by the rules which have been mentioned in some of the previous post made by them and interact within the community by commenting, upvoting, making a response post, helping a newbie or do anything that might benefit others.

Picture Source - Pixabay

The thing is, no one in this community is guaranteed an upvote from @steemstem, not the management, not the curators, not the honour members and not even if you are a noble prize winner who recently has been introduced in this platform. You are the one who has to prove why you deserve @steemstem support in a form of an upvote by presenting a "good quality, entertaining and generally understood" article. Try to find your own mistakes before blaming the @steemstem management, that's how you educate yourself and generally others.

The content

Well, for the past few weeks, the other honour members and I have encountered quite a number plagiarised content. If, you didn't know that plagiarism is a crime in the academic world, logically, it is unethical to pass off someone else works as your own. It's shameful really! You don't have to be complicated, choose a simple topic which you are familiar with. If you would like to choose something that you haven't heard all this while (maybe you are studying in a different field), if you are interested in the subject, then be my guess. No one can stop you! You might be learning something new every single day and that's a good thing.

The catch is if you are trying to rip off as much reward as you can writing about something which you are not familiar and interested in would cost you a lot. You might find it difficult to commit yourself every day to producing articles so you succumb to plagiarism. Some people don't plagiarise, but the article produced seems half-cooked. They end the article prematurely which make their readers felt betrayed by the promising title. I mean, you might be angry if the title was "Watermelon; A fruit with much benefits" and the content is basically a selfie of someone with a watermelon.

Picture Source - Pixabay

There are four components of an article which I have been using all this while:

• The introduction
• Some fact about the article's subject
• The discussion about the topic outlined in the title
• The conclusion (might be optional)

If you wanted to write an article about the benefits of watermelon, don't jump straight to the topic of discussion. Write a little bit of info on the subject and slowly progress to the benefits later on. Provide an introduction, just imagine, you readers are not familiar with the subject and give some definition to the terminologies being used. If your reader is familiar with the subject, they can skip it. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

Make use of the Markdown Editing properly to enhance readability. If you are unfamiliar with Markdown Editing, click here to learn more. Generally, I've used only a few commands to make an acceptable STEM-related article which are:

• How to make a header
• How to create a page break
• How to make a bullet point
• How to create a table (if needed)
• How to centre an image with a source at the bottom
• How to align an image to the left/right of a text with a source at the bottom

Check the link out and I assure you, if you pay attention to the details and your article's preview, you will be fine. No need to make it complicated. Just take a few commands which are necessary for your article and be on your way. Obviously, I can't teach you how to structure your article, it will pretty much depend on you. Be creative! This is your article, your work, be proud of it. Pay attention to the details and ensure that you have covered pretty much everything needed for the readers to understand your article. There is no consensus about the length of an article, but I have always emphasised to my mentees to write at least 500 words in length. That is my current personal standard of an article's length. If you write less than that, you might end the article prematurely so better to write more. If you think you have can't write well in English, use an English-language writing-enhancement platform such as Grammarly. I'm also not a native English speaker and my grammar was bad but with time, I improved. Practice makes perfect, right? Except for suicide of course.

Picture By Grammarly - Wikipedia

If you need some help with your content, find a friend who can help you or better, consult a mentor in the steemSTEM Discord Channel. You are not alone. That's the point of being in a community.

The Images/Pictures And The References

People think this is the most difficult part in creating STEM-related articles for #steemstem but it's actually pretty easy and useful if you want to avoid being sued in the future. Generally, there are a lot of images which can be found on a Google Search Engine which might be up to your standard but a number of them are copyrighted. If you are unfamiliar with this topic, I suggest you click here to find out. It is vital for you to give a proper attribution to the original author. Well, we are not perfect, right? Sometimes we missed a few details but I have recently taught by @dexterdev the essence of image's attribution that we can use on this platform.

• Image source: the link
• Image owner or uploader: his or her username
• License version: link to it

To play it safe, my template would be:

For centered images
Picture By [Author] - [Source]([License version])

For right/left alligned images
[Author] - [Source]([License version])

Usually, all of the info can be found on the same webpage where you took your image from.

This screenshot was taken from Flickr

The red circle is the author, the green circle is the source and click the blue circle to find out about the license information.

This screenshot was taken from Creative Commons

So the final result would be:

Picture By Charlie - Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Pretty neat huh? Don't forget to link it to the original website. How to do that? You can refer to the Markdown Editing Tutorial link I've mentioned above. People have their own way of attribution and if it has all of the three essences, that should be fine. If the picture is CC BY 0 or a public domain picture, you can either write it in the bracket or just don't write anything. If the picture is public domain it should look like this:

Picture Source - Pixabay
Picture Source - Pixabay (Public Domain)
Pixabay (If you are too lazy to write the whole thing)

If you use the right picture and give a proper attribution, you should be fine. If the pictures you are using were your own, just mention it either at the bottom of the picture or at the end of your article. Give the attribution to yourself for doing a good work. It's a metaphorical pat on the back.

People have different ways of referencing their article's sources. I have my own template and I generally didn't like people who just put a number without any information on it.

[Author]. [Source]. [Title of the Original Article]. [The time you access the source]. [Link to the original article].

If, let's say the article in the image below is my source:

This screenshot was taken from Mental Floss

Then my reference would be:

Shaunacy Ferro. Mental Floss. 6 Scientific Explanations for Ghosts. Retrieved April 9, 2018, from http://mentalfloss.com/article/70293/6-scientific-explanations-ghosts

Well, it shouldn't be complicated but you have to ensure you give a proper attribution to the original author. You can use the APA referencing style but dude, chill out a bit will you? As long as you put some references you will be fine. There are a lot of people out there who thinks we didn't click on the references so they just put something which is unrelated to the article. Bad move! We did check the article before commenting. It's to ensure that you are not plagiarising anything from the original article. If you think, you need some text from the original article, quote it and write down the source of the text.

Author's remark

Well, that's it. I think the most critical part of why you are not getting upvoted provided you are not blacklisted and curators didn't miss your article lies in these three domains:

• Problems with your content
• Problems with your images
• Problems with your references

Well, I have laid out some clues. It will be up to your knowledge, your understanding from the point I've made and your creativity to create a good content, gives proper attributions and cite proper references. Just keep on writing, avoid plagiarising and consult steemSTEM honour members if you have some concerns with your article and someday, you will be rewarded. Don't forget to engage with the other community members as well. It is a vital thing which has kept this community flourished. If you have any disagreement or think I have made some mistakes, drop a comment below. Like some of you, I'm relatively new to this platform and have many things to learn. I'm open to criticism, really. Please be reminded that following my recommendation doesn't guarantee an upvote from @steemstem. It is just my personal opinion and I would like to help as many STEM-related authors as I can. Thank you for your attention and good luck!

Best regards,