A few days ago I was reading @katrina-ariel’s post My Thoughts On Manual Curation and it occurred to me that it’s been a while since I wrote about how I go about curating for the Steemit Ramble.
Manually curating means the curator reads through a ton of posts. Out of necessity I’ve formed a bit of a process as I go through posts looking for the gems I want to add to a Ramble post.
Inverted Triangle
I have some friends who are journalists and over the years I’ve written articles for publication. My journalist friends taught me a long time ago to write an inverted triangle. My most important points come first in the article and then narrow down to the less important details.
There are times when the subject demands the opposite, to build up to the most important point. In those cases, your article has to pull the reader through it so they actually want to wait for the important point.
Headlines
In many instances, the headline alone gets the post discarded. If the person doesn’t care enough about the content of the post to write a headline to catch my attention, my interest lowers. At that point, those first few words better make up for the headline lack.
Having said that, don’t try to put up a catchy headline and then not deliver the goods. If that first paragraph doesn’t give me some indication the post actually is about the headline, I move on.
Content
Having pulled me past the headline into the post there are several factors which will keep me there or lead me to click on to the next in line.
Formatting
The goal is to make the post a pleasant experience for your reader. You don’t want them to be so irritated at navigating your sloppy formatting they just give up when you may have had some really good content.
Reading is for pleasure, don’t torture your reader in any manner. As a curator, I’m one of your readers.
Text Alignment
In most cases, your text should be left-aligned. There are times that you’ll want to centre text. Like for example, formatting poetry or lyrics. If you present me with paragraphs of centred text, I’ll move on. It’s irritating trying to read centred text.
Paragraphs
What I was taught in school was to use a paragraph to present a related argument. In the days of reading only on paper, that would work. The eyes reading on a screen are not so comfortable with large paragraphs of text.
For reading on a screen, you should adopt what the newspapers tend to do. Short paragraphs that draw the reader through the article. Don’t do a paragraph per sentence, that just gets annoying
Long blocks of text is annoying to read on the screen. The writing has to be extraordinary to hold my attention. Most posts with long blocks of texts aka long paragraphs, rarely, if ever hold my attention.
White Space
White space on the screen is your friend. If you’ve already conquered the concept of left aligned text and short relevant paragraphs, make sure you put a blank line between those paragraphs. The momentary break from text actually is easier on the eyes.
The Content Material
Now, having already taken in the mechanics of your content, my attention will be drawn to what you are actually creating. Here my evaluation turns to the content material.
Writing Flow
If I find myself wandering off to other thoughts while reading the post, I pull myself back once or twice. I’ll ask myself if I’m too distracted to read this post or if this post is just not written to hold my attention. If it’s the latter, I move on.
The goal with your content is getting and holding the readers attention. You want them to desire to continue through the post. You’re either informing them or entertaining them.
The Writing
The smoother the writing is, the better. I know this is an international site and I don’t want to just discard the posts of those struggling with English. I also don’t want to put myself through torture to read and comprehend what the writer is trying to say.
So, my compromise point is, if I can get the gist of what the writer is saying, I’ll try to hang in there reading it. If it is too much of a struggle, I’m moving on.
If I have to spend too much time translating the English to actual English, then I’m doing the work and not the reading.
If you quote from other sources, name the source. You need to be careful not to cross the line from fair use of material as part of your longer piece and just copy/pasting someone else’s work.
If I discover that your post is someone else’s work, I not only wont curate it, I may very well report it to places like @submarine or @steemcleaners. Don’t plagiarize, it’s theft. Write your own posts and own the intellectual property.
The Subject
Not everyone is going to be interested in your subject. That’s a given. Your goal though is to write your content so it conveys the message you are trying to convey.
When I finish reading a post, I need to be able to formulate in a sentence or two what the post is about. If I finish a post and am still wondering what it was about, I just wasted my time. Don’t waste the reader’s time.
Graphics
Pictures should add to the value of the content. They should make me understand the content even more. They should be placed in a way which helps draw me through the post.
They should also be properly sourced and you should have the rights to them. If they are your pictures, say so. If they aren’t, say where you got them. Not every picture on the Internet is yours to use.
Audio & Visual
I rarely listen to or watch videos in posts. There are ways to get me to. Most importantly, the audio or visual needs to be produced by you. You need to also write enough material to get my interest in actually listening to or watching it.
How Do I Find Posts?
I have several ways of finding posts. The first is right in the Steemit Ramble discord. I have a channel there for people to nominate other people’s quality posts.
Posts from PYPT which don’t make it into the report will be considered for the Ramble.
I’ve recently implemented a rule where posts in most channels have to be introduced. It’s a big help when the nominator can articulate to me why the post is being nominated. I take that into account as I review the post for potential inclusion in the Ramble.
I often will look at posts in other channels on the Ramble. They too have to be introduced. The ones with good intros will get my attention before any others.
Posts on other discords will sometimes catch my attention. I have Ginabot configured to cover some topics I particularly like and I have another source setup to provide me with a range of topic feeds.
And Finally — The Announcement
If you’ve read this far, you now have a pretty good idea of what I’m looking for and also where I’m finding the posts.
I’ve decided to start rewarding those who take the time to make thoughtful decisions on nominating posts in the nominate-someone-post channel. I have been crediting those I use with the nomination and using their intro as part of the writeup. That will continue.
Now, I’m going to start sharing a portion of the posts proceeds with the nominators. Payments will be sent when the post pays out.
I should disclose that posts from PYPT put in the nomination channel, are rarely considered unless the nominator is the person who presented the post.
I do encourage people to present other people’s posts as well as their own on PYPT. Especially when doing so introduces us to someone who is new on the platform. Those are good posts to put in the nomination channel as they help to encourage new people on the platform who are doing good work.
Keep up the good work building the platform with excellent content.
Until Next Time — Just Steem on
