Introduction
New curation guidelines have been released yesterday. For a long time (since the creation of @sndbox) everyone was eligible for one vote per day if he met the “quality requirements” of our curators/founders. With the new rules, completely new dynamics has been introduced to our lovely incubator. Let me break it down.
The guidelines
We are a transparent group, therefore it should be perfectly fine to share with you the new rules.
TIER 1 (100% Vote)
• Extensive original content
• Highly structured and researched, strong conclusions
• Minimum 750 words, 7+ photos/videos including original ones
Examples: Major Project Milestones, Long-form Personal Posts
TIER 2 (50% Vote)
• Extensive original content
• Ongoing project-based content
• Minimum 500 words, 5+ photos/videos including original ones
Examples: Sndcastle Posts, Projects, Campaigns
TIER 3 (25% Vote)
• Original content
• Minimum 300 words, 3+ photos/videos
Examples: Creative writing, Personal Updates, Photography, Discussion-based Material
TIER 4 (10% Vote)
• Descriptive / Shortform content
Examples: Shortform poetry, News, Wiki-style Articles, Travel Updates
TIER 5 (0% Vote)
• Content with writing/media of dubious sources and origin
• Controversial or offensive content
Situation prior to the introduction of new rules
Up until now everyone was eligible for the same upvote every day. If I’m not mistaken, for quite some time the percentage of the upvote was set to 25% (it used to be bigger before we vastly grew in numbers). What that effectively meant though…
It basically meant that the shorter article one manages to produce, the bigger value for time spent will be received. For example it didn’t matter how much time @fathin-shihab had to spend to create those 3d prints, or how many pages me, or @heymattsokol had to read through before we could post our educational posts. There were also poetries formed by two stanzas which totally dominated in time efficiency (meaning how long it took to produce the article). Everyone received equal share. There was no incentive that would further motivate the @sndbox members to spend more time every day working on their article.
The pros of the new guidelines
The guidelines brought the much needed motivation incentive! The 25% upvote that was “online” every day for everyone is now right in the middle of the newly created “tiers”. I understand the new guidelines as the way how to reward the creators more fairly. Unfortunately there is no way for the curators to measure the time that had to be spent on the creation of the article. Maybe that is not even necessary since only the outcome that will be locked into the Blockchain is what matters. The amount of words, or photos, (and its quality of course) is then the only logical way how to measure the contribution of every single post, thus its reward.
The cons of the new guidelines
There is no subject whatsoever that does not have its negatives from my perspective. In this early stage there is though only one aspect that I would change if I could. The new guidelines ignore one significant aspect of articles. It ignores its type, or in other words aim. It tries to unify the content that is to be created under the banner of @sndbox. I understand why the founders think it’s necessary and how it would make their curating life easier, but is it really going to help the incubator in bigger picture? Isn’t the versatility what makes us special too? What I mean by that…
I really dislike the 100 words = one picture rule. I totally understand why it’s more important to have original photos for photographers or travellers, rather than tons of text. The same applies the already mentioned @fathin-shihab with her 3d prints. But how is the amount of photos relevant to @heymattsokols break down of cryptocurrencies? Does it not matter how informative the article is, but rather if it has the set amount of photos in it to be eligible for the bigger upvote? What if person spends more time to create longer informative post, but won’t really have any good pictures to “support” the text in a relevant way. Relevance is after all much more important than set number of photos right? Will it not “force” people into spamming less relevant pictures in order to achieve the “much needed” number in order to receive the bigger upvote that should have been “rightfully” deserved due to the number of relevant and informative words, or in other words information transmitted into the brains of the readers? Not all readers need the visual representation or are interested in it. Some decode information more effectively from text and some from photos. Visual representation comes in handy, but irrelevant amount of it won’t make the article better in my eyes.
Conclusion
Overall the changes are awesome. It introduces a bit of game theory into our lovely incubator. It enables the users to have bigger control over their activities in @sndbox and possible rewards for their contribution. I understand that the whole concept is really new and that the percentages, which articles will be seen as part of which tier and so on may, and probably will, change in time. It is major step in the right direction, even though it from my perspective has some flaws described in the paragraph above and it needs quite some tweaks still. Let’s give it the time it needs shall we :P?
PS: The article has around 900 words and took me good few ours to compile. It definitely is an original content, but whether the conclusion and structure is strong is up to you to decide. It only has 4 pictures though. Therefore it can be eligible for the 100% upvote as well as 25% upvote. The word count is though 3 times bigger than what is supposed to be in the 3rd tier. Is the text what transmits the relevant information to you or was it not transmitted because it lacked the pictures? As I said it still needs some work, but overall great job. If you want me to help you with that further, all you need is to ask.
