Status of and changes in Ask.Steem Community

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Current Status of the community

The ask.steem community has been in icu for a while. I stayed back from supporting the community for one simple reason. I found most of the community members to have no community spirit at all.

Almost all of them were motivated to cash out their earnings but not motivated to contribute to the welfare of the community as a whole. Very few (handful) of them powered-up their earnings thereby increasing their and the community's strength. Until and unless the community members do so, I will stay on the sidelines and will not take an active part in the community.

The essence of community spirit is the mutual support of community members for each other. If community members expect others with large SPs to upvote them without them taking efforts to increase their own SPs and upvoting other community members with their increased SPs, it is a clear indication that they are there only for the free-ride.

Such free-riders are always a burden on the resources of any society, be it a country or a community in Steem. When free-riders outnumber the contributors even a strong community will eventually collapse.

When members of a community keep increasing their SPs, upvote each others continually, engage with members by commenting and replying to their posts, such actions add to the strength of the community. These are already in the curation guide and the rules. Such a community will grow from strength to strength even in bad times.

I can only do so much as a founder and admin. The rest is up to the community members. If you want lasting success, it depends largely on you as a community member and not on the founder/admin.

Changes to the community

With a view to enlarging the size of the audience, I would like to make slight changes to the purpose and rules of the community.

Henceforth you can ask, subject to the amended rules, any question in the community. To reflect this change I am rebranding the community to Ask Steem Anything.

Of course you can continue asking open-ended questions as before. In addition you can now ask questions on:

• how to do something,
• troubleshooting issues,
• any subject of interest to you, such as economics, technology, health, sciences, mathematics, sports, law, psychology, and
• many more.

Conclusions

If your are a community spirited member you would, besides providing mutual support, also monitor and police each other's conduct to ensure that the rules are followed. This will also include spotting free-riders within the community and penalizing them by downvoting them.

cc @whyaskwhy @attraction @juderita @invest.country @dibie @voiice.direct @ask.steem