Now is the time to speed up the curation process - by @cryptogecko [Club100]

_{Source: Canva}

Namaste Steem Family,

The Steem community needs to come up with a system that can be implemented by all the members of Steem by consensus in order to speed up the curation process so that it is more efficient and time-saving. For now, this is just a suggestion that could be implemented after some proper discussion among moderators, admins, and curators in order to find out if this will be beneficial in the long run.

Below are some of the suggestions that I have come up with so far. If you think of other suggestions on top of these, we can come up with a better process and ultimately we can all come up with a way that works for us.

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The first thing we need to understand is what affiliation tags are. Although most of us don't know them by this name, we've all seen them. Every community uses these tags beside your username in order to identify you within that community. These tags may be used to display some of the attributes associated with the user. In most communities, however, it is used to place shiny emojis, which I don't mind at all. The point I am trying to make is that why use these tags for emojis when it is possible to use them to tell so many things about the people in your community?

_{Source: Steemit / SAGE Academy}

It is important to use these tags properly in order to help curators from other communities and monthly theme curator teams make informed decisions based on the information that you provide in these tags.

To demonstrate how I use these tags, I will illustrate how I use them to visualize all the different attributes that are associated with a particular member in the communities I manage. It is up to you to follow or modify these instructions according to your needs, but a single format should be used across all communities in order to make it easier for all members to follow.

_{Source: Steemit / SAGE Academy}

_{Source: Steemit / Google Chrome}

As a first point, I would like to point out that the affiliation tag can contain up to 30 characters, so it should be used carefully so that all relevant information is contained within the available space.

There are several ways in which the available space can be divided. One of these is to use a three-column layout. It is intended that each of these columns will highlight a different aspect of the user.

The first column of the affiliation tag can be used to indicate the member's status in the community and the country to which he or she belongs.

A member of the community may be tagged as the moderator of the community, or he or she may simply be tagged as a member of the community, based on their role within it. In order to make this work, you need to make sure that the first column does not take up a great deal of space. The Moderator tag can be shortened to MOD and the Member tag can be shortened to MEM in order to achieve this.

The country tag can also be included following the community role in the same column. In some front-ends, country tags are displayed as flags of countries and these can be found in the following table.

Country	Tag / Flag	Country	Tag / Flag
Argentina	🇦🇷	Azerbaijan	🇦🇿
Bangladesh	🇧🇩	Belarus	🇧🇾
Cameroon	🇨🇲	Colombia	🇨🇴
Germany	🇩🇪	Spain	🇪🇸
United Kingdom	🇬🇧	Ghana	🇬🇭
Indonesia	🇮🇩	India	🇮🇳
Japan	🇯🇵	South Korea	🇰🇷
Sri Lanka	🇱🇰	Mauritius	🇲🇺
Malaysia	🇲🇾	Nigeria	🇳🇬
Philippines	🇵🇭	Pakistan	🇵🇰
Portugal	🇵🇹	Russia	🇷🇺
Thailand	🇹🇭	Tunisia	🇹🇳
Turkey	🇹🇷	Ukraine	🇺🇦
Uganda	🇺🇬	United States	🇺🇸
Venezuela	🇻🇪	South Africa	🇿🇦

The codes I have included here are for countries that have a high number of users on Steemit and I have included them here. For more countries and their flags, visit emojipedia website

As for the next column, you should indicate whether the member is an active member of a club or not. Consequently, I recommend that the moderators and administrators of the communities make use of the smallest possible format in order to make it easier for everyone to read and understand.

This can be accomplished by using the C letter for representing the club, and then 5050, 75, 100, or None for indicating the status of the member, which can be separated by a hyphen if necessary. Ideally, the status of the club a member follows should be checked every week and updated every Sunday, if not every day.

This next and third column can be used to display delegations made by members to the community. Alternatively, you can use this column to indicate how many times the user has been found plagiarizing. If a user is found to be plagiarizing for the first time, their delegation will be replaced by the word WATCH, which indicates that the user has been placed on the watchlist. If the user is found to be plagiarizing a second time, they are tagged with the BLACK word to indicate that they are now placed on the blacklist.

The or sign, which looks like a straight vertical line on the keyboard, can be used to separate these three columns.

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In many cases, users who use plagiarism in their posts are saved by hopping from one community to another. The new community where they begin posting does not recognize the user's history, and as a result, they start receiving support from there again.

It is possible, however, to track these offenders if a centralized watchlist and blacklist is maintained by all of the community moderators and administrators. Even if they create an alternative account, this list can include several details of the users to facilitate the identification of them as early as possible.

The list can contain the username, the number of times the user is found guilty of plagiarizing, the link to the post that was found full of plagiarism, the country of the user, the community where the user was found plagiarizing, and the dates of the plagiarism instance.

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It is necessary to establish an appeal process for users who are found to be plagiarizing in order to assist them in creating better posts in the future. It is important that users who have been found guilty of plagiarizing go through an appeal process during which they are guided by their country representatives or moderators of the communities.

The appeal process can last up to one month, and during this time, the user is expected to have learned how to write a better post as well as how to conduct research for the information that will be used to make their posts.

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Every community's moderator is expected to curate posts in their respective communities in less than six hours after the posts are posted to the community's page. It is expected that as a result of this change, other members of the community as well as theme curation teams will be able to curate content more quickly.

If any information is found that requires changes to the affiliation tags, it should also be done within this period of time so as to assist other curators in making informed decisions.

Upon completion of the curation process, the moderators or administrators must post a comment describing the findings below the author's post. In addition, you can find @klen.civil 's comments in the Steem Better Life community if you would like to use a most liked comment format.

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It is often the case that there is a lack of understanding among members of communities regarding the use of tags and what can be added to their posts.

The use of long and shiny banners is common among users, which do not add value to the post, but rather occupy space that could have been used to add links to articles that are related to the article where these links are shared.

Often, we find articles with improper tags being used. For example, #art, #food and #finance related articles using the #learnwithsteem tag indicates that the users are not properly trained in the use of tags. It is possible to avoid all of this if the users are properly guided.

This can be accomplished in several ways, such as writing informative posts on a monthly basis to guide users and also through your discord channels to provide them with guidance.

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I would like to mention a few people in order to provide a starting point for the discussion on this topic. I have taken the liberty of mentioning many people since this issue is of great importance.

CC: @steemcurator01, @reminiscence01, @kouba01, @fredquantum, @irawandedy, @event-horizon, @o1eh, @the-gorilla, @whyshy, @heriadi, @kiwiscanfly, @disconnect, @harferri, @klen.civil, @ngoenyi, @patjewell.