Rebooting SteemSTEM - Towards an engaged community on the STEEM blockchain!

I assume all of you have read our rant 3 days ago. If not, you should. Please follow this link before reading on.

Essentially, it was all about engagement. But what is engagement?

ENGAGING EACH OTHER

Engaging with each other means acting as a community - and having fun! But fundamentally, creating the opportunities to have fun within that community.

I recommend reading the comments made by @kryzsec on the previous post. Let it be known that steemSTEM is not just about the money involved. On top of getting a steemSTEM upvote, here are some suggestions:

• Give tips to users on how to improve their writing (markdown/html, style, format, etc.)
• Comment and ask questions on others' posts, or even better, create discussions. Of course, this does not mean doing that on every single one of the 300 posts we consider each week, but simply whichever ones you are actually interested in.
• When writing posts, one could also consider leaving points open to trigger such discussions and questions.
• Write response posts (please do not attack others, but engage an adult discussion with arguments). This could also be a pair of collaborative posts (author A writes part 1 and author B writes part 2 for instance).
• Vote on content and comments, either manually or trail the @steemstem vote.
• Write about something you are passionate about and share it with us.

This list is not exhaustive, but it is a good start!

MORE ABOUT CURATION

It is time to let you know how steemSTEM curation works, in the spirit of transparency.

Our team scours the platform for original and quality content and then decides about the voting strength (small, medium, large) with which the post should be voted. Medium and large votes always require a second curator to double-check and confirm. We also have a moon-ish option that is used maybe 3-4 times a month.

We try to be as generous as possible with the small votes. It is perhaps only a small amount of SBD, but keep in mind this is easily 50 times more than what many users get on STEEM... And what do you think we prefer? Giving 100 SBD to a single individual, or give 25x4 SBD to 25 unique authors?

But sometimes, some posts are really, really great and we are trying to be there to support them as well!

This being said, the rewards we give come mainly from our partnership with @curie, and this comes with some golden rules:

Golden Rule 1

The 18 people in our team (managers, general curators and community curators) are not eligible for this curie vote. In short, the curators and the management get a pay cut for joining the cause (we share the curation and distilled rewards, which gives 2-20 STEEM per person per week for an often full time schedule).

Golden rule 2

Okay, @steemstem has a comfortable delegation. But this doesn't fully compensate: a single individual cannot get more than 2.75% of all steemSTEM votes cast during the last 2 weeks. And this percentage may actually go down in the future. This applies to staff, management, authors; everyone.

We are of course not exempt from the posting standards of steemSTEM either; we have to work hard on our own content just like everybody else.

In summary, the team gives for free. In addition, this takes so much time that they post less. But it is our choice to be a part of this and we are making these sacrifices for a cause we strongly believe in.

So, every time you get a steemSTEM upvote, think about what that means, and think about what you can do in return to make the community a more fulfilling environment.

Why not throw a few comments or votes to any other steemstem-considered posts in exchange? Help us build the community that we alone simply cannot grow. Discover like-minds and engage with them on discord. It's up to you!

CURATION AND HONOR MEMBERS

To try and improve on these problems of engagement inherent on the STEEM blockchain, we have implemented a test scenario that will be deployed item by item at some point next week.

Curation

• We made our private voting channel public. No more excuses about not knowing what the posts we reward are, and how strongly we reward them... If you see an interesting topic, just click on the link, read and comment (and potentially throw an upvote)!
• If you have no time to do that but want to use your VP for @steemstem, you can either join our homemade curation bot (check the pinned messages on our discord channel for the how to), or just follow @steemstem on @steemauto (here).
• If you'd rather not do this, SP delegation is also a solution! With steemconnect and this simple form, it takes at most 5 seconds.

For now, this is simple enough and we hope this will lead to some improvements we can all be proud of.

Honor members

We created the concept of steemSTEM Honor Members. You can apply for the position here. We (@steemstem) will read through the applications, check the qualifications and then pick the ones we think are suited to do this job.
The choice could be made because of their write-ups, their level of engagement, the way they welcome and guide the newcomers, etc.

Our steemSTEM Honor Members will be easily identifiable on the discord. There are three main tasks, from which each honor member can pick one, two or all three:

• Mentor newcomers and steemians who want to become successful STEM posters (helping inside the general chat room, taking on people who messaged management for help, actively seeking out steemSTEM/related posts to give out advice in the comments).
• Monitor the (freshly created) public "complaint room", where people can complain about anything (in particular why their super-awesome post has not been curated), and rant in front of everyone. The management and curators will from now on systematically block any private complaint about upvotes; there are more than enough posts in the useful links channel to get even the most naive individuals started.
• Be our engagement officers, checking the comment/answer/vote behavior of steemstem-supported people. No matter how good their content is, people refusing to engage will naturally see less support from the community.

As a reward, our Honor Members will have access to some secret channels and cool colors for your names on the discord. Who hasn't dreamt about that?

SUMMARY

As of this post, we are back in business, and we will try to make these changes as well as further developing our long-term goals. We're not going to drop this initiative, but it is up to the community to decide whether or not we move forward.

The list of people below is our crew. Each individual has personally opted in to sign and support the message in this post.

Founders: @lemouth, @justtryme90
Managers: @anarchyhasnogods, @mobbs, @suesa
General curators: @kryzsec, @ruth-girl, @zest
Community curators: @aboutcoolscience, @alexs1320, @carloserp-2000, @gentleshaid, @greenrun, @guga34, @iamphysical, @kingswisdom, @sco