Some news from STEMsocial before entering 2022

in StemSocial3 years ago

It has been a while since the last time we reported about the STEMsocial project. The pandemic has slowed us down quite a bit, and most of what we had planned before it is frozen. However, frozen does not mean forgotten or dead. We have plans...

In this short report, we give some updates about curation (which has been a constant since the early days) and the development of our app (which is currently in a state of cerebral death). Both consist in incontrovertible milestones to reach our grand goal: create an environment where STEM professionals and enthusiasts could be incentivised to take STEM communication in a new direction (i.e. directly to the readers without the need of a third party).

Our idea of growing the community with STEM live events is still there, but is rescheduled for later. More urgent things (our app for example) are in order.



Development of our application


All developments related to our application ended in March 2019, when @lemouth (who was the sole developer) got his agenda completely overwhlelmed by university and research duties (in the middle of a pandemic). Today, we can definitely say that our application is in a very bad state. We however need it to achieve our grand goal...

A solution was found earlier in December. The STEMsocial team is happy to announce that @bambukah, who is a contributor and developer for several Hive projects, agreed to become our lead developer. @lemouth will in addition stay on board to review the code. Two pairs of eyes are always superior to one.

After a short discussion we decided to start all developments related to the STEMsocial app from scratch. Here is our roadmap for Q1 2022.

  • Create a testing environment (NodeJS, Docker, NginX in proxy-pass mode, etc.)
  • Install and configure the condenser application.
  • Update the user interface so that it matches the one that had been deployed on the former STEMsocial application.
  • Asking and handling feedbacks for future improvements (usage of the app, responsive design, better accessibility, etc.).
  • Moving to production version on the stem.openhive.network address.

We decided not to create any DHF proposal for these developments. We aim to do so once this Q1 2022 work will be done and could be integrated into a longer-term roadmap including curation (the development of dedicated tools; plus see below), live events and plans to get in reach with big institutes and known STEM bloggers.


Curation


Our curators browse many tags to track down original and quality content related to all STEM fields in three languages (English, French and Spanish). Whereas we focus mainly on our STEMsocial community tag, we also check out other tags such as #science, #technology, #engineering, #stem, #stemsocial and many more.

We require that any given post discusses some STEM content, but we are flexible on this definition (for instance, we support history, psychology, economics, architecture, medicine and more).

We have moreover always been highly respectable of intellectual property. As such, we always verify that a post is not fraudulent or dishonest (references, image credits and availability for commercial purposes, plagiarism).

For the rest, the supported content is quite freeform. There is no length requirement and our support relies on originality, style, effort and creativity. As one writes on a social media blockchain, we specifically focus on content that is easily digestible by everyone.

We upvote posts according to four levels.

  • 10%: To encourage a new user or to acknowledge effort.
  • 30%: Average post that fits the guidelines but does not really discuss anything new or exciting, or that is not written with any personality.
  • 65%: Very good posts showing both character in their writing style and bringing some fascinating content to Hive. We feel that this class of posts contains information that could be searched for in the future and should thus belong to the top posts.
  • 100%: The best of the best, often written with a unique approach to a topic. This content may be completely original, even groundbreaking, demonstrating one's own research, and it will typically be an easy and even fun read.

In addition, setting @stemsocial as a beneficiary to the post rewards slightly increases the level of support.


The famous last words


Please do not hesitate to use the comment section of this post to ask questions or suggest anything. You can also reach us out on Discord.

If you like what we do, please consider joining our community on HIVE and delegating to or trailing the @stemsocial account (85% of the curation rewards are returned).

We wish all of you a happy new year!

Sort:  
 3 years ago  

It's been a very difficult 2020/2021 for everyone. I'm certain even animals can feel it. I'm glad the project is undergoing a revival. This is a very good development.

You probably forgot to mention where the initial funding will come from pending the time a proposal would be put up. This might be important for reference purpose.

 3 years ago  

You are right. I forgot to mention this.

We got about 300-350 HBD (I don't remember the exact amount). I hesitated quite a bit about what to do with those, but finally decided to take it for myself as a kind of reward for the more than a thousand of hours I spent on the previous application. They however have not been spent (they are sitting in my account) and I have no intention in spending them. Anyone is free to disagree with that move, although I think it is a fair move.

These details will be included in the next proposal, don't worry.

Lol. Who would question you for taking that after investing that many hours into developing the previous application? I actually think it's nice to get rewards for a job well-done. There's nothing wrong with that.

 3 years ago  

Thanks pearlumie. It has been a while. How are you?

I'm fine and okay. How are you doing, sir?

 3 years ago  

As usual: science, science and science. Life is almost back to normal here (almost because of the pandemic and the war). :)

Lol. After dedicating some much time to science, I don't expect you'd stop now. Things are back to normal here except for some stores still enforcing the face masks. My guess would be that they bought too many and they need us to take it off their hands, lol.

About the war, I hope you're far away and safe?

 3 years ago  

Was actually wondering if you were going to just spend those hours for free, knowing how precious every minute is to you. Personally, I don't have any objection to the move and will not even if you take more in the nearest future.

However, I think you misinterpreted my comment or maybe I couldn't just relate your response to the comment I made. I asked where the funds to pay the dev would come from pending the time the project will get funded by the community. Unless you are implying that the money in your wallet, which is supposed to be personal, is going towards that.

 3 years ago  

Ah yeah, now I see.

@bambukah and I are planning to write weekly reports from the STEMsocial account and take a beneficiary share of the associated rewards. Every month, a bigger report will be written as well. That's all we can do at the moment as we have no dedicated budget.

 3 years ago  

That's good. Kudos to you guys

Reading an update like this from @steemstem reminds me of those days interaction via steemit. How I hope such interaction can happen here again. Indeed we have missed a number of steemstem authors.

I will be happy to see the success of the steemstem application, of course it has been a long time expectation and I hope it will be achieved now that @bambukah is now here with oga @lemouth.

And lastly, One must not overlook this gesture

In addition, setting @stemsocial as a beneficiary to the post rewards slightly increases the level of support.

Well done to the team @stemsocial

 3 years ago  

Many old authors have indeed left the ship for ages. But who knows, they may come back at some point. On the practical side, I will start to get organised with @bambukah from January onward, and we will regularly write reports about what we do.

PS: Note that we are discussing the STEMsocial application and not the SteemSTEM one ;)

PS: Note that we are discussing the STEMsocial application and not the SteemSTEM one ;)

Yes, STEMsocial application, it was a mistake from my end

It is wonderful to read this update. Exciting times ahead for the STEMsocial community. I will brush off my science creds and post I hope some interesting, entertaining content in the coming weeks.

Happy New Year to the STEMsocial team and the community.

 3 years ago  

I am looking forward to read your new blogs! Thanks for your wishes, and happy new year in the meantime!

Happy New Year to you and your family, @lemouth!

It's so good to hear that stemsocial is finally going to work and you have a new reliable developer for your app, would you please give a brief explanation about how you measure the consumers' rewards?

 3 years ago  

I am not sure to have fully understood the question. What do you mean by consumer's rewards? Is it about how we choose the strength of the STEMsocial support?

in advance thanks for answering me, I appreciate that. For making my question more specific, consider that consumers reward in hive blog depends not only on the weight of their HP, but also the time voters upvote, from two minute after the post has created or later than that.

 3 years ago (edited) 

According to my understanding of HF25, all curation windows have disappeared (see here). Therefore, I am not sure there is anything to worry about here.

Greetings dear friends of @StemSocial, I think the proposal for the year 2022 is excellent, stemsocial has been for many of us the meeting place to socialize academic aspects, I am glad to hear that you have new goals to improve our interaction.

Goodbye, have a happy new year and much success in the development of this new application.

 3 years ago  

Thanks for passing by, and I wish you a happy new year as well!

I didn't know that you supported history and economics and architecture 'and more'! That's heartening!
And nice to get some clear explanation on how the posts are evaluated.
Looking forward to the app!

 3 years ago  

We are actually as broad as possible. I actually have mid terms plans (Q2/Q3) for the app to facilitate STEM curation too. But one thing at a time.

I so love this community.. I hope for a better 2022..

for instance, we support history, psychology, economics, architecture, medicine and more).

I write medical content and this somehow makes it look like medicine is not core science..

I wish us more success in 2022.. I good also to deliver great content this year

 3 years ago  

We all hope for a better 2022, believe me. And please don't worry, we actually support medical content! Cheers!

Thank you for your support.. I actually believe in the stem community

Greetings @steemstem community.
I hope you had a happy new year 2022 together with your families.
It is gratifying to know about the new plans you have for this year that promises to be better in every way.
We can only wait for the launch of this new application and for the interaction between users and the published content to be more effective. Because that is where the support of the community will come from.
Best regards

 3 years ago  

Thanks for your nice message and passing by. We are all quite excited with these developments and hope to finalise them as soon as possible. I wish you a great year!

Wow
Very good

 3 years ago  

Thanks!

Thanks bro

keep up the good work @stemsocial, and thanks for your impact so far 👍.

 3 years ago  

We will, don't worry! Thanks for passing by!

Wow... Just getting to see this. I just recently came back to Hive and of course, I thought of checking on my favourite community. This is a nice development and I'm keeping my fingers crossed on it. Hopefully, it would be completed soon.

 3 years ago  

Me too I do :D

Well understood, thanks for enlightening on us on what's needed in the #Stemsocial community. I promise abide by the rules. Let's Give On!

It is a very interesting community
I expect to post with you