@sndbox-alpha is a curation account with rotating themes and liaisons. Each month, a new theme will be announced alongside a new team who will be tasked with upvoting content. “Alpha” is a community account created for the first cohort of the @sndbox incubator; a diverse group of 100 Steemians representing nearly 20 countries and languages.
Curation Experimentation & Empowerment
Today we’re excited to announce the launch of the @sndbox-alpha account! This will be a rotating curation initiative operated by the incubator’s first cohort. Each @sndbox incubator cohort will receive their own independent account to experiment with curation practices and empower strong Steemit content. In this post, we’ll go through how the trail will operate and what goals this account will have looking from short to long-term.
Alpha Schedule & Guidelines
10 core themes were chosen by popular vote among incubator members. These 10 themes will be covered by different teams of curators over the course of 5 months. Posts will be nominated and curated by Sndbox members.
The following are the themes that were selected through a recommendation process:
- January : Art + Music
- February : Meetups + Philanthropy
- March : Philosophy + Writing + Literature
- April : Education + Science
- May : Steemit Comments
As always, we ( @sndbox ) strive to be 100% transparent for the sake of open critique and public use. The following are our preliminary guidelines for @sndbox-alpha’s use -
- 30,000 SP will be delegated via @sndbox to the @sndbox-alpha account
- No voting on @sndbox posts other than major announcements
- Majority of curation dedicated to external (non-Sndbox affiliated) accounts
- Curation practices to be reevaluated on a monthly basis
- Curation Teams are compensated through 50% of SBD payouts (all else to be powered up)
- @sndbox retains full ownership of the account’s Steem Power
The Current State of Curation Trails
Trails on Steemit are an important resource to empower authors and curators. Each has it's own strategy. Trails wear a lot of hats within the Steem blockchain, here are the essentials of what they provide today:
Trails cultivate a support network for good curators. Trails can be used to back specific Steemit users and provide a boost beyond that individual's Steem Power. Trails "follow the leader" and are a nice way to strengthen a curator's standing within the Steemit community.
Maximize curation rewards. On the financial side, following a trail is a generally viable strategy to use your individual voting power to its fullest potential. In theory, if enough votes were trailing and cumulative votes generated a larger payout, you would receive higher curation than typical, non-'trailed' posts.
A resource to build communities. Upvote trails can also mobilize people around special topics or interests.
When we started out @sndbox, we used our Streemian curation trail as main way to bootstrap awareness and support for the project. As time went on and we experimented more with voting, we realized a few key issues in the curation trail approach. First of all, it’s a fairly simple transaction. Your upvote tags along to give a bigger bump and you receive a better curation reward. Trails don’t demand any more engagement than that and it also means that once the curator stops voting, there’s nothing created as consequence of the trail.
This leads to the issue of personal accounts. The majority of trails are tied to a single individual and because of that, it's rare to have collaborative exchange between trail leaders and trailers. Also, in the case that the curator starts upvoting material that you do not want to support, you’re not left with much room for negotiation.
Experimenting with New Curation Strategies
As a result of researching pros and cons, the @sndbox team wanted to try something different. By developing a program for account growth and using an external account with rotating leaders, we could establish a more dynamic and experimental trail that can grow exponentially in impact and scope.
The @sndbox-alpha account will be used by the cohort as a Steemit-wide curation account as well as the platform to post on specific member developments. The account will be flexible and up to the members to decide in which direction to drive it.
Long-Term Outlook and Growth
Ultimately, our primary goal is to incubate a framework that allows Steemit communities to scale cumulative impact. Much in the way we strive to build up Sndcastle communities to become autonomous and growing foundations, we believe that the @sndbox-alpha account is a first step toward structuring scalable communities with overlapping interests and ambitions.
With Sndbox recently shifting to a rotating program where we plan to incubate a few hundred new Steemians by the end of 2018, developing cohort-specific curation accounts will help increase the group’s impact beyond the core schedule. This means that alumni groups can begin to diversify topic growth and project development. After a few program rounds (alpha, beta, gamma...) we’ll have a number of dedicated and collaborative curation accounts completely dedicated to growing high quality content and user commitment on Steemit!
If you would like be involved and engage the first Sndbox cohort on this journey, we encourage you follow the @sndbox-alpha trail on Steemauto.com. As always, let us know your thoughts below!
awesome post
welcome to steemit society. your first post is informative for me . i hope be successful in the platform
As a philosopher & poet, I’m very interested in this initiative, @sndbox-alpha!
By way of introduction, here’s a peek at my work, off Steemit: https://www.amazon.com/Yahia-Lababidi/e/B0042SRQWG
Looking forward to knowing you better, Yahia
Very interesting initiative. Firstly, it's great that you're helping so many other Steemians.
Secondly, I would love to be involved in this project. Can you please let me know how to get involved?
Hi @lukebrn, thanks for your support and comment!
Each monthly Curation Team will each have their own way of engaging the broader Steemit public - that might be through public contests, spotlights on new authors, support in discovering posts, etc... Those guidelines are entirely up to each team and the goals they set.
Later this week, @sndbox-alpha will be introducing themselves more personally and will address a handful of outreach strategies.
No problem!
That sounds fantastic, I'll be keeping an eye out for the different outreach methods.
I will definitely look out for those posts later this week by @sandbox-alpha, would love to be involved in this project. Thanks for the great work you do!
Upvote me back yaaa
A game changer about the way curations will be done and a real chance for so many Steemians that are doing so great jobs. Grow, grow and grow. Cheers for @sndbox-alpha!
Great to see @sndbox growing and maturing into the next phase like this; excited about the road ahead and what the entire initiative can do to promote quality content and creativity on Steemit!
The rotation of curators most certainly will help retain users of the sndbox-alpha community; if you don't like the content, just wait a month! I have seen good content supported by the orignal sndbox in the short time spent on the platform and am looking forward to more from this project.
as a non-sndbox member, whenever i encounter with sndbox related content i do enjoy read them. But this one, @sndbox-alpha, is more than a joy! It encourages for quality content and productivity. Gives a hope for deserved visibility on the platform. I personally appreciate the team behind the project. Welcome and Bonne Chance @sndbox-alpha
This is good news! Thank you. Only today I posted a blog about kindness and sharing of information then I find this!!
First of all, thank you for your commitment to the community and for continuously looking for ways to make this platform better.
Second, and this is more of a personal note.
This move is killing my Steemit game! I wish I was there when we voted for themes. Y'all know I've been trying to pump out the #spirituality tag for a while now so we can get more flavour up in here.
Serves me right for not being more active lol.
I love the idea of putting up something new here in steemit. I'm curious about what you mean by #spirituality.
Spirituality for me covers a lot of things but the biggest distinction is, Spirituality is NOT Religion.
Topics "Spirituality" could cover would be.
Crystals, Meditation, Reiki, Chakras, Feng Shui, Astrology, Numerology
Great initiative! Do you have specific set of criteria for screening Art and Music posts? Hoping to take part of this wonderful project.
Welcome to Steemit :)
This is good news, thanks you.
buen post saludos desde venezuela friends
So good! Wonderful, many thanks.
Thank you for sharing what will be curated for the month of January onwards although to bad im bad at art and music but Philanthropy and meet ups give me hope as well as Philosophy and literature haha.
I will follow and hopefully will get a chance to be featured haha.
Looks good. I think the building of more bespoke communities underneath the large umbrella ones will be a great benefit. I’ll keep checking in. Trail, for some reason, doesn’t show on my phone, so I’ll grab a look from a computer.
So how do I get involved in this project?
we all want to be involved in this project i wanna know how to get involved
Should we expect @sndbox-alpha's attention towards the Portuguese written content?! :) If not, you must consider that! It's a great project! I'll definitely follow!
Alright, let's go @sndbox-alpha! Steem ON!
I was just thinking about you guys lol, didn't realize you guys were already expanding into full-fledged curation. That's really great! Now that I'm fully back on Steemit, I'd be excited and honored to contribute to the @sndbox (and/or @sandbox-alpha) mission in any way that I can.
Excelente y perfecta presentacion! Saludos welcome.
What a great project helping other steemians especially minnow. Hopefully I could be part of your team. Please let me how ?
Upvote me back please :)
Really liking the idea of how the members are also involved in curating good content. It has become more community-like. Which is awesome. Thank you #sndbox
Hello fellow Steemian .. I'm a newbie here. Please support me by following my blogs and I will follow yours as well . Hope we can be good friends.. Please check my introductory post. Thank you. Lovelots
https://steemit.com/nikkabomb/@crisjay110313/hello-from-the-queen-city-of-southern-philippines-cebu
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Am very happy you came along....@sndbox
This is a worthy concept that should be supported by everyone who truly means well for this platform. Your dedication to the growth of steem blockchain is second to none.
As day goes on, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that the men behind project @sndbox are my role models. And I must built a community similar with what you guys are doing for growth of everyone of us and steem blockchain.
Thanks team @sndbox!
Upv by by latest fellow at @sndbox team,
@eurogee, the Steemivangelist and the founder of @euronation Newbie's Support Team
okay. this looks promising. i was just strolling around when i came to this page. i have no idea since i'm still a minnow in this platform. would love be of help and participate in this project. question though, how can i get involved? thanks anyways. have a great day ahead!
good news! joined the trail
so cool .. great to be part of the "trials" lol
Art is history with out words.
It's so beautiful to have you here on steemit. I took time to come welcome you and I know you will love it here. Welcome to our family. @greatness96
Steemit is getting better and better, and making more impact in communities. Thanks, @sndbox for setting the pace. I will surely follow.
Hey Welcome To Steemit, and to the Community i am also new on Steemit and youre Post is Amazing Follow me for Follow back :)
you great brother
Beautiful! Through this, we will pure our hearts out for a better content! Sometimes, I think that this platform is solely for the gifted writers. However, we non-writers see to it that we put our best to our posts. We may not earn much, but surely we will learn a lot!
Hello fellow Steemian .. I'm a newbie here. Please support me by following my blogs and I will follow yours as well . Hope we can be good friends.. Please check my introductory post. Thank you. Lovelots
https://steemit.com/nikkabomb/@crisjay110313/hello-from-the-queen-city-of-southern-philippines-cebu
What the hell??
hello @sndbox-alpha and welcome to steemit!
this is a great place with a great community .. glad to have you.
@ricmark
I like that you're thinking beyond the traditional curation trail since they are very imperfect Good ideas and I'm very curious to see how things go!
very good ... very interesting ... what would also be good and interesting in this curation project is, that being part of you @leotrap, that the CURAZAO program be made...Without a doubt, the best live cure program...Thank you and I will surely participate in the curation in February and March...if you can explain me how it will be the curation of comments from steemit I will appreciate it
Hi @matuca, just follow the month schedule and make me know when making those posts! :)
1st Meetup of Jakarta Steemian — Steemit https://steemit.com/meetup/@andrianhabibi/1st-meetup-of-jakarta-steemian
I am happy because I got your visit this morning :)