The document below has been written by myself, @rycharde, and @Angelica7, one of the new Curation Team Managers, under instruction from the Blurt Foundation.
This is a DRAFT, so comments are welcomed. Yes, it seems long, but if it was too short it would generate more questions. At the foot is a Quick Checklist of the main points.
Blurt Curators Guidelines v.0.1
What is a Curator?
The role of curator is very important within an ecosystem such as Blurt that fosters and rewards creative content. It is more than merely distributing upvotes, although those are important too, but also in growing a community where members support each other and thereby promote the best values of that community.
The guidelines below include a variety of technical checks to ensure originality and quality, but the most important quality of a curator is the sheer enjoyment in engaging with the content and promoting that content to a wider audience. Whatever the subject, curators need a keen sense of aesthetics and a confidence in their judgments. They are rather like magazine editors in that their role is to select, showcase and encourage those quality creators to continue to produce their best.
Anybody can decide to start their own curation project. You don't have to belong to an established community. Indeed, there are people who prefer to run their own project so that they can decide on every step of the process. However, training someone else to do something that may come naturally to you may be a challenge. In such cases, the guidelines below may serve as a template for your own in-house training.
Blurt Community Curation Accounts
The Blurt Foundation supports a number of Community Curation accounts. Each supported account will have one Lead Curator, plus possibly other curators to assist as each community grows. There are also Curation Team Managers (CTM) whose job is to interface between all the Lead Curators and the Foundation. Each Lead Curator will report to the CTM with updates and any other requested information.
The financial arrangement between the Lead Curator and the Foundation is currently as follows; this is subject to change and will be edited at such time.
The Lead Curator of a Community Curation account shall be given the posting key so that they may use the power vested in that account. They have the responsibility to manage the curation and voting from that account in accordance with the New Lead Curator Training section below.
As compensation for their dedication and work, each Lead Curator is allowed to post from their personal account and to vote on such posts from the community account so long as two conditions hold: such votes will not exceed two per day at 100% weight; and such posts must be relevant and up to the standards of the community being curated.
New Curator Training
This is to ensure a uniformity of aims and methods across all curators within a community. Even an experienced curator may just need some orientation, so that the time taken can be flexible but best not to miss each step. Expect to take about one week on average per person.
- Ensure the prospective curator understands the aims and ambitions of the community and what is considered to be of good quality.
- Ensure the trainee understands and can implement basic quality checks, especially referencing sources such as quotes and images. This can also include other issues that may detract from a post, such as bad grammar and spelling, tag abuse or spamming mentions etc.
- Ensure the trainee can check for plagiarism and can submit such posts to any sanctioning process.
- Create some flexible templates for comments that the curator can use to communicate with a post author. These should be to encourage the author to either maintain their high quality or, possibly, to fix a few things, such as sources, so that the post may be reconsidered for a vote. Avoid long debates about quality.
- The trainee should keep a record of all posts that have been upvoted and/or commented upon during the training. This separates the trainee's curation list from any other personal behaviour. This should be submitted to the trainer on a daily basis for review.
- Feedback should be on-going during this period and the trainee curator encouraged to improve their skills. Depending on the community aims and topic, it can sometimes be time-consuming finding quality posts. Techniques to facilitate content discovery can be introduced here to help the new curator improve their efficiency and time-management.
- The new curator must also ensure that their own posts adhere to all the same criteria that they expect from other content creators.
- At the end, the new curator should produce an aggregated post with their favourite curated posts found during this training period. This is rather like a portfolio of their work during the training, showcasing a minimum of six quality posts they have discovered. Such a post should include thumbnail images, links to the original posts and a brief description. At this point, it is good to establish a template for future such posts.
- The showcasing of their favourite curated posts is not an examination. If the trainee has reached this stage, then they have successfully completed the training and the post is a public announcement of their new role.
- Well done!
New Lead Curator Training
A new Lead Curator is a person who is to be entrusted with a community curation account. Such training shall include all the steps above in the New Curator Training plus some additional steps below. It is expected that anybody seeking to manage a curation account should have previous experience, but if this is not the case then thorough training should be given by either an existing Lead Curator or a member of the CTM.
- A short document should be produced with the aims and ambitions of the community plus specific guidelines on what is considered to be a good quality post. This should then be posted to Blurt for future reference.
- The Lead Curator is responsible for setting guidelines so that the weight of votes are commensurate with the quality and impact of each post; this need not be published but should be consistent.
- Any post that uses multiple community curation tags must be checked so that the sum of community curation votes does not exceed 100% weight, even if all the tags are relevant.
- No user should receive a curation vote more than once per day.
- If a post is original work but previously published elsewhere, it must link to the original and should be limited to a maximum vote of 30% weight.
- The Lead Curator is encouraged to vote on comments that foster community engagement, but these should not be more than 5% weight and no more than one per user per post.
- A new Lead Curator is entrusted with training any other curators needed by the community, hence must be familiar with the training steps above.
- The Lead Curator should write and post their own set of training guidelines that are specific to their community. This is especially important if the community is not primarily English-speaking and requires such instructions in their native language. It is also important to highlight any special features that qualify as "quality posts" for a topic-centred community.
- The Lead Curator should post at least once per week about community issues and showcasing some, or even all, the posts that have been supported. This may include contests that are appropriate to the specific community.
- A Lead Curator should know how to set up a community chatroom and basic management issues about moderating such a discussion environment.
- The Lead Curator must be familiar with their obligations to the Curation Team Managers (CTM) and about information sent to the team.
- A Lead Curator who wishes to step down from their position should train a replacement and inform the CTM of their decision.
- A Lead Curator who does not follow all the guidelines will be subject to sanctions, including their removal from their position.
Closing Advice
Quality curation is an important function within the Blurt ecosystem. It demands enthusiasm, time and an aesthetic sense of what defines quality within a specific community. The work must, however, be a source of satisfaction and stimulation to the curator. For all the seriousness behind some of the quality control measures, the being a curator must be ultimately enjoyable.
Curator burn-out is very common, especially as a community grows and the number of submitted posts becomes overwhelming. Human curation does not scale. This is one thing any Lead Curator must look out for and plan ahead. Sharing the curation load can be important so that any individual can take time out and recharge their batteries. If curating ever starts to feel like a burden or a chore, that's the time to discuss bringing in new people to spread the load.
It is ultimately supposed to be rewarding, both to the community and the individual curator, so that strong guidelines can be applied with a light touch.
Quick Checklist
Curators must...
- ensure a post is original work
- check for plagiarism, spelling and grammar
- check sources of images and quotes are referenced
- check for inappropriate tags
- ensure the post is of good quality as defined by your community
- ensure any serious abuses are reported to the Lead Curator
- liaise with the community Lead Curator
Curators should...
- advise content creators via comments on any improvements to receive a vote
- engage with the community members to widen participation and improve both quantity and quality
Lead Curators must...
- follow all voting instructions as laid down by the Foundation
- liaise with the Curation Team Managers on all matters
- inform the chatroom abuse channel of any users who should be investigated
- post their own guidelines in their own language if needed
- promote their community so that it grows in both quantity and quality
- train new curators when needed
Lead Curators should...
- keep the community informed and motivated, possibly with posts showcasing quality and initiating contests
- create a trusted team so that the tasks of curation, moderation and motivation can be shared
The Blurt Foundation & Curation Team Managers
I love the criteria of the curators, and it fascinates me that u are so transparent, what I don't like at all is that the curators get paid with votes in their posts.
They have to work all day voting and curating quality posts, checking plagiarism and much more, and as a reward they have to post quality posts daily to vote? even if it is a 100% vote, it seems unfair and exploitative to me.
If you understand that the work of a curator is so important, pay them in liquid Blurt, not with votes. It is a job and as such they should not have to wait to withdraw their money, what if a curator has an emergency? should do Power down and wait? It doesn't seem like a good deal.
We hope that the best comes out of this, and what you are doing is something incredible, we really appreciate it, but do not fall into the vices of the other networks.
Exploiting curators only leads to one thing, they will start creating multi-accounts or favoring their friends and acquaintances.
Thanks, yes, my views on the matter too.
Train the curators properly, then trust them to do their jobs - if they abuse that trust then, well, a new curator will be found.
The Curation system must stop being passive, and take a more active and humane role. It can be noted that there is only the distribution of rewards and few are the curators who comment or give a positive point of view on the content created or why they are relevant within the system, there is no incentive for content creators to comment and it is something that has already been experienced in other platforms such as hive or steem, where only reward is expected but no incentive for interaction to improve everything in the blockchain. The comments should be enhanced, encouraging the vote not only of the famous whales or foundation, but of the creators as well. All this is a circle where we are all immersed
For me the most important point is that a curator knows how to establish the parameters to indicate if a content is of quality or not, something that can be defended at all times, so you must start from the fact that it is considered quality content and the parameters that a good publication should contain. As for plagiarism, it is clear that different tools should be used to check it, but also to make the rules of publication very clear in each of the communities that are sponsored by the foundation.
I understand that this is one of the first versions of the rules or regulations mentioned, has many positive points and processes that should be understood by the curator, but also should be constantly reviewed by the foundation.
On your point about comments, on Blurt they currently get the same rewards as posts so there is no longer the disincentive due to the horrible unrewarding so-called convergent-linear curve.
As for actually commenting, that needs a change of culture - this isn't steem/hive - and that should be led by people such as the curators. Now, I understand this is an expansion of their role, but I think that's good, and I see that the new #blurtwomen role is very much how I envision it in the doc above.
Two points.
Discussions on Discord are good to exchange opinions in real time, but they are not very good at coming to articulated conclusions. Comments get lost as they go up the page into oblivion! So, would be really helpful to articulate thought-out suggestions here in the comments.
I have already made a note of some issues. I could edit the above document but that could cause even more confusion. So I shall edit a copy of this doc and post it for comments, then publish a v.0.2 for all to see. Hopefully that can then be the final version.