Announcing Project Newbie: Welcoming new users on their introduction posts

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Coming back to Steemit and noticing the initiative users are taking to make this a better place with @steemcleaners, @curie and @robinhoodwhale feels great. One thing that would also be great to have is a group of people who focus on the new introduction posts from legit new users. Many of these already ongoing projects disqualify introduction posts.

I remember in the beginning I was browsing the new section and many intro posts were popular back then, but because of the attention they were getting through votes it brought up a lot of fake posts and accounts just for the profit, with time Steemit started to turn away from the introduction posts and focusing more on the content users were creating. I am not saying that's a bad thing, but since new users is what will make this platform thrive, I don't want them to get totally hidden and not receive much attention just because its an introduction post and/or said user isn't famous or already known on other platforms.

I myself haven't used the referral link when getting new users to the platform, so I can't exactly prove how much I have done for the platform so far or how many users I have brought in. My post count is pretty high though, and considering most are comments and directed to new users, maybe that can talk a bit for itself. To be honest I haven't even made an intro post myself, and I am not saying that every new user has to introduce themselves or verify their account. Those that do though, would be amazing to get them some attention and value to their post, respectively to the content in it.

With this initiative many will obviously try and fake posts and accounts, but with the help of other users who will step up and join this project, we will be able to tell fakes from real. So it won't get too much abused, the vote value of these posts coming from this project will be limited and let the rest of Steemit choose themselves how valued they think the intro post should be. This project will help the new users get their first boost on their posts, and give them a chance to get followers with the visibility and attention their post gets after the Newbie Squad has voted it up. While at the same time removing questions like "are Steem Dollars and Steem real" from new users cause of the reward they get from their intro post, and get them motivated to activate themselves more and provide content in the future.

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Guidelines

1. Post has to be within 30 minutes and 20 hours (reason of the 20 h max limit is so that we have time to evaluate the legitimacy of the post and account, and that there is time left for curators outside the group to vote on it)

2. Post has to be the first introduction post of an account (if they have made their intro post a long time ago and want to update it with a new and improved one, these can qualify too depending on their first posts reward)

3. The intro posts won't be divided into different tiers, curators of the project will decide themselves the % of vote they want to give to certain posts, with an increasing amount of new users daily the % may be lowered so our curators don't have to spend too much of their voting power on them. Remembering that the vote and attention is of more value than the reward the post makes.

4. Creating a new account focused on this and having the curators follow its votes and other votes from the curation team, a comment placed from said account could at the same time verify the legitimacy of the user for future references. It will also save time for the other projects who won't have to verify the accounts in order to assign them to @robinhoodwhale or @curie. This could all be made a lot easier with a "verified" button on users pages, but until/if Steemit implements that, this would be very helpful until that time.

A google docs with all users and their posts that the project has curated will be made public.

I created a channel called #projectnewbie on steem.chat for curators who want to help out with this project. (No finder fees available yet but I'm sure some users will step up and help out with that too to get an incentive to look out for new legit users) Will also be inviting users to it that I know have wanted a project like this come to live and be more welcoming to the new users joining Steemit every day. Let me know in the comments down below if you have anything to add to either the guidelines or other thoughts you may have about the project or how to improve it.

Thanks for reading!