My curation owls for scientific content
Hi Steemians! I think Steemit is still lacking some post quality control. When a post receives an upvote it is unclear what the exact reason is. It is also unclear if the upvoter has actually read the post.
The Six Scientific Owls
I cannot change how others upvote but I can change my upvote methods. To give my upvoting process rigour I made criteria for when I am reading a scientific post. By scientific post I mean a post in the fields of classical sciences: physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology. There are a total of 6 criterea. For each of these criterea I made an adorable owl by modifying these owl vector graphics by Анна Куликова. An owl or owls will be awarded in the comment section of the post if you did a good job for the corresponding criteria. In case you did not get all the 6 owls I will also explain why in the comment section. Let me introduce my criteria for scientific content:
Citation and sources
Text formatting and Layout
For scientific content there is usually a lot of information to process. Proper text layout can help the reader in pinpointing important/crucial information of the post. When writing scientific formulas it is important to do it in an aesthetically pleasing way. For example by using Latex. So this purple bird is also an easy catch.
Spelling and Grammar
We are living in a world of spelling/grammar checkers. You can also always ask another steemian to spell check your work. So I am sure you can get this blue bird.
Clarity and Completeness
When writing science you need to be clear and complete in your explanations. Clear means that your work is not open to misinterpretations by your target audience. Complete means that you do not leave out important facts/details/sources. If you do so you can receive this pure white fellow.
Originality
If you re-write a single web-page and post it on steemit it is not original content since I might as well read the web-page that you based your work on. If you are able to give your own interpretation of a scientific phenomenon or are able to construct your own examples you might find this green boy one day in your comment section. This might be the most difficult one to get. Well it is not easy being green.
Sexy Science
Science can appear unappealing to many people outside the scientific community. If you can explain science in a fun/sexy way then you did a good job and you will be rewarded with this pink sexy science owl.
UPDATED How to call the curation owls
First you need to follow me so that I can add you to the owl curation pool. If you use the science, mathematics, maths, physics, mechanics, biology, chemistry or steemstem tag and write in a reply to your post
@mathowl I want to catch them all
and you will be put in a queue for future curation. First time callers will be given priority. You can only call @mathowl once per week. If you call @mathowl twice or more per week you will be removed from the queue. There is still some automatization stuff that I need to sort out but I will keep you updated about that.
How important is citation to your grey owl when the content involves knowledge that has long been generalized and considered basic within a specialty?
For instance, I am working on a post about the cents measurement in musical tuning. If you take the "perfect fifth" in a Pythagorean scale, which represents a frequency multiple of 3/2 times unison, you get its value in cents when you multiply 1200 times its base-2 logarithm, like so: 1200 times LOG(3/2,2), yielding about 701.955¢. If you take the perfect fifth in 12 equal temperament, which represents a frequency multiple of 2^(7/12) times unison, you get its value in cents the same way: 1200 times LOG(2^(7/12),2), yielding exactly 700¢. Thus the difference between them is a little less than 2¢.
If tuning is not your specialty and you are given to doubts or disputes by nature, you might want citations for all of those facts: the formula for calculating the cents value of an interval from its base-2 logarithm; the multiple of unison that represents a perfect fifth in Pythagorean tuning; the variant perfect fifth in 12 equal temperament; and so forth.
But all of these facts are just givens among the people involved in tuning who quantify musical intervals using the cents measurement. Citing sources for these facts would be an extremely arbitrary procedure, requiring a choice between thousands of sources that one would not normally bother to consult at all. It would be exactly like citing a source for the fact that there are 12 inches in a foot.
So I'm troubled by the prospect that your grey owl might remain out of reach when a post involves facts, customary agreements, or conventions that are "common ground" within a field, but might look to people outside the field like points that ought still to be in contention and that therefore should be supported with citations. Do you think this could sometimes become an issue?
It depends on your target audience. But I absolutely agree that this is a grey area which is a bit open to interpretation. That is also why he is grey :)
Nice work @mathowl. You have a spelling mistake in your post: "aestatically" should be "aesthetically"
Cheers!
It is clear that I do not deserve the blue owl :P
You got a 12.90% upvote from @adriatik courtesy of @mathowl!
ok, I wrote mathowl in one of my posts. Hope I manage to catch them all !
I hope my tracker works :P
Damn, I wish there was no limit in calling the mathowl. This service is simply hilarious. XD
Amazing idea! I really love it and will surely call you when my next science post comes up. Looking forward to caching all the owls. :D
Good to know you have taken some article assessment criteria from journal standards.
I'm so doing this. Haha. Just called you in one of my posts :)
These owls ain't there yet on my post though? haha I tagged you. Are the owls slacking off? hmmmmm
Hi so my bot is tracking everything through steemistry and steemistry is down. I will write a update about it. I am so sorry. I need to change the bot to tracking my followers.
No worries at all. You are making an effort to make this place more fun and engaging at the same time. I appreciate that :)