For weeks now, Xposed has been on Recess. Whereas that was in part because I had some personal commitments to dispense, which ensured I could not maintain the same level of activity on steemit required to curate, the recess also gave me time to reflect on and ‘re-think’ the entire concept of my curation activity in regard to Xposed.

When I began Xposed, I had the goal to bring exposure to high quality but undervalued/unrewarded content. That, I had hoped would lead traffic, including high SP voters to those posts and get them rewarded.

Was the goal achieved? To some extent it was, but not as much as I had wished. It gave exposure which led some to further get exposed to ‘higher’ curating groups such as @curie.

However I also found that it fell short of getting those featured rewarded as I had hoped. This is the reason I gave Xposed a break. There was no sincere reason for featuring planktons/minnows, if at the end of the day, they didn’t get rewarded, or as became the case; my feature post was the one instead being rewarded! It was more like a feature scheme for benefiting myself. And that was not my interest.

I have since just about wanted to end the project, but having thought long and hard, I decided to tweak things a bit in a bid to incentivize curators to indeed follow up on those I feature and reward them.

What is the incentive?

This is where the Curators Rebound comes in. This is a rewards redistribution scheme where 75% of the SBD paid out of the feature post is rebound to the top 7 curators and 25% to the scouts.

How does it work?

• Every day, I will make a feature post showcasing 3 plankton posts of proven quality.

What are you as a curator required to do?

1. All you have to do is Upvote the feature post by vote weight of your own choice
2. Follow up on the 3 posts featured and upvote those also at a vote weight of your choice

Then what?

If you are among the top 7 upvoters, you earn to the tune of 75% of the SBD paid out of the feature post that you upvoted. This is transferred as soon as the feature post pays out after the seven days.

Take the example of a feature post that you upvote to a potential payout of $50 SBD. Upon payout, you get a redistributed rebound of 14.0625 SBD.

Potential Post Payout = $50
Default System Distribution
Curators Default (25%)	Feature Post Default (75%)
$12.5	$37.5
	50% SBD	50% SP
Paid out after seven days as SBD	18.75
Redistributed Payout (18.75)
Curator’s Rebound 75%	Scouts 25%
14.0625 SBD	4.6875SBD

The plan is to rebound SBD to the top 7 curators. To leave your individual share unaffected, the 75% will be divided proportional to the weight of individual upvotes

Will the planktons benefit?

That is the goal. First and most importantly, you are going to upvote them. As such, the Plankton whose post is featured, and which you upvote, I expect, will have traffic redirected to their featured post, the accruing rewards hence there of all remain theirs to keep.

In addition, the Plankton/minnow who is featured will by default henceforth get enlisted into a daily upvote plan, entitling each to an upvote by the host account (@mirrors) on at least one of their posts a day for as long as their works continue to meet the set quality criteria.

What is the scouting plan?

I will remain the chief scout. For every feature post however, I will make a call for others (everyone) to submit/recommend an assorted list of 3 plankton posts to be featured next.

Then what, if i recommend as a scout?

If your set of 3 are chosen, you qualify for the other 25% of SBD from the feature post in which those you recommended are featured.

In summary, the scheme ensures that the featured planktons are rewarded, deservedly; the curators also get rewarded as well as the scouts. The curators just to be clear, take 75% of SBD paid out of the feature posts and the scouts take 25%. I keep the steem power. I think that is only fair enough.

The ultimate winner, I trust, is the platform as more and more planktons are featured and continue to add value to the platform, confident that their efforts are worth it!

What is the criteria for post selection?

To make sure that no one bound to upvoting otherwise undeserving content, and for the purpose of scouts to recommend, here are the set criteria for selecting which plankton posts to feature. They remain from before!

(i) Originality

Originality means that the plankton/minnow featured is the principle source of the subject discoursed. It means that whereas extensive research is encouraged and requisite, still the post must be grounded on and led by the plankton/minnow author’s own thoughts and opinions. If it is a science post for example, the subject doesn’t have to be unique, although that is preferable, but the author must own it up in such a manner that he/she thoughtfully qualifies/disqualifies, and/or adds to the thoughts/opinions of others on the same subject.

(ii) Depth

Depth is largely a function of length and insight. But what is the recommended post length that satisfies the quality criteria? There is not a blanket answer to that question, my own belief however is that length-wise, a good post is like a mini-skirt - it must be short enough to arouse and sustain interest but long enough to cover the subject!

(iii) Relevance

The post must address a relevant subject, one that concerns a pertinent societal issue, and from which the community can learn. What value does the subject addressed add to the community?

Future plan

Depending on the success of the scheme, the plan is to increase the number of those featured to seven and above, and to engage other plankton/minnow supporting groups to recommend posts to feature.

Any advice?

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This is a loosely thought out scheme, subject to further modifications. It is what I could come up with to see to it that planktons I feature get rewarded, but also those who reward them -the curators – as well as those who scout them out, earn.

If you have a better idea how to reward all these three variables, the planktons, the curators and the scouts, let me know and we adjust accordingly. Otherwise for now, I will start with this one and ask that we all support planktons, and kick out of steemit the retention problem!