Steemit Subcommunities: The Members and Their Roles

Subcommunities are a way for Steemians to come together around a specific subject of interest to teach, learn and earn based on that common interest. This is my original idea so I am not speaking from experience, but rather seeking to innovate this concept and hope that it gains steem (pun intended)! For the moment, I will not be creating any subcommunities because I have other projects that have more priority. I am simply laying out some guidelines that can then be tested by others to see how it works out and to provide further insights and solutions should any problems or defects arise in the model.

A subcommunity will have four types of members and will initially be composed of 5 participants. The four types will be known as Initiators, Artists, Patrons and Enforcers.

An Initiator is the first person who will begin the process of creating a subcommunity. The Initiator's first task is to choose the subject of interest that he or she is most passionate about. That can be anything from biology to history. The Initiator holds a temporary, but obviously historical role in the subcommunity, because all members have to be Artists. The Initiator then has to create a tag which will serve as a way to unite the members under that common interest. The tag cannot be a popular tag like "history" or "life" or "steemit" because this would make the subcommunity unmanageable. So something more appropriate would be "mayanhistory" or any other tag that does not yet exist. You'll understand why later. The Initiator then will need to find four more members to become Artists within the subcommunity.

Artists, which essentially are all the members of a subcommunity, are responsible for three main tasks: creating good content on the subject of interest, supporting the other Artists by upvoting their posts and creating a dialogue under the content posted by all 5 Artists. I used the word dialogue intentionally to differentiate from commenting. Commenting is fine but "Great post!" and "Nice job!" does not add value to the conversation or dialogue. Artists should genuinely add their insights, ideas and even disagreements to help the subcommunity grow in knowledge and awareness.

Patrons have a great responsibility to help raise the value of the subcommunity. As always, Patrons are still Artists. Each subcommunity will have one Patron and the Patron will be chosen based on having the highest amount of Steem Power. That Steem Power must then be used to upvote the content and comments of all the members of the subcommunity. Patrons can also decide to add new Artists or increase the number of subcommunity members beyond 5. Patrons can also modify these guidelines, always keeping in mind the desires of the entire subcommunity. Patrons are also responsible for initiating new Rounds and announcing Round winners.

Enforcers have the responsibility to make sure that the rules are being followed and to point out when a rule has not been respected. An Enforcer is the member of the subcommunity with the lowest Steem Power. It is in the best interest of the Enforcer to make sure that the guidelines are respected because this will help raise his or her Steem Power, as well as that of the entire subcommunity. As mentioned already, Enforcers are also Artists.

Rounds are the subcommunity's way of creating good content and being mutually rewarded for those efforts. The very first Round will be announced by the Initiator. A Round lasts 7 days. The Initiator will create a post announcing the beginning of the first Round and will be timed from the moment it is published. In the post will be the names of the members participating in that Round. The first tag in each post will be the subcommunity's tag, like the example I provided of "mayanhistory". All Artists then have 24 hours to publish content with the same tag as their first tag in the post they create. Each Artists must submit at least one post before the 24 hours have passed. Artists can create more than one post, but only those posts within the first 24 hours will be monitored for that Round. All other Artists are required to upvote those posts. Obviously, you do not want to exaggerate baring in mind that there is a limited amount of voting power available each day. Artists are then required to dialogue within each post providing at least one paragraph to each post. Artists are not obligated to upvote comments.

During the first Round, the Initiator will need to take on the role of Enforcer.

After 4 days and 12 hours, which is the midpoint of a Round, the Initiator (later the Patron) will check to see which of the posts is trending the most by clicking on the (example) "mayanhistory" tag to see who is in first place. The Artist who is trending the most wins the reward of having that post resteemed by the other Artists.

At the end of Round 1, a Patron and Enforcer will be assigned and the Initiator no longer exists. The new Patron will then decide when to begin the next round.

If an Enforcer finds that an Artist has not respected the guidelines, he or she will announce it to the subcommunity and the Patron will exclude that Artist from the next Round. The Patron then must either find another Artist to add to the subcommunity, or wait until the following Round to bring the excluded Artist back into play.

Before another Round commences, the Enforcer will double check to see that the Patron indeed has the most Steem Power. The Patron then during the next Round will have the responsibility of upvoting all posts and all comments of the subcommunity's posts submitted during the first 24 hours of that Round.

I hope that you have enjoyed these thoughts. Let me know what you think and if you would like to try this out as I would be fascinated to observe this in real time and to offer other insights and suggestions.