Official Launch of SteemPH Gold - A Steemit Group and resources focused on helping PH creatives grow

Dear Steemit Friends,

Today marks the official launch of @phgold (a sub-group of SteemPH) - a project dedicated towards showcasing and supporting talented individuals who support and produce content and material that help spread awareness of Steemit in the Philippines.

As most who join the SteemPH Discord Server know, we have a very open and inviting community and are constantly looking for ways to grow and support our community. With this growth comes a lot of challenges and lessons that the team is constantly learning from. Because of the accepting and open nature of the organization, we are frequently the target of abuse when it comes to the services we provide - not only to the PH community but to the Steemit community as a whole.

We want to continue being an open community supporting talented individuals regardless of who they are and where they are from, so a solution (whether it is temporary or permanent) needed to be put in place so we could continue providing support without taking anything away that was already existing.

Current State of the SteemPH Support Services

---

Like most groups that support users from the Steemit community, we have a number of Bots that support our community. UpvotePH is the most popular of these bots and supports any registered user of SteemPH by providing small upvotes of members posts. Over the course of the bots existence, we have seen a huge spike in the number of registrations and users utilizing the UpvotePH service.

Month-to-Date Data

What we have begun to notice is that a number of registrations and users are individuals who do not necessarily give anything back to the PH community and are instead just there to promote their own posts and leech on the system we have established. Unfortunately, we don't have enough resources and manpower to police this resource, and I don't want to necessarily take it away from the community because it does help genuine members promote their content and boost their rewards.

Ongoing State of the SteemPH Support Services

---

With the information we have at hand, we wanted to establish a supplementary system that would allow us to continue supporting all Steemit users who join the Steemit Philippines community through UpvotePH, but at the same time recognize and reward the contributions of those who have continued to help SteemPH grow and establish itself among the Steemit Community.

Our solution - SteemPH Gold. Supported by a number of Core team members, Witnesses, and community members who have taken it upon themselves to constantly support members of the PH community and to help lead, educate, and organize events to foster growth and prosperity among the organizations most active users.

UpvotePH will continue to support the community as a whole. We will never discriminate against anyone who wishes to use our basic services to help them grow and prosper in the Steemit community. Usage, of course, is subjective and abuse will strictly not be tolerated.

SteemPH Gold is a more premium service that will be offered to PH Community members who have shown commitment and support towards activities and participation in efforts to help grow Steemit and the PH Community. Access to this service is on an invite basis ONLY. All users who are interested in upgrading their SteemPH membership and status to PH Gold must complete the following:

1. Fill out and Submit an Access Request Form.
2. The form, as well as your activity and contributions, will be reviewed by members of the PH Gold
   -- If you are granted access you will be sent a DM in Discord notifying you of your status change and further instructions
   -- If you are not granted access, you will also be notified of the reasons why
3. Once Accepted you will gain access to the private PH Gold Channels in the SteemPH Discord server so you can register
4. Registration is done by sending 2 SBD to @phgold through Steemit.com with memo register then type $register [steemit username] in the registration channel. This is a one-time registration fee that we feel is reasonable enough for those who truly want to support the PH Community. All registration fees will go back into powering up the bot that supports the PH Gold members.

PH Gold Mission

---

Like the vision of Steemit Philippines, PH Golds mission is To grow the Filipino Steemit Blogging Community through positivity and empowerment using the underlying technology of Steemit and the STEEM blockchain.

Recruitment of talented and gifted individuals and organizations with a focus on growing the Steemit community through programs and charities.

Teach, Guide, and Support new users and minnows about Steemit and Cryptocurrencies as a whole. As we continue to grow, we want to help members become better content creators through positive and supportive feedback with the aim of collectively growing within the community.

Inspire quality content creation and provide a source of support for any ideas, projects, and creations that community members may come up with and provide tools that will help individuals succeed in reaching their own personal goals.

Membership Benefits

---

We are constantly looking for more ways to support the community and this is just the beginning. In a couple months time, we will outline our overall project plan for this community and outline additional initiatives in the works that will tie into this project.

The One-time registration fee that members pay will enable them access to the @phgold bot which can be used once a day to upvote posts. The delegation to this bot is and will be much greater then our standard UpvotePH bot. Attached to @phgold will be a curation trail made up of members of the community which will help in post-promotion and visibility.

Once the @phgold bot upvotes a post, it will be included on a list that is regularly updated and posted to the https://www.steemitphilippines.com homepage where a random 3 posts per day will be manually curated and receive a 100% upvote from our PH Whale Account - These votes will be made by End of day.

Users with access may use their vote towards any post including non-PH Gold member posts who they feel deserve additional support. Their daily vote usage is at their own discretion.

Registered members will also get special access to events and functions that SteemPH sponsors or hosts. Currently, the only special access in the works is membership and access to SteemCenter PH which will be announced at a later time. You can expect there to be more special access privileges as time goes on.

Taking a page from @sndbox,

Our goal is to create a supportive environment where writers, artists, musicians, programmers, non-profits, entrepreneurs, dreamers, and community members can go to explore, innovate and play all while being rewarded for sharing their craft. In turn, this will help the community grow collectively together and provide ongoing support for new members.

Ongoing and Future Plans for the Project

---

As mentioned, development for this and other projects are ongoing. The plan is to continue each project individually with separate team members assigned to each project and eventually merge each into a unified platform that will support the overall community.

• Continue working on SteemitPhilippines website to integrate individual user statistics for @phgold tracking using Steemconnect and user database
• automate power-up functions into @phgold code in order to maximize registration and curation rewards real-time.
• add auto refunds for accounts not registered
• add server admin functions so bot can auto-assign roles to new members

As we continue to build and develop this project, we’ll continue sharing updates with the community through the @phgold account. I and the team appreciate as much feedback as possible so we can continue to make this project better for the community. For any suggestions, feedback, or contributions, please contact me @cloh76, @cloh76.witness, or the @steemph core team.

---

Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

---