Lets multiply the value of our articles by helping each other to write better
Do you want to be more persuasive, inspiring and influential? Would you give or welcome feedback? Then read on...
Why Should You Learn to Write Better?
The more value the readers gets from the article, the more likely they are to upvote. You want upvotes, don't you? The way an article is written has a huge effect on the perception. Just have a look at this and compare it to this to get an example. The 80/20 rule often applies here. You have done 80% of the work but without proper structuring you get only 20% of your possible earnings. With a little tweaking you can increase the value of your content by 80%, which results in more people actually reading your article and a greater percentage of them appreciating it.
If you can learn to write articles that capture the reader, your rewards will be multiplied. With the help of others and some practice it will become natural and habitual, and you will earn more without any extra effort.
I believe it will be beneficial to the Steem platform and to all of humanity if we learn to write better. The ones who aquire the ability will be the ones to reap the greatest benefit. Will you be one of them?
A Mutual Writing Aid Group
Everyone interested in writing better articles, helping others write better and in getting a share in the success of others can join this group. This group is informal, and is actually only a description of how to participate. We want to learn and grow together, and share the benefits. Any formal structure can evolve naturally and practices will be adjusted to better suit the purposes, once we have received some experience.
I outline no rules of good writing here; they are better laid out in a separate post. This post is about the mutual help group itself. Best practices will emerge naturally and at some point we might co-author an article on them. Meanwhile you can read this article by @cryptogee about how to write good articles.
How the Scheme Works
- Write an article under a suitable category. Write it as well as you can. Submit it.
- Make a separate post under the writing category, where you link to your article and ask for feedback. Also link to this article for an explanation. The reason for a separate post for the feedback is to keep it from cluttering and thus lowering the quality of the article in question. Here is an example.
- Decide what percentage of the earnings of your article you promise to share with the contributors. State it. This will incentivize lots of people to give feedback, which is valuable to you but costs nearly nothing to give.
- Take the feedback and implement it if possible. Don't worry if it takes a lot of time, because you will accumulate the know-how and next time it will be more automatic
- Give others constructive feedback and get a share of their earnings
- Make sure to check the writing category every now and then for new requests
- Once you receive your reward, make sure you pay everyone who has contributed. This will have to be done manually until someone comes up with some automated solution.
Because steem has no mechanism to create a group, this will be an informal one. Anyone can participate. Until a possibility to filter categories is provided, all users will see the requests for feedback, so remember to provide a link to this article.
How to Provide Good Feedback
- Read the article to see if you understand what the writer is trying to communicate. Upon any problems think how you could express the same thought in some better way
- Make note of any grammatical errors
- Look at how the article is constructed. Is there a logical thread or is it unclear?
- See if you can identify the core message of the article
- When giving feedback, write the different points in a numbered list. This will make it easy to address the observations in replies.
- Be polite. Remember that receiving feedback might be hard.
So Why Not Participate Now?
- Check out the #writing category or #writingfeedback tag for any requests for feedback. Give feedback
- Ask for feedback on your articles with a second post - to keep the article itself uncluttered. Make sure to include the #writingfeedback tag in your request.
Scott Adams has short and simple instructions how to write better: The Day You Became A Better Writer
I read them, thanks! They seem to apply to business-writing, where it is important to be concise and clear. When you target different audiences and want to influence people, you must have something more than just short sentences. That's where I need input from people better than me, like you. By the way, you are one of the better writers :-)
It depends on what you are trying to achieve. If you want to make art, short and clear sentences aren't necessarily the best choice. But if you want to influence and persuade people to do something, teach new things or change their minds, business style writing is usually very effective.
Thanks for the compliment! Although I'm usually sure that I'm doing lots of grammar and spelling mistakes, my English skills are still far from perfect.
I love this initiative and think it is well worth it. With that said, I would also have to warn people that it may not be the quality of the articles that drives value in the early stages as much as alliances with others who wish to work together. Longer-term though...it is beautiful. :)
Could you elaborate a bit more on what you mean with alliances? Within Steem?
Could work, we'll have to see what the "consensus" is, however some people like constructive criticism, others are offended when you touch their "baby" (because writing is a bit of a creative act).
Then you also can have the aspect of people committing to pay others and then not paying. To overcome that you would probably need something like a automated transparent reputation tracking system, however the payouts to authors are determined by algorithms and potentially fuzzily understood by the average user and could lead to misunderstandings.
Misunderstandings around money generally get ugly really fast.
Good points!
Personally I don't find it easy to recieve feedback, but it's somehow easier if I specifically ask for it. I certainly don't expect very many to join the effort, but those who join might enjoy some mutual benefit. Together we can achieve more than separately, and I think good writing will be a valuable asset in other contexts too.
I think I would personally just keep track of who I have helped and who has helped me. There will certainly be someone not paying, but after a few rounds no-one would count them in anymore.
I applaud this initiative. Here is my 2 cents to help people write better. READABILITY! https://readability-score.com
Put your text in there and make sure you don't go beyond a 8-9 grade reading level. Beyond that it's getting hard to read.
You are a perfect example. This article has a 8.8 grade reading level. Perfect! :-)
I guess there are some benefits to being average :-)
I checked out the site, and it's really good and informative. I'm going to start using it. Thanks!
This is an awesome idea, I just started using steemit today and trying to figure out how to build eye appealing articles with pictures and videos, So far I have figured out how to properly insert the links but the pictures I am struggling with. Good on you for helping the community.
Images have to be https, otherwise they aren't shown. The format is
thank you
I love the initiative. I like the idea of developing a format which enhances the potential for discussion and also offers a means to reward valuable critique and discussion. I think, as gavvet points out, that a transparent, automated system would be necessary for reward distribution to minimize the risk of disagreements and administration.
It's worth remembering that appreciation is highly subjective, for instance, your subject matter may hold absolutely no interest to some people. That means, regardless of the 'quality,' a certain proportion of the population are unlikely to be interested in the material. However, there is great value in having the ability to articulate an idea in a way that maximizes it's impact and the development of language skills that enhance communication can only be a good thing for society at large. It's also worth noting that value is subjective. So if even one person is moved or inspired by something you write, to some, that is of enormous value.
Thanks for your thoughts!
I have no possibility of automating anything, and I can't foresee anyone doing it on my behalf, so for the time being manual distribution is the only method I can suggest. Personally I don't see it as a showstopper, and I am willing to trust people. Earned reputation is worth something too. If someone cheats me, I think the collective benefit will outweigh my pain.
Do you have any suggestions on how to organize this effort in a better way?
So there are two main objectives......helping to improve presentation and helping to improve the application of language (words, spelling & grammar.) I still think the reward and incentive aspect could be problematic without functional support from Steemit.
I was thinking that you could have a new topic called 'Pre-publish' where an article could be published for critique before being published to the appropriate topic for the subject matter with wider visibility. The problem is any created post is visible immediately to the whole Steemit community. There is also the issue of privacy before the article is ready. There is no way yet to form a private group as you say.
You could have two new topics, 'Presentation Critique' and 'Language Critique' so that people can post under the appropriate topic for their subject matter, but also post a copy to the appropriate critique topic depending on what kind of feedback they are looking for. General feedback on the subject matter of their post will remain against the original.
Within 'Presentation Critique,' it may be possible to offer a service to improve important posts on behalf of someone who is willing to provide a reward......though i'm not exactly sure how that would be achieved.
After a while, hopefully a culture would develop around the process and a general improvement could be forthcoming. It really is a very exciting idea. Well done sir.
Just thought......you could have tip or how to sheets posted to the appropriate critique topic.
Could you explain, the share process?
Or maybe you could add that into the article, being new here, I don't understand how I would be able to share my earnings with multiple voters.
Thanks
On payout I will take note of the amount and the users who have contributed. I take half of the payout and divide it with the amount of contributors. I just send that amount manually to each contributor.
It's manual yes, but I think we could test how collaboration works in a simple way like that. What do you think?
Yes, it's a good idea and like you say it kind of tests the community, it could prove to be very time consuming if you have hundreds and hundreds of people feeding back, maybe the Steem mods will come up with a way of disseminating multiple payments.
Great idea. Your article was easy to read and communicated the idea well using the markdown tools.
I would like to participate in the #writingfeedback group, as a casual reader not an expert. I have posted a request and tag it to give it a shot. https://steemit.com/writingfeedback/@bbqbear/writing-feedback-request-for-my-product-reviews
Any suggestions would be great! and don't be shy about throwing me a vote if you think it's a useful contribution.
please check my posts. do i have to part in your writing group?
Sorry, I was on vacation, so I didn't notice your post.
The idea is that you make a post. Then you make a separate post to ask for feedback, with the tag #writingfeedback. In that post you promise to share the reward or promise some other compensation for the feedback you get. Since the timeframe for getting a reward is short, the feedback also should be gotten within some 12 hours. This doesn't really work unless someone keeps an eye on the tag. Hopefully some day you will get notifications on tags too, so this experiment could work better.