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We hope you all enjoyed Season 1 of the Steemit Engagement Challenge which has now ended. Season 2 of the Challenge will be starting at the beginning of June. Applications are now invited from communities for the new season. For this second round in June we are again looking for six Communities who would like to take part alongside the Steemit Crypto Academy. --- --- ### How Communities can Apply

For the Engagement Challenge in June we are looking for six Communities to take part. The Communities should be well established, with a good, active team of Admins and Mods, and an actively growing community curation account. We are looking for Communities who already check and comment on every post in their community. Particularly those that check for plagiarism, bot-use, steem-exclusivity, club status etc. All the Admins and Mods should be following at least #club5050. The Communities can be country communities, subject specific communities or general communities. The selected communities will receive increased voting from @steemcurator01 and @steemcurator02, and weekly and monthly Challenge winners will receive extra prize votes from @steemcurator01. Communities chosen for the Challenge will be expected to run weekly contests through their community account, and also be willing to check and comment on every post in their community. To apply to join the Challenge, the Community Founder, Admin or Lead Moderator should make an application post including… * the purpose of their community * a brief history of their community * a list of all Founders, Administrators and Moderators including their #club status * details of their community curation account, how it is being built up and who holds the keys * details of the community’s current policy for checking and commenting on posts * details of how the community helps members improve the quality of their posts * reasons why their community should be selected for the Challenge. The post should also contain the contact details (Telegram/Discord) of at least two lead people in the community team. **Posts should be submitted by 11.59pm UTC, on Sunday, May 29th, 2022.** The application posts should include the tag #engagementapplication in the first four tags. The Communities selected for Season 1 are welcome to apply again for Season 2. --- --- ### Changes for Season 2 - Checking & Grading Posts

During Season 1 of the Challenge we have been strongly encouraging the selected Communities to ensure they check and comment on all posts for their weekly contests. The minimum they should check for are #club status, Steem exclusivity, plagiarism and bot use. To help @steemcurator01 and @steemcurato02 to curate the contest posts more effectively we have been looking for community Mods to use a clear, simple and easy to read comment format. Communities are free to design their own comment formats but it is ideal if all Mods in a particular community use a common, standard format. The use of green ticks and red crosses can be useful to avoid language issues for the positive or negative verification checks. The comments by @saracampero in SteemWomen Club and @harferri in Steem Entrepreneurs are examples of good formats. **For Season 2 we want selected communities to commit to ensuring all contest posts are checked and commented on promptly - ideally within 12 hours of posting.** — We also want to trial a new addition to the checking to be done by community Mods. In the Steemit Crypto Academy the Professors give each challenge post a grade or score out of 10 according to the quality of the post. **We are interested to see the other communities in season 2 of the Challenge to introduce this sort of grading.** **Mods should assess entries to their weekly contests and give a mark out of 10 according to the quality of the post and how well it meets the criteria of the contest.** Each community team should work together to decide on the marking criteria to reach a common standard for the marking. They can look to the Steemit Crypto Academy to see how the grading is done there. @steemcurator01 and @steemcurator02 will use the grades as an additional guidance for voting on posts, alongside #club status. Remember though - votes are not guaranteed regardless of grade or #club status. — **To reward the extra work involved for the community Mods they will receive votes from @steemcurator01 and @steemcurator02 on some of their checking comments where they are done well and accurately.** --- --- ### Changes for Season 2 - Community Beneficiaries

Please note that the selected communities should not make setting a beneficiary to any related community account obligatory for anyone to enter the Challenge contests. --- --- ### Changes for Season 2 - Selection of Challenge Winners

For Season 2 we are changing and expanding how winners are selected and rewarded. Each week we would like all 7 Challenge communities to make a post on their community account announcing the three people who have demonstrated the most engagement in their weekly contest both through the quality of their contest post and the quantity and quality of their comments on other people’s contest posts. Then at the end of Season 2 we would like the Communities to again make a post on their community account announcing their three overall winners for the whole month. This should not be a list of the winners of each week, but three people selected for their overall performance across all four contests. We will leave it to each community to decide how they select their weekly and season winners, but they should include in their announcement posts a brief summary of their selection process. **All the weekly winners and overall Season 2 winners, as well as the community announcement posts, will receive extra prize votes from @steemcurator01.** — — Congratulations to the winners of Week 3 - @mile16, @patjewell, @yrmaleza. You will be receiving votes from @steemcurator01 shortly. — — We are looking forward to reading all your applications. This is an exciting new Challenge to help build engagement on the platform. We hope as many people as possible will take part. Thank you _The Steemit Team_