So I've had some questions about the leveling-up process, and this post is more about telling you how I can't answer them right now than actually answering them. But maybe putting down my thought process will either make it make more sense, or spawn some better ideas either in myself or some of you.
A month ago I made a hastily-constructed model for the process because some members were buying Steem and getting to the point of needing to move up levels before I was expecting. I know that it's not especially clear, but in some ways it was designed to not be especially clear, and I still have a little hope that will work.
My model for the leveling projects was the Eagle Scout Service Project, something that has motivated scouts collectively to spend more than three million hours a year doing community service projects. The Eagle Project guidelines are not much more specific than mine:
While a Life Scout, plan, develop, and give leadership to others in a service project helpful to any religious institution, any school, or your community. (The project must benefit an organization other than Boy Scouting.)
Wikipedia gives some examples, that aren't very useful on the blockchain except for inspiration:
Examples of Eagle Projects include constructing park benches, running a blood drive, constructing a playground, building bat houses for a local park, refurbishing a room at a church or school, resetting stones at a cemetery, planting grass for erosion control, organizing a dinner, interviewing American veterans for the Library of Congress, and collecting necessities for the homeless.
The Eagle Scout Service Project Workbook offers a little more detail:
In addition to providing service and fulfilling the part of the Scout Oath, “To help other people at all times,” one of the primary purposes of the Eagle Scout service project is to learn leadership skills, or to improve or demonstrate leadership skills you already have. Related to this are important lessons in project management and taking responsibility for a significant accomplishment.
I'm not looking to duplicate their processes; we're all adults here and I don't think the same level of oversight is necessary, and I particularly want to encourage rather than discourage collaboration. But I think their goals and their core methods are appealing and congruent with what we're doing here.
If any scouts are doing online projects - and unless they're disallowed it seems like some should be - I'm not finding a convenient list of them anywhere. So you kind of have to do that translation yourself.
My hope has been that as the first few users go through this process, they'll have the opportunity to define what it means through the projects they choose, which later users can use as examples. @corpsvalues was the first to complete a level-up by creating the Cartoon-Off Comics Contest. I'm mostly just sitting around waiting for @photocircle to tell me what they want, as since they hit 500 SP they've added a new collaboration and a new photography spotlight either of which can count.
It's useful for the program to make a post about it, or include in a post that it's for the purpose of a Mesopotamians leveling project. That helps us get more exposure in the community and more interest in the leadership development part of the program.
I'm not sure if this has really answered any questions, or maybe just created more of them. It's very free-form at the moment, and my hope is that I've selected people who can run with that. I'm not looking to tell anybody that their project is wrong and doesn't count, I'm really looking for you guys to come up with cool things of your own to make Steem a better place, and over your time in the program to get into the habit of doing it.
Does that make sense?
