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Having read @ats-david's post about curation guilds last night, I feel that he raised a number of important issues. However, I'm not entirely sure whether the post was in fact an elaborate trolling effort, because 90% of the questions raised were also applicable to himself.

Troll or not, some important issues have been raised-- ones that I too myself have been pondering in the recent weeks. We must consider what message we are promoting to outsiders looking in, wondering whether they would want to be a part of the community we are building here.

I believe there is a place for curation guilds. At least during this initial phase of Steemit's development. Without @curie and the support it was able to offer me, I wonder if I would still be here. Nonetheless, I feel it evident that there are negative implications to some of these guilds that are in desperate need of addressing.

The trending page is often full of guild member's posts. It was only a few weeks that I learned of who the guild members were, and since I have not once looked at the trending page and not seen at least one or two of them in the top five.

The content is not necessarily unworthy of rewards-- but the question is; is it worthy of the most rewards?

We have to keep in mind that to someone checking out Steemit for the first time, the trending page is going to be a significant message which speaks to the type of content, and the quality of content that earns the most rewards here. For this reason, we should be making absolutely sure that the top five trending posts are of exceptional quality.

Meaning no offence here, but I don't think, based on my own personal observations, that that's what we are seeing here. It's certainly not the best content that Steemit has to offer. We could and should do better.

Now, I have read over a number of debates about the issue with curation guilds, and it seems that the justification most often cited for this is that guild members should be compensated for their time. "People should be rewarded for working 10 hour days,"- or something to that effect, is a passage I have seen a number of times.

Is this true though?

I can definitely understand the desire to be paid for time spent. But, I do not believe that this type of mentality is suited for the task at hand.

There are millions of people in the world who work ten hours without monetary compensation. It is called volunteer work. If one cares enough about a cause, they commit their time towards it.

Does this mean that they are not compensated? No. They receive payment for their work through the knowledge that they have done good, the feeling of being able to help, and the spectacle of seeing what they care about improve.

With this in mind, I can't sit around and watch this continue whilst remaining silent on the issue. I have grown to care deeply about Steemit and about its success. A mantra that has been replaying through my mind in the recent days is;

If you want to see people doing better, then set a better example.

Curation guilds are hurting Steemit as much as they are helping it at the moment. I think the only way for us to move passed this is to create a guild that only helps, and does not hurt the community or the platform in any way.

I have given quite some thought to how this could be achieved, and I believe I have come up with the answer.

What we need is a curation guild who's members seek only the compensation of being able to see users adequately rewarded, and having Steemit succeed.

Guild members would never vote their own posts with the voting power bestowed upon them.

Rather than people working ten hours a day, there would be a number of people committing one or two hours a day towards searching out exceptional content, and suggesting it to the guild.

Members of the community would be encouraged to put forth suggestions of very high quality content-- not because they would like a finder's fee, but because they think the post in question merits a reward.

All posts upvoted by the guild would be at 100% voting power.

What good is it upvoting a post a hundred times to give it $0.50? This is useless. Let's consider the user retention issue.

Do you think that rewarding 100 users per day with 100 votes and $1 dollar payout it going to make them stay? Whilst upvoting yourself to the tending page?

Or will they look at those who have similar votes but 10 or 20 times higher payout and feel disheartened?

It is my opinion that guilds would be of better service by aiming to assist others at getting on the trending page.

Give a new member who has produced something of great value a boost onto the trending page, as well as rewards that are deserving of their efforts, and they will stick around as long as it takes to get that feeling again.

Beyond that, boosting them to the trending page will give them the visibility necessary to amass some followers and quicken their progression. Thus, enriching their experience.

Giving them 100 or 200 upvotes and a small payout will do nothing to increase their visibility, nor their motivation.

How this could be achieved

Having discussed this with @stellabelle, we have decided to officially give this go. We have also reached out to a few a dolphins and one whale who have shown great interest in the idea and offered support should it live up to their expectations. They also understand that they will not be compensated for their efforts, and are happy about this.

Obviously we are reaching out to even more in the hope of support, but we will be needing a lot of it if this is going to be successful. I write this post with the hope that it will serve as an invitation to any in the community who want to be a part of setting a better example.

To be a part of a guild that is founded not upon self-serving desires to gain monetary rewards or a sense of empowerment, but on the principal that the best, and only the best content should be reaching the trending page.

There will also be a keen eye in search of posts which attract a lot of user engagement. If your post has 100 comments or more, you should really be getting rewarded for that. I have heard it said so many times that Steemit is an attention economy, so to draw so much comments equates to garnering a lot of attention, and consequently such a feat should be rewarded.

To summarise how this guild would be different to other ones;

• No guild members would receive votes from those who have gifted their power-- unless that person or persons does so manually.

• There will be no monetary rewards of any kind of guild members. There will be no account for the guild, so it will extract no money from the reward pool. This will be strictly voluntary work from anyone who wants to help for the benefit of Steemit.

• The guild's voting power will never be used to downvote a post, nor a comment. Not in individual disputes. Not because a post has too high of a reward. Not even for spam, plagiarism or abuse. There is already mechanisms in place for this type of thing, such as @cheetah.

• All guild votes will be at 100%, with the intent of making at least one exceptional post hit the top five every day.

• Whilst the guild will aim to reward the newest of users to make their posts get more visibility so that they can attain more followers, there will be no restrictions on what author's posts are eligible. Only guild members will be excluded. We want to see the best content promoted and rewarded, so if that content happens to be produced by a level 68, we will not exclude them from our consideration.

• Controversial posts will not be excluded from consideration. Be it political, religious, conspiracy-based or otherwise, we feel that to disallow any type of content is to the send the message that some people are not welcome here on Steemit. We will be looking for quality, regardless of content.

These are the foundations upon which we intend to build this guild, but this is still in the earliest stages of development, so we are open to ideas on how it can be improved.

It will be a little while before this gets up and running, but if you would like to assist in any way, then please make your desire to do so known in the comments. There will be a channel on steemitchat created soon for discussion.

Ways in which you can help

• Volunteer some of your time(your choice on how much) to finding the very best of content available for suggestion.

• Sharing your ideas on how to improve the efficacy of the guild.

• Offer your voting power for when the time comes that the guild launches.

• Share your technical abilities for better functionality.

Reminder: You will not be rewarded for this in anyway other than seeing Steemit improve, and perhaps your account value increasing should the improvements lead to more people making use of the platform.

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When first thinking of this, I thought it would be better to just share the idea and keep my name out of it. There have been a few instances in the past where I have spoken up about my concerns and as a result of this, I thought it would limit our chances of gaining some support from influential members of the community.

I have since been persuaded that the fact that I was willing to speak out at the risk of having my account's reputation ruined, is the reason why I should attach my name to this project. The community and the prosperity of Steemit has always and will always come first with me. I feel transparency is another issue that prevents me from remaining a silent partner on this project, so I have decided to be open about my involvement.

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There has been enough debate, enough complaining, and enough arguing among ourselves. If we want to see change, then we need only be the change we want to see. If you would like to offer your support. Let it be known in the comments.

Please resteem this post to raise awareness and hopefully get more people, and more minds involved.