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Although I already called for alpha testers a week ago (thanks to all who joined using this link, I realized I never properly announced what steem.city actually is. The enthusiasm of starting a new project was a bit overwhelming and I focused a lot on development (both technical and customer development) but ignored the good ol' PR side of the things.

So, without further ado:

(Properly) Introducing Steem.City - Communities for Steemit

A community, in steem.city lingo, is a "neighborhood". That means you get a visual context for seeing all the posts and comments related to that community. What you post in your neighborhood will also be posted on steemit.com.

You can create up to 6 neighborhoods in the alpha stage and each neighborhood has a maximum of 50 members. These numbers are low because I still don't know how Steemit's split rewards API will cope. In theory, you can split rewards among an unlimited number of beneficiaries, although I didn't look in the code for that.

There are 3 types of neighborhoods: "Equal Split", "Sheriff 50%" and "Sheriff + Deputies". They are already described in a bit more detail in this post. But for the sake of having everything in one place, here's a brief description of each of them:

Equal Split

All citizens split the rewards equally, on all posts. Each citizen gets the same share from the entire revenue pool.

Sheriff 50%

Each citizen gets 50% and the rest is split equally among the other citizens. Each citizen gets 50% of his own rewards.

Sheriff + Deputies

Each author gets 30%, 3 deputies (moderators) get 10% each and the rest is split equally among the other citizens.

Other Steemit users can ask to be included in your neighborhood. If you accept them, they become "citizens" of your neighborhoods.

Citizen Rating

As each community will split the rewards in some way, the question of "but what if some citizens are lazy, or just freeloading?" is obviously raised. To solve this, steem.city introduces a citizen rating system. During alpha, we will start with the following metrics to define an active citizen:

• posted at least twice during the last 7 days
• upsteemed at least 7 times during the last 7 days
• commented at least 7 times during the last 7 days

If a citizen fails to comply with these requests he will be automatically eliminated from the neighborhood and he will have to ask permission to be included again. This model can be further refined to create some levels of rating (first class citizen, second class citizen) based on the feedback received during alpha stage.

User Interface Improvements

Steem.city will bring a number of UI improvements over the standard Steemit experience.

Medium-like Editor, with Markdown Output

Markdown is fine and I love it, but it may not be everybody's cup of tea. So I decided to integrate a WYSIWYG editor, which will output a Steemit compliant post body. You can see the first screenshots of this integration here (which, at the moment of writing, has image drag and drop uploading in testing).

Basic Theming

Each community will have a number of distinct visual elements, in an attempt to introduce basic theming. Don't think Wordpress-like theming, which will be overwhelming, but more reddit or tumbr-like theming. Here are a few screenshots form the latest development branch.

The Mandatory FAQ

1. What Problems Does Steem.City Solves?

Until now, the most complex form of aggregating towards a common goal in Steemit consisted in curation trails. While I appreciate this form of content consumption, I think it's limited. Steem.city brings it to the next level. Not only you will share interests and goals with a specific group of people, but you will also have a dedicated interface for that, a custom visual experience and a real tool for splitting the rewards for your activities.

2. How Steem.City Will Play With Steemit Announced Subcommunities?

I have no idea. The specs for subcommunities are not public, which means either they're not drafted yet, or are somehow concealed. If, during the alpha and beta stage of steem.city, this project will bring important business information that will shape this feature of Steemit, it means I did my job correctly.

3. How Steem.city Will Support Itself?

By using the same "splitting rewards" feature. There will be a certain percentage from all the posts generated in the platform, that will be allocated to development and maintenance costs. This is already a common approach in other apps, like chainBB, busy or eSteem.

4. When It Will Be Launched?

The tentative date is July 10th. At the current development speed, I'm confident we can have at least an MVP on July 10th.

5. How Can I Join The Alpha Testers Group?

By clicking this link. The alpha testers group will get early access (and the benefits of seeing the app crashing many, many times, obviously) but they will also get real revenue from posting from within the app, as citizens in one of the neighborhoods of their choice.

Looking forward to hear you comments, suggestions or critiques.

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I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.

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You can also vote for me as witness heren:
https://steemit.com/~witnesses