Introducing The Mesopotamians: a project to build community-minded dolphins

The Mesopotamians is a project to use ongoing support and gamification to encourage account growth and build a class of community-minded minnows and eventually dolphins. This project is run by @tcpolymath.

The Mesopotamians uses a six-level system of automated votes to encourage specific users to invest in their accounts and make community contributions. As a user progresses up the levels the value of vote they receive increases. Before advancing to each new level a user will be asked to envision, develop, and implement a new project with community benefit. More details about this later, but it's intended to be open-ended and allow them flexibility. If you're familiar with the Eagle Scout Project concept, that's what I'm looking at as a model.

The Mesopotamians is an outgoing support initiative, not a vote-trading scheme. Support from our members is appreciated but not in any way required.

Users are chosen for the program by @tcpolymath in a completely-unfair and usually-opaque selection process based on what he thinks is important for the community and who he thinks would be a good dolphin someday. He's giving his own money away here so he's ok with that, but it's best to be upfront about it.

Currently Level 1 has been running for four weeks on @doctorworm and launched last week on a second account @particleman; Level 2 will be launching on Monday when the delegation I'm using to fund it ends its cooldown period. Levels 3-6 are not yet active, because I don't have SP for them yet. Their small votes will follow curation trails of the active accounts until they're ready to be used.

The intention is that I will be able to fund the higher accounts as the users currently in the system reach them. The system is currently designed to self-vote up to 20% in order to build the voting power of the accounts and reduce the reliance on delegation, both mine and leased. It will also be getting consistent votes from @tcpolymath to fuel it from outside.

ACCOUNT	LEVEL	STATUS	VOTING
@doctorworm	0-500 SP		Supporting 8 users
@particleman	0-500 SP		Supporting 11 users
@m-sargon	500-1100 SP		Following @particleman
@m-hammurabi	1100-1800 SP		Following @particleman
@m-ashurbanipal	1800-2700 SP		Following @particleman
@m-gilgamesh	2700-3800 SP		Following @doctorworm
@themesopotamians	3800-5000 SP		Following @doctorworm

I love this project, how can I get support?

Places in Level 2 @m-sargon will be open for public application at this post for another day or two. In order to qualify you must have between 400 and 800 native SP, and comment following the guidelines in that post.

Places in Level 1 are not currently open for public application, and it's not anticipated that they will be in the near future. Given the number of users in this pool the project needs to scale a lot before that can happen. It's possible to get into Level 1 by doing amazing community work and having me notice, but I have a waiting list even based on that.

I love this project, how can I support it?

Votes on posts from the project accounts are always great.

There are weekly status update posts on the "race" to the next level on each account. @giddyupngo came up with a great idea to become a fan of one or more of the users and use your vote to help them get to the next level quickly.

@doctorworm and @particleman have curation trails on SteemAuto, and I'll make one for @m-sargon when it launches. Following one or all of those trails would support both the users and the project.

I currently have no system set up to ask for delegation, but if that's of interest to you please contact @tcpolymath.

I have a good idea for how to improve this project!

Please hit the comment button.

I hate this project!

Please don't hit the comment button.

Why The Mesopotamians?

It's They Might Be Giants-themed because I needed account names and I'm a little weird. But also the end goal here is to build a civilization full of contributing middle-class citizens, rather than the warlords-and-peons thing we largely have going now. So Mesopotamia seems like an appropriate metaphor.