Introducing StemQ - An upcoming Q&A app for STEM subjects

Repository

https://github.com/irelandscape/quearn

Introduction

This post provides an introduction to the upcoming StemQ application.
It describes what the app is all about and how Steemians will be able to participate in the project and, in the process, earn and expand their knowledge of STEM subjects.

What is StemQ?

StemQ is a questions & answers (Q&A) application dedicated to S.T.E.M (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) topics.

Similar to other Q&A applications such as Quora, Answers.com and Stackoverflow, StemQ distinguishes itself from the rest in several ways.

Being powered by the Steem blockchain, StemQ allows contributors to be rewarded in SPs and SBDs like all Steem-based applications.

StemQ will not feature advertising or links to commercial sponsors so users will be able to enjoy scientific content without distracting banners and other obtrusive material.

StemQ encourages questions asking for factual answers while discouraging those calling for subjective opinions or religious debates.
This is a real problem plaguing other similar websites and StemQ aims to promote questions and answers of significant scientific value rather than personal views and contentious ideas.

StemQ strives to reward as much as possible original questions for which informative answers are difficult to find on the Internet.

Credit: Pixabay

Posting STEM articles in the form of questions and answers

Many posts related to the STEM subjects lend themselves very well to be submitted as a pair of question and answer contributions.
The advantage of doing so are:

• Posts using a question as a title are very engaging for readers. They either pick the reader curiosity as to what the answer might be or promote the knowledgeable readers to answer those questions.
• Titles in the form of questions are also a very effective way to pick the interest of search engine users and tend to bring them to the Steem blockchain in search of answers.
• It offers a way for Steemians to submit their own answer to a particular question and allows creating logical relationships between posts.
  Currently the most common way for a user to interact with an existing post is to submit a comment.
  StemQ offers an alternative way whereby users can submit new posts but relate them to other posts under the umbrella of the initial question.

Credit: Pixabay

Give me an example!

Let's take the following example.

A user decides to post an article about the use of antibiotics in medicine.
Traditionally this user might have entitled her post:

Antibiotics and their use for the treatment of bacterial infections

Using StemQ, this user could instead produce two posts: one brief question post and one longer answer article.

The question could have a title along the lines:

How do antibiotics fight bacterial infections?

The post body for this question could be filled with a description such as this one:

Antibiotics are often prescribed by doctors for the treatment of bacterial infections.
This type of treatment is commonly accepted has a real breakthrough in modern medicine since the discovery of penicillin.
But how do antibiotics differ from other medical treatments? And why are they so effective where other types of medical treatment often fail?
How do antibiotics interact with our immune system to fight infections?

A user looking for an answer to this question would post the above and wait for other users to submit answers.

But it is also possible for the issuer of the question to provide her own answer through a new post.

This provides an effective way to better engage with the community as it promotes curiosity and participation from other users.

Is it possible to post StemQ questions and answers from other Steem apps?

While StemQ provides a nice interface for organizing questions and answers into one application, while filtering out all other content from the blockchain, it is also possible for Steemians to add content to StemQ by posting question/answer articles from other Steem apps such as steemstem.io, Steemit, Stempeak, Busy, etc.

In order to do so the poster must ensure that a question post meets the following requirements:

• The post title must be in the form of a question and must finish with a question mark. Support for other languages using other mechanisms to indicate a question is planned.
• Specify the stemq tag. It doesn't have to be the first tag.
• Specify one of the available topics as a tag. For the above example one might use the tag biology. A list of topics will be made available on StemQ.

Similarly, for an answer to be added to StemQ and be associated with a particular question it must:

• Have a title prefixed with the string "A: " followed by the text of the original question title.
  For example: "A: How do antibiotics fight bacterial infections?"
• Specify the stemq tag. There are no other tag requirements.

The server hosting StemQ constantly runs a service which scrapes the Steem blockchain for posts matching the above criteria and inserts a reference to those posts into the backend database. The post becomes visible within the StemQ app user interface once this operation is complete

What about @steemstem?

StemQ aims to complement @steemstem by providing another format for users to submit STEM related posts.

It does not replace @steemstem.

StemQ questions and answers can still be tagged with the #steemstem tag for review by the team at @steemstem.

StemQ and @steemstem ultimately share the same vision of informing the wider community about all STEM topics and rewarding quality contributions.

Credit: steemstem

Roadmap

StemQ is now in the final stages of development and the first 0.1.0 Beta release is expected to be launched early November 2018.

This initial release will have a limited set of features but will allow users to create, edit questions and answers and of course upvote contributions.
A nice topics page will provide users with question browsing capability.

From then on frequent releases will be rolled out aiming at adding the 1.0 release features (described on the github project page) and fixing known issues.

StemQ - A cross platform application

StemQ will initially be available through your Web browser.
The user interface is designed to render well on mobile devices as well as larger screens when using a desktop operating system.

An Android / iOS application will be made available in the near future for those who prefer to run a dedicated app on their handheld device.

Windows/Mac/Linux applications will also follow.

How can I help?

If you have read the post this far then there is a good chance that you are really interested in the project.

Great!

Credit: Pixabay

Once launched, StemQ will be in dire need of fresh content!
So one very useful way to help would be for you to prepare question and answer posts in advance and ready to be submitted soon after launch date.

Are you a developer or graphics designer? Would you like to help with StemQ development?
Fantastic!
Get in touch on our Discord server (see below) and we'll make sure to get back to you.

Resources

• #stemq Discord channel
• steemstem.io
• Quora
• Answers.com
• Stack Overflow