Utopian aims to reward open source contributors. However, your contribution must be up to the required quality in order to get a reward that you will be proud of.

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As a moderator in the ideas category. I have seen numerous contributions in the category. Some are below par, while some are of decent quality. Many users whose contributions are not up to the required quality end up getting low ratings, leading to a reduction in their contributions to the category. Many see this as a reason not to contribute in the ideas category again. Well, I say NO. Even if the category weight is doubled or tripled, most posts will still be of low quality.

The big question is, What is the major reason?

Inadequate knowledge of Utopian/Ideas category policies and guidelines is the major reason many contributions are not up to the required quality. Now you see we don’t have to tackle rewards because there is nothing wrong with it. It is the underlying factor that needs to be tackled. That can be achieved by explaining what the Utopian policies and guidelines are all about coupled with the category guidelines too.

Understanding Utopian policies and guidelines

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It is imperative that before making your contribution, you should check the Utopian guidelines. This is important to both first-timers and regular users. Utopian is dynamic meaning there may be times when there will be a change in guidelines either in the ideas category or the general guidelines. The changes are usually accompanied with an announcement on the Utopian discord server and blog. However, for some reasons, many users may not get to know of the update until a moderator reviews their post and brings the update to their notice. It is advised that you visit to read the Utopian guidelines and fully understand what is expected of you.

As a contributor to an open source project, you are aiming to improve the project by providing suggestions on how to improve certain parts of the project. It is your hope that these suggestions are implemented by the project owner. This means the suggestion shouldn’t be posted only on steemit but also in the project repository on Github. You will have to create an issue in the project repository then anticipate the project owner response. Imagine you got no response from the project owner for weeks, months. How will you feel? Bad is the answer, you feel bad and down because your suggestion has gone to the bin due to no response from the project owner. To prevent this kind of situation for our contributors, Utopian has an integration policy that tends to solve this. The project Github repository must have a considerable level of activities within the last 6 months. Certain sections such as the project readme file, open source license file, the source code must also be present.

Your contribution is seen by millions of users, the project owner, and developers wither on steemit or on Github. Therefore, submissions made in English are considered in the ideas category. English being a widely spoken language is the accepted language for submissions in the ideas category. It must be easily understood by everyone. Grammatical errors, poor formatting, usage of informal words are what makes your post difficult to understand, thus causing it to be rated low. Double-checking your post is vital in solving the aforementioned problems. This will let you spot any errors you make. There are also external resources you can use to enhance your post quality. Grammarly has a free package that spots grammatical errors, spellings and helps you to correct it.

If you have a problem with post formatting, there are quite a number of guides to get you started in that aspect. You can check markdown guide here or this well-detailed one by @espoem. Both guides are sufficient to help you format your post well and make it look good to anyone. You don’t want your contribution to be sub-par just because of some basic steps you failed to follow. These are some of the general policies and guidelines that must be adhered to for your post to be of standard.

Idea Category guidelines

Just as we have general guidelines pertaining to all categories, we also have categories specific guidelines. This category guideline is what most users fail to fully comprehend thus leading to their contributions being of low quality.

The first guideline summarizes what the category is all about. Your suggestions should be enhancements that will greatly improve the project or add value to it. The idea you are pitching to the project owner should be one that will make the general public ditch other similar projects for it. This means that what you are suggesting must be unique and original. You should check for duplicates in the project Github repository, Utopian, project blog/forum. You should also make sure that your suggestion is unique. Before a project is developed, there are similar projects already existing. It is normal for the project owner to check this similar projects and see some of the features present there.

The absence of common features in your project of interest means a lot of things. The project owner might either want to start small and include this features in subsequent versions or don’t find it ideal for the project. A user suggesting the implementation of this feature should know that it is not as unique as it can be seen in other projects. It will only lead to a low quality contribution. Unique means one of a kind, not common.

One of the easiest way of suggesting a unique idea is to be an ardent user of the project. This way, the ideas come easily because you already know the in and out of the project, what will best improve it. Downloading countless of applications and making suggestions hastily is a norm among contributors. This will only lead to lower quality posts being churned out. This is because those kinds of hurried suggestions are not well researched and end up being not of much importance or similar to others.

In the quest for making sure your suggestion is unique, you should be aware that suggestions relating to organizational processes or spread religious/political beliefs are not entertained. For example, making a suggestion on the need for esteem application to increase their upvote weight. This is clearly an organization issue that will be discussed by the esteem management.
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Your suggestions should be on the features and functions of the project.

• What you think should be added or improved,
• Why should it be added,
• The impact on the project, and
• How will it affect the project usage?

These are what your suggestions should be about. To provide a better explanation, it is advised that submissions to the category should include graphical illustrations of your suggestion. This will make the moderator reviewing your contribution, project owner, and other users see what you are trying to suggest at a glance.

In order to make things easier, there is a template to follow when making your contribution to the ideas category. This will be discussed in the next part.

References

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