The Mesopotamians is an initiative built to train and empower future leaders in the Steem community. It uses consistent voting support and gamification to help users who have shown a desire to become strong positive forces within the Steem community become more effective. It's run by @tcpolymath.
Our mission is to create a class of dedicated, community-minded users who hold enough Steem Power to be extremely effective in the areas where they work to make Steem better.
In order to do this, we select users who we believe will be good future leaders and provide consistent voting support as they grow to 5000 SP through a six-level system of automatic voting accounts. Accounts operated under this system are @doctorworm @particleman @m-sargon @m-hammurabi @m-ashurbanipal (future) @m-gilgamesh (future) and @themesopotamians.
History
This initiative started on May 17, with the single account @doctorworm supporting twelve users below 500 SP. The project has grown quickly since then, and we recently launched our fourth active account, @m-hammurabi, to support users as they grow beyond 1100 SP. The system as a whole is currently supporting 68 users and growing; we'll likely be taking applications for a new class at the smallest levels in the next week or two.
Each account in the system posts twice per week - once a curation post to share what our users are doing in that week, and once a post to provide users with statistics on their account growth. In order to be a part of the system, the users have committed to growing the Steem Power in their accounts for the long term, and to participating and growing the community. They are not required to support the system in any way, though we're glad that some have chosen to.
Current community-support and curation projects supported by The Mesopotamians include the Pay-It-Forward Curation Contest, Helpie, Asapers, Photocircle, Archisteem, See.Feel.Write, Classical-Radio, Dropahead, Cover-a-Steemian, and the Steemit-Webcomics and Cartoon-off comics contests. We also support developers behind such projects as NobleBot, BDExchange, Steem Monsters DB, and SteemDaily.Press.
For the future, we have a project roadmap which may be accelerating. September tasks are already finished, and the low price of Steem has made it more practical to acquire the necessary Steem Power for expansion faster than planned.
Level-Up
At each level the users are required to envision and complete a community support project in order to remain in the system and advance to a larger vote amount. This keeps everyone in the mindset of building new things and learning how to be more effective on Steem, as well as developing their leadership skills. The structure is based loosely on the concept of the Eagle Scout Project.
Completed level-up projects have included the Cartoon-Off Comics Contest, the Photocircle Weekly Photographer Spot, organizing and producing the DTube birthday video, and the Steemit Webcomics Cover Contest, with more in progress.
However, the level-up reward of a slightly higher vote may not be sufficiently motivating, especially with the falling Steem price making the difference between the votes at bordering levels only a few pennies. So with the opportunity to to apply for Curie support, we would like to create a new incentive for users to complete their level-up projects.
Potential Sponsorship
We would like 100 Steem per month to be used to reward users who have completed a level-up project during that month. Our preferred method of reward would be Steem Basic Income shares, as value in SBI promotes long-term presence on the platform, and the extra share from sponsoring would support the sustainability of our program. However, we are open to sponsor input if they feel this is too self-rewarding; SBI shares can be awarded to two users with no self-sponsorship, or the reward could be provided in Steem Power or liquid Steem.
Increasing the level-up reward will make one of the most exciting parts of the program more effective - the part where we're essentially a machine for creating community projects.
We'd like to thank @curie and @randomwanderings for this opportunity. For any further questions please feel free to contact @tcpolymath on Discord as tcpolymath#2171.