[Manual Curation] Introduceyourslf tag - My criteria to vote these posts

I get a lot of discord messages every day from newbies asking me to vote on their posts. That´s ok, I actually encourage people to send me links to their posts every once in a while. The thing is, most of those posts do not fulfill my criteria to vote on them so, to be honest, they are just wasting theirs and my time by sending me those posts.

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This is the second post I make about manual curation, the last one was about curating the art tag. I will continue to write this kind of posts whenever I feel like. There isn´t a specific day of the week or date of the month, I just write them whenever I fell writing about curation. I write these posts talking about the specifics of each of the most popular tags around so everyone knows what do I expect from a newbie´s post in order to curate it.

What I´m going to do is spread some votes among the various posts I find while browsing the introduce yourself tag and explain why am I voting on them and why am I voting with that percentage.

Now, these set of criteria I use to vote, is not a step by step guide that you should follow in order to get a vote from me. I´m 100% in favor of people posting what they want, when they want and how they want to do it, I am just putting this information out because that is how I base my decision whether to vote or not on a post and what percentage I vote it with.

This is not a rule book and definitely should not be taken as law, I am going to make these type of posts to answer all these questions I get of what do I take into account when curating certain tags.

If you are inviting people to join the platform, perhaps let them know about this post because most of the manual curators take into account some of the bullet points I´m about to list here.

Curating the introduceyourself tag

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My personal criteria when voting on this kind of posts is kind of loose, not because I expect low quality posts, but because I expect the post quality of a newbie. This doesn´t mean I just throw votes to every post I find using this tag, but I definitely strive to reward as many people as I can, sometimes I even leave comments in these newbies´s posts.

1 - First timer. An introduceyourself post must be the first post a person makes to, redundantly, introduce themselves to the platform and its community. If I notice that an intro post comes from a Steemian whose rep is not 25, I click on their profile name to see their posting activites. If he/she hasn´t made an intro post before and then decide to make one then I decide if it´s too late or not - I mean, an intro post 10 days into your steemit journey it´s ok, and intro post 5 months after you joined the platform and started blogging... definitely not ok -. It also has to be the first time this person uses this tag - this one is hard to control but usually this tag is the first used, so it´s easier to notice if the person uses it frequently.

2 - Original content. As weird as it sounds, some people copy introduction posts from someone else so, I do my usual plagiarism check using Grammarly so I am sure this intro post comes from the heart and not from the copy+paste realm.

3 - ID check. I find it easier to vote on a post that includes a pictue of the Steemian, showing their face and holding a piece of paper with their username and the date. This is to ensure that there is actually a person behind the account and it´s not just another bot - we don´t need more of those. There´s a lot of people who take their privacy very seriously and I´m fine with that, so sometimes just holding a piece of paper without showing their face, or perhaps just the paper side by side with something the new Steemian likes as a hobby. Probably the steemian likes football soccer, so if he doesn´t want to show his face, why not take a pic of the piece of paper resting on the ball? Anyway, timestamp, that little piece of paper is very important for a manual curator, sadly, less and less people are doing it nowadays.

4 - You only get one first impression, make it count. I want a post, full of pics and swamped with passion. Show me that you are really interested in making Steemit your second home. If I find a small post with just a few lines and just one picture, It´s going to be very hard for me to vote it but, sometimes when a post is amazing, I vote hard on the post and I may even end up following the person. Imagine making your very first post and having already a minnow with a whale costume following you? So make that first impression count, write the best post you can because that lone post is going to set the bar high or low for your readers, your first post is your presentation card, make it the best one.

5 - Smart writing and smart title. Imagine there are hundreds of introduceyourself posts every day. How are you planning on leave a mark? What´s your strategy to make people curious about you and click on your post? Use a smart title, I was very lucky because my post title was very plain and simple but those were other times, now we are competing with a lot more people to get their attention.

6 - English writing. I´m sorry, but if the post is not written in a language I can´t understang, I completely ignore the post.

Are you curious about my introduction post a bit more than 1 year and one month ago?

Hello! About me <- What a simple title, I bet today this title would get me nowhere.

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Not everyone is a writer and not all of us are english speakers so I understand if you have a few grammar mistakes but, in general, I expect from these introduction posts a lot of passion, dedication and overall, quality - for a newbie, I don´t expect markdown perfection but I do expect more than 3 lines and one pic.

None of these bullet points are mandatory for me to curate introduceyourself posts, but certainly fulfilling a higher percentage of them makes it easier for me to vote with a bigger weight on these posts.

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Ladies and gentlemen please allow me to introduce to you to myself@theserene -

Long post: Check
Nice pics: Check
Interesting subjects: Check
No plagiarism: Check
First introduceyourself post: Check

What would I add to the post: Piece of paper for ID check.

Voting weight: 20%

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Introducing myself@david.laguardia -

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Long post: Check
Proof of ID: Check
Interesting subjects: Check
No plagiarism: Check
First introduceyourself post: Check

What would I add to the post: A few more pics as teaser, perhaps of the book he is talking about?

Voting weight: 20%

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New Steemit: Let´s get to know each other@sweetelyse -

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Long post: Double check
Nice pics: Double check
Interesting subjects: Check
No plagiarism: Check
First introduceyourself post: Check

What would I add to the post: Again, a piece of paper for ID proof.

Voting weight: 25%

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A writer, A scientist, A programmer... A short intoduction of myself@herbayomi -

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Long post: Check
Nice pics: Check
Interesting subjects: Check
No plagiarism: Check
First introduceyourself post: Check
ID proof: Check

What would I add to the post: Nothing!

Voting weight: 25%

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First post en Steemit, I´m ecstatic@queendina -

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Two words: Video introduction!

What would I add to the post: Nothing! I couldn´t ask for a better introduction.

Voting weight: 30%

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There you have it, I hope this makes it clear to you what I look for in introduceyourself posts. Make sure to let your friends who are just arriving to Steemit know about this post, perhaps this will give them an idea of what some whales look for while curating intro posts.

Why don´t you go to these posts and give these amazing Steemians a warm welcome!