You’ve probably missed it, but hidden behind the bot-bastardised tragedy of the trending pages there is actually a thriving array of good-hearted and mutually supportive community curation initiatives through which actual-people work together to reward quality content.
Steeminc has promised us that communities (and supposedly happiness?) are just around the corner, and that, along with Smart Media Tokens, these will basically solve all of the social injustice problems that are currently amplified through this platform.
Until those days arrive, below is an overview of currently existing communities who are just getting on with the business of making people happy right now, simply by putting the social in what might otherwise be perceived as anti-social (and anti-human) platform, (I've read the second half of that sentence several times, and I THINK it's English?!?)
NB I’ve no doubt missed a lot of stuff out, so please feel free to add in anything else in the comments (I’ve set up a small ‘steem-bounty’ for comments!)
Edit - thanks to the many comments below, I've also done a second post: even more community curation initiatives on steemit covering (I won't say all) the initiatives I missed below... lots of good stuff going on!
Manual Curation initiatives
These are the teams of people on steemit who trawl the platform for quality content and upvote it to boost author rewards. To my mind, getting a vote from one of the accounts below is (mostly) like getting a stamp of approval that your post is worth something. It’s also nice to know that at least someone different is actually reading what you write.
NB The way get upvoted by one of these accounts (the humans behind the accounts) is to produce quality content - you’ll need to read the daily/ weekly roundups they do in order to figure out what quality content is. Of course you can always try connecting with the people behind the accounts to!
This is not (yet/ if it every can be?) an exhaustive list…. I’m focusing on the main ones at first, and the ones which interest me…
- The curation and engagement leagues maintained by
Hive account@abh12345 and sponsored by 
Hive account@paulag and 
Hive account@carlgnash - it’s basically two leagues, both of which encourage engagement: one for ‘total value of curation rewards' and one for 'engagement' (length of comments etc.) with prizes for the winners. I’ve put this at the top of the list as it’s brilliant, great people, and it sort of ‘brings whales, dolphins and minnows together’ around manual curation quite like nothing else on the platform! Vote 
Hive account@steemcommunity as a witness to support.
Hive account@curie - consists of around 90 manual curators who trawl steemit for undiscovered content (they get rewarded with a finders fee) and if agreed by other curators, the post(s) submitted get a Hive account@curie upvote, which can be worth a substantial amount. With around 115K SP, a 100% upvote is worth $30. New, typically low rep accounts with quality content are much more likely to get an upvote with older (typically higher rep) accounts with the same quality of content. Analysis has also shown that accounts which have previously received an Hive account@curie update are less likely to quit the platform. (Certainly worked for me!). Hive account@curie has a witness account you might like to vote for!
Hive account@ocd - is a manual curation team who, much like Hive account@curie, trawl steemit for undervalued content, submit the posts for consideration and the best get an upvote and are included in the OCD-daily round up posts. There’s a ‘regular’ round-up and an international version too. With nearly 40K SP, a 100% upvote will earn you $10. Hive account@ocd also has a witness account you might like to vote for.
Hive account@asapers is a young curation initiative which again manually curates undervalued content - a 100% upvote is worth $0.20, but still worth having! The more manual curation, the better, after all.- @Sndbox is a ‘steem incubator for creatives and communities’ - I think this basically means that if you do something creative and collaborative which the sndbox team like the look of then you’ve got a chance of getting a massive upvote from their nearly 60K SP account. This post will give you an idea of some of the excellent creative, collaborative projects going on which are supported by sndbox.
- @Sndbox-alpha is a curation programme which supports new themes every month - with rotating teams of curators who seek out good content and upvote and publicise said content. The introduce yourself post will give you a basic idea of what the project’s about - the ultimate goal of
Hive account@sndbox-alpha is to set up regular communities of curators focused on curating specific topics.
- The ‘pay it forward’ curation contest imagined and maintained by
Hive account@thedarkhorse - you basically have to nominate 3 steemians with a reputation below 50 for a chance to win SBI (
Hive account@steembasicincome). For a very clear idea of what an entry might look like see this entry by 
Hive account@fitinfun here
- The Minnow Support Project -aims to >Accelerate the minnow growth through community accounts, social interaction, resteems and upvotes. This post outlines the basic details of MSP.
Hive account@aggroed founded the MSP, and I’m sure he’d appreciate your witness vote, he’s got mine! There are various ‘subsidiary initiatives run through MSP such as (a) The MSP ‘Community Curation’ weekly top five positive PAL posts - submit your PAL posts (have to be in line with PAL values, which basically means good vibes posts); (b) The MSP Music and Art Curation Contest (upvotes 10 submissions per week, and you can delegate to it) ; (c) @Isaria’s MSP music curation competition - @Isaria manually curates 5 songs a week, from the msp-curation account and another account.
- The
Hive account@dropahead curation trail upvotes posts the best posts (ITO) that have had 20 votes but which have got rewards of less than $20 (there’s higher tiers as well). You’ll need to submit your posts to the relevant discord group…. You can join and find instructions by clicking this link
- The steemit comment challenge is a great iniative run by
Hive account@danielsaori in which he selects one post a week for users to comment on - the best comment gets $5SBD and 200 SP delegation, and a second prize of 200SP delegation.
- Dustbuster is a nice initiative by @Davemccoy - all you have to do is to send him your posts or comments and he’ll upvote them so they’re worth more than $0.02 cents (the threshold at which you don’t get paid!)
- Promote your post live - Basically a show in which you can promote your post for others to upvote. Posts are put out by
Hive account@freedomexists. NB this is linked to an initiative called whaleshares which I’ve only just stumbled across, don’t know much about it, but it looks like it’s worth checking out… This is an invite to the discord group if you wish to do so.
- It’s also worth keeping an eye out for random acts of generosity such as
Hive account@markymark’s one off (of course he may have done it before!) nominate awsome authors to win them a $100 upvote 12 hour special individual curation efforts.
Community oriented pay for upvote initiatives
the concept may sound like a bit of an oxymoron, but check out the two upvote initiatives below, they really are different to the dreaded voting bots….
Hive account@qurator is an account which offers a lifetime upvote for those who produce quality content. It is primarily aimed at supporting minnows who see very little reward for their posts - to register you simply need to transfer 4 steem to qurator for their basic ‘tier one’ upvote service. If you upvote qurator’s posts, you qualify for higher rewards, and if you delegate SP then more still! (basic details in this post- Hive account@steembasicincome - one of my favourite initiatives on steemit: guaranteed upvotes for life, reclaim your investment after 6 months. To register for SBI you have to transfer a minimum of 1 steem to SBI and nominate one other person, you both get 1 share in the programme. You can send more. A number of people put on competitions through which you can win shares in SBI. Check out Hive account@steembasicincome’s feed for regular updates. Details in this post here - steem basic income!
Other good community stuff to look out for…
this is all good stuff that doesn’t really fit into ‘regular curation’...
- @Pennsif’s dollar a day charitable given project -
Hive account@pennsif started giveing 1 SBD/ day to some of the charitable causes championed by various steemians back in November 2017, a few other people joined him and now he’s looking for enought people to make it $1000/ month. Or as he says, there is a higher bar: >On current prices, we would currently need 838 people out of the 60,000 active people on steemit to join with this and we would be donating US$1 million per year !
Hive account@steembounty is a nice way of providing people with a little reward for commenting on posts - it’s quite complex, but basically you send (for example) 1 SBD to Hive account@steembounty with the post url in the memo and then the comments get a share of the bounty based on the upvotes on the comments (80% author to others weight) - check out further details here - How to create a bounty
Hive account@trufflepig - this is a bot with uses an algorithm to measure the quality of a post taking into account number of paragraphs, headings, spelling, language, and it leaves a comment on ‘the best 25 posts’ of the day based on these metrics. I’ve only just come across this, still tyring to get my head around it… Details in this post- I should also mention the various topic specific curation groups out there - such as
Hive account@steemiteducation, or some of the many location based groups which curate specific content.
- I could mention many other, focused accounts which reward ‘good work’ -
Hive account@utopian-io is worth a special mention for it’s rewarding developers and data analysts for example.
I guess some people are also worth special mentions for their massive delegations - 
Hive account@hendrikdegrote with Hive account@curie and up until quite recently 
Hive account@fulltimegeek for sponsoring the curation leagues.
Good hashtags to use to get your posts noticed…
to end on…if you’ve got a hashtag or two left over, then below some useful hashtags, then below are some useful hashtags which might get you noticed! NB not my strong point hashtags, bit tired, so maybe someone else can update them in the comments!
Final Thoughts
Obviously I've missed a few initiatives out, so please plug away in the comments below!
If you want to ‘break into’ to the above curation circles and become a curator yourself (NB I don’t curate on any of these) I guess the way in is to connect with the people who do the curating via their own work on steemit, and/ or get in touch with them on their various discord channels.
Peace and all that!
Karl.
