This is a quality post.

My introduction to the world of crypto was through DTube as an alternative to my now demonetised YouTube channel.

There was a very generous upvote on my "introduce yourself" post that would have translated to about AU$250 at the time, but I had no idea how to access that money, what Steem was or even how to convert it back to Australian dollars. I'm still trying to "avoid any imperial entanglements" in doing so.

Then I discovered the blogging / posting front end and a few local Steemians who posted blogs and I learned various points of etiquette here.

One of those points was the idea of producing quality posts.

It's still a nebuluous term and what others think of as quality seems to shift somewhat, but when I started here there were two main unwritten rules:

1) Don't offend the reader's eyeballs.

2) If it's worth a dollar, use markdown html code.

It wasn't much to go on, but it was enough to start.

Later there were other rules like there needed to be at least 1000 words within the post otherwise it was considered a shitpost.

More recently there has been a movement to demonise some of the newer dApps and say that their content isn't quality.

Some people don't like posts to do with Steem Monsters and others consider Actifit activities as spam. This could easily be fixed with subject filters though.

There are those who think that they are "protecting the block-chain" by demonising people who post via Partiko, eSteem or any other new dApp that makes a Steemian's life easier.

How could that lead to mass adoption?
The focus for them on the format rather than the content inside it.

In reality you need great content, within a great format.

So, what is a quality post?

To me, it's about showing personal effort.

Some of my posts can take less than 10 minutes to produce, but then there are others might take a hours with photo placement, editing and selecting the right subject line and hashtags. That's not to mention the weighing up of when to release a post for maximum readership. What doesn't get shown is the thinking time from concept to release and that might be months in the making. This one took 2 days, and I still had to edit it once it was posted.

But here are a few general rules for making a quality posts.

Think about what you want to say *before *you post it. Edit for clarity, grammar and spelling. Read your own posts to check.
Is it accurate? This is the internet, and while I think that a lot of people don't fact check, you can bet your bottom Steem that someone will and you'll be corrected. There's a lot of nonsense passing itself off as the truth here.
Only use high quality photos that are well lit and in focus, unless it's part of the style not to. Make sure to copy and upload a photo directly rather than posting a link to it because sometime the image won't display properly leading to less upvotes.
Only use original content, and don't plagiarise other people's work. If you need to use other people's work for reference, such as photos and logos, cite the source and give them credit.
Are you proud to put your name to it?
Does it make people laugh, cry, groan, feel or think? Is it useful?
Don't offend people's eyeballs. This is subjective though, but show your best work and you should be OK.
Use the markdown html code to create eyecatching headers, bold or italic text and even for lists.
Aim for a minimum of 250 words if possible, but edit your work so that people can get to the point of it within a few pages.

Not every post of mine is going to meet all of these criteria, but I make the effort. This isn't Twitter.

Oh and before I go, the reason I purposely took the photo above and shared it here?

I was told, not once but twice, over a period of months, that a photo of the candle on the table (specifically) wouldn't be considered a quality post and therefore unworthy of an upvote.

So, of course, I had to include it! :D
In fact, it might even be a running gag...
Sometimes you have to call people out on their B.S.

Once again, it's not the subject matter but the effort you put in that makes it a quality post.

This is a quality post. It even has my seal of approval. :)