We (
This (somewhat lengthy) post will inform you on the progress that we have made in the last few months, our current philosophy regarding supporting STEM content on Steemit, our desire to grow and nurture a community of STEM content creators, and some plans/ideas we have for the future of the project.
The steemSTEM project is a community-oriented initiative to increase both the quality as well as the visibility of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) posts on Steemit.
Discussion revolving around STEM disciplines are not just niche topics, but rather core subjects essential to the long term growth and development of Steemit. We believe that a thriving Steemit STEM community is crucial for providing support and encouraging further development of current skilful bloggers, as well as recruiting outside talent. Each is necessary for achieving our mission to provide Steemit with quality, interesting and cutting edge STEM content.
The project seeks in part to accomplish these goals through the direct promotion of quality content posted on Steemit. Quality assessment of content is achieved by a team of curators with expertise in various STEM disciplines working on behalf of the community. Curation by 
Since the initiation of the collaboration with
Members of the curation team have also begun assembling a weekly curation digest (Issue: [#1], [#2], [#3], [#4], [#5], [#6], [#7], [#8], [#9],[#10],[#11],[#12],[#13],[#14],[#15],[#16],[#17]) highlighing one exceptional post from each day of the week as a means to provide further exposure for excellent content creators; as well as provide examples that other community members can learn from to improve their own blogging skills.
One question which community members frequently ask is “What do the curators look for when selecting content for votes?”
As explained in detail in this post, four requirements are in order. An authors' post must be original, well written (using clear English), well formatted (easy to read) and not plaggiarized (or translated from foreign sources).
Moreover, being recognized by @steemSTEM means more that just being rewarded for his/her blog. It means that the author is engaged with our vibrant community through posts, participation on the chat (on the steemit chat or discord) and through comments on the articles of other STEM authors.
The steemSTEM team members understand that our standards require a high level English proficiency that not all members of our growing community may possess. We recognize that this is both unfair, and also is closing the door on a chance to educate and inform more people. To enable users to be able to create content that is keeping with the SteemSTEM qualilty guidelines, but written in their own native languages we have begun establishing sub communities with curators/managers who have both scientific expertise as well as any needed language expertise. Each community has chosen a unique tag for users to use to better enable identification of local or non-english STEM content of high quality.
To date collaborations with the following communities have been established:
| Community/Language | group tag | managers/curators |
|---|---|---|
| Nigerian | stemng |  @greenrun |
 @gentleshaid | ||
| Italian | itastem/scienze |  @aboutcoolscience |
| French | franco-stem |  @guga34 |
 @kingswisdom | ||
| Spanish |  @carloserp-2000 | |
 @iamphysical |
We thank each of these sub-community managers for their efforts to expand the spread of quality STEM content on steemit. We look forward to assisting them in growing the size of these communities and bringing more great content creators to our platform.
In addition to the project’s curation function, we also encourage and support various community member initiatives through the donation of STEEM POWER as rewards for their participants. Since the previous update we have supported the following projects/contests:
Disclaimer: All projects discussed below are tentative, and require future developments by either Steemit Inc. or other community developers as well as collaborations between the SteemSTEM team and other generous Steemit community members/developers.
Steemit’s recent announcement of Smart Media Tokens and their intended use to aid in the development of internet communities provides us the opportunity to implement a secondary token revolving around the creation of STEM content. We have teamed up with 
Currently the finer details of how these tokens will function have not yet been completely revealed. It is nevertheless our intention to utilize this new technology to continue to build the STEM community on Steemit as soon as possible.
The steemSTEM community is not just those of us in the SteemSTEM management and curation teams, but actually all of you as well. Implementing a SMT needs to be done in the right way: one which will help the community grow! This means that we will need your help in deciding what to do with these tokens. Please drop by our channels on the steemit chat and/or on discord, or leave a comment below if you have any suggestions about the way in which one should implement the token to encourage excellence in STEM content. This is a community project, and a SteemSTEM SMT would be a COMMUNITY token, one that we are all proud to distribute and use to promote STEM the world over.
Also, if you have not checked out the SMT White Paper, you can also do that Here. Perhaps you will find some inspiration by reading through it!
The steemSTEM team, much like everyone on the platform, is extremely excited at the prospects of official communities being implemented on steemit. We have been trying our best to organically grow the group of posters who possess a likeminded vision that high quality, interesting, well cited and well formatted blog posts will illustrate to the masses that steemit THE place to go to read about Science and Tech. In recent months the community size has increased to almost 2100 followers of the
As many of you are aware we (well mostly 
Finally, we would like to take a moment in this closing section to thank our community members for the great discussions that we have in the group chat on steemit.chat (https://steemit.chat/channel/steemSTEM) and more recently on discord too, as well as for their enthusiasm for what we are trying to do; enthusiasm which can be seen in our winning the award for best public chat on steemit.chat, a testament to the supportive atmosphere that the community keeps and the enthusiasm they share for each others’ content and STEM as a whole.
We strive to keep our steemit.chat and discord channels positive places where users who are creating STEM content can discuss whatever they want. It’s not just about chatting science, it’s our place to get to know one another, and to help build the relationships that will allow for a network that can support one another! Our community is about helping each other grow on steemit.
Thank You All for your support of this project, for creating the wonderful content that you do, for your passion for the fascinating mysteries of the world, and for allowing us the privilege of building this community.
Cheers!
Curators
Management Team
Founders
@kenchung
@mystifact
@biuiam
@curiousity
@mcw