As promised we are now publishing our new roadmap document for StemQ.

You will find the transcript below.
The document is also available here.

StemQ Roadmap

Overview

This is the roadmap document for the StemQ project, a Q&A application for STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) powered by the Steem blockchain.

StemQ rewards contributors in the form of upvotes which are then converted into Steem cryptocurrency.

Vision

To provide a place of excellence where people can ask questions of scientific or engineering nature and provide a clear environment for all to answer those questions.
To substantially reward the highest quality contributions in form of cryptocurrency and offer a friendly place where knowledge is shared with minimal subjectivity or opinions.
To benefit the general public’s interest into STEM subject and help students of all levels to understand those same subjects.
To promote research and publication of scientific articles in the form of questions and answers.

Objectives

As of this date StemQ provides a simple platform for users of the Steem blockchain to submit question and answer posts related to STEM subjects, while getting rewards from other users and curation guilds (such as SteemStem and Curie) in the form of Steem cryptocurrency.

The StemQ team strives to expand the scope of the application and target a wider audience.

Specifically the team aims to promote the emergence of content which will be of significant interest to the academia of all levels as well as the scientific research community.

This can be achieved through a combination of several factors:

• Bring in features which clearly groups content in a way that specific audiences (such as university students) can easily find articles that is relevant to their level of education.
  Add support for features required by contributors to format content that is required to express ideas or logic specific to their field, such as inputting complex mathematical formulae.

• Provide a framework allowing a selected team to curate content in a consistent and logical way. This framework will result in each curated post to acquire a specific rating which will then be converted into a certain amount of upvote from the StemQ account. This upvote is then ultimately converted into Steem.

• Provide the curation team with enough Steem Power to be able to make the rewards substantial. This Steem Power will come from three sources: delegation from other Steem users, Steem donation from other users, and earnings resulting from activity on the Steem blockchain.

Roadmap

Release 0.2

This release addresses the current limitation whereby a particular author cannot provide multiple answers to the same question.

Supporting this would allow a given author to publish a series of posts under the umbrella of a single question.

Features

1. Author can indicate that a given answer is part of a series.

2. Where applicable, a button indicates that an answer is part of a series, with a label indicating the part number in the series (e.g. “2 of 3”)

3. A user can click the series button and be directed to a page where the question and all series answers are shown in ascending order of part numbers (e.g 1 of 3, 2 of 3, 3 of 3).

Release 0.3

This release allows users and the StemQ admin staff to assign knowledge prerequisite levels to published answers. Answers are color coded and/or tagged with with markers.

This requires the capability to mark certain StemQ users as staff members. Staff members will have additional capabilities such as categorizing posts.

Features

1. StemQ users can be configured as staff members using the StemQ administration UI.

2. The author of a post, or any StemQ staff member, can update the difficulty level of the post.

3. The difficulty level of a post is represented on its card (home page and topics page). The default difficulty level of a post is 1 (easiest).

4. The meaning of each difficulty level is clearly indicated to the user. For example, the user might be able to click the difficulty level tag of a given post and be shown a popup documenting the meaning of that level.

5. The home page and topic page present a set of radio buttons for each level: level 1 -> 5 and an additional “all levels” button. The user can select which question he wishes to see by selecting the appropriate button.

6. On the backend, questions and answers can be fetched filtering on the difficulty level.

The selected difficulty level is stored on the backend so that the user’s choice applies seamlessly across different devices.

Release 0.4

This release facilitates organized curation of published posts. A selected team of curators is given a set of tools to easily rate posts.

Features

1. StemQ users can now be assigned the curator role.

2. Curators can select posts for curation. A comment is automatically posted to indicate that the post has been selected for curation.

3. Multiple curators can curate the same post.

4. The curation of a post is considered complete 5 days after publication of the post.

5. The final rating of a post is the average sum of all criteria ratings provided by all scoring curators.

6. At the end of the curation period (5 days after publication), the curated posts are awarded a certain percentage of StemQ upvote based on the final rating.

Release 0.5

Allow users to compose an introduction page about themselves on StemQ.

Features

1. Provide a form to users to allow them to specify various information about themselves, such as age, place of living, educational achievements, published papers, fields of expertise, etc.

2. Link the above user profile from any question/answer contributed by this user.

Release 0.6

This release aims to expand the user base to non-English speakers.

Features

1. Automatically detect a post language. Allow author or staff member to override the detected language.

2. Allows users to filter out all posts that are not of a chosen language.

3. Introduce support for localization to other languages.

Release 0.7

This release aims to bring in new users to join Steem and start early contributions to StemQ.

This would also help the StemQ account by keeping a Steem / SP commission on all rewards transferred to newly created Steem account.

Only StemQ curated submissions will be published under the StemQ umbrella account.

This guarantees that posts published to the Steem blockchain under that account meet designated quality criteria.

Features

1. Allow StemQ to verify non-Steem accounts. This may be done by verifying email address, or allow users to login using Google or FB account.

2. Allow verified non-Steem users to submit Q&As on StemQ for publication under the umbrella account.

3. Allow pending non-Steem user contributions to be selected for StemQ curation.

4. Allow curated non-Steem user contributions to be published on the Steem blockchain using the StemQ umbrella account.

5. StemQ to monitor all rewards earned by non-Steem users under the umbrella account.

6. Allow verified Steem users to specify a newly created Steem account.

7. Automatically transfer pending rewards to newly created Steem account, minus a predetermined commission.

Release 0.8

This release brings in search capability.

Features

1. Add Search page allowing users to search questions and answers using keywords.

2. Automatically index all Q&A texts on the backend

3. Provide HTTP API to query all Q&As matching certain keywords.

Release 0.9

This release allows user to specify favourite topics

Features

1. Add a page to allow a logged in user to update his/her list of favourite topics.

2. Add a button on the home page to filter out all questions of non-favourite topics.

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StemQ seeking SP delegation

As can be seen from the above roadmap, we would like to reward our best contributors with large upvotes.

But of course this can only happen if the StemQ account is backed up by significant Steem Power.

For this reason we are calling on anybody with an interest in this project to make an SP delegation, no matter how small.

Please find below convenient links which will allow you to delegate easily.

10 SP | 20SP | 50SP | 100SP |500SP|1000SP

To delegate a different amount, simply change the value in the link following the vesting_shares= field.
For example, to delegate 30 SP, open the following URL in your browser:

https://steemconnect.com/sign/delegateVestingShares?delegator=&delegatee=stemq&vesting_shares=30%20SP

A formal post for StemQ SP delegation request will shortly follow with the ROI rate and return period.

Thank you!

credit: Pixabay

Where to find more information?

For more information and latest news, join the vibrant StemQ Discord Server and follow the @stemq account!

Links

• StemQ: https://www.stemq.io
• Discord Server: https://discord.gg/AMSChmj