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We hope you have all been enjoying Season 16 of the Steemit Engagement Challenge which is coming to an end shortly. Season 17 of the Challenge will be starting in mid April. Applications are now invited from communities for the new season. For this 17th round we are again looking for six Communities who would like to take part alongside the Steemit Crypto Academy. --- --- ### How Communities can Apply

For Season 17 of the Engagement Challenge, we are looking for six Communities to participate. The Communities should be well established, with a good, active team of Admins and Mods, and an actively growing community curation account. **We are looking for Communities who already check and comment on every post in their community**. Particularly those that check for plagiarism, AI content generation, bot-use, steem-exclusivity, club status, etc. **All the Admins and Mods should be following at least #club5050.** The Communities can be country communities, subject-specific communities, or general communities. The selected communities will receive increased voting from @steemcurator01 and @steemcurator02, and weekly Challenge winners will receive extra prize votes from @steemcurator01. Communities chosen for the Challenge will be expected to run weekly contests through their community account, and also be willing to **check and comment on every post in their community**. To apply to join the Challenge, the Community should make an application post including… * the purpose of their community * a brief history of their community * a list of all Founders, Administrators, and Moderators including their #club status * details of their community curation account, how it is being built up, and **who holds the Master, Owner and Active keys** * details of the community’s current policy for checking and commenting on posts * details of how the community helps members improve the quality of their posts * reasons why their community should be selected for the Challenge. The post should also contain the contact details (Telegram/Discord) of at least 2 lead people in the community team. **Posts should be submitted by 11:59 pm UTC, on Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024.** The application posts should be made on the community account and include the tag #engagementapplication in the first four tags. The Communities selected for previous seasons are welcome to apply again for Season 17. --- --- ### Checking & Grading Posts

The Communities selected for Season 17 should ensure they promptly check and comment on all posts for their weekly contests. The minimum they should check for are #club status, Steem exclusivity, plagiarism, AI content generation and bot use. To help @steemcurator01 and @steemcurator02 to curate the contest posts more effectively we have been looking for community Mods to use a clear, simple, and easy-to-read comment format. Communities are free to design their own comment formats but it is ideal if all Mods in a particular community use a common, standard format. Remember though - votes are not guaranteed. --- --- ### Community Beneficiaries

**Please note that the selected communities should not make setting a beneficiary to any related community account obligatory for anyone to enter the Challenge contests.** --- --- ### Selection of Challenge Winners

Each week we would like all 7 Challenge communities to make a post on their community account announcing the **three** people who have demonstrated the most engagement in their weekly contest both through the quality of their contest post and the quantity and quality of their comments on other people’s contest posts. We will leave it to each community to decide how they select their weekly winners, but they should include in their announcement posts a brief summary of their selection process. **All the weekly winners, as well as the community announcement posts, will receive extra prize votes from @steemcurator01.** --- The weekly contest announcement posts and the weekly winners announcement posts are rewarded with substantial votes from @steemcurator01. **Communities now have the option to set beneficiaries on those weekly posts to share the rewards with their Admins and Moderators who are curating and commenting on the entry posts.** --- --- We are looking forward to reading all your applications. This is an exciting Challenge to help build engagement on the platform. We hope as many people as possible will take part. Thank you _The Steemit Team_