https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2018/07/14/11/33/network-3537401_960_720.jpg

Now that the cat's out of the bag about communities which I've been very excited about and was sitting on edge during the presentation of @roadscape at Steemfest, I wanted to discuss what we at @ocd would like to do with it moving forward.

Let's keep this short. Over the last couple months we've been receiving a lot of requests for curation and supporting people's projects, the main reason we haven't continued responding to them has not just been cause we've been super busy but also because we get swamped with people asking for assistance. Many of those have been about onboarding users through your projects, the biggest flaw there has been that it's been promises of what you will be doing and asking for support on your project's posts about it mainly.

Now you may think there's nothing wrong with that but similar to other smaller curation projects we've been assisting lately we've only supported the posts they curate, not the actual curators or reports of what they curate with ocd and ocdb, same thing goes for our own team of curators at ocd - yes even when we've been downvoted for reasons that often have not been due to disagreement of rewards.

We're passed the time where we announce a project and ask for assistance from the get go. Now you have to take a risk, put in some work and invest yourself in your project either with funds or time. Then once you have a working project that is getting some traction and actually flowing - that's when you should look for more support and to help user retention. You should have some sort of statistics followed by proof when requesting further assistance and a kickstart. I am sure I am not the only one here who thinks this should be a requirement by now after the many years of empty promises, rewards and delegations that went nowhere. There's nothing more disheartening than delegating to a project only to find out a few months later that the leader has gone AWOL and was selling his free delegation votes through a bid bot.

Anyway, please keep that in mind before approaching us in the future. We always answer to proposals and take the time to talk about ideas through DM's, but they have to be somewhat serious for our interest to not extinguish.

Having said that, now that communities are arriving, we have some news.

We would like to help kickstart communities through our voting power and other ways we can help. Here as well we would like some thought out ideas and plans before we consider your community. A very good community idea won't even need much voting power incentive to work and grow, if we see signs of that happening in new communities we will assist it anyway. Similar to that at our own discretion we may not assist communities we may believe won't grow as big or be able to stay relevant for a longer time period.

So if you're reading this and are as excited about communities as we are, feel free to [join our Discord](https://discord.gg/k2Hu77b) server and/or hit us up in direct messages about your ideas for our consideration. Please remember that support won't exist from the start unless it's a really great idea we like and think it has a great potential for growth.

The last few weeks we've been helping grow the Gods Unchained community here on Steem as we believe the game has a high chance at reaching mass adoption and showcasing the blockchain proof of ownership advantage to the world. At the same time immutability is important as we've seen players be censored, demonetized and all other nice things for their beliefs. We are happy to see the community grow and be introduced to other advantages of blockchain through Steem than just proof of ownership which we also got here as showcased by Splinterlands and even better they've shown what more you can do with blockchain in gaming through evolved chains like Steem that won't get clogged up or require fees for every trans/action.

We are looking forward for the cryptorush of communities starting up on Steem and hoping to be on the forefront to assist their growth, retention and success. 

Thank you for reading and we'll be looking forward to talking with you more about your community ideas!