Team Europe – Still Digging, Still Hoping (Report #1)

It has been a few years since any of the team members were responsible for a steemcurator account, during which we’ve all been active and primarily curated manually with our own accounts.

When the Steemit Team announced their new approach to the curation teams, we thought that it was the perfect opportunity to brush off our steemcurator caps and apply - something we had been considering and discussing for a while.

With our combined experience with the platform and various tools that we have created over the years, we were confident that we could find some gems, hidden away from communities.

Having seen a decline in European authors, our approach of “Europe first” sought to bring more prominence to this under-represented group.

We were proudly awarded the largest steemcurator account (03) and soon set about our business of seeking the best that Steemit has to offer. We set out clear guidelines which follow our own ethos of seeking out authors and contributors that have a positive impact upon the platform:

• Not supporting vote service users
• Supporting users who see Steemit as their primary platform (i.e. cross-posting on Hive - who have long attacked Steemit users)
• Not supporting users who transfer out all of their STEEM
• Supporting users who spend time reading and engaging with others - consistently seen in the comments section.

As a team, we’ve always seen the above criteria as the “basics” (Notice that there’s no mention of post quality at this point!).

Our optimism and enthusiasm quickly evaporated.

What we saw surprised us and whilst we’re aware that there is already some repetition above, we’ll avoid repeating as it has already been covered in the below posts:

• NO Structure, NO Sense, NO Rambling, NO Silence, NO Thinking, NO
• NO Questions

We could go on - we haven’t even mentioned the frustrating lack of quality and low effort across the platform and that we are also competing against 10 other curation teams and the sc01 and sc02 accounts in a race to vote on the better content first. Frequently losing this race.

We have all committed a huge number of hours this week with the mindset of helping the community, rather than ourselves (this post has a beneficiary of... 100% to @null).

Imagine our disappointment when yesterday, we were questioned about our use of the allocated voting power.

it looks SC03 is not well used, I need to remind you and pls sync with your team

We’re still waiting to understand what the below means but it’s not good enough:

We’ve gone out of our way to ensure that our votes only go to people who deserve them. That our votes are always made with a minimum of 95% voting power, so as to benefit the author as much as possible - not ourselves.
Perhaps we’re not as in-tune as we’d like to think.

Ouch!

Despite all of the above, we were able to find a few authors that we’d like to highlight this week - as much for their engagement across the platform as for the posts themselves…

Mit der Tutana vor Istrien, Umag 1994 by @jochenpaul, Germany

@jochenpaul is a rare but very welcome author in the German community. We were recently able to read the final part of his very personal account of a sailing trip off Istria almost 31 years ago. You can read about the adventures of the mostly "newcomers with little or no sailing experience" in three parts (Part 1, Part 2).

Musou Black by @bluelavender, Nigeria

@bluelavender has published a short story that can certainly be described as a fictional psychodrama. Using literary stylistic devices, the author succeeds in building up an arc of suspense that captivates the reader until the rather unexpected end. She is a gem for friends of stylistically and linguistically first-class stories.
In a nutshell, the psychodrama is a mother-daughter conflict that spans many years of the adolescent girl's life in the absence of her mother. I can't give any more away, otherwise I would take the tension out of the text. Read it for yourself - it's worth it!

Фільм - "Людина, яка впала на Землю" by @diodao, Ukraine

@diodao is a user that frequently appeared in our search for European content. Hers is a name that we consistently came across in the comments section of the Ukraine for Steem community and this selection is in recognition of that engagement, as much as it is for the post itself.

The Waiter of Arroyo de la Miel by @quotes-haven, Singapore

When we quickly ran out of content from European users worth voting for (or the votes for a single user would have accumulated too much), we looked for users who write about Europe. We came across an article by Quotes-Haven, in which he describes a holiday destination in Andalusia (Spain). We made a ‘mistake’ and voted hastily without realising that the author was using a delegation service. The resulting dialogue and the immediate action of the pensioner, who often spends his holidays in Spain, was amazing. Engagement bonus!

Недільний кінозал - "Ідеальний пацієнт" by @linux911, Ukraine

@linux911 writes around one post per week suggesting that he only writes when inspiration outweighs obligation. This is reflected in his recent post about the film ‘The Perfect Patient’.
As the film tells the true story of the alleged serial killer Thomas Quick (whose real name is Sture Bergwall), the author also writes about this unprecedented case of failure of justice, psychiatry and the police, leading @moecki to put the film on his wish list.

The Diary Game: Квест - знайди будинок мами) by @nobilisa, Ukraine

It’s rare that I’d support an author who predominantly writes Diary Games and I’m aware that this selection is hugely biased by the fact that @nobilisa visited the town that I grew up in and even tried to find my mum’s house (oh, so close)! So I’m unashamedly including her!

Your Fellow Community Members are PEOPLE, not Just “Upvotes!” by @denmarkguy, USA

After a week of foraging for content, @denmarkguy has articulated exactly what we’re feeling as curators. He’s also another author providing meaningful engagement in the comments section of others.

Die 10 häufigsten Sprachen auf Steem & SteemSearch Update v1.3.2 by @michelangelo3, Germany

Hehe, another one of those cases that was "unfortunately" voted on by sc01 the moment the article was published – we lost the race...
In an extensive conversation, @michelangelo3 sensed our deep frustration and, overnight, worked on an update to his SearchTool to support us in our work. For us! For the community!
As mentioned before, this man has no need for financial rewards anymore - but we want to mention him here to doubly emphasise just how deeply, deeply, deeply we appreciate his dedication.

Bye, bye!

@chriddi, @moecki & @the-gorilla

2025-07-07