Hi Steemians! I think Steemit is still lacking some post quality control. When a post receives an upvote it is unclear what the exact reason is. It is also unclear if the upvoter has actually read the post.

The Six Scientific Owls

I cannot change how others upvote but I can change my upvote methods. To give my upvoting process rigour I made criteria for when I am reading a scientific post. By scientific post I mean a post in the fields of classical sciences: physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology. There are a total of 6 criterea. For each of these criterea I made an adorable owl by modifying these owl vector graphics by Анна Куликова. An owl or owls will be awarded in the comment section of the post if you did a good job for the corresponding criteria. In case you did not get all the 6 owls I will also explain why in the comment section. Let me introduce my criteria for scientific content:

Citation and sources

I think that whenever you mention a scientific fact, which lies beyond the realm of standard knowledge, it should be properly cited. This means that it should be clear which fact in your text is connected to which source. In addition, if your work is base on a exposition is based on a specific scientific work it should be mentioned to protect intellectual honesty. So getting this little grey bird should be easy for everybody.

Text formatting and Layout

For scientific content there is usually a lot of information to process. Proper text layout can help the reader in pinpointing important/crucial information of the post. When writing scientific formulas it is important to do it in an aesthetically pleasing way. For example by using Latex. So this purple bird is also an easy catch.

Spelling and Grammar

We are living in a world of spelling/grammar checkers. You can also always ask another steemian to spell check your work. So I am sure you can get this blue bird.

Clarity and Completeness

When writing science you need to be clear and complete in your explanations. Clear means that your work is not open to misinterpretations by your target audience. Complete means that you do not leave out important facts/details/sources. If you do so you can receive this pure white fellow.

Originality

If you re-write a single web-page and post it on steemit it is not original content since I might as well read the web-page that you based your work on. If you are able to give your own interpretation of a scientific phenomenon or are able to construct your own examples you might find this green boy one day in your comment section. This might be the most difficult one to get. Well it is not easy being green.

Sexy Science

Science can appear unappealing to many people outside the scientific community. If you can explain science in a fun/sexy way then you did a good job and you will be rewarded with this pink sexy science owl.

UPDATED How to call the curation owls

First you need to follow me so that I can add you to the owl curation pool. If you use the science, mathematics, maths, physics, mechanics, biology, chemistry or steemstem tag and write in a reply to your post

@mathowl I want to catch them all

and you will be put in a queue for future curation. First time callers will be given priority. You can only call @mathowl once per week. If you call @mathowl twice or more per week you will be removed from the queue. There is still some automatization stuff that I need to sort out but I will keep you updated about that.