Abstract
The idea is to create informational and educational content about Idle and its protocol, as also discussed in this post. Since the community is growing, new users need to clearly understand what Idle is, by having several resources available divided by a specific topic.

The Pilot League has decided to initiate an Educational grant, under the category Community Grants, to reward users for creating educational contents about Idle

We opened an official discussion on the topic, receiving feedback from the community regarding the various parameters and the type of content to be considered for this grant.

@mangaa18 provided this detailed feedback, importing ideas from his content marketing experience, which in future editions of the edu grant we plan to include many of those insights, but for this first edition we prioritize a learner structure.

Budget
The reward will depend on the type of article and the number of topics covered.
The Pilot League will evaluate the contents and their quality, rewarding submissions that will be selected for the Idle Gitbook

Furthermore, there will be an extra reward of 10 $IDLE for anyone who will cover more than 3 topics.

Scope of the work
The purpose is to create educational articles about Idle, since the Pilot League is planning to modify the current gitbook by also adding new educational content and resources.

For the first edition of this grant, the Pilot League asks its community to focus only on written content

Each written content must be between 500 up to 2000 words in length and you can also add visuals (charts, images, GIFs) to make the content more enjoyable.

The articles should always include an ELI5 paragraph so that beginners can follow along and understand the high-level concepts without feeling lost.

Assume your audience might not be specialized in math, finance, and computer science. They are sophisticated enough to use Metamask or other user-friendly wallets to perform simple DeFi transactions, without necessarily understanding everything that’s going on under the hood.

Topics to cover (main topics are written in bold, everything else is considered subtopic):

Article Examples

Discussion Links

Application Window
The application window is open since the publication of this post and will be closed on 2021-06-14T17:00:00Z. This may be extended up to 24 hours

How to Apply
To join this grant, reply to this post with:

• Topic to cover + content type: Specify the topics and category of your submission. This would help the community to understand the expected covered tasks.

Secondly, when you will complete your work, update your post by adding:

• Your Article: Post your article/s by linking a shared document (be sure that the document is public and accessible to anyone)

Rules for written content

• 1 Article per main topic
• Article must be about topics you find in the list above
• Articles should be original and unique
• Articles found plagiarized will be rejected
• Articles that are not written in a shared document will not be selected
• Articles must be tailored for Gitbook
• You can use any document sharing platform (applications will be then collected by the Pilot League in a common platform to avoid length valuation disparity).

When the open candidacy period ends, the Pilot League Committee will discuss the applications, thus the articles received. The final winner(s) will be announced in the governance forum here

Hey, great that this is moving forward. Just have a couple of questions:

• Why is the deadline so late – in a month an a half from now? You have to account that the people after elected need to actually write the article, then there’s some sort of quality control and feedback that needs to be given (and articles probably given back for improvements), then the SEO optimization of the article, and finally uploading the article (assuming that by then there’s actually an infrastructure on the website that supports blog posts, and that’s something that needs to be done simultaneously as the first article is being written) → I’d encourage to start sooner, because that’s a continuous process. We need to have new articles being created on at least weekly basis, starting ASAP.
• As mentioned above, what would the supporting infrastructure be like? i.e. where would the articles be published? Fine you’ll have the articles ready and what do you do with them? Like an educational hub (and evergreen content – example with categories and subcategories in the blog section), or via a simple blog section? What would the filters and tags be like for that content? That needs to be accounted for, as the creation of the content hub or blog section probably needs to undergo discussion, proposal and grant BEFORE the first article is written. There’s also the Coinbase example and my favourite the Binance Academy content hub example. This all needs to be thought of before the first article is written, because the alternative is improvisation, and short-term solution which greatly increases a chance for mistake in later development, as well as long-term costs.
• I think we should simultaneously be writting the more broad content (banal example “What is DeFi”), especially with the potential CEX listing and insurgance of new people. That also opens up another channel via which we can reach new IDLE users.
• “How to apply” – From my experience in growing brands via content marketing and coordination with the other parties, there are 2 more things that need to be factored in: 1. The writer should give their deadline as it’s an important factor for accepting that writer. 2. What about quality control? What if someone just writes total gibberish, or just copy/pastes an existing article? What if it needs to be sent back for an upgrade be it because it’s not structured well, it isn’t well written (ex. too long sentances, spelling mistakes, too high reading level), doesn’t use enough photos to break up the monotony of long-form content, etc. → I suggest to add the deadline as a requirement, and that the writer first needs to send an outline (heading titles (h2) and a 1-2 sentance explanation of that title), which needs to be approved, and then the writing can begin. After the article is written, it can be sent back for improvements if deemed not high enough quality (but with specific feedback and instructions how to improve the article)?
• What happens if even after that the article is not good enough as someone just does a very bad job of it? Do we have that scenario covered?

The deadline was set at over a month to give users time to create edu content.
In particular, as explained in “how to apply,” the user announces firstly which topic and category is choosing; once he has finished creating the content, the user edits his first comment adding the content he has completed (all this within the deadline).

People then will not be elected first: the Pilot League will judge the content once it is received and will select the most appropriate ones.

As mentioned in the “scope of the work” and also in “rules for written content,” for this grant, the infrastructure will be Idle’s Gitbook, following a similar structure to Sushiswap’s Gitbook.
I personally like the idea to create and have an Idle Edu Hub, but there’s also the goal to modify the current Gitbooks, so that’s why this grant is focusing on this platform.

For this grant, we are focusing on receiving educational content that explains Idle protocol; at the moment, there’s this need. For future Edu Grants, we can list general topics that help new users in the DeFi world as well.

I think you misunderstood the application and selection process. In “rules for written content,” you can read that “Articles should be original and unique,” “Articles found plagiarized will be rejected.”

The Pilot League will check every content before choose which to select, and then if the chosen content needs few more changes, they will be made after the deadline; in the meantime, the content has been selected and only after all the changes (if necessary) made by the author on the content, he/she will get the reward.

We thought to leave an open application on certain topics that have not yet been covered after this grant, so in the scenario in which despite continuous adjustments can not get to adequate content, that topic covered in the content will be available to anyone who wants to create the edu content for that.

It could possibly be available again to another author who was not chosen in comparison with the previous author (the one who failed to finalize the content despite various adjustments).

By the way, I appreciate your comments and feedback, but this thread is the official grant where we can collect applications, so I ask you to write your tips or feedbacks either in the official discussion where this grant has already been discussed or in the Idle telegram/discord groups; otherwise, this thread would become again a discussion post

Alright, thanks for the detailed explanation! Some things make more sense now. I’ll save the rest of the comments and discussion for the Official discussion thread.