escapethe3RA Monero Observer maintenance (3 months)

What

I will continue to maintain Monero Observer (https://monero.observer) for the next 3 months (winter 21/2022): December, January and February.

Tasks:

• Daily: search, curate, structure and post new reports/stories
• Daily/As Needed: post new MO Community Messages
• Weekly: publish the MO XMR TA Report (technical analysis Monero price report)
• Monthly: publish the MO Blitz Report (includes everything that happened the previous month)
• As Needed: housekeeping (revise stories to make sure links and content is still relevant)
• As Needed: outreach (engage with the community on Matrix, Reddit, XMPP, emails)
• As Needed: make sure the website is live and working as expected (no 404's, domain is paid, etc)
• Optional: add new features, improvements and website sections

Who

escapethe3RA, I have started contributing to the Monero ecosystem in August with Monero Observer and other smaller projects:

• published 356 MO stories (https://www.monero.observer/stories)
• published 11 MO XMR TA reports (https://www.monero.observer/tag/analysis)
• published 3 MO Blitz reports (https://www.monero.observer/tag/blitz)
• created several guides on GPG encryption, RSS feeds and Monero contributors (https://www.monero.observer/ultimate-guide-new-monero-contributors/, https://www.monero.observer/gpg-cleartext-signatures/, https://www.monero.observer/gpg-generate-full-keypair/)
• redesigned Monero Means Money website, donated bounty to GF (https://moneromeans.money/, https://github.com/escapethe3RA/monero-means-money/)
• started MO Community Messages initiative (https://www.monero.observer/tag/community)
• other project improvements (https://www.monero.observer/changelog)

Proposal

I will work for 25 hours per week over 3 months at a rate of 0.07 XMR / hour. At $220 / XMR (10% buffer) this makes 21 XMR (0.07 * 100 * 3).

changed the description

I strongly support this proposal. Over the last several months Monero Observer has been a key resource for Monero community members to gain insight into the day-to-day developments and breakthroughs happening across the Monerosphere. Coverage has been consistent, prolific, and in-depth. Here are a few suggestions to make Monero observer even better:

1. More publicity of Monero Observer's articles would be good. This is something that all of us can help with. For example, linking its articles on Reddit. Making a Twitter bot that tweets out MO's articles could help, too, although I am aware that using Twitter privately is difficult. I notice that MO's search engine optimization seems pretty good, so that's a plus.

2. It may be good for opinion pieces to be clearly marked as such, i.e. as editorials. For example, this is more of an opinion piece than an impartial news article: https://www.monero.observer/zcash-shows-true-colors-proof-of-stake-move/

3. On desktop, the font seems rather large. Consider using a slightly smaller font.

4. Finally, I think @escapethe3RA deserves a raise! They have proven their worth in the first CCS funding period. I would suggest 0.09 XMR/hour.

@Rucknium thanks!

• (1) Agreed. I already have some ideas and plans in that direction for 2022.

• (2) Good idea: added the [editorials] tag today.

• (3) I'm still considering the font size, as some users with visual impairment issues have thanked me for the larger fonts.

• (4) Thanks for the trust, I will think about it. :)

mentioned in commit 95204565

merged

I second the bump in pay. The community as a whole benefits immensely from an active Monero news service. The only problem i have is that you are adding more and more to your plate but the hours per week remains the same. Im going to assume that you spend alot more time than 25hours a week on this project (originally it was only a news service, you've added Alot more things now and should use this 3 month period to monitor your hours per week worked) Success!

Update: added new guide (Guide to verifying, running and updating the official Monero CLI wallet on Linux)

@plowsof thanks for the vote of confidence. I could monitor my weekly work hours more closely in the future.

The next step would be to go full-time, since close to 100% of my free time goes to this project already. Considering the current level of financial support, I'm not sure that is feasible at the moment. We'll see if this gets fully funded.

I have a lot of plans for 2022, it's hard for me to not overextend. But I will cut back if necessary.

Thanks to everyone who contributed so far!

Milestone 1 (December 2021) completed.

Here's an overview of my work for the past month:

• MO reports: 88
• MO XMR TA reports: 4 (Weeks: 48/49/50/51: https://www.monero.observer/tag/analysis)
• MO Community Messages: 38
• MO Blitz: yes (https://www.monero.observer/monero-observer-blitz-december-2021/)
• added new Resources section (https://www.monero.observer/resources/)
• created new Guide to verifying, running and updating the official Monero CLI wallet on Linux (https://www.monero.observer/verify-install-update-monero-cli-wallet-linux-guide/)

All other modifications are on the Changelog page (https://monero.observer/changelog).

January 2022 Update (M2)

Here's an overview of my work for the past month:

• MO reports: 99
• MO XMR TA reports: 5 (Weeks: 52/1/2/3/4: https://www.monero.observer/tag/analysis)
• MO Community Messages: 36
• MO Blitz: yes (https://www.monero.observer/monero-observer-blitz-january-2022/)
• added new Calendar section (https://www.monero.observer/tag/calendar/)
• started publishing a new MO Artistic Saturday Top 5 report (Week 4, 2022) (https://www.monero.observer/monero-observer-artistic-saturday-week-4-2022)

All other modifications are on the Changelog page (https://monero.observer/changelog).

February 2022 Update (M3/final)

Here's an overview of my work for the past month:

• MO reports: 90
• MO XMR TA reports: 4 (Weeks: 5/6/7/8: https://www.monero.observer/tag/analysis)
• MO Community Messages: 30 (https://www.monero.observer/tag/community)
• MO Calendar events: 14 (https://www.monero.observer/tag/calendar)
• MO Artistic Saturday Top 5 reports: 4 (Weeks: 5/6/7/8: https://www.monero.observer/tag/art)
• MO Blitz: yes (https://www.monero.observer/monero-observer-blitz-february-2022/)
• added new Calendar RSS feed (https://www.monero.observer/monero-observer-calendar-rss-feed)

All other modifications are on the Changelog page (https://monero.observer/changelog).

Support my new CCS !291 (merged)

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