Class 69 built a room where members talk. Class 70 turns talk into material worth keeping. Community-generated content — questions, reviews, discussions, rankings, recommendations, comments, photos, experiences — is the raw ore of the flywheel. But ore does not mine itself. Members contribute when the ask is small, the format is obvious, and the reward is visible. This lesson designs that ask.

Why members contribute (and why they stop)

People contribute for four reasons: to get help (my question answered), to gain standing (my answer highlighted), to belong (my work recognized by peers), and to build something lasting (my template reused). They stop for equally clear reasons: the ask is vague, the format is intimidating, good work sinks without trace, or low-effort noise gets equal attention.

Your design job is to maximize the first list and eliminate the second. That means replacing open invitations ("share your knowledge!") with narrow, repeatable contribution types. A community that asks for everything gets nothing. A community that asks for one specific artifact weekly gets a library.

Consider the eight raw types from the course outline — questions, reviews, discussions, rankings, recommendations, comments, photos, experiences. Each suits different jobs. Questions fuel help. Reviews and rankings fuel decisions. Photos and experiences fuel trust ("here is my finished hem, here is what I paid"). Discussions fuel belonging but decay fastest. Pick the one or two types that directly serve your purpose statement, and design those deeply before adding more.

The contribution card

Write one card per content type with five fields:

1. The ask — one sentence, answerable in 10–20 minutes. Bad: "write a tutorial." Good: "post one before-and-after brief paragraph with the source line you cut."

2. The format — a fill-in template, not a blank box. Example for a filing teardown: Context (filing + page) / Source passage (quoted) / Brief version / What I cut and why / Open question. Templates lower stage fright and make later organizing possible — Lesson 70.2 depends on consistent structure.

3. The example — your own model contribution, flaws included. Members imitate what they see. If your example is polished to perfection, nobody dares follow. Show real work with one rough edge acknowledged.

4. The reward — what happens to good work: highlighted in the weekly roundup, linked in the archive, credited by name in any derived article. Rewards must be predictable. "Sometimes the founder notices" is not a system. "Every Friday the three best teardowns are linked on the index page with author credit" is.

5. The review path — who reads it, how fast, and what good feedback looks like. Promise a response time ("every teardown gets a substantive reply within 48 hours") and a feedback format (one thing kept, one thing to sharpen). Unanswered contributions are the number one killer of future contributions.

A tailor's circle card might be: ask — "post one rush-job photo with fabric, deadline, and price"; format — photo + three lines; example — the founder's own Saturday hem; reward — monthly "saved the wedding" board; review — two peer comments within a day.

Gate gently, credit always

Two policies protect quality without chilling participation. First, gate the artifact, not the person: anyone may post, but only contributions meeting the format get highlighted, archived, or derived into articles. The bar is public, applied evenly, and paired with help to clear it. Second, credit the human, always: every derived use carries the member's name and a link back. Nothing poisons a community faster than the founder's newsletter going viral with unattributed member wisdom. State the reuse deal up front — Lesson 70.3 formalizes the publish-or-not gate — so contribution never feels like exploitation.

Rankings and recommendations deserve a special caution because they look easy and fail quietly. A ranking without stated criteria ("top five tools") invites lobbying, recency bias, and stale results that mislead newcomers for years. If you run rankings, fix the criteria in writing, date every entry, and schedule re-votes — quarterly for fast-moving tooling, annually for slow craft knowledge. A dated, criteria-linked ranking members can challenge is an asset; an undated leaderboard is a future embarrassment. The same discipline applies to recommendations: require the context that makes advice transferable — budget, skill level, deadline — so a suggestion that saved one member does not mislead the next.

Exercise: write one card, fully

Pick your single highest-value content type and write its card as CONTRIBUTION-CARD.md: ask, format template (copy-paste ready), your model example, reward schedule, and review pledge. Then list the seven other types and write one line each explaining why they are out of scope for now.

Finish line: one complete card a new member could follow tonight, plus an explicit not-now list.

Verify quickly: give the card to someone outside the community. If they can produce a valid contribution in 20 minutes without asking you anything, the format works.

Common failure mode: three cards launched at once, none with a reward. One type with guaranteed attention beats three with possible attention.

Check your understanding

1. What are the four motives for contributing, and the fastest way to kill each? 2. What are the five fields of a contribution card? 3. Why should you gate the artifact rather than the person?

Next

Contributions are flowing in a consistent format. Lesson 70.2 organizes them — AI classifies, summarizes, tags, and drafts digests while originals stay preserved and humans review everything before it ships.