Submitting a Thrive Article

Topcoder is a crowdsourcing company with an open global community of designers, developers, data scientists, and competitive programmers. The Thrive initiative is an opportunity for Topcoder members to share their knowledge in the form of an article based on specific track related topics. Thrive is Topcoder’s vault of content collected over the years and includes over 1,800 articles on diverse tech topics. The goal is to add more educational content to the Thrive database which will help users continually learn and polish up on their skills.

Overview

Here we introduce the Topcoder Monthly Thrive Article challenge series. In this challenge series Topcoder is looking for content creation from the Topcoder community. There will be no code needed in these challenges. Your submission must be at least 750 words while meeting the screening and reviewing requirements.

The five article categories are Competitive Programming, Data Science, Design, Development, and QA. The five topics related to the tracks will be within the challenge details and the task is to choose a topic to write a Thrive article.

Guidelines:

Topcoder Thrive Submission Guidelines

Sample articles: Competitive Programming Track Articles

Each article has a minimum of 750 words

Must pass the plagiarism check. Please utilize the Plagiarism Checker by Grammarly before submitting articles.

One article submission per track allowed

These challenges are not rated

No appeal phase

Your content must be written in English

Submit your Topcoder Thrive Submission Guidelines document as a Microsoft Word or Google Docs file

Challenge Timeline

Registration Phase: (1- 4 weeks before challenge launch): Participants can register to the challenge

Checkpoint Submission Phase (7 days): Participants will submit their article by registering and submitting to the challenge.

Checkpoint Screening Phase (2 days): Submissions will be evaluated by screeners to confirm that articles have met the screening criteria (check Screening Criteria section below). If the screening criteria requirements have not been met, the submission will fail the screening phase and be disqualified from advancing to the next phase.

Checkpoint Review Phase (7 days): Submissions will be evaluated by reviewers to determine the quality and accuracy of the content. The reviewers will provide feedback to the participant based on the challenge requirements. If the requirements have not been met, the submission will fail the reviewing phase and be disqualified from advancing to the next phase. A maximum of five submissions may advance (one article per track)

Final Submission Phase (7 days): Participants will have the opportunity to assess the feedback received from the reviewing stage and make content adjustments accordingly. After edits have been made, competitors must resubmit their article.

Final Screening Phase (1 day): Submissions will be evaluated by screeners to confirm that articles have met the screening criteria (check Screening Criteria section below).

Final Review Phase (7 days): Resubmissions will be evaluated by the previous reviewers to determine if the edits have been made. If the edits did not meet expectations, the submission will fail the final reviewing phase and be disqualified from advancing to the next phase.

Prize Structure

Topcoder will publish up to one article per category each month, resulting in a total of up to five published articles coming from five winners. Each competitor whose article has been published will receive a $75 prize.

Submission Requirements

Submit the following to these challenges:

• A zipped (.zip) folder containing a modified version of Topcoder Thrive Submission Guidelines - Template as a Microsoft Word or Google Docs file.

• A non-copyrighted image file to be used at the header of the article (445 x 355 pixels). Images can be from, Public Domain Archive, Unsplash, Pexels, or an image owned by the article submitter.

• Please include the banner image link in the Banner Image section in the Topcoder Thrive Submission Guidelines - Template file or include a declaration text file in your zipped (.zip) folder to ensure that the image is not copyrighted

Screening Criteria

Submissions will fail screening if:

• Plagiarism is detected when checking with Grammarly (note: we will scan the content section only)

• Word count is less than 750 words

• Content is not on the required topic
  Note: a submission that failed the screening phase will not be shown to the reviewers for evaluation.

Submissions will get a warning at screening phase if:

• Grammatical errors are present in the content

• Banner image was not included

• Image declaration was not included: you should add a link to the site you took the image from
  Note: a submission that was warned during the screening phase will pass screening therefore it will still be reviewed during the checkpoint review phase and the member will have the opportunity to correct the issues in the final submission phase.

Evaluation Criteria

• Quality, clear, and detailed information

• Maintains integrity and accuracy of the topic

• Expertise: Article should prove your expertise in the domain, beyond integrating theory content that is already found online.

• Unique: The content offers unique information based on factual information

• Practicality: Forms of practical content are used to exemplify the theory (samples of code, videos etc.)

• Completeness: think of the various aspects related to the subject required. All information should be included thoroughly, and it does not leave the reader asking more questions that could have been answered in the article.

Disclaimer

*Topcoder reserves the right to determine how many articles are published each month based on the quality of article submissions and if requirements were met. Challenge winners are not guaranteed.