How to Stop Being Afraid and Write a Diamond
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From the Basics and... to the Basics.

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Everyone wants to be superior to others in some way. Even the last ascetic hermit deep down feels a moral superiority over the "miserable little people".

This post does not contain a manual on "How to checkmate Magistr in three moves". The path to gaining traction is long, thorny, complicated, difficult, and teeth-crushing... feel free to add more epithets as you please.

No, we are not talking about that now. Our topic today is: achieving maximum efficiency in your posts and completing the epic achievement of obtaining a diamond. Specifically, getting a fair — "non-robotic" and "not burnt" — diamond. A task has been set, let’s move to actions.

Theoretical Part

  • It is possible to achieve a diamond through copy-pasting. There have been instances. Nevertheless, over 80% of diamonds come from original posts. However, if you can’t even connect two sentences together... it’s better to continue copy-pasting. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, you know.

    Conclusion #1: Rewriters are better than copy-pasters. Translators are better than rewriters. Authors are better than translators. If you deal with diamonds — that’s how it is, and not otherwise. However, these stereotypes need to be leveraged (or broken, if you are a rewriter)!

  • We are all unknown. Behind this somewhat cynical phrase lies the simple fact that even if you are a Unique Pink Penguin™, it doesn’t mean that polar bears know about your uniqueness. However, they can very well know about the existence of Antarctica. From a familiar purple penguin, for instance.

    Conclusion #2: Even if you are thrice popular, you can slightly increase your readership by posting on a popular blog. If by a twist of fate you are an anonimous of the first level, don’t venture into the wilderness at all — they will eat you up.

  • Follow trends. In general, the ability to analyze is important in any business, including diamond writing. However, don’t forget that there are many subtleties involved. Wrote a decent review of Metro 2033 first? Well done, here’s gold. Wrote an inadequate first review? Try harder, here’s silver. But a review like the fifth to seventh one... even a master pen can’t always jump above gold.

    Conclusion #3: Be timely.

  • However, sometimes the opposite situation occurs. Theoretical Hypothetical situation: [Duke Nukem Forever](/games?search=Duke Nukem Forever) is released. Everyone is crying, sobbing, hugging. The blog already has twenty tearful posts like "I waited for this game thirty years!", reviews everywhere. At least 50 previews, at least — two for each release delay. In general, idyl; the blog is mega-popular... but what should we do? We should remember that trends sooner or later get tiresome for people. Humans want unexpected material on their favorite subjects? Then give it to them!

    Conclusion #4: Be original. If a niche is already occupied and it’s quite difficult to offer something distinct within it, take another one. Write a guide. Or a walkthrough. Or the developers' memoirs, in the end, translate.

Five Minutes, Five Minutes

It should be remembered that on average, about half of all upvotes a post gets within the first hour and a half, provided it’s posted during peak hours. Simply put, if after an hour the post is gold — it’s almost a guaranteed diamond. Silver? Then it will be gold. That’s under normal circumstances, of course.

Key Ingredients

You are not being read. This is not a supposition, it’s a fact: no post above silver and longer than two thousand characters has been read by every upvoter. Not every reader upvotes, not every upvoter is a reader. Here, there is a fundamental disagreement between two "schools" of post writing: for action and for results. Simply speaking, for readers and for upvotes. With the former, it’s simple: write guides and may a million search engine clicks be yours. But what to do for the latter group, especially if it wants to bring some value?

There are four "parameters" of a post that most "bystanders" will pay attention to: blog, title, introduction, and author. The blog has already been adequately discussed above, so let’s look at the rest.

  • An intriguing title is the most important thing in both "schools" of post writing. Even if you aimed for silver instead of gold — a well-crafted title can greatly assist you. In various ways, by the way. Maybe the Most Important Admin would have passed by your post had it had a dull title. But now they won’t. And they will award you a medal. Who knows?

    Conclusion #5: Creating a good title is the most crucial step. It should be intriguing, concise, and correspond to the content. Exceptions are possible, but only if you understand why you are trying to break this formula.

    Conclusion #5.5: The introduction, in general, serves the same purposes (to seize the reader's attention), so it makes sense to craft it using the same formula — just without excessive brevity.

"Peak Time"

A preliminary calculation of your reader’s appearance time is also a rather significant thing. If you care for precise numbers, there are counters at the bottom of every page. However, there’s really no way to calculate this reliably. There are just two general rules: it is undesirable to post at night and in the morning on Monday on weekdays. The greatest "immediate" benefits come from posts published on weekday evenings. By the way, on weekends there is greater stability in attention, and hence, priority on the main page. Choose what matters more to you; in reality, the choice between these two positions isn’t that important if you have a really good post.

Look for friends. Build reputation. In my view, these two aspects — the most, most, most unpleasant, supreme mockery of World Justice™, but practice shows that in order to write a diamond "off the bat" — exceptional luck is required. There have been instances, though. But we are for reliability. In particular, this is where I should mention the existence of chat. But we decided to play fair, didn’t we? Or at least try...

  • In any case, the process of earning a name is lengthy and labor-intensive. This is not about writing diamonds! In general, this part is pure Powerleveling. You can look up this terrible word in the blog search if you want. Personally, I would recommend focusing at the beginning of your career on achieving a particular goal. The most obvious ones are becoming a viceroy/a cool translator/reviewer. If the latter requires certain experience (or at least just a predisposition), then viceroyalty is indeed a noble aim. If you manage to accidentally choose the viceroy seat in Team Fortress 2 as your target (and achieve certain success on that basis) — many unforgettable moments will be guaranteed to you.

    Conclusion #6: The best way to make the process of gaining social weight useful is to combine it with something enjoyable: posting about your favorite game, trying to write the "ideal post" for the first time. Writing a "dream post" from the outset is not recommended — you first need to write a few simply good posts. However, if you are aiming for really high social weight — you should also start big in a better and more impressive blog.

Techniques

Sometimes diamonds are simply achieved because a genuinely good person wrote a genuinely good post. Rarely, but it happens. Very rarely. But nonetheless, it does. Usually, however, in diamondology, there is its own statistics regarding this. We have already discussed the timeliness of the material and the author. But there are also other "tricks." Here we should note that it is not always necessary, and often even harmful, to use them all simultaneously.

  • Unexpected topic. If the reader from the title all the way to the comments is exclaiming, "This is genius!", "How did I not think of this?!" and other praises in the same vein — we have at least future gold. In principle, a good half of all "exclusives," Easter eggs, and sometimes plot analyses fall into the category of "unexpected" topics. In special cases, if you manage to achieve a maximal simultaneous concentration of simplicity and brilliance of the idea, it almost automatically brings hundreds of upvotes. Examples include the "Dark Lord" Unknown (see in the diamond posts), first-level Pyro (who once created a post made up of many phrases like "Mmmmphh!" and their variations), and of course, the most upvoted post of the entire portal.

    Conclusion #7: The post should either maximize the reader's interest or strike them squarely with a question already in place (and finish with the answer to it).

  • The more readers, the better. The more people understand your message, the more interested they will be. That’s why a good third of all diamonds somehow relates to, shall we say, the social component of the portal. However, a "broad" topic can also be created in ordinary blogs. For instance, a review of [Lada Racing Club](/games?search=Lada Racing Club). Not only is it a review (that already makes the post "massive"), but it's also about a relatively old game. An openly failed old game. There are quite a few criteria for determining "massiveness", but the absolute majority of people can handle this at an intuitive level.

    Conclusion #8: If your post is understandable to everyone right from the title, regardless of their level of acquaintance with the game — it’s a huge plus.

  • Timeliness. Essentially, this is just a slight repetition of the first part of the post: a post at the right time in the right place expressing public opinion (the so-called "cry of the soul") is also a plus. Why, I believe, does not need explaining.

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Of course, it is impossible to cover all the subtleties in such a short post. Diamondology is a small but proud Gamer science based on the ability to analyze and continually invent something new; that’s why its secondary positions are constantly changing. Let’s not lie — it’s damn hard. But incredibly interesting.

Good luck and may you have more readers!