Sprouts System

Question Garden uses a community balance system called Sprouts. This page explains it in simple terms.

What Is a Sprout?

In nature, a sprout is the first sign of life breaking through soil. Small, tender, full of potential. In Question Garden it's a simple, gentle system to keep sharing and reading balanced for everyone. What you plant, you can harvest.

How to Earn and Spend Sprouts

• Share an answer with the garden: +1 sprout (immediately, even while waiting for our human moderation)
• Read an answer from the garden: -1 sprout
• Maximum you can hold: 3 sprouts a day

Answering questions to yourself does not earn or spend sprouts.

Daily Limits

We've set gentle limits to keep the garden healthy:

• You can answer up to 3 questions per day
• You can share up to 3 answers per day
• You can read up to 3 answers per day

If you reach a limit, you will need to wait until the next day. These limits are part of our healthy boundaries approach, so reflection stays supportive instead of addictive.

Editing or Deleting an Answer

If you edit a shared answer, its previous version is deleted from the garden while you edit. That way, the sprout earned from sharing is removed. After editing, if you wish, you can reshare your new answer for moderation.

If you delete a shared answer, the sprout earned from sharing is removed, and the answer is taken out of the moderation queue if it hasn't been moderated yet.

Reading Fairness

When you read an answer, Question Garden does not focus on popularity or your English language skills. Our visibility algorithm favors answers that have been read less, so visibility is more balanced and every answer has a better chance to be discovered.

Sprouts Aren't Points

Sprouts are not a ranking system. There is no leaderboard, and this is not a competition. Sprouts are simply a gentle way to keep sharing and reading fair and sustainable for everyone.