Is Tagging Wrong on Steemit? The Effects of Tagging Accounts and Cogent Reasons that Warrants It

We have some practices to trash out in the Steem ecosystem and here is one that is associated with tagging accounts. Is tagging accounts on your articles bad? Or there are a few exceptions? and so on. I have a few things to share with you on the context today, sit back and relax, and let's take a ride together.

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_{Edited with Canva}

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Let's discuss the concept of tagging in this context, it's actually what many people in the ecosystem are quite familiar with. That said, tagging in this case means mentioning different accounts in your articles as a means of calling the attention of the users to visit and so on.

The act of tagging accounts in your articles can be done acceptably without causing parties involved much stress while some are so unnecessary to do because in the end, no cogent reason warrants such tagging in the first place. In essence, if there are no special reasons, do not tag users in your articles.

I can't imagine how many times I have corrected users utilizing comments but it seems not enough. Well well! It's your article and you can choose whatever you deem fit but you must understand how tagging affects you, things or other users in the ecosystem. I guess you would have to conclude not tagging unnecessarily again because you are being affected, only that you don't know.

• Do not tag the SC01/02 and other SC curator accounts in your articles.

_{Don't | Creative from Pixabay}

• Do not tag community Admins/MODs in your articles because regardless of mentioning them, they would still find your article in the community, so how has the tagging been useful?

• Do not tag random users by a means of appreciation over and over again. "Thanks to @user0, @user1, @user2... for their continual support over time", it's quite unnecessary. You can include their names by mentioning them in a way that they don't get notified on their accounts.

• Tagging that involves all listed above results in nothing but spamming and you know what people do to spammers in the long run, barring, ignoring, you just name the results you could think of, as compatible in the Steem ecosystem.

Tagging the accounts highlighted in the previous section has several effects you are not quite aware of, these are what would be discussed in some lists below.

• Unnecessary tagging continually spams users' notifications as it keeps growing without no special importance.

• The users being tagged tend to miss cogent information due to the ever-growing notification. You can imagine checking 20 mentions and having no significance, such users tend to lose interest in checking the rest while significant mentions might be missed.

• Your action promotes such tagging among other members, especially, the new guys in the ecosystem who have not quite well understand how things work.

• You tend to miss support for unnecessary tagging of accounts on your articles, I have seen articles skipped during curation, for this reason.

• It dents your reputation, not in the form of reputation score, Nah! But you tend to get ignored because you must have been identified as a spammer in a list (it may be in the mind) you ain't quite aware of. As such, significant mentions from you tend to get overlooked.

We can't eliminate tagging in the blog, can we? No, we can't. Certain conditions require mentioning other users about something as such, it requires mentioning them but one should know when to. Let's see some of those below.

_{Friends | Creative from Pixabay}

• Mentioning friends you have attended the same event with is a bit acceptable, maybe in a report or article that explains how your time was spent on a day, your time in the college/university, how you got to Steemit, and so on.

• Mentioning friends to take part in a contest. Some contests/challenges make it mandatory that you invite your friends to the contest or out of goodwill, if you wish to promote the contest, it's acceptable (friends, not curator accounts).

• Mentioning Admins/MODs and some top Steemit accounts to report an irregularity on certain accounts (plagiarism/phishing links/farming accounts and so on). Ensure that the case you are reporting is quite genuine, that is you have all claims verified such that your mention doesn't amount to spamming in the end.

• A contest/challenge/event where the organizer has directed you to mention him/her on your entries, that's quite a valid tagging as well.

Paying attention to a few things that have been discussed earlier would go a long way to enlightening you about tagging and the right way to do it in the ecosystem. Extra: Don't include the accounts you have set as a beneficiary on your article, the Admins/MODs/Curators would check that appropriately during verification/curation to give you the right remarks/upvotes. Take note of this as well.

In conclusion, we can reduce the headache for ourselves by understanding some etiquettes of tagging on the blog and also being an advocate of such, it would go a long way to helping individuals filter genuine information timely without wasting time and other resources on mentions that has no significance.

That said, my call to the Admins/MODs is to pay attention to these things during their work in their communities, don't overlook such behavior, let the user know it's not good, it would greatly contribute to correcting users on the right practice. Thanks for reading through and I will be around to answer questions from you. #Steem-on.