SCIENCE Tag SPAMMERS & Other ABUSERS +++ a CLEANUP PROJECT Launched +++

in #abuse7 years ago (edited)

Respect the Post TAG

Tags were introduced at the early start of Steemit to support categorising the posts helping those who are interested in a specific topic. Tag's are a form of community features that is talked about in many posts and comments and on the roadmap of Steemit Inc. These community features will have more functionality than the tag's have, but in essence the community features will allow to create sub-communities around specific topics.

The unfortunate thing that happened over time, is that tags are more and more abused. Ie, none relevant tags are used for posts. For instance the 'introduceyourself' tag. This tag is specifically ment for a one time introduction of a Steemit account holder, however we've seen Steemians us it for every post they publish, with record high of 117 posts within 7 days by a single account.

Since we have the tags today, @guiltyparties and I thought: "Why don't we try to re-install good behaviour around tags?"

While @guiltyparties is focussing on the 'introduceyourself', I focussed on the 'science' tag and analysed the top 35 users of this tag.

Our method is to leave a comment to the most recent post of a TAG-abuser and try and persuade the abuser to change its behaviour.

Guide to TAG Use

From our friends at @steemcleaners, a guide to "how to use tags" and their definition of what TAG abuse is; The guide can be found here.

From day one Steemians have been abusing tags, which is showed by a post from the CTO (at that time) of Steemit INC when Steem and Steemit was just launched more than a year ago (here).

Comment to TAG abuser

YOUR ATTENTION IS REQUIRED

You have been found in violation with of the norms & customs at planet Steemit. You did this by:

  • tagging everything under the sun with 'science'

Please correct your behaviour so we may continue to coexist in harmony.

Sincerely,
Your Steemit mentors and Friends.

'science' TAG

Analyses

The top user of the science tag used it 111 times in the last 7 days; While the top 35 users of the tag used it 591 times in the last 7 days; an average of more than 16 times per user in 7 days, more than twice a day. These figures called for analyses of these accounts.

When analysing the various accounts, we've found some other 'abuse' as well. We've decided to alert for 'high frequency posting' as well as for 'no source credits'.

Results

  • 24 out of 35 accounts got a comment on abuse.
  • 4 accounts responded, with statements from "i didnt know that .. i will correct myself" to "@edje DONE...Upvote".

FYI: those who responded positively, I gave a comment upvote, but certainly I did not give the account with the request for a vote an upvote since 1) I don't like this type of asking for votes 2) the account did not change the tags at the other post including a post published after the comment was posted

Results: Other

The top 3 science tag users are:

These account all have the exact some post layout and together they posted 236 times in the last 7 days; That is an average of 34 post per day.

  • These three account post on similar topics.
  • These accounts are setup in August 2017.
  • These accounts seem to be persistent in what they do.
  • These account did not respond to my comment on abuse: of tag, high frequency posting, no source credits.
  • What is the intention of these accounts?
  • Are these accounts from the same owner?

Fortunately the number of voters and rewards on these posts are next to nothing, but this type of behaviour is not good for Steemit IMHO.

Next

For me this exercise was a test, to identify what the impact is of our work. I spend a good 4 hours analysing the accounts, posting the comments, and the few interactions. In addition, I spend about 1 hours creating this posts. A lot of time for relatively little response IMHO.

But, it gave me a very good first impression on what is going on in our community, and it also gave a better idea on how we can contribute to creating a better community, a community with less spamming an scamming. And maybe we convinced a couple of Steemians to re-visit their behaviour :)

The next steps need to be defined, but I like us to fill in gaps left in the community to identify and fight spam and scam in an efficient and effective manner.


NJOY

follow me @edje

Sort:  

It's a shame proper science content is getting buried by chancers, especially when lots of people work so hard. I suppose a lot of categories have the same problem.

Yes indeed, many tags are abused. Need to figure out if somehow this can all be cleaned, but I think it requires a lot of human time. We are trying to think of more automated ways and when we figure that out, to actually create them.

I completely agree. The science tag is completely inundated with plagiarised content. It makes it really difficult for people posting interesting articles to be recognised or even for people to read their posts. It makes it very difficult for people new to steemit to get the readership and upvotes they deserve.

I fully agree, and since science is already a difficult topic at Steemit, we've decided to wrok on that one.

Good luck with that. The main category I curate is #science, and I have muted more than 100 of accounts because of being tired of the spam... I hope you will succeed!

It'll be super difficult and very time consuming as I realised when going through just to top 35 accounts using the science tag. It is sometimes also hard to determine the fine line between use and abuse. We will need to re-visit our methods, for sure.

In my case, I systematically block anyone posting more than 3 posts a day. The reason is simple: it is better to spend time on quality than quantity. And it is hard to believe someone writing 3 top-notch posts per day. At least in my opinion.

I agree with you, especially when writing about complex topcis like science. Some of the Steemians copy/paste a part of the article and link to the article in Internet and claim it is science, even when it is technology. Anyway, because of all the spam in many of the tags, I hardly look at the tags. Also because of all the spam in my HOME channel, I dont look at that channel as well, therefore only follow favourite writers (through bookmarks, and browser plugin SCT) and from time to time I use Esteem.Life where I created special filtered channels to discover new writers. Long story short, due to all the spam, it is harder for any writer that I do not follow to get noticed by me. I'm afraid many Steemians have similar approach, there giving lower chances to the new accounts in our community to get notices. I simply wished the collective would understand the results of their own behaviour, which in the end bits themselves.

The steemstem channel helps me a lot. But I agree the loopholes are just huge :(

Steemstem is doing a good job; also in keeping their tag clean.

We however cannot prevent spammers to use it (although we have the chance it has not been discovered by them so far ;) )

This sounds like a great initiative. Thanks for spending your personal time doing this. You are a good human! :)

I agree with your view !

Thanks for the spam. Have a flag.

My comment is spam ? I am newbie , I apologize if it is mistake !

The comment looks like it has nothing to do with the post. It is particularly egregious because it is on a post about spam. Anyway it is only a 1% flag so will not have any significant effect but please be mindful or you will get flagged. Also I see you have changed it after the fact. I wonder if you would have done that without the flag.

Thank you so much @thecryptofiend for your valuable suggestion. I will try to improve my comments and post. If you don't mind please check my last post and suggest me. I don't know my writing is on right way or not ? I am newbie and trying to learn something from the expert like you.

same other channal
from https://steemit.com/@cheetah
https://busy.org/@cheetah
Okay, I have banned your channal in 5 dyas

Warning! This user is on my black list, likely as a known plagiarist, spammer or ID thief. Please be cautious with this post!
To get off this list, please chat with us in the #steemitabuse-appeals channel in steemit.chat.

What kinda spammer are you? Downvoting my post while writing crappy and untrue comments! You got yourself a flag!

im rebot in 1 minut to check every datails for wrighting
check My Official channal
https://steemit.com/@cheetah
https://busy.org/@cheetah

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