I have never flagged, but I am considering it.
I joined in January and am yet to find content that I would downvote. Not that my vote is worth much. I took a couple of hits in the voting experiment by some whales. Fun times. :)
I have considered flagging for things like porn clips and pics. It is not that I am a prude but I don't think it is worthy of even the few cents that it gets as far as content. For me, I would like to see Steemit be a community of content creators and supporters of content creators. Hopefully, content will make the money go around too and attract users.
If the people posting porn are starring in the porn, shot the porn, are the model in the photo or took the photo of the model themselves, I will be the first to give them an upvote as they would be content creators. If they reposted it from Tumblr. They probably don't qualify.
But, I haven't downvoted these people yet either.
When I joined I read some advice on how to get some followers and votes going my way which was basically: Good content, engage.
Most of my content is of a fair quality generally (my opinion) and I definitely can do a better job at engaging with a wider range of users. I tend to wait until people comment with valuable comments and then engage with them. I find, that in this way, the people are more often interested in my content or helping me improve my thinking. These are often the people I track back to their blog and find that their content gives me new perspectives and helps me grow in unexpected ways.
This has worked well so far and led me to some great authors with little work on my part and they in turn have led me to more. By doing this though, and staying away from 'trending', I get a skewed perspective of Steemit since most of what I see is from quality content providers. When I scroll a few hundred in the 'new' section, I quickly realise this is not a realistic view.
I tend to ramble, so on to flagging. It seems at an increasing rate, there are comments on some of my posts whether long form or photos that make a short and somewhat related comment to my work and then a link to check out theirs. I have no problem with this approach. I have only done it a couple times in the five months myself, but I understand it.
Out of courtesy for their effort and time to consider my work and an attempt to engage, I follow the link. However, on the other side, I find some poor quality (So far, it hasn't been porn, but it won't be long probably), random post or something that has been grabbed from the net with a few lines of hurriedly typed text attached.
Quality is in the eye of the beholder, I know this well but, in the past when I have come across this and have done this occasionally, the content linked is likely to be of interest to me based on the content of the post, related directly to the post itself or something that adds to the conversation in some way.
It is like very poor AI on a commerce website. We saw that you were just looking at bathroom light fittings, would you like to buy a bowling ball? or, you just purchased a book on World War 2 history, other people who have bought this item also bought, Justin Bieber extended DVD + 4 colour click pen + slinky.
I am loathe to actually downvote someone but this is more annoying than 'Follow for follow' people because they are easy to ignore. I actually feel I should click the link and see just in case it is a great author laying in wait on the other side. I worry though that if I continue this, it will increase in occurrence and I will stop following the links and miss the opportunity to find worthy authors. I will just ignore. (Real quality comments are hard to ignore though).
I am not one to downvote bad content and I can even find value in bad content but I don't want to only be greeted by it. The advice was 'Good content and Engage'. It is a two-parter that should probably not be separated and if one does risk separation, the first part is more important than the second. I understand I am not always going to find content I am interested in but still, isn't there some etiquette?
I could leave a comment but I feel that they are playing a spam numbers game anyway so wouldn't care. I don't even know if this is a viable reason to flag. Maybe for now since it isn't such a big problem, I just have to keep clicking through and crossing my fingers it is not a waste of bandwidth and is actually someone awesome waiting to be upvoted with my 3 cents.
By the way, for the older people and more 'free software' inclined, does anyone remember a warez site with a link that said 'more cracks here'? If you clicked through you would remember as once seen, it cannot be unseen.
I dread the day that starts happening here.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
Ive been desperatley trying to do the same thing i never use others photos or titles and i always post original thoughts and ideas but yet even with 140 followers i cant get more then 1 cent on a post and nothing on comments am i doing something wrong here? I engage and respond to every reply and still im not getting any engagement at all on here its almost got me ready to give up on this site. Ive been on for about a week ive done 40 plus posts all original and i think only 4 out of my 140 followers ever checks them out or upvotes them. Its kind of sad and discouraging. And then to see some dumb advertisement about some island no one can afford getting hundreds of dollars in pay outs
Go visit Steemit chat, join a curating guild, make thoughtful comments on other people's work. You need to build a network and become established in your community of subjects you write about. This process takes time.
That's the way to go.
I recommend making sure your posts include pictures - no pic = no thumbnail - bugger all views!
And if you want to get into doing ads for island resorts some bikini pics might help -but seriously in that case six months of mind blowlingly high quality presentation posts would lay the groundwork for having big payouts
It took me weeks to get any traction really. And it took about 4 months to get 100 followers. For me though, some of my content attracted more active and higher rep followers.
As an example of content volume, I have a couple of posts on my word count. Over two weeks I posted around 43000 words in about 75 posts of original content across several fields of interest. That is a masters thesis in length. Most didn't get more than a couple dollars.
I have been working very hard at this since arrival and I feel like it is only now I am starting to get the hang of it and still I get posts with very low returns often.
There is more value here for me in what I write than what I get paid for it. There is also the value of interaction with some great people. It is easy to count success on reward but it is not a good indicator of value at all.
Your doing pretty well man, I believe you would just need to keep up the pace your at. 140 followers is pretty impressive, I only have 85 but I've been on here since November.
I convinced some of my followers on facebook to join steemit and thats where most of my followers come from. The big break comes from appealing to just one whale. I currently have a whale who upvotes my posts for whatever reason and it makes all the difference.
I bet if you keep up your posts you will get some followers who really appreciate your work.
Hey thanks man thats really encouraging to hear i try to keep my content sincere and simple i have a complex mind that works in short simple bursts of information i have alot of opinion but i love to get feed back and this site totally incites conversation and i dig it but your right i gotta find like minded whales
I feel you. I personally won't down vote them. I get similar things. I will share a link in a reply ONLY if it is relevant to what I am replying to and adds something to it, but you are correct this is not what a lot of these people are doing.
I also am not into gambling, sports, etc. So sometimes these links lead to posts like that which had absolutely nothing to do with my post they responded to.
I also don't follow people if they beg. I follow people because I find them interesting. That doesn't mean there are not a lot of people out there I should be following. I just haven't discovered them yet.
If they write things I am interested in, eventually I will. If they shove themselves in my face then I am less inclined to be interested.
There are also people that most of their posts are about how bad ass they are, and how everyone should be following them, etc. Some of these people are people I have followed for awhile because they occasionally wrote some pretty good posts. I am not finding the I'M BAD ASS, buy my COIN based on open ledger posts to be particularly interesting.
I don't really enjoy posts with people self congratulating themselves. That's not my thing. Show me your mind, and if it is more than a narcissistic journey then likely that is all it will take to interest me.
I don't know how you put thoughts together and get so many word out so fast...
I am probably never going to flag anyone but perhaps some of them will read the post and think deeper.
I don't either. Practice. Luck?
Kind of mostly stream of consciousness for me. I write pretty close to how I actually think. That seems kind of odd.
I remember "more cracks here" - classic stuff - these days I use torrent sites for all my software, music, movies, and other free stuff.
Do you really click on the links people put with their follow me comments? Has hell frozen over?
Hahah. From what I saw, you need a bigger can.
No, not the follow me ones but the ones that sound like they have something useful to add.
Some good stuff you write! Upvoted a bunch of your posts and followed, cuz your work deserves it, and I am pleased to have stumbled upon it. I will NOT, however, ask for anything in return. If you're anything like me, that's like a recipe to do the exact opposite of "what I'm told"! lol
Regarding the porn stuff, sounds like it kind of boils down to those doing little more than blatantly ripping off other people's work without adding a shred of additional color or commentary.
That said, I have come across a few nsfw steemians (who always mark such content appropriately) that do produce their own intriguing content. I am always interested to learn from perspectives covering all walks of life, so for me it's all good.
The very few times I have flagged, it was usually on a comment on one of my own posts, and literally was completely irrelevant spam, adding no value whatsoever to the topic at hand, and made me feel "stupider" for having been forced to see it. lol
I don't mind the NSFW stuff when they are the creators and there are some really good model photographers here.
But the feeling stupider for having seen it is multiplied by having clicked through to it :D
And thank you for the ups and follow.
I hear you. I feel you. I've thought about the whole flagging thing. I've written about it. It's hard to arrive at anything that consistently makes sense.
I like writing and creating content... but I also like the idea of being a "responsible curator." But I don't really have that much time on my hands... I try to keep up-- to the best of my ability-- with the growing number of people I have chosen to follow because they consistently turn out quality content. Which is a long way of saying I don't have a lot of energy left over to go through a "teaching process" with every newcomer I encounter.
In an ideal world, some version of "Thanks for your comment-- the best way to gain readers and a following on Steemit is _____" could be left on each comment and a potential response awaited. Some DO say "thanks for the help." The "clicking buttons for cash" crowd most likely will NOT. I have had a couple of Steemit "Elders" suggest that if we try to help and there is (a) no response and (b) the poster continues spamming behavior then we should downvote and "bury" their content.
I also have the time issue to deal with, this is why I don't want to follow dead links too often. There are many pressures on my time and attention (as with many people) and having people try to steal more of it with low quality doesn't make me feel like pressing the follow button.
I don't want to bury all of their content (even if I could) because there may be others sat find that same content awesome and love the proactive approach.
Great post.
Don't get me wrong here but what i think the problem is with steem and any other way to earn money on the internet.
Western worlds are used to higher standards so we would like to earn something good for our content so we write good content.
Then someone from a poor country sees that there is money to make here and comes in post some random stuff he/she picked from the internet.
Thinking hell there is always someone thats gonna vote this so they spam the feed with nudes reposts from other blog's but basically no original content.
For us 100$ or euro is not much but for some people they can feed there family from that for a month.
I come here to read good content i like to learn new things.
I'm not a great writer so i won't waste to much time on that.
The flagging i'm really starting to think about using that damn thing on posts that are not original.
Meaning that they just copied something from a blog and pasted the link below it. Thats not original content.
Never flagged anyone also but my fingers are itchy and the longer i'm on here the more of these bad posts come by.
As Steemit becomes more mainstream we have to start using flagging to policy as there isn't downvoting tool like in Reddit.
There are better ways. I am not keen on censorship of any form but at the same time rewarding bad behaviour is enabling.
What ways comes to mind to you?
Besides a complete shift to unbrainwash the world into acting like less like sheep and tying their success to reward at any cost?
I guess it is about incentives. There should be more incentive to create quality than incentive to play a numbers game. This is not the case now. Numbers of followers means rewards and attention and since people have been told to engage and follow to get followers and attention, the cycle feeds on itself.
There is also the chance to strike gold by offering little. I see introduction posts with very little content getting into the hundreds. Where is the incentive for quality and consistency when that happens?
Should reward come with luck only for if that is the case, steemit becomes a lottery. This means that many people will do all they can to win the lottery rather than the hard work to create and build. Just like real life. The streams will get clogged with low quality.
Not a very practical answer I know.
Word. I've used the flag prob once or twice. For a good reason though
I would simply say, be careful where you point that flag because you piss off one whale and you will ruin your account.
The whales generally don't engage in this behaviour in my experience. The ones that comment take the time to engage well. This is generally from people trying to build followers or get votes.
I totally agree and they annoy the absolute shit out of me. I usually just unfollow them/mute them after a tirade of shit posts every day. Just offering a word of caution as I once got an entire weeks worth of post flagged to hell over it.
Like I said to dwinblood, I am actually unlikely to ever flag but if this goes unmentioned than it will likely escalate. Some may actually think they are engaging well, annoy a whale and get ruined before they start.
I hear ya, it reminds me of those people that used to try to start the huge blog circles and "click my link I'll click one of yours" and claim they were making 100 grand a year off their adsense money. People wonder why adsense is basically useless now.
I am hoping that this leads to nosense nomoney.
You can mute someone if you don't like their content. No need for flagging if you just don't like their content. Flagging is for plagiarism, ID theft etc.
It is not the content I have a problem with, it is the irrelevance and randomness of action. Like door to door religion sellers.
Personally, I think I've only done the comment & link approach in cases where I had written something that related to the topic of the post I was commenting on. Of course any rule has exceptions, but I generally apply the reverse rule in comments. I only click links that appear to be related to whatever I was writing about.
I'm not considering flagging, but I am considering a policy of muting the follow for follow and other spam comment folks. I haven't done it yet, but I might start.
I haven't even muted anyone yet. I want to see what kinds of behaviours are going on first. My own little personal experiments.