Hi there @everittdmickey! I was directed here through a comment @kingyus made on one of my posts. Instead of typing it all out again, here's my reaction:
I can definitely agree that bots are bad in some ways. However, Steemit is for humans and humans can be stupid/greedy. Stupids (and the bad kind of bots) will vote on greedy's posts, even when they are stolen from someone else. I think Cheetah is a great bot for pointing out potential plagiarism (no harm done when the source is cited in the article). And flagging? I loved flagging when someone stole my post and pretended it was their own. I'm pretty sure most people would feel this way.
I think bots like Cheetah are certainly doing good work. Work us humans just can't do. Cheetah doesn't even flag, it just upvotes, while notifying us of potention plagiarism. I also think flagging is needed to weed out all the bad, because people are lazy and vote without looking sometimes. People who are paying attention can battle plagiarism and such things with flags and I'm finding it hard to see the bad in that.
All the upvote bots that vote without looking, now that's something we can agree upon, those don't do much good here.
while I agree that plagiarism should be punished I disagree on the method..
I would be all for an idea of shaming steemians by badging their profile even up to their profile picture with a downward arrow or anything that clearly shows that he/she has been a naughty person. Marks like that will be also shown in their posts for everybody to see but it is not only about shaming also to engage the viewers on how that happened and if it was legitimate as per not to inflict injustice and thus maybe by popular voting from the followers and/or by the return/refund of the undeserved upvotes to the pool can it be solved. I think steemit left that flag much for our harm than the growth of itself. but that's my opinion :)
Then we agree about the fact that nasty acts like plagiarism should be punished somehow, but the preferred method is something we need to find! I'm all for showing 'naughty' badges on people's profiles/posts, but I'm wondering how that would have to work. Do we all tag someone as plagiarist, spammer and stuff like that? Do we vote on these things?
That is kind of what's happening right now. We flag posts/comments for these acts. That takes away some of the reward the post is due, but it also lowers reputation somewhat. Members with a bigger stake have a larger effect on the reputation, which means newbies can't instantly be nasty and abuse this system. The reputation number next to our name basically shows us if a member's been good or bad. If it's lower than 25, you can be pretty sure this new member was bad in some way.
Any system can be abused, so yes, the flagging can be abused. However, if we were to have seperate 'tags' we could give someone, that could easily be abused aswell.
I flagged someone for plagiarism yesterday. He was a sore loser, so he flagged me for no reason and wrote some insults on posts of mine, but he also wrote one where he said 'It provide from another site Suck it up !'. Simply to accuse me of what I called him out for. Now his flag and crappy comment can't do much to me. If, however, he were able to 'tag' me as a plagiarist (if that's an actual word), how would that work? I'd get this tag, because I pissed someone off? Or would he have less weight, because he's new? Who would be the counter weight to tell people I'm not plagiarising?
I kind of like the simplicity of reputation we have now...
good point! well ..that's decentralized social networking for ya...lol somehow/sometime the good steemians will have to come up with solutions or the bots will eat us lol I also enjoy what we have I mean I never got so engaged and attached...I stopped flagging just to stop the revenge bloodshed instead I will report to a witness about misbehaviors mentioning his name without the @ ;) ..I never did it so far but if I ever will I think I will go that way, am still a minnow for a long time..I dont want no trouble :))
I understand that! I've been reporting forms of plagiarism to Steemcleaners lately. It can be a way to battle misbehaviour without putting yourself in the crossfire :-)