Begging comments.
I've become increasingly annoyed by comments I've seen on posts by myself and others that simply say something like 'follow me back!' or 'I upvoted you, please upvote me back'. No. I won't.
If you want me to follow you or upvote you, then create quality content. Engage me with meaningful comments. If the best you can do with a comment is 'follow me back', it really puts me off looking at your profile. Because if you can't produce a quality comment, why would your posts be any better?
It isn't hard to write a meaningful and engaging comment. I have dyslexia, and my spouse also has it, and she has English as a second language. So we are very tolerant of bad English and typos. I will try to understand you.
Begging is lazy and just looks like spam. It seem like a bad marketing tactic in any case. Quality comments help build community. A meaningful community, not just one aiming for quick upvotes and payouts for no work. Most of these begging comments bare so little relation to the actual post they may as well be bots or mass copy pasted.
I might start flagging it, to discourage the behaviour. Not sure, what do others think?
Totally agree with you @antonchanning.
I think there isn't anything worse than to beg votes. If you have quality content and you are also following those who produce quality content.. leaving comments under the posts that are meaningful is the best way to gain followers and moreover respect.
I think with begging you just lose respect and even if you gain some followers they are rarely truely following you if you know what I mean.
Always up for quality content
Thanks for pointing this .
Unfortunately you can just ignore these people.
Flag their comments i think is too much as usually these people are beginners and will hurt them a lot, ranking higher .
I the case of new members sure. But what if you look at the users comment history and see a list of the exact same begging comments? I think then a little flagging becomes necessary. See the bot that left the begging comment on this very thread...
So much yes to this! I sometimes feel bad for not wanting to follow someone back if their content doesn't interest me but I honestly don't want to fill my feed with info that's irrelevant to me.
Agreed. And we shouldn't feel bad. I suspect most of the time these comments come from bots. Look at this: https://steemit.com/@rooseveltwoods/comments
Wow didn't realize that. Today I had some comments that said were hidden due to low ratings and when I clicked to reveal them they were nonsense and strange. Come to find out it's spammers as well.
We all start with errors. I not like flagging its like banning. Banning / Flagging is not the Steemit way. Maybe offer them help?. Maybe send them this post https://steemit.com/steemit/@yourhelper/yourhelper-sniffing-around-for-quality-posts-and-articles-throw-a-challenge-if-you-can — Steemit I found it very useful about how best to use the site.
Maybe. But how many of them are newbs and how many are bots harvesting likes? Look at this comment history for example: https://steemit.com/@rooseveltwoods/comments
great one topic
Hello @antonchanning.
I think a down vote is a bit extreme for a follow me request. It must be understood that not everyone has the same skills and abilities to fit properly in a network where there is so much competition for the attention of users. I think we must be very tolerant of these users who will take longer than others to mature and contribute more productively to the community. Of course, there are also the shameless to which we must apply the full weight of our frustrations with the corresponding argumentation.
I recommend that you place a small foot in each of your publications with a GREAT WARNING that tells your readers that you are tired of being urged by votes and follow-up requests. At least until it is already widespread knowledge in the network that this type of behavior is quite abusive, annoying and ineffective if what the user is looking for is to grow in Steemit.
With respect to spam type comments it is very difficult to take actions unless they are as obvious as the @rooseveltwoods case, but in these cases I think the Mute button is more than enough.
By the way: great article upvoted! It would have been my only comment in support of your work.
My best regards and have a great day ...
I have only downvoted the @rooseveltwoods one. I don't think I would downvote a user for doing it once. I might be tempted to check their comment history in future to check if they are another case like roose~ though...
As a matter of fact, if you start following back , you will end up with a community that doesn't care about what you are writing. The primary aim to produce quality and engaging content is destroyed. I think you should start ignoring them as those followers doesn't value much at all.
Indeed. Ignoring them has been my strategy so far. I am considering 'voting down' these comments when I see them to discourage them. If people lose reputation for making them, they have something to lose, unlike on twitter and other places where such comments have zero risk...
Yeah thats true , i will start flagging them down too.
begging comments really makes the place unhealthy for readers.I upvoted please up.....just kidding.
Yes it is becoming very annoying. Comment spam, eventually it end when they see no rewards from such behaviour.
Comments should always add something to the idea of, (or a contradiction of) the post or the general flow of the comment thread, not just be a begging cup.
I knew someone would make the joke. I thought roosevelt had gone the whole hog. Then I looked at their comment stream: Totally a bot:
https://steemit.com/@rooseveltwoods/comments
Yep, I think you may be right about that one, just took a look...nightmare!
New guy here ...I find the bots more upsetting ...seeing someone get 16 votes on a comment the second its made is a little discouraging ... But I do this for fun and education not for $ been bloging for years for free so this is just a really neat twist with steemit .. Those begging for clicks
Will go away after a while from crappy returns on there efforts but the bots will keep going as it pays ... Well back to the games ... And they would be happier if this cantankerious old fart didn't follow them lmao 😈
If we all flag the bots, then it won't pay. Unlike other social media, steem has a built in decentralised defence against these kind of bots.
Good point I have just looked upon them with condemnation and moved on. Guess all it takes is a click ... 👎
Hello @antonchanning and thank you for this post. I too have started to become annoyed by such comments and tend to ignore them. I have also noticed that some of those who follow you, when you go to look at their blog, have done no posts and their followed count is in the thousands. They seem to think that worth on Steemit is counted in the number of followers one has. I must admit that in the past I have been guilty of just clicking on people who followed me but now I intend to go through them all and maybe cull a few out.
I'm not sure but doesn't flagging affect one's voting power or something?
Yes. You get a certain amount of voting power each day, which you can divide between voting and flagging. It would be nice to be able to do a 100% upvoting, but I think sometimes using some of your daily voting power to flag, is also a possitive way to curate for the good of the community. After all, if we can prevent any of the reward pool going to spam bots, we all benefit.
You make a very good point there. I may start to use my voting/flagging power a little more wisely now. Thanks for the education! :-)
Agreed! I got a comment yesterday asking people to tell me why they follow me and sort of introduce themselves, and this dude flat out told me to follow people so they would follow me back, without following??? I was so cofnused by the comment, I had to re-read my post, wondering if I had subliminally asked for followers in it... Definitely behaviour to discourage!