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RE: Verification and You! How, Why, How to ask, and How not be a #$%@ about it!
Hi reneenouveau! Great post, A for relevance to current issues! I would add something to your last paragraph though.
There are nice ways and not so nice ways to ask people to verify themselves. I have seen most people ask nicely but also seen some people ask in a more blunt and careless way...
I think it's a delicate matter and should be treated that way... So maybe you could offer some advice for people who ask for verification to be extra careful that they are still making the new person feel welcome.
You just did! Thank you! I think that's an important part of 'don't be a dick'. :D
As part of my usual routine, I go through promising introduceyourself posts. I give the new user a lot of good information to get started, and verification is discussed within the information. The best advice I give people is to verify by linking back to their new steemit account from an existing one. That is the best way to verify other than a video.
Posting a picture doesn't work. I would like to ask that the official Etiquette webpage be updated with that in mind as well. Some people will post obviously photoshopped verification images. The more famous a person is and the more valuable their content is, the more important they properly verify.
You are right though that it is a delicate matter. I've had a witness consider my request of someone to verify as "bullying." That conversation made me walk away from Steemit entirely for a few months because it frustrated me so much. The exact case in mind was a clear photoshop job too.
A lot of people try to come here to game the system and make a lot of money. If I suspect someone of doing that, I'm going to call them out on it. I'd rather be wrong about a person being a potential fraud and have to apologize to them too than have a real person's content be stolen for a thief's profit.
If a person has valuable content already on the Internet or is famous in some way, it should be very easy for them to verify themselves by linking back from some other site to their new account on Steemit. I post through my Twitter as just one example. People will add a link back from their Facebook or Instagram to here as well. They can mention their account in a episode of their podcast as I have heard people do.
A bad example of this is the Zerohedge account on here. It is not the official Zerohedge, and they are making thousands of dollars off ZH's content. No one from ZH has given them permission either. Because of that issue, I've stopped following the account. I am not sure what should be done about them either, but I don't think it is appropriate. It can harm our community's reputation too.
Anyway, thank you for bringing this up, and I appreciate all the people here fighting to keep Steemit wonderful, good, and growing. :)
P.S. Sorry for the necro post, but this is a good topic that needs to be continually addressed.