RE: Fighting Spam & Low Quality Content Together. Part 1: What Do You Think Is Spam
Comments that ask for upvotes in a round about way really annoy me. An example would be someone saying “I gave you an upvote, do you hear” or “I gave you some lovin, how about some back” these people are obviously trying to hide their intentions from the Steemit system or from bots that look for people asking for upvotes. These people always worry me as it makes me feel like if I don’t upvote them they may be the type of person that would flag my content out of spite for not giving them an upvote. And if I was to flag them I worry they will attack my content by flagging it all. On the other hand I don’t mind if someone has entered a competition and simply suggests that if someone really enjoys their work then a vote would be much appreciated. I think there’s a big difference between the two. But how to track down the people in the first category with a bot, I’m stumped. It may have to be manually done by reporting them to a specified account so their comment can be checked out by a human. I’ve only been on this platform for less than a week and I’ve had people ask for an upvote in a round about way twice now but they don’t use the word upvote.
I also think that new people to the platform who have been here for under a week or two may either need to be cut a bit of slack for not knowing all the rules yet so maybe a warning system would be better as that would educate them on the dos and donts. Perhaps a bot could be created where people report others who are trying to get around the system by asking for upvotes without mentioning the words upvote or vote. Then the bot could send them a warning and action is only taken if people continue to be reported to the bot for continuing to flout the rules. I have no knowledge of how bots work so don’t know if it’s possible but maybe someone more knowledgeable than me could work a reporting system out. I’d have a couple of people to report straight away. As I mentioned I’m too scared to flag them as their passive aggressive comments make me feel I’ll be attacked if I do. Thanks for your post and efforts to uphold community standards
I’m not around long enough to know if using a bot would be possible. Those comments are always different, so I don’t think it’s possible to detect them.
I don’t flag either. Mainly because I don’t know if I should or shouldn’t (must look that up). The chance that the commenter would take this personal and starts a flagging war does exist.
Plus, if I had to flag every post that is spam, plagiarism and every comment that has nothing to do with the topic of the post or is just a beg for an upvote, I’d probably be flagging all day long, spending all my precious voting power.
I’ve read a couple of articles and it is still not entirely clear to me when to use a flag and when not to use a flag
( @domcrypto : I’ve read your article about SteemIt an flagging, may I ask if you could give us a clear view in what to flag or not)
My main idea is to raise awareness about simply not upvoting those kinds of posts or comments - when people notice they’re not earning a single cent that way, they will either burn up their account or have to change their ways and start using tactics that do work, like not spamming and posting valuable upvotes. At least, that’s what I hope...
About newbies and rookie mistakes:
In my opinion, SteemIt lacks a good initiation for newbies. There’s a lot of info around, but you have to go look for it yourself. People should be educated about what to do or not to do, before they can get loose on SteemIt (like some ‘training classes’ or something... )I don’t know... There should be an easy to find, straightforward and to the point ‘how to’ guide provided by SteemIt itself. I think users should be taught how to use the platform properly before they can get started. If nothing changes and the number of users keeps growing as fast or even faster than it is at this very moment, I’m afraid SteemIt won’t survive
I agree, in my short time on Steemit it has become quite obvious that a lot of people have got the wrong idea about Steemit and how to make it work for them. For example, I have been followed by a couple of people who have a lot of followers and are following a lot of people but they have posted no content and have made no comments on other people’s posts. It looks like they think just having lots of followers will benefit them without having to post quality content or any content or comments for that matter. The FAQ is a very good guide but doesn’t go far enough in some areas. I do think however that some people don’t read it. A bit like how a lot of people don’t read the instructions when they buy a new gadget
True, unfortunately