Plagiarism on steemit - Are you giving your vote to plagiarists - how to spot it and what to do about it
Ive been a bit dissapointed while doing my daily giveaway at the amount of new steemian plagiarists ive discovered.
Ive looked through so many posts over the last week, looking for deserved candidates for my daily $5 giveaway...
and have ended up discovering many new users posting images that are either other peoples images or they are royalty free but they are giving the impression they are their own.
e.g. 1 user posted a royalty free wallpaper image but included the title 'colour challenge' without giving any other info.
most users who use the colourchallenge tag are aware it is a challenge where users post their own images (not royalty free or wallpaper)
I found 1 user posted another users image a week after and passed it off as their own.
I was also a victim of plagiarism in the last week, my website http://howtosteemit.com/ was copied , image for image, word for word and posted as a help article on steemit. no reference was given to me or my site, info wasn't quoted it was just entirely stripped and copied.
So how do you check to see if a user is stealing somebody elses content?
Its fairly easy to find some plagiarisers.
Hold your mouse over the image that you want to check, then right hand click and select 'copy image location'
Now open a new browser window or tab and go to google.
Click on 'images'
Click on the camera icon
now in the 'Paste image URL' box , paste the link you copied and see what information comes back.
if their are no other examples of that image in the search return then that photo has a good chance of being original to the steemit user.
If you find several copies of that image on different sites, check to see if it has the same author, is that author the steemit user?
is it a wallpaper or free image?
Its ok to use royalty free or 'labeled for free use' images but not if you are passing them off as your own then getting revenue from steemit votes.
yes you can use a royalty free pic to emphasise an article, but not to give the impression its your image.
some users are just posting images that are not their own, no words attached, just a royalty free image and they are getting good revenue.
do you really want your vote going to them?. if so fair enough, but at least check if its their own original good honest content first.
If you do find a plagiarist. then go to chat https://steemit.chat/home
then type steemcleaners-linkdrop into the search bar (top left) and report the post there.
please vote pc for witness.
to vote for me go to : https://steemit.com/~witnesses scroll down the page and enter pcste into the box (dont use @sign) then click vote
It's really quite a chore to go through the New tab and find good, original articles. Most is either crap or plagiarism. Honestly, some days I feel like the majority of my voting power is wasted on flagging plagiarists more than it is spend on upvoting good content... Some just keep on going, no matter how much they get flagged and get their reputation ruined. I actually wish I could filter out the < 25 rep people.
What about public domain then?
Yep some times I like to go to the New tab and find new people to follow and stuff but lately its been slim pick'ns for good OG posts.
Thank you for your efforts. I made it easy for thieves to steel my posts. Check out the following. I add it to every post. This is because I like to spread ideas and not collect moneys. But if this is my source of income I will do it your way.
Copyright agreement:
You are free to copy, share and reuse any word, sentence, paragraph or the whole damn thing.
You can claim it for yourself, use it for personal or commercial purposes.
As long as you keep this agreement attached to any portion you use.
Thanks for respecting yourself.
Great post. It's important to be aware and careful of plagiarism on a reward driven network such as this.
As an additional note on avoiding plagiarism on steemit, I recommend paying attention to bots like @cheetah who are designed to catch plagiarism.
Ultimately plagiarism is a compliment @pcste, and proves you are posting good content. Totally cheating though, and defeating the object of Steemit which we all enjoy for the original posts x
Here is something that I've contemplated... I have been posting content, pictures and various other things on the internet since about 1997. I've used various nick names mostly the same one but there has been a few cases where I've used a different name. I've posted some of my own work and have been accused to stealing my own work because it just so happened to be posted previously under a different name. I've since have tried to stop doing that and been looking to post only new original content that I've made. But I'd like to be able to go back and post some of my orders stuff. Perhaps I should try and post some of the more new stuff only? I totally do not agree with stealing others peoples work unless giving them credit for it.