RE: Plagiarism on Steemit. A Look at @jpiper20
I'm flagging this. Not because I support plagiarism. Nor do I have anything against @pfunk reporting on it (in fact I support him finding it and reporting it). However, I think it is unnecessary and harmful for this to be the second ranked and rewarded post on the entire site. I would not flag it if doing so sent it negative or if it were already a modestly-rewarded post in an obscure "meta" section on site-specific issues.
This is not even a summary or status report about rampant plagiarism (which I don't think exists). It is a post about one particular incident out of thousands of users and posts most of whom behave in a reasonable and responsible manner (non-plagiarizing). It was handled by flagging the user, who has even admitted his mistakes and apologized, and ongoing reasonable platform-wide efforts to discourage and limit the effects of plagiarism exist and I support them. So I see this is largely sensationalism and blowing the issue way out of proportion in a manner that is misleading about the current status of the issue.
I disagree on the negative effects. From my perspective, it shows the ecosystem is self-policing. I didn't get the sense that there was rampant plagiarism going unchecked in this post.
If there isn't rampant plagiarism (and I agree on that), then this isn't noteworthy, it is just one incident being blown out of proportion. Other sites delete/police abusive posts, but you don't see reports featured on the front page about the fact that some abusive content was removed, you just don't see the abusive content at all. (There might be a mod log or other obscure location that provides transparency for those who seek it out.) We should operate on the same principle.