Steemed by plagiarism? Some potential solutions

Nothing attracts plagiarism like a platform where you earn value for posting content, and within hours of registering on steemit I see that this platform is no exception. People post garbage or worse, steal other people's content, get it upvoted and rake in rewards. As a result the entire platform is degraded and comes to be known as a spammy site. 

Platforms like steemit represent a great, possibly even revolutionary, concept... if the plagiarists can be defeated. I propose the following potential solutions for consideration by the development team.

1. Delay payments Although I am really excited about the possibility of getting paid this evening for what I submitted last night, I think near instant payouts are a bad idea from the perspective of controlling plagiarism. Delaying payments will accomplish two things. First, it will discourage those who want to make a quick buck and get out. If they have to wait two, three, or six weeks to get paid, they may decide it's not worth it. Second, for those plagiarists who are willing to wait, a delayed payout system will give the community a chance to catch up with them before they get paid.

2. Set clear plagiarism policies for this site Not all use of another's work is legally plagiarism. For example, I obtained the clip art image above from a site called Open Clip Art which allows people to freely use its images for personal and commercial work. However, this site may determine that its own policies regarding use of other people's work may need to be more stringent than what our laws cover. Steemit should set whatever policies it believes will be best for the purpose and vision of the site and then clearly communicate those policies in plain English to all its users. Once the policies are set and clearly enumerated, then violators can be disciplined.

3. Make the consequences of policy violations severe Plagiarism is not a three strikes and you're out scenario. Once a user agrees to abide by the policies then violations need to be met by banning the account and forfeiting all rewards from the offending post. As long as the policies are clear, violations will also be clear. Steemit could set up an appeal process (in the case of human error in judgement) but the default should be that the user's account is banned and rewards are forfeited while seeking appeal.

4. Compensate individuals tasked with monitoring plagiarism Have dedicated workers whose job it is to look for plagiarism and compensate them well. This could be worked right into the block chain.

5. Reward community members for spotting plagiarism If a community member who is not one of the compensated workers finds a plagiarized piece, then that community member should be rewarded for it. I propose the reward should be some kind of flat fee plus whatever monetary gain the plagiarized post had gained up to that point.

6. Penalize community members for falsely accusing of plagiarism Make sure that there is a way to check the accusation and not reward the community member for making it falsely. This area should have some leniency to account for honest mistakes, possibly a three strikes and you're out system. However, it should be very clear that there is no benefit to making a false accusation of plagiarism. Any community members wanting to call plagiarism should be directed to a set of guides on Steemit's policies and how to tell the difference between plagiarism and original content (it's not always as simple as it sounds).

7. Penalize community members for upvoting content that turns out to be plagiarized This penalty should not be severe, as most readers are not going to want the burden of checking each post they read for plagiarism. However, some kind of degradation in the value of their upvotes could be tied to consistently upvoting plagiarized content. Community members should at least think twice about upvoting something, and over time, they will tend to upvote the content contributors who have established themselves as trustworthy in that regard.

Wherever people get rewarded for posting content, plagiarism will be an issue that has to be addressed head on. I hope that the Steemit leadership takes this challenge seriously, and I hope they find my proposed solutions helpful in drawing up Steemit's antiplagiarism strategy.