WARNING - "9 Things You Shouldn't Do on Steemit"

Today we will be talking and I'm gonna give you my top 9 things I think you should be watching out for and not doing on the Steemit platform. I'm probably gonna zoom through these points or else I'll be here all day talking about this and that could go on and on about it. But the number one thing that we have an issue with here on Steemit and I think we can all agree on this is Plagiarism. This comes in the form of just stealing people's content, posting it on to your steemit channel and taking credit for it. You know some people do this probably not maliciously. They probably don't think it's a big issue now. Steemit is a decentralized platform, meaning there is no main governing body that governs us all so technically, there are no rules. But what I want to tell you guys is, just because there's no rule on Steemit doesn’t mean there aren't repercussions so if you're out there doing something maliciously or not and you do something wrong. The statement community will come in, flag your content, they will downvote your posts. Your post could go hidden; you could lose all your reputation, so you need to be accountable for what you're doing here on the platform. So again no rules to your own steemit technically but there are repercussions for your actions so you need to be knowledgeable about some things you shouldn't do here on the steemit platform. So, again number one thing that we have a problem with is plagiarism.

plagiarismchecker.net

Now there's a big project that is helping out the steemit community making it a better place. Keeping it plagiarism free or at least trying to and that would be Steam Cleaners. If you guys are not familiar with steem cleaners, you can go to steem cleaners or can check them out. They are actually the owner of the Cheetah Bot as well, which goes out and checks for duplicate content. So if you're posting something on your steemit channel that you've also posted maybe on your blog out there on the web, it made leave a comment on your post and what it'll do is it'll actually upvote your post and then it'll comment on your post letting you know that “hey! we found similar content out on the web” and basically what that does is, it allows your followers to kind of be aware of that and let your followers determine whether that really is plagiarism or not. It may be that it's your channel and maybe that it's your website out there and so your followers will probably know that I mean, they could tell that if you know you posted your own channel and then you brought it over to Steemit. Well even if Cheetah comes by in upload, supposed to in comments on it saying “hey we found similar content out there”, if your followers can tell and they'll be able to go to your own channel and see that it's the same channel name and it's you, so it's fine. So it's basically to bring awareness to similar content out on the web now, you can get on, you can get blacklisted with cheetah which means they're gonna flag all your content and they could start actually flagging, downvoting your content and if that happens there's a way to get off of it and it's listed right here on steam cleaners. Cheetah - how to appeal, so you'll just need to go there and prove that it is your content that you're posting on steemit and they will get you off that blacklist.

So I'm just want you guys to be aware of this. It's not likely this is going to happen if you're doing all the right things but if you do find yourself in a situation where *”Oh man you're posting your own content on Steemit but you've also posted it somewhere else and cheetah starts flagging you. There is something you could do about it you can appeal it and they're very understanding. They'll take you off their blacklist and all that good stuff. But it is there you know, in place just to make sure that Steemit stays plagiarism free or is plagiarism free as possible because that is a big issue we have here on the platform. Now, if you want to learn about the different versions of plagiarism and how that's happening it's not just stealing words; it's not you're stealing articles or stealing videos; it's also stealing pictures so I know a lot of you guys probably aren't aware but it's a really a big deal if you're let's say you write a post about writing a book post about cats or something like that and then you go out on Google Images and you search for a picture of a cat and you take that picture. Rule is if the pictures copy written and you don't have the right to use it that is plagiarism. It's a form of plagiarism.

Pixabay

Now what I use previously is a site called Pixabay. Let me pull this up and this is a place where you can get free images. This is copyright free and copy written free. So, if this the first you've heard about Pixabay,

it is a vibrant community of creative sharing copyright free images and videos. All contents are released under Creative Commons CCO which makes them safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist - even for commercial purposes.

So you can use this anyway. You can use these pictures any way you want to even for commercial purposes and this is actually where I get the different images. Sometimes, I'll borrow different graphics from Pixabay. It's a perfect place to do that. You don't have to give any credit back. Now, it's not a bad idea to actually give credit where you've found an image or where you got your image from unless you're taking it yourself that way. If something does happen, if something does occur and the cheetah bot comes along or something like that, you can show that “hey this was a copyright free image that I'm using and there's nothing wrong with it.” So plagiarism is a really big issue here on Steemit and it's something I just really want you guys to be aware about. Guys you're actually stealing their work in hopes to get up those or to get a follow on your channel but if you're not the rightful owner of that content you can't do it. So just use some common sense out there guys and be careful that you're not plagiarizing.

I want to bring some awareness that there are no rules, there's no official etiquette guide here for steemit but these are basically, a list of standards that we should go by as a community and it's even listed in the FAQs here for steemit, so if you go to the FAQ, look up the etiquette guide and you will find this post. Now again, no rules here whatsoever but there are repercussions if we don't all kind of go by the same standards. So I would recommend that you guys read through this etiquette guide and be familiar with it. I don't actually agree with everything every single thing here on this etiquette guide it's not a hundred percent. I don't think it's a hundred percent accurate of things we have to do or shouldn't do but there are a lot of good points here, so I would definitely recommend going through that.

Pixabay

And I think one thing that was mentioned on here is do not beg for upvotes or resteem. So that's my number two thing. Do not beg for people to come to your content and upvoted your posts. Chances are, people aren't gonna do it you know and it's just tacky that you're asking for it so you know what I like to tell people is position yourself as a content creator position. Position yourself as a leader in the in the niche area that you're talking about and you will never ever ever have to beg for an upvote or a follow or resteem or anything like that. Okay? So don't do that again, it's just tacky and you probably won't get it or each team anyway.

Pixabay

Now, number three is Do not spam people. Now spam comes in a lot of different forms and ways. If you're going to people's blog posts just to say and there's actually BOTS out there I'm sure of it that just say “great video”, “great video”, “great video”, “great posts”, “great post” on every single people's post. If you google spam you really want a definition of it it's

irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of recipients

send the same message indiscriminately to large numbers of recipients on the internet.

So it's mostly unwanted messages right and so we get this a lot here on steemit and again some of it is BOTS sending out you know, great video, great post or whatsoever, there's also a form of wallet spam I guess. I'll call it and that's where people go and they actually send you over like 0.001 steem. I'm not upset with this, but it is kind of annoying that people can just go in here and send you a message in your wallet by sending you 0.001 SBD but this does happen and I don't know there's any way to really combat this and I guess at the end of the day at least they're sending you a little bit of money. So you'll read their messages but anyway this is also a form of spam and there are many forms of spam here on steemit. If it doesn't feel right guys I guess that's a really good way to go about. If it doesn't feel right what you're doing then it's probably not right so don't do it so if you're just spamming people's articles saying “hey check out my blog post or whatever” and that's spam. Don't do it! Okay? Pretty simple.

Steemit.com

Now number four on my list of things you should not be doing on Steemit is Misusing of the tags and we see this alot here on Steemit. So if you go over here to the tag categories, I don't know, introduce yourself it's one of the I'm sorry, the worst misuse tag out there and this tag “introduce yourself.” I even read some and someone commented and say “you should be putting this in the introduce yourself tag it'll get more attention.” Well it wasn't about whatever the post was, I can't read what it was, it wasn't you introducing yourself. So it doesn't belong in the introduce yourself category. Now I've noticed recently that a lot of people are starting to use this correctly. I'm actually pleased to see that this is actually getting a lot better. I'm not sure what exactly has happened there maybe it's just we've got a ton of people joining the steemit right now but I'm glad to see that this is actually becoming more well used but if you go to some other categories like photography like any of these top categories, these are the most misused ones because they are the top categories. What people do is they go view all tags, I don't know if you guys know this but if you go to view all tags you can see which tags are getting the most money, the most payouts so what unfortunately what people are doing is saying hey I can just post into one of these tags or one of these categories because you get to choose five for every post and I'll just choose five of the top ones and I'll get more eyeballs on my article. What's gonna happen guys is that people will see that you're posting inappropriate content in the wrong tag or the wrong category and they might flag your content. They don't even read your stuff because it doesn't make any sense. It's not in the right place so be careful not to do that. That is a kind of a form of abuse here on the steemit platform. You know it's tacky so don't do it guys.

blog.d2design.com

Number five on my list of things do not do not do on steemit is to post too often. Now this can be debated depending on what kind of content you're putting out. If you're talking about like crypto news for example and I think some posted five times in the last 24 hours but they can get away with that because they're in a niche that has news that comes out every single hour. Like the news cycle is ridiculous with crypto, in the speed at which the market moves is ridiculous, so they can come out with relevant content literally every hour if they wanted to and luckily you know they don't do that we could consume that much information probably but they do post about every five, six hour or something like that and it's actually good. I actually like to keep up with the crypto markets and what's going on in the news. Going on out there in that crypto space. So it's actually they can get away with it. I think that's good now if you're just posting stuff, just to post it and kind of game the system and get up votes and follows and all that stuff. You're just putting on a bunch of crap post then that is not good right. You only put out enough content that your readers can consume and that they're actually still enjoying and uploading and stuff like that. You know statement. You really want to be careful with that if you're doing it on some channels. It's not really that big of a deal here on steemit. People only have so much of those they can give per day. So it may not even be in your best interest to post that often so just you know use your discretion and be careful with that all right.

Pixabay

The number six thing I want to talk about is “Misusing your flagging privilege.” I call it a privilege because we're privileged to be able to flag content we think is inappropriate or shouldn't be on Steemit. Let me go to the etiquette guide and look at the proper way to use the flagging system okay. It's actually in the steemcleaners.org website

Fair downvotes:

Our curator disagrees with the content of a post or comments

So if you disagree with a post then you can downvote it

curator funds the content of a post contains abuse such as plagiarism

By all means; flag it, down vote it, and get that crap off steemit.

Unfair down votes

where the curator wishes to harm a steemit user by downvoting contributors posts

curator wishes to harm an individual or specific group of users by downloading contributors and/or supporters posts

The gray area here is retaliation downvotes where if you just don't like somebody and you're just flagging constantly, just flagging their content and stuff, that's a form of abuse. Where they're saying it's actually a kind of a gray area, just be mindful. Don't get into some kind of you know, where you're just abusing your power and flagging it into one of these flagging boards. You'll probably end a loser either way right. Be mindful of how you go about flagging content. I know that someone proposed an idea that kind of like where you can actually having three options instead of upvote or flag, it'll be upvote, downvote or flag. So like, you would use the flag which would actually could hurt somebody's reputation and hide their content and stuff. It's like plagiarism or abuse that they're doing or just downvote because you simply don't like it. I think that's a really good idea that came out with saying that we could possibly put that into our interface and into the steem blockchain. Guys just be mindful, be careful about how you use your flagging powers. You know some of you guys have big accounts or higher reputations and you could actually really really damage somebody and so just be careful and think about what you're doing before you flag somebody stuff. Also I don't know if you guys know this but you should also leave a comment if you do flag somebody's post. If you have a good reason or you think you have a good reason for flag of somebody's content then by all means do it but leave a comment letting them know why they got flagged and by that way they don't do it in the future. That's just good etiquette.

Pixabay

Number seven, don't follow expecting a reciprocating follow. Don't expect people to follow you just because you follow them and that's kind of a gaming system. I saw it happens on Twitter where people just go out follow massive amounts of accounts in hopes that these accounts are just gonna follow them back and then what they do is like once a week they'll unfollow everybody that didn't follow them or they just didn't follow everybody so it ends up looking like they have this all popular channel because they got all these followers. At the end of the day guys it doesn't really matter how many followers you have on the Steemit and if they're not really interested in your content. So it's better to organically get your following so that way they're actually upvoting your stuff, they actually like your stuff, they might receive your post do it naturally. Don't go out and follow a bunch of people just expecting them to follow you back alright.

iconfinder.com

Number eight, is posting without editing your content. So before I post my content you know I go through it two, three, four or five times to make sure that everything is perfect. I do that with the text that I put it in my articles. I go through it more than once make sure that you're editing, proofreading all of your content that you're putting out because you know if you start misspelling a lot of stuff and people can tell you're just rushing content out then they may think you're just putting a bunch of junk out just to get upvotes. So take your time put your best. I like to put my best into everything that I do. Anyway, so make sure you're doing that here on Steemit and it will go a long ways for you.

Pixabay

Number nine, don't take criticism too personally. Okay, if somebody has taken the time to give you constructive criticism, I don't meanlike they're just posting a bunch of crap about you and your post but if they're giving you constructive criticism, take it to heart but don't take it personally and don't let it keep you from enjoying your time here on steemit. You know, I got a post like that or I got a comment too. But that's a constructive positive criticism and I actually took that to heart. But don't take it personally, you don't let it ruin your experience here on Steemit and if somebody's taking the time to give you constructive criticism, that's a good thing and that means you've got a healthy following that knows like and trust you and they're willing to dish out that the honesty and critique your video for you. So that's actually a good thing and take negative and positive feedback the same way. All right guys.

So guys don’t forget everything that I mentioned today so you can check all that out for yourself. The etiquette guide, steemcleaners.org, the Cheetah page, the steem cleaners’ page and all that good stuff. Also the pixabay so you can see where to get copyright free images to use in your blog post.

If you like what I'm putting out here, go ahead and comment, resteem and then upvote. Until then guys, have an awesome day Steemians.

I would like to thank @bobiecayao as my leader ang @iwrite for giving me support to Steemunity affiliate of Steemit Diversify