My first flag
Well, this was a sad and unwanted milestone. Today, I cast my first intentional flag on a comment/post. When I say intentional, I've cast a couple of flags accidentally before... on the mobile busy website, it is really easy to accidentally hit the flag (thumbs down) button by accident! So, I've cast a flag accidentally and removed it immediately, but I've never cast one ON PURPOSE... until today.
Normally, for posts I've just forwarded offending posts to @steemcleaners, in an effort to not get involved in a long escalation with someone who I'd rather have no more contact with. I figure it is better for a third party to handle the problems. Likewise for spam comments on my blog, whilst for non-content comments, I just ignore them. I've also started to give a small upvote for decent comments (nothing much, but it pushes them up) to help trigger @dustsweeper as a thanks for visiting and reading.
The Straw
Well, this was the little straw that broke my patience. Or maybe it's just because I'm cranky and tired due to a toddler who woke me up in the middle of the night.
I run a SBI contest, which is pretty easy to enter and only just requires a little bit of thought. I ask a question (or two) and it is always chosen so that everyone can answer, you just need to think for a second or two! Nothing specialised, no problem solving or anything like that... and the winners are chosen at random from the valid entries.
Anyway, this week, I put a @steem-bounty on the contest. Just a little way of giving back to all the people that made valid entries, but didn't win the SBI shares... and it seems to have attracted this @steem-bounty chaser (profile here). I see from his comments he goes from post to post that have a bounty posted and makes little comments to try and get a piece of the reward. Anyway, I have no problem with that, it is a pretty inefficient way to grow your account but his other method of growing his account is by copy and pasting other people's material (which I have to say is also a pretty inefficient way of growing...).
What did get my goat up and caused me to flag his comment/entry was that he just took an existing comment (from a long time follower @giddyupngo) and just ran it through a translator and pasted it in.
So that this:
Good question! I know a lot about laser printers/copiers, but others do not. Many times people will call toner ink, though toner is dry and ink is wet. One thing I don't do well is small talk. I like talking about weighty matters, but really don't care about the weather report
Became this:
Gute Frage! Ich weiß viel über Laserdrucker / Kopierer, aber nicht andere. Viele Male rufen die Leute die Tonertinte an, obwohl der Toner trocken ist und die Tinte nass ist. Eine Sache, die ich nicht gut mache, ist, wenig zu sprechen. Ich spreche gerne über wichtige Dinge, aber den Wetterbericht interessiert mich nicht.
So, congratulations @mazasuarez, you have become my first (and hopefully last) flag. It was a small one (5%), but please please please just don't do it, and change your ways. It was a easy thing to just write something simple. The questions were easy to answer, and if you are not careful, you just will annoy someone that is bigger and less tolerant than me. You will get better and longer term growth by just doing the right thing.
WHY?
Which leads me to the other question... Why do people do this? The copy and pasting, and the deception? I know that money is at stake and that makes people do all sorts of stupid things to try and make a quick buck, but don't they realise that they could earn and make much much much more just by producing decent and original content? Just take photos with you smartphone, just write about your day and do a #ulog, just write about something that you enjoy or like doing... it doesn't have to be long or world-shattering. I look back on my first posts and they were pretty terrible, but it was a start, and I've never had the urge to steal other people's written work.
It isn't profitable and it is inefficient (unless you control hundreds upon hundreds of automated accounts), so why do people take the deceptively simple and low-paying route?
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Thank you for sharing. I had no idea about @steemcleaners, and I will be taking a look. I have flagged the occasional person. If you post a link to your completely unrelated post in my comments and beg for an upvote, I may flag you. I am a little nervous to flag the wrong people, but generally these people are begging for it.
I am hesitant to flag those comments, I tend to just ignore them. In the end, I figure it is just people trying to learn and they will grow out of it when they realise it doesn't do anything...
You are right best to ignore. Spammers and trolls aren't worth the time. But sometimes they hit a nerve and get downvoted.
I've seen someone who does this - copies a bit of the post text and pastes it as a comment. Then, she/he/it upvotes it for $1 a crack - but doesn't upvote the original post. Rude.
Now, following the steem-bounty trail can be very useful - especially if you're looking for followers, go and put meaningful comments on such pages, make contacts/friends, figuring that people on the steem-bounty trail tend to be some of the nicer types. ;-)
Oh that is rude! But the Steem-bounty weighs the bounty poster with a huge leverage, so one wonders if it is even worth it to upvote your own comment with such a large weight?
Yes! I have come across that, too, @viking-ventures! I also came across someone the other day who posts recipes... when you comment, you get about a 1c upvote and a "thank you" response (which is fair enough)... and then she was upvoting all her own "thank you's" to the tune of 75-80c each!!
=^..^=
Oh, like that? That is a bit much....
Yeah, pretty sad. Just scratching my head, thinking "selfish much, lately?"
=^..^=
It's annoying, and it's very much frowned upon to do what this user did. I always try to think like this though if I see something I don't like:
Still doesn't make it right, but I do see why people would try and trick the system. They might not know (yet) that honest interactions will make them richer in the end :-)
I simply always report to steemcleaners. I do a rare flag too though, if I feel like 'that person should have known better.'
Sorry you had to reach this milestone, but I totally understand why you did it. You were trying to give away something that person could have used and he decided not to take it seriously it seems.
A real pitty!
Yes, I also think about the same points that you listed. Most of the time I just report to Steemcleaners, but this one was also a bit tricky to report. All the comments were essentially chasing the steembounty, but they were either copied or generic. It was also just too hard to fill out the steemcleaners form for this.
Well, on the bright side, I know I can do it if I really really have to... But yes, best to hold fire for the really special occasions. No need to ruin another person's account over a small thing...
Hey, @bengy!
You might also want to report this steemian to @steem-bounty and/or @knircky.
They will put him/her on a blacklist so he/she will not receive any bounty in the future.
I might consider it if it keeps happening. For one offense (that I have definite proof of), I'm not willing to tar them for life! However, for repeated offense, I will definitely look into it!
Sad that you had to do that. Funny that they work so hard to get out of working, makes no sense to me. Like you said, upload a picture from your phone, do a ulog and talk about toe fungus. It's so much easier.
I know! The amount of time finding something to post, obscuring it and all of that, just to avoid writing something... It takes more time than just doing the right thing in the first place!
Hang on, you write about toe fungus?
LOL no, but I bet you laughed. Someone like that who takes time to steal something from someone else and put all that effort to cheat, should be relegated to writing about toe fungus :D
For sure, I did do a double take! Now I'm going to try and write about toe fungus... Maybe into a few days, I'll add it to my ideas list!
Well if @bengy didn't, I did 😂🍄
@themonkeyzuelans ROFL 😆
play the tones " da da da daaaaaa!"
It's a bummer, but unfortunately necessary sometimes.
As to WHY people do this? Well, for the same reason there are thousands of people using things like Amazon's "Mechanical Turk" to earn fractions of a cent for each time they choose an appropriate tag for a photo, or transcribe a supermarket receipt. Copy-pasta is seen by some as a quick way to earn 1/4c on something. They actually have ZERO interest in what you are saying or doing, they are just looking for the "quick and dirty" way to make 1/4c. But WHY? Well, 1/4c means nothing when you live in Australia or or the US, but if you live in Bangladesh or somewhere like that, those 1/4 cents become actual money fairly soon.
Sad, but true....
=^..^=
I understand that the economics of it works very differently in other economies, but even still, with the effort that goes into making these quick and dirty cents, you could be earning much much much more with interesting original content. It doesn't even have to be hugely interesting, just something about your day, or your life!
I have yet to flag anyone or be flagged. Should I really declare this information!? There will be a day I suppose it will happen.
Your first picture on your post is duplicated. The guy with the thumbs down.
Thanks! I'm still messing around and learning with SteemPress.
Since I joined Steemit, few months now, I have never flagged anyone.
Even if sometimes I'm really tempted to, I am afraid they could take revenge by flagging me back...
This is also my issue with flagging, in the end it really becomes a matter of who has the most VESTS, or other words, more money. Well, it took me a good half year or so to become annoyed enough to use it...
We had that problem with pifc a couple of times and it deserves a flag. Well done
If possible can you put your contest in the #contest general tab in pifc discord
thanks
Sure, will do!