If you have been to the trending page lately, you will see the following post which has gained alot of attention, flags and seems to have divided opinions here on Steemit - there has been over 350 comments to date.

Note - I am not here to take sides on this, but rather to have a discussion about some interesting issues it has raised.


The original post was a sales type pitch where the author was selling the benefits of ‘Ormus Gold’ (Google it and have own opinion!), but after so much controversy the post has been completely edited and the author shares his own views on the controversy. The disagreement mainly stems from the fact the author used SEVERAL bid bots to boost this post to the top of trending, and many people disagree with what it is he is sharing, and trying to sell to people.

In my view it seems he truly believes in what he is sharing, and there is no problem with this - it is completely up to the individual to assess the validity and quality of this and what they ingest into their own body. If this same post had been botted up to half of the amount I think it would have generated much, much less controversy. In general whether you agree or disagree with something someone posts on here shouldn't warrant getting flagged, but it seems that if you have boosted your post to the top then you have some responsibility, and can expect some retribution from the community for certain types of posts.

What is the communities role in quality control?

Flagging has always been a grey area - although there are guidelines in the FAQ it is up to the individual to decide if content deserves flagging. It seems that if a post has made it to the top of trending and is detrimental to the success of Steemit, then some people see it as their duty to flag these posts to reduce their payout and visibility.

As the trending page is the first page that people see when the visit Steemit (potential new Steemians and investors) the article above is what they will see first.

Is it up to us as the community to monitor what is making it to the top of trending, or is this against the idea of freedom of speech?

Remember that the idea behind Steem is that it is decentralised and there are no ‘rules’. With the rise of the bid bots it seems that anyone who is willing to spend enough can rise to the top of trending - does this change peoples flagging habits? The original idea (before bid bots) was that the ‘best’ content would rise to the top and feature on trending. It seems a few people on Steemit are more and more viewing the trending page as a paid promotion page - if people have the money to boost there post to the top then that is fine - what are your thoughts on this? There has been alot of discussion on here about ways to fix this, but for the moment this is the way Steemit works.

Fight or Educate?

In the authors edited post he stands by what he posted, but does apologise for the overuse of bots - being new to Steemit I can understand how people wouldn’t understand that excess use of bots is frowned upon by many in the community (the payout for this post reached about $1500, but has been flagged down to about $1300 - the payout for the next post on trending is around $1000).

Steemit can be a confusing beast when you join, and there are many unwritten laws and differing opinions - so should we be flagging this type of behaviour or educating the users. For those who follow me, you will know that I am not a huge fan of the negativity on here, and would rather see someone given the benefit of the doubt, and encouraged to change than for the pitchforks to come out straight away. Sure if people don’t listen and change then maybe it is time to take a different approach. What do you think - should we instantly be flagging this type or behaviour or should be educating authors about the ethics of what they are doing on here?

I will go over some of the genuine reasons for flagging below, but the only reason I can see that this post should flagged is for tag abuse - it used the popular tag #steemit even though it has nothing at all to do with Steemit - authors sometimes use the most popular tags as a way to gain more views on their blog, even if the content has nothing to do with that tag. One of the commonly misused tags is the #introduceyourself tag.

Genuine reasons for flagging

There are several genuine reasons for flagging content:

When the content is obviously a scam attempt - It is often pretty obvious when they leave a comment such as head to ****.com for free upvotes. There are campaigns such as @arcange who look out for scam and leave a comment - and then I will usually flag the comments. Another red flag is if you look at their Steemd page and can see they are making the same generic comments over and over again.

Spam - It has become subjective as to what spam exactly is and whether it should be flagged or ignored. I sometimes see people just going and commenting completely irrelevant comments, and in my mind this is considered as
spam - I usually dont flag these and just ignore. There are more and more bots offering different advice and information in the comments section and I have seen some of these with a 0 reputation which means that people have been flagging them.

Flag abuse - As I mentioned above this is when people use a tag that is not even remotely related to what they are posting about - often using the most popular tags, such as #steemit, #introduceyourself and #cryptocurrency in a hope to gain more views.

Plagiarism - Blatant plagiarism should not be tolerated on here and be flagged/reported to Steemcleaners. This can be people claiming work/images as their own, or completely copy/pasting of others content.

Conclusions

There has been some controversy over the latest post to make it to the top of the trending page, with many disagreeing with the contents value and flagging it. This has brought up some interesting debates about what constitutes the reasons for flagging, and whether it is up to us Steemians to monitor and ‘control’ the quality of posts, especially on trending (remember this is what new people will see first, so it is in our interests to have the best content on trending). The author is doing his best to rectify the situation, and I hope it can come to a peaceful conclusion - the last thing Steem needs is more flag wars!

This is a bit of a controversial topic and I would really love to hear everyone's thoughts on this one!

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