Suggested universal rules - how to react for the plagiarism and abuse
Suggested universal rules - how to react for the plagiarism and abuse
The rules are quite liberal and clear.
Our task is to educate first, punish by downvotes or blocking only when it's absolutely necessary.
That's why we suggest following reaction for inappropriate behavior:
| Behavior | Reaction |
|---|---|
| Auto-plagiarism from other websites | If it's autoplagiarism from the other websites (Hive user or blogger, sharing same content on Steemit), it's fine as long as post does not include #steemexclusive tag. Of course, that person is excluded from SC01/02 and booming support for that publication, but sharing it on the platform is not against the rules, per se. If #steemexclusive tag was used, inform the person about the mistake in a comment, and explain what does #steemexclusive mean |
| Auto-plagiarism on Steemit | Some users are sharing their few months old publications as the "new content", not changing much, if anything in it. At first, make an investigation to see if it happened only once or if it's a standard procedure for that person. Using the same photos, as long as they belong to the user or are on a Creative Commons license, is fine, but copying more than 35% of the text and publishing it as the new post should be treated like a regular plagiarism. |
| Copyrighted photos | It's the most popular mistake made by the Steemians. Many users has never heard about the creative commons license and they do not realize that taking random pictures from the internet is stealing from the author. Here, education is crucial. Explain what Creative Commons are and where the user can find proper pictures. You can use THAT PUBLICATION to do it. The author who used wrong photos does not have to be muted or marked in a system, but should not receive the booming support or SC01/02 upvote as long as the post contain copyrighted content. |
| CC photos without the source/with wrong source | It's a small mistake, that should not be considered as the abuse but require our reaction. Sometimes the publication does not contain sources at all or include the source that redirect us to google searcher or any other wrong website. The very common mistakes include also assuming that every element of Canva or other similar programs are for free and using the paid elements with the watermarks. In that case, ask in the comment for fixing the mistake. To explain how to do it, you can use THAT POST, chapter "how to link photos". The publication should not get booming or SC01/02 upvote until the mistakes are corrected by the author. |
| Plagiarism up to 35% | Partially plagiarized content can be treated as skipping the source in quoting and, if it is not happening constantly, does not require marking the author as the plagiarist. In that case, first thing you should do is to check the previous publications of that person to make sure their posts are not plagiarized on a daily basis. If only the small part of the post is plagiarized, educate Steemian about citing and quoting importance. To do it, you can use THAT LINK. The publication with partially plagiarized content should not be qualified for booming or SC01/02 support |
| Plagiarism over 35% | In case of plagiarized content in more than 35%, you should take actions. As the admin, mute the post to make it invisible for other users and avoid further upvoting, then downvote all the rewards (if any of your friends upvoted it, you can ask them to cancel the upvote - that way you will need less SP to make the downvote), and edit the label of the user (details in one of the next chapters of that publication). Finally - write in a comment under the last report in our community the nickname of the abuser, date and send the link to the muted plagiarized content. |
| Spam | If you see the spamming account that is advertising the products or services in your community (both: in posts or comments), mute it immediately and block it in your community then send the link to the account to us, sharing it in the comment under the last report in Anti-Cheat Cheetah. |
| Indentity Theft | Luckily that sort of serious abuse is rare, but it happens. My identity was stolen on Steemit too - the abuser was trying to steal the money from the others, using my nickname (slightly changed) and photos. Contact with the original author, if possible, then contact us immediately. |
| Account farmers | Finding the account farmers is very challenging and require long investigation. Things that may suggest account farm include: sending the money to the same binance address (or other market/wallet), mutual upvoting, similar style of writing, same mistakes, same photos used etc. If you suspect that you have found the content farm, white a post about it in our community. We will try to double check it (possibly by more than one user) to make sure it's the abuse and if it is, we will take the proper actions. |
| Inappropriate comments | If it's just a vulgar or discriminative comments, it's your decision what to do with them - as the admin you can mute them, downvote, block the user or not react at all. You need to react when you suspect that the password of the user was compromised and that someone is using it to share the spam by sending suspicious links or asking for sending the money to them. First, hide that comments, then inform the account that besides the owner, most likely someone else is using their profile, finally send the information to us. |
How to find the abusers?
I assume all the moderators and admins already know how to look for the plagiarized content, but if someone does have any doubts, here is a very short tutorial:
| Checked element | How to review? |
|---|---|
| Photos | At first, check the source to see where it will redirect you. Find on that website the information about the license of the picture. If it's copyrighted, it should not be used on Steemit, if it's CC - everything is fine. In case when someone is sharing the photos describing them as their own, you should still take a look at it. I even had the situation when someone participated in the contest sharing "my own pictures from the vacations" that happened to be taken from... The National Geographic! You may scan the photos using different tools, for instance Google Lens. Google Lens can be used on Google Chrome, after right-click on the photo and selecting "Search with Google Lens" from the list. You may also install their application on the phone. |
| Text | There are tens of the programs and websites that offer checking the text to find the plagiarism. In my opinion, the best free tool is on the website Plagiarism Detector. It's not perfect, but from all the free options, that one is most accurate. Best paid programs include Scribbr and Quetext - the first of them is quite expensive though. |
| Account | Like I mentioned before, making sure that accounts are made by the same author is challenging but possible. Check the history of transactions to see if they all are withdrawing the money using the same account, then track their upvotes, investigate the posts to see if they use the same photos, have the same writing style, make similar mistakes. Many account farmers are sharing the trash (one photo, or a few of sentences) just to upvote each others - it's also something that should bring your attention |
Marking plagiarists
In case of identity theft, spammers and content farmers, blocking them from the community should be made immediately, as they clearly are here just to steal the money. If someone is sharing for the first time the publication with over 35% of the plagiarized content, we should try to give a chance to the user to change their behavior first. To do so, we should introduce the warning system that will effect in adding the their label special marker. Marker should be added in all the communities that want to participate in the program, so even if the plagiarism will move from one community to the other, admins will know that their posts require special attention while being checked. Same thing with the constant abusers - plagiarist caught on their third attempt to cheat should be blocked not only in the community where the plagiarism was shared but in all the communities that follow our account.
| Label | Situation |
|---|---|
| (W1) | Warning 1 - First attempt to share the content with over 35% of the plagiarism on Steemit + hiding and downvoting all the rewards from the post |
| (W2) | Warning 2 - Second attempt to share the content with over 35% of the plagiarism on Steemit + hiding and downvoting all the rewards from the post |
| Blocked | With the third attempt the user should be blocked in all the communities and excluded t + hiding and downvoting all the rewards from all the active post written by that person |
How to join the downvote curation trail?
You don't have to be the admin of the community to help us fighting with the abuse - just join our trail. The more users will join @ac-cheetah downvote trail, the more power we will have to downvote the abusers. Downvoting is taking VP from the separate pool so it won't affect your ability to upvote the content that you like. You do not loose anything joining the trail and you may easily contribute in helping to make the platform much better and much more fair place just with a few clicks.
PS: Our work will be made manually for now, although we are in touch with the user @alexmove who is preparing the tool that may automatize it, at least partially.
100 % of the income from this account will be powered up and used to downvote abusers.
I wold like to know who will be handling this trial and this account? Who have all accesses for this account?( I didn't mention the posting key.I meant all the keys including master also. That will be secured the account without powering down)That should not be only one person exsacly. Because I really don't like to see another endingplagiarism which belongs to one user and when they got enough all rewards powered down and left the platform. And my concern is only 4 communities can't make this right. If you need to start a war, you have to contact every and each members to make this trail powerful. It's good to start from Crs, Professors and other High Sp accounts.
And I will join this trial in near future when I get good impression than previous times. You can count on me. For now I am watching your path.
The account of ac-cheetah is mine. I mentioned creating it and this community and got the words of support from the SC. Yours too, I understand that something has changed.
Communities will participate. Today Comunidad Latina has joined, I didn't have a time to add it to the list. Steemit is very untrusting (apparently, as you, and it's fine), so probably most of the admins need more time to see that it all is transparent and works well.
Having multiple admins does not work as well. Always owner of the master key can change the passwords some day and leave the platform leaving other admins on the ice. For now I'm sending my own STEEM to ac-cheetah so obviously I wouldn't want to see someone else steal it. I guess at the end of the day it's all about trust. I believe many users have met me well enough to trust me. With Sri Lanka I did not have much experience yet, but I'm hoping I will earn your trust with time.
I can see that a lot of people instead of worrying about plagiarism is concerned that I could earn on it. The community won't give even one upvote. It's 100% downvote focused and 100% of the rewards will be powered up.
I don't ask about the donations or delegations. It's absolutely out of the table. Long term downvote trail is not possible yet. It will be in the future. For now it's just reporting the abusers in the comments in one place. Sending to me the links to the plagiarized content in your community won't make me rich in any possible way. You can just tag me in the muted publication instead. Denying to do it will only work well for the plagiarists and I truly don't understand why someone would like to do it.
If you have understood my point about only 4 communities can't make this because when you start this war, abusers don't care about theirself and when we downvote them, they surely downvote on you and your communities.. apparantly if only 4 communities are here and only them have to face downvotes on their community. And I have the highest threat because we have some Sp than others. I am fully ok ti have downvotes on my posts or whatever comments I made..but my concern about the community. I really don't like to see downvotes on my community members. So that's why I said it's good to get most members support because then abusers can:'t downvote for all.
Regarding the reward, Yes...you are correct. Currently steemit is only about making profits and getting paid for whatever shit anyone posted. That's the main point I wanted to join this because it destroy the Steemit life. I wanted to end this as much as possible.
And about the account, it's ok to have account only for you or within your team. But my concern is, this will end up with like endingplagirism.
It's good for not going for delegations because Unless steemit team makes a delegation users can't affort to make huge difference. You can make reports about abusers or whatever you want.it's not my bussiness. But it would not make anything to abusers well. So instead of making reports, you should try to build the trail well.. This is just my idea.
And if you say I am untrusty ,it's ok.. the peoples Who know about me, they know. If I given a word, I will be doing it anyhow. So you have my support. But My only concern about my community.
You are right that having trail is crucial. I know that for now there is no tool that allows to make downvote trail except of the steemyy which works only as long as the website is opened.
I was talking about this issue with some very well respected steemians and it seems that there is a hope - the solution could appear, but if it will be possible, it will appear in some time, not instantly.
There will be more communities, no worry about it. We already have five, with extra two I'm in touch on discord and they will most likely join soon. Rome wasn't been built in a day - even the idea has less than a week, so... It's work in progress.
Yes, downvotes from the abusers may happen but it will most likely focused on that community. That's also why I wanted to remain anonymous and created separate account for the plagiarism fight, but I understand some people may have doubts not knowing who is managing ac-cheetah, so I'm out of the closet and will take that risk on me. Until the community is weak and trail does not exist, we can focus on abusers that has lower SP. In a month or so, when the trail (hopefully) will be supported by tens or hundreds, we can fight with everyone who breaks the rules.
Agreed. There is one more important difference. As this account is only to downvote, the delegations block that SP to upvote posts within it. Downvote trail keeps upvote VP untouched so we do not interfere negatively in upvote decentralization process.
Depends. Downvoting is effective in one way, but reports help to block the user who plagiarize constantly in multiple accounts. Right now person who plagiarized the post many times can be blocked in community A and then go to community B to get the booming there for the only post without the plagiarism. Booming and SC upvotes should be distributed wisely too, and thanks to the lists they may be taken from potential abusers.
I cannot do anything to make you trust me. You may look at my reputation gained in such a short time, you may track that I was powering up 50% of my income far before clubs, you may see that I was promoting Steemit in many ways, making mini newspaper that was promoting the best writers here, that I was chosen one of the best bloggers, that my community works well and in one of the last comments was described by SC as the example how plagiarism should be checked. You don't know me personally, so I assume it may not be enough for now. I believe when we will be cooperating, with time your concers won't be as big as now though.
I don't think it's a good idea. On a platform where there are so many authors who delegate STEEM POWER in order to receive upvotes, starting a downvote trail could be self-destructive.
There are very few accounts with so much STEEM POWER that if they decided to punish those who downvote other members' posts, many steemians would leave this platform. Already many steemians have left and others are still leaving Steemit because even after creating good content, they haven't received enough upvotes and support.
It won't be about downvoting everyone who is using the bid bots though. It's about downvoting abusers, account farmers and those who use the bid bots, sharing exclusively copy-paste trash. Downvoting does not have to include 50 whale accounts at the same time. Finally, downvote trail that would include 50-100 users is partially protecting from the revenge downvotes. In my opinion Status Quo is bad.
I'm happy to say that other two communities just joined us. We are currently in 6, will be more. Project didn't even properly start yet.
Thank you for the reply!
I understand what you say.