I just recently quit cigs so I am a bit scatter brained -- I wrote above that I would step to that low level, I meant that I would not and have edited it.

Definitely needs stricter policies. However; this isn't to say centralized policies. We are to police each other and ourselves. The stiffer penalties would come from the users.

In the same way that we have a "Minnowsupport group" we need the same for plagiarists and it shouldn't be monitored by or left to bots. There are whales fighting each other threatening to take their accounts down to zero rep while also turning a blind eye to other whales possibly abusing saying "They can do whatever they want it's their stake!" If I was a plagiarist, I would see this as a golden opportunity to slip by the cracks for major profits and that is exactly what's happening, even if by accident If this much effort went to plagiarists I think my rewards would be higher. I am pretty content with my rewards, though.

So then they go and take over $200 from one post on the 6th day. Some even get it done bright and early and no one notices. When the plagiarist account gets paid, what do they do? Send it straight to bittrex or blocktrades and they play the crypto market with stolen work and undeserved earnings.

I feel that at the very least, you and I deserve that money in the sense that if his plagiarism is worth $200 ours is unimagineably more valuable. Aussieninja is definitely deserving of this kind of reward too.

There are users who literally upload chicken scratch drawings or even illustrate their short story with it and get paid a fraction. While they are given a lot encouragement, the whale who sold an upvote needs to be upvoting the guy who is learning to draw, posting chicken scratch. They are more deserving of it then the plagiarist. I can go to any tag and find 100 posts that are more deserving, but it's all because whales are lazy and plagiarists take advantage of their laziness. If no one who is legit would dare buy a vote (unless it's some kind of community approved thing like minnowsupport, which only requires a 1 time super small fee anyways) then only plagiarists would buy votes, making them easier to spot. Whales would be yelled at for upvoting trash and the upvote selling business would crumble, rightfully so. As you said, take out their farms and food supply. Whales who do not comply would then be considered scammers so even if they are, they'd be inclined to stop scamming in order to protect their investment.

But where did the rewards go? To a plagiarist, effectively giving the plagiarist trading power. Trading power that I want, but wouldn't even dare cash it out because powering up is 10x better.

I see a lot of good curation too, but to be honest even some of the good/proper curation that I see the user had to buy an upvote just to get the exposure.

Didn't think this comment would get so long.