Please Stop Copying Other People's Images
Lately I've been seeing a lot of people copying the images from other people's posts, especially from posts that have gone viral/earned a lot of upvotes.
Here's a recent example:
Original Post:
Offending Posts (only a couple I happened to run across while browsing new posts):
https://steemit.com/steemit/@romangelsi/steemit-posters-cashing-in
This is not a good practice for several reasons:
1) You will confuse/mislead readers
If readers repeatedly come across the same image being used in multiple posts they will get confused as to why so many posts are showing up with the same image. They may even start to believe that it would be a good idea to use the same image in their posts too (ugh)
2) It looks spammy and decreases the quality of the Steemit community
Having a bunch of the same images in a bunch of posts just looks bad. That's not the kind of image we want to be showing off to our users - especially new ones who are vulnerable to being turned off altogether.
3) You're ripping off the original content creator
Images are part of the content creation process. Even if the person originally posting the image didn't actually create the image themselves, they still made the effort to find an appropriate image for their article that they thought would enhance their post.
When someone takes someone else's image and reproduces it in an unrelated post it debases the original poster's effort, time and creativity. It's not as offensive as copy and pasting somone's words, but it should still be taken seriously.
In closing, I urge everyone to take the time to choose their own images so that we can increase the quality of the community we're trying to build, for everyone's sake (including your own).
Come On - We can do better than this steemians!
#steemhelp #steemittutorial #steemit-etiquette #posting-best-practices
upvote of appreciation for addressing this.
I'm curious as to your perspective...
I busted someone who'd copy & pasted a chunk of 21 unique tags I'd used at the bottom of one of my stories today. What would your outlook on this be?
From one angle - it's only tags. From another, time & energy was put into crafting those original categories - and buddy just rips 'em for his own use.
I kinda gave him a piece of my mind in the comments. not sure if I was being too harsh and should have just let it slide, taking it as a compliment he wanted to copy me... or if it still is a minor form of plagiarism and is all fair to get a bit pissed off.
I'd appreciate your objective viewpoint on this, to see another perspective on the matter - given your show of valuing integrity with this post about copying images...