Respect the Post TAG
Tags were introduced at the early start of Steemit to support categorising the posts helping those who are interested in a specific topic. Tag's are a form of community features that is talked about in many posts and comments and on the roadmap of Steemit Inc. These community features will have more functionality than the tag's have, but in essence the community features will allow to create sub-communities around specific topics.
The unfortunate thing that happened over time, is that tags are more and more abused. Ie, none relevant tags are used for posts. For instance the 'introduceyourself' tag. This tag is specifically ment for a one time introduction of a Steemit account holder, however we've seen Steemians us it for every post they publish, with record high of 117 posts within 7 days by a single account.
Since we have the tags today, @guiltyparties and I thought: "Why don't we try to re-install good behaviour around tags?"
While @guiltyparties is focussing on the 'introduceyourself', I focussed on the 'science' tag and analysed the top 35 users of this tag.
Our method is to leave a comment to the most recent post of a TAG-abuser and try and persuade the abuser to change its behaviour.
Guide to TAG Use
From our friends at @steemcleaners, a guide to "how to use tags" and their definition of what TAG abuse is; The guide can be found here.
From day one Steemians have been abusing tags, which is showed by a post from the CTO (at that time) of Steemit INC when Steem and Steemit was just launched more than a year ago (here).
Comment to TAG abuser
YOUR ATTENTION IS REQUIRED
You have been found in violation with of the norms & customs at planet Steemit. You did this by:
- tagging everything under the sun with 'science'
Please correct your behaviour so we may continue to coexist in harmony.
Sincerely,
Your Steemit mentors and Friends.
'science' TAG
Analyses
The top user of the science tag used it 111 times in the last 7 days; While the top 35 users of the tag used it 591 times in the last 7 days; an average of more than 16 times per user in 7 days, more than twice a day. These figures called for analyses of these accounts.
When analysing the various accounts, we've found some other 'abuse' as well. We've decided to alert for 'high frequency posting' as well as for 'no source credits'.
Results
- 24 out of 35 accounts got a comment on abuse.
- 4 accounts responded, with statements from "i didnt know that .. i will correct myself" to "@edje DONE...Upvote".
FYI: those who responded positively, I gave a comment upvote, but certainly I did not give the account with the request for a vote an upvote since 1) I don't like this type of asking for votes 2) the account did not change the tags at the other post including a post published after the comment was posted
Results: Other
The top 3 science tag users are:
These account all have the exact some post layout and together they posted 236 times in the last 7 days; That is an average of 34 post per day.
- These three account post on similar topics.
- These accounts are setup in August 2017.
- These accounts seem to be persistent in what they do.
- These account did not respond to my comment on abuse: of tag, high frequency posting, no source credits.
- What is the intention of these accounts?
- Are these accounts from the same owner?
Fortunately the number of voters and rewards on these posts are next to nothing, but this type of behaviour is not good for Steemit IMHO.
Next
For me this exercise was a test, to identify what the impact is of our work. I spend a good 4 hours analysing the accounts, posting the comments, and the few interactions. In addition, I spend about 1 hours creating this posts. A lot of time for relatively little response IMHO.
But, it gave me a very good first impression on what is going on in our community, and it also gave a better idea on how we can contribute to creating a better community, a community with less spamming an scamming. And maybe we convinced a couple of Steemians to re-visit their behaviour :)
The next steps need to be defined, but I like us to fill in gaps left in the community to identify and fight spam and scam in an efficient and effective manner.