Remember that votes equate to "I want to see more of this."
I also withhold my vote for "bad" behavior.
I often thing of my votes as a method of positive reinforcement...to motivate people to post more of what I voted on. I simply can't allow myself to give my votes to those that continually of tag spam. This is an area that cuts right through cultural or language differences to be pretty straight forward to see.
So what exactly is Tag Spam?
Tag Spam is when users purposely choose higher traffic or higher paying tags for their posts...even though it doesn't actually apply to the category. For example..
- Your last 30 photography posts shouldn't have the introduceyourself tag
- Simply because you are a Steemit user...isn't reason enough to use the Steem or Steemit tag in every post
You see...people notice that there are certain tags that more of us watch and vote on here. It's not that hard to figure out. However, the down side of too much of this spamming is that those category feeds suddenly become useless. We use the introduceyourself feed specifically to find the new users to Steemit...if tag spam was left unchecked, we'd have to sift through countless random posts to just find one actual introduction.
I get the you're new and wanting to earn yourself some money, but if your tag spamming, it's really going to work against you because:
- You CAN get flagged for tag spam, reducing your post payout
- You will likely Lose Votes by those noticing you doing this
Do Something to Combat Tag Spam!
Now @Steemcleaners puts forth a lot of work combating people that tag spam. However, with as many users as we have (with more joining each day) there is only so much that can be monitored. I look at blogs of a lot of newer, smaller users so I wanted to do something as a way to educate them about tag spamming and ideally reduce this behavior.
My preferred steps to combat tag spam:
- DON'T be mean about this. Remember people come from social media where this is rarely thought of (by them).
- Explicitly tell the person that they're tag spamming (i.e. why are you using the Steemit tag for the photo you posted?)
- Let them know I was going to vote for your post(s) but they all included tag spam, which made me move on to vote elsewhere. (Sometimes saying to contact me when they've fixed the problems.)
We are all out there on the 'front lines' of looking through posts, talking with people, and voting. I do ask that you keep on the lookout for people Tag Spamming and see if you can nicely get them to stop. In the end...if we don't keep this in check, we'll have a rather challenging time to find posts we're actually looking for.
Rather than having to use the 'stick'...just let them know you 'withdrew your carrot'!
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Tag Spam