A war on spam has been declared.

Many Steemians feel spammed by "please follow and upvote me" comments and declared they will start flagging those comments now.

I think we have enough "wars on..." in the world and I would like to suggest a more tolerant and less aggressive solution.

And a more energy-efficient one: flagging every such comment takes work, time, and a lot of voting power, if I'm not mistaken.

Plus it might discourage beginners (which those commenters mostly are) and give them a really bad first impression of Steemit.

Isn't there a better way?

We are dealing with a global platform here.

That means we are dealing with different cultures, worldviews, values, beliefs and motivational drivers and economic situations - the very things that tend to cause clashes, conflicts and, well, wars in the world.

"War" means: I have a vision of how this world (Steemit) should be (for the wellbeing of all, of course) and I'll eliminate (flag) anyone who doesn't share my point of view or behaves the way I want them to.

I am just as annoyed by "please follow and upvote me" comments as the next person, but I'm also aware that,

• Beginners make mistakes and this might be how they think the platform works
• In some cultures, where bartering is a normal part of life, an upvote for an upvote might not be perceived as bad at all. It's just how they do things there. Who are we to judge that and force our rules on them? Aren't we all here to enjoy censorship freedom and the fact that nobody controls us? Who gives us the right to try and control others? Do we need a reminder on what decentralisation truly means??
• There might be many many desperate people on here who don't know how to pay the rent next month - can we really blame or judge them for trying, when they think that more followers and upvotes could save them? Would you feel good about flagging someone like that and making it even harder for them?

Loving education vs. flag wars

Anyway.

I came here to suggest a super simple solution, not to rant :)

What if we added a little red warning, that appears as soon as someone types the words upvote or follow? It would work similar to the little red warning that appears when we type a capital letter in the tags:

Only difference: it would still allow us to post (because we can't take those two words out of our language completely). It would just be a warning.

The warning might say, "Please be aware that asking for upvotes or follow's is considered spam by many Steemians. You are risking to get flagged, which will damage your reputation and success on Steemit."

So their comment would still go through if they pressed submit, but most people might reconsider and remove their follow & upvote request before posting, don't you think?

I got this idea from Fiverr, where a little red warning message pops up as soon as Fiverr thinks you're asking for a payment or email communication outside of Fiverr, depending on what you type:

The thing is, even though we have complained about those comments multiple times in our articles, there are thousands of new people joining every day, who simply have not come across those articles yet.

There will always be information, that someone doesn't have. Aren't we all still learning new things on Steemit every day?

This way, the information (education) would appear right in the moment when someone is about to make a potential mistake. And they would be empowered because they are given a conscious choice to proceed.

What do you think?

Wouldn't this help reduce those comments immensely?