A serious continuation of yesterday’s tongue-in-cheek, in-your-face, misunderstood irony is in order today. It was evident that my last post was largely misunderstood and that it didn’t have its desired effects, so today I am going to solemnly outline the issue and clearly explain what I intend to do to address it.
I have consistently rewarded what I consider to be quality comments and have tried to separate the wheat from the chaff by upvoting what, in my opinion, are the best comments, thereby “bumping” them to the top. That I know of, I am one of the few who do this, and as one might logically expect, this kind of rewarding has its drawbacks in that it attracts people who are only trying to get a “freebie”. This has reached the point where I have to monitor each post for several hours trying to keep what is valuable towards the top, and the trash towards the bottom.
That’s untenable for me given my limited time, and I need to be a bit more direct and longer term in my thinking with regards to my efforts to keep my threads clean. I want to continue rewarding quality comments, but I also want to do that when my schedule allows and not be obligated by junk posters to “police” the comments section in the hours immediately following each post. I can’t allow a select few to cause me such a waste of time and effort, and I have to deal more definitively with them.
It is not just my time, it is the reader’s time too, and other quality commenters' time as well. The numbers have grown, and those meaningless comments have turned into a virtual plague of “litter” that robs both the good comments of their rightful visibility and the reader of his or her precious time as well.
I also want to be able to give everyone time and equal opportunity to comment first, before I start rewarding, so I can really move the best to the top and not be forced to make premature decisions in order to combat the nonsense.
As such, I see no other alternative but to start flagging all comments that do not contribute something of value, as I define it of course.
That is right, you heard correctly, I am going to start flagging junk, or what I consider to be junk anyway.
This is an obvious attempt to moderate my threads with the limited tools available to us. Perhaps in the future we might be able to block people. That would be nice, but, until then, we have got to work with the tools we have. I do not like people getting robbed of their time and hard work, and I am going to do my small part to make this small part of Steemit a better place using the tools we have at our disposal.
This is also a very subjective matter, no doubt about it. What I consider to be acceptable in the comments section might be very different from what others might think. Ideally we want to make everyone happy, but we know that is not possible. I am going to start cleaning up my threads as I see fit, and I want everyone to have very good expectations as to what I reward and what I will flag.
Below I will briefly outline my “definition” of junk so that everyone has equal advance notice and, of course, the chance to avoid being flagged.
The Dos and Don’ts
DO
DO post about your own personal experience (2nd hand is good, 1st hand is better). Do post about your knowledge on the subject. And do recognize your own limitations: nobody here is a god; there are no OGs or any of that pompous crap here, just ordinary folk working together as best we can! We all put on our pants one leg at a time, and we all are just doing our best with what we know about the subject, some more and some less, and there’s no fault in admitting that you just started or that you have limited knowledge – just the contrary, it will get you the respect of others contributing in the same area.
DO NOT
DO NOT post copy and paste comments from a previous comment that was rewarded – it will get you flagged.
DO NOT post stupid animated gifs – it will get you flagged unless it is extremely good.
DO NOT post a quote from the original article WITHOUT making specific mention to why you are quoting it, and if it is to agree or disagree, then why you are agreeing or disagreeing – otherwise I will flag you.
DO NOT post any comment whatsoever WITHOUT either explaining why you are making the comment (remember, “because” is the magic word), or giving an example of what you are talking about and why it’s relevant (the example can be either first or second hand) – otherwise I will flag you.
Simple comments like “great post”, “thanks for sharing”, “you’re a genius” and the like, might get you a thank you in reply, but there will be no upvote coming your way, so only do that if you really mean it and have no expectation of getting an upvote.
Similarly, if you are trying to get a reward for resteeming, forget it, it is not going to happen. Now, if you really liked what you are resteeming and you are doing it for everyone, and you want to say so, by all means do so! I often resteem though without feeling the need to post a comment saying that I resteemed the article.
Anything unintelligible will simply be ignored in order to give those who speak English as a second language the benefit of the doubt.
Finally, if anyone ever feels they have been treated unfairly, all you need to do is reply to your own flagged post with the reasons why you think you were dealt with unfairly, appealing to your fellow Steemians for help. That’s the only way to “appeal”, and the wider community will be your jury on that.
You have been forewarned. Think before you click on the “post” button. Ask yourself if you are sharing something of value, or if you are just trying to get a quick buck for doing nothing. If it is the second, and if you post it, I will flag it, guaranteed. And if you become too much of a pest, I will flag you with 100% voting power that will rip a very nice hole in your reputation.
Be wise and think well before you try to get something for nothing in my comments section – you will look dumb doing it, and dumber still not only going away empty handed, but also with a flag.
