First of all I have to say that am happy that mass adoption of our beloved platform, STEEM, is taking place. No doubt STEEM is becoming more and more popular these days as for example @penguinpablo pointed out (whereby one should take into consideration that some users have more than one account as @freiheit50 hinted at).
Many new users are writing interesting stuff of very good quality. As one example amongst numerous I name @bikergirl's reports about her motorbike trips.
Increasing number of users = increasing amount of bad behavior?
Source: Pixabay
Unfortunately where there is light, there is also shadow. I wonder if I am the only one who more and more often observes several kinds of bad behavior, which I think are really annoying? Some examples:
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Under my articles increasingly often I notice comments like "Vote for vote, follow for follow. If you follow me I will do the same." followed by a link to an article or blog. This is completely unrelated to the content of my article! I can only say upvote my article if you like it, otherwise just stay away (respectively in case you are interested in the topic, but disagree with my opinion, just let's discuss the content of the article in a friendly way).
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I even get more and more private messages (in steemit.chat) which ask me to upvote something first to get an upvote in return. Again: if you like my article, just upvote it ... I may upvote you in return (if I like what you write) but I won't sign any 'upvote-contract' with you. :-)
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By the way it seems that many newbies fear to lose anything if they upvote an article. They leave a comment like "Great pictures!" but don't 'find' the upvote button. Hey, you even get curation reward for upvoting articles ...! But please, don't complain that I "forgot" to upvote your comments if you 'forgot' to upvote my article. :)
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Recently I noticed a rather perky behaviour in the #postpromotion channel of Stemit Chat: one user claimed to upvote nearly everybody to get some 'upps' in return ... but it seems he didn't know there is https://steemdb.com/ ... he hadn't upvote anybody during the last few hours ...
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Well, there may be different opinions about general behavior and politeness but until now it never happened to me before that someone (a newbie as well) came to my 'wall' just to write a comment he didn't find my meme challenge entry funny (while the ones who had upvoted it were called "suck ups"). Of course there is no 'duty' to like my memes (it's a matter of taste as so many things) - but I myself would never make the effort to write negative comments under every article which isn't in accordance with my (subjective) expectations (not to upvote is enough) ...
- Last but not least the previously mentioned article of @penguinpablo had been copied, pasted and set up as 'own work' by a newbie ...
Don't get me wrong: STEEM still is by far the most pleasant place to meet friendly, polite, educated, creative and intelligent people online. Bad behavior like in the examples above is still not the rule but the exception. But I really hope it stays like that in future even if the number of users keeps growing.
And to all the newbies reading that: I really understand very well how urgent you are trying to get more attention for your articles. I agree that in many cases your rewards are much smaller than what you would deserve. If you go to the start of my blog you will see that most of my early texts stayed more or less unnoticed as well. It can be a long and sometimes frustrating way to finally get some reward for all the efforts. My advice is to patiently build your own follower base by ...
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... communicating with other users by commenting on their articles (in a friendly way). Best is not only to write "Nice post!", but to show real interest and discuss the content of the article. Also don't be too costive with your upvotes.
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... trying your best to write high quality articles. If for example I write about science I always list the sources at the end of the articles. If I show images of animals or plants I will deliver the scientific names (if possible). These are just two examples.
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... writing about things you are interested in (not about what you think people want to read). As an example I started to write about chess, even if I considered it to be a small niche. Amazingly my chess quizzes have been my most successful posts in the past.
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... investing some money to buy STEEM if possible. You will not only benefit if the value of Steem increases but in addition your higher Steem power increases the influence of your votes and your curation reward. To invest into Steemit helps the platform to grow and the value of Steem to increase.
That's what I can tell you, but you may also ask members like @trafalgar, @timsaid or @sweetsssj, who are far more successful than me, for even better secret hints ... :-)
I wish you much success and all the best! But please abstain from the crude 'follow-me-then-I-will-follow-you' method. Believe me, there are better ways.