Flagging for @steemflagrewards: A Dolphin’s Perspective

@iamstan has been asking me to write something for @utopian-io for a few weeks now so I figured I need to get my arse in gear and do something.

I have been a member of the discord anti-abuse channel, @steemflagrewards for several months and have seen it in grow in stature, gain delegations for its cause and become more visible to Steemians in general.

Source

Some don’t welcome it at all and seem to think it is some crusade against the ‘stolen money’ that they are entitled to have for producing whatever content they deem appropriate.

I have no doubts that some that I have targeted are going to flag this post. Well, go right ahead, because I don’t really care.

The STEEM blockchain is about content. Content that is of some value. Why is it that some think that plagiarism, spam, voting their own comment up every time they do comment or creating a vote farm of 300 STEEM delegated accounts is of value?

If I flag something and mention @steemflagrewards in a reply comment, I get back in rewards more than I flag. It’s not called @steemflagrewards for nothing. It’s an incentive to rid the blockchain of poor content.

The channel is headed by @anthonyadavisii, @iamstan, and several other administrators and moderators.

They dedicate their efforts to flagging, writing articles about abuse, and trying to raise attention to all the good content writers of the level of abuse that goes on.

Most don’t notice it, but you should be aware of it, as it is a problem. Scammers are looting the reward pool to feed their pockets leaving less for you, the real producers of content.

What can I do about this?

Well, that depends. Do you have a full vote of say $0.03? If so, why not join the fight and visit SFR at their discord channel here. If you have a bigger vote, then even better.

Just be aware that even though you will be rewarded by SFR on the value of your flag, the scammer may retaliate and flag your ‘good content’ out of spite.

You can choose which battles you want to fight, and if you have 1500SP, then don’t fight the spammer dolphin at 8000SP who may well seek his retribution on you.

It does happen, but the SFR team are a tightly knit group and we do try and equal out injustice's done by appropriate ‘compensation’ votes.

From my perspective as a dolphin, I can dish out bigger flags and do so quite regularly. It’s getting a little of a ritual of mine to expend any spare VP I have every evening on flags.

Who to flag?

The SFR team make it their duty to hunt down abusers and highlight them in the ‘flags-needed’ section. It’s like being handed the ammunition before firing the shots.

If you're new to the group, you can see this channel but you can't chat here.

Just to be clear, I don’t enjoy pissing people off or removing their rewards. I always hope they will join the SFR channel and post something in the ‘flag-dispute’ area.

If they do, then they will get a swift response. Some spout abuse and don’t want to listen to why they have been flagged, but others really don’t know they are committing abuse and can be quite humble about it. These are the people we hope to see in there.

Is it re-education? Yes, it is. Some have changed their ways and are now producing content that is worthy of their rewards. If this happens, we have succeeded.

I want to add an example of somebody who we thought had changed their ways but still has not. I hope @ahmadchemist737 sees and reads this article. If he doesn’t change his posts, he will continue to be flagged until he does something about it.

This guy likes his bid-bots and uses around EIGHTEEN different ones per post.
Have a look at this post and explain to me why its worthy of $23 of rewards?

He’s paying for his votes you might say? Yes, he is. Though due to @thedarkhorse and myself, in this case, he is possibly making a loss.

Is it OK to use this many BOTS to up your post to an exteme value? Well, that depends. Is the post adding value to the blockchain?

Do you see other comments on the post praising the author for his wonderful authentic genuine work? I see none, and I see none on all the other posts he makes.

Is it copied work or is it his original content? I think it may be copied but I can’t guarantee it.

I do know @ahmadchemist737 has previously been scanning things from books, and expecting nobody to notice. Is he now simply typing them in from the same books?

Sometimes I want to scream to these people, ‘WRITE SOMETHING ORIGINAL’. It’s not that hard and the satisfaction you gain from being original and creating something unique can be great.

Is being in a non-western developed country a reason to NOT do this? No, it’s not; and if you want some inspiration then look at @el-nailul (above) and his blog. This one attracted a @curie vote.

His first language is not English and yet he produces original content and teaches us lazy westerners about things we don’t know about. I will continue to support @el-nailul and other good authors via my @chops.support passive voting account.

@ahmadchemist737 has already challenged his flags with SFR and we thought he was on the straight and narrow, but it’s not happened yet.

He has recently had some conversations with @steevc but just doesn’t seem to understand what he is doing wrong.

I will leave @ahmadchemist737 alone for now and hope he sees this and learns something.

How to find things to flag (the lazy way).

Go to the SFR Comments page. Pick any.

Open a post and see if the reward is NOT $0.00. If it still has rewards pending you can use an add-on flag and help reduce it to a NULL value.

The keyword used here is 'bid bot abuse'. SFR uses a BOT that checks for certain keywords, such as spam, vote farming, and several others. @steemflagrewards also needs to be in the comment (a mention).

Then that BOT brings your mention from a flagged post or comment to SFR's private channel. There your mention will wait for approval upvote.

If you click 'View the full content' you can see if the post has any remaining rewards to remove.

I can see a remaining $2.08 of rewards on this post. So it's time to remove some more.

I simply have a Spam.txt file on my desktop I can just copy and paste from. It makes life easier when I do several at a time.

So now it's $1.78 and some of the reward for this post has been returned to the pool where it should be.

The author will likely still get something from it but it's in the interests of SFR to make it not worth doing anymore.

Conclusion.

Flagging is a dirty business and @steemflagrewards needs more delegation if it is to grow. I only delegate 100SP but if others did likewise it would help a lot.

Don’t expect a daily vote for your delegation, there is no ROI. What you will get is respect, and that’s worth a lot more than a crappy vote most times.

I have recently added all the SFR administrators and moderators to the @chops.support account for a passive daily vote. It’s not a lot now, but I hope to increase it in the coming months. You guys are awesome!