Communities changed a lot the way we post on the Steem blockchain these days, curation seems to have been updated as well, but you can collect more than you obviously deserve, when clever and sneaky enough, with just one post that hits various communities, one after another, and quite often benefits from the usual auto votes for the same content.
I get the meaning behind cross posting, as it is intended to promote others, to cross post some low value piece of work, that you might consider being worth more, to other communities, and to help the poor guy that flies under the whales radar in earning more, getting more exposure, and taking your share from that cross posting as well.
Hope I'm not wrong, but from what I understand you can cross post only through Steempeak, and if you do that with another user's post you get 5% or 10% from the curation of the post. Sounds legit... to some extent, because you could have done that before communities as well, with a simple reblog, but yeah, now we have communities and with benefits come flaws as well.
Leaving math behind, as I am quite bad at it, and technicals, lets dive into what I find not legit and what's actually another way of abusing the rewards pool, which is cross posting your own content. That's total bullshit and I don't know what was in the head of the ones thinking and making it a reality. I don't care if anyone feels offended or if you're gonna downvote the shit out of this post, but it's total crap.
It's simply not fair to cross post your own post to different communities, transforming basically that post into multiple ones, and milk the poor Steem cow for the same material, thanks to autovotes that can't distinguish between duplicates. Simply not fair.
Yes, I understand that now communities have changed a bit the exposure of posts, that are uploaded through a specific community, and are not visible on your blog anymore, if you don't post them through your blog, but that's the price you have to pay for being part of a community, or more... You can't be a cheerleader for two teams at the same time, so you have to choose one and support it. Yes, you might change teams from one season, or event, to another, but doing both at the same time is impossible.
Why do such people cross post their own posts? I don't know for sure, but my guess is that the main reason is exposure. The more, the better, but that's what haejin thought as well when he decided to post his TAs ten times a day, and we all know the reaction of the community. Well, he might have had rewards in mind right from the beginning besides exposure... but lets mover forward.
Now, if you targeted your article for one community, then you should be fine with making it visible to only that community and your followers. After all you, have some incentives to pick a certain community, and most often they're reward related, aren't they... Milking is good, and we all do that, abusing is wrong and most of us hate that.
I, for example, hate abuse, in any aspect and corner of life on earth and won't encourage it. I only downvote the bible spam comments, and even if I would start downvoting cross posting it wouldn't make too much difference. My SP is low and getting lower, but I will unfollow if repeated. It might be the case that some are not aware of the implications of cross posting their own content, but for recidivists, I only have a good bye hug and nothing more.
It's not like we don't have enough with this whole Sun situation and softforking, but now we have self cross posters as well. Is anyone ever gonna learn anything? Really, I am amazed to see that after years and years of community talks and smiles, and kisses, we are still blinded by rewards and would do anything for more, and usually it's the ones that have a roof under their head and food to eat that simply can't have enough.
Not all of us are in that situation of course, but some really amaze me, in a negative way. I confess that if it wasn't for rewards I probably wouldn't join Steemit right from the beginning, and blog for more than two years, but I wouldn't put aside my moral principles for some damn extra rewards. Probably some believe that we don't observe these things, but we do... As I said, we all make mistakes, but repetitive ones are considered abuse.
Hence... "You Jane, Me Tarzan". You cross post, me unfollow... I really wonder when people will get to that level of consciousness being able to allow pure decentralization for anything that we can imagine. Right now... I tell you, without rules we're screwed. Curious to read about your take on cross posting, as a concept... and reality, and especially about self cross posting.
Thanks for attention,
Adrian