So this is my second day here at steemit - I had previously been fixated on the facebook medium, with little use of twitter and reddit. Someone on facebook linked a post to something here on steemit, I stumbled upon this mysterious land and had to investigate.
What the hell is a 'block-chain'? I've heard of Bitcoin before and researched a little but still couldn't get my head around the crypto-lingo. I understood the impact though - a decentralized economy, and a decentralized social network that encourages quality content. Personally, the standard of quality discussion and content on facebook was decaying - people wanted truth in the form of a catchy slogan, if they wanted truth at all.
I admit, being exiled in facebook land comes with a few bad habits that some (like myself) may also carry over to steemit. You see facebook is more about consensus (the like/trolls ratio), overall subjectiveness is often ridiculed, discouraged or ignored - it teaches a habit of presenting information, so long as you keep your subjective view out of it.
One of the first things I notice with steemit, is that the 'post' button is a 'publish' button, and there is a title bar? This gives the impression that this isn't your usual "blert-box", so I went about compiling together a "story" to "publish".
So it got "flagged" (is this a 'dislike' button?), I hadn't even got my head around what the crypto-currency vote thingy was all about either. I noticed that this "flag" had made my post a little less noticeable. I thought to myself ' it's this easy to censor someone elses post?'.
Being a well-tempered facebook warrior, I initiated a 'flag-war' on one particular person with rather healthy and robust blog - my flag seemed have no effect at all - the confusion grew.
Shortly after, I met 'steemitcleaner' who informed me on the rules of copy/paste and use of subjective material only. I was surprised at first (you mean, you actually want to hear what I have to say and think? - and that its kinda a rule here?), that's when my attention was directed to "the white paper".
Alas! This is an amazing idea... I quickly made the adjustments to my flagged posts, and cleaned up my flag war remnants with upvotes and an apology. Lesson learned, this is not facebook - create content, not simply redirect it.
To any fb transfers out their, read the white paper first, and express YOUR words and YOUR thoughts when you publish a story. Presenting other peoples work requires more then citation and acknowledgement, but primarily your overlayed commentary/perspective.
I know there are people like myself who skip over the fine print and just like to jump right in, but be mindful of the intellectual property laws and copyright - make it original, speak your mind here at steemit, it is more then a distribution network of recycling news and content.