Why is copy-paste "bad"?
[Image source. Labeled creative commons.]
Steemit is not Reddit. Steemit is not Facebook. Steemit is a place where original content can, and should, be rewarded. If you feel like you are able to curate good news stories, I welcome you to do so, but I first invite you to understand the following property:
Reddit and Facebook allow you to link to an article, which incites discussion on it. You do not copy and paste an entire article onto Reddit, nor do you copy and paste an entire article into your status in Facebook. What happens instead, is people create a link, then discuss it.
Be the discussion.
Tell us what you think of the article. Why is it important? Does it affect you? What will happen due to it? There are plenty of avenues for discussion. If the community rewards shit posts, that is all we will see in the future.
Secondly, copy paste hurts search engine optimization, which hurts our site. When articles have an original source, the original source is placed higher in ranking compared to steemit. When this happens too often, steemit will be considered a haven of plagiarism, and will be pushed off the rankings of searches (e.g. Google rank). This hurts us, as it means people will not naturally stumble upon steemit, and our user-base will not grow.
Thirdly, upvoting this low-effort content takes away shares of rewards from people who actually do deserve it, who are producing original content. [See this post.]
Fourth, plagiarism and identity theft are ILLEGAL. Do you want steemit, the company, to recieve DMCA notices? Do you want them to drown in legal fees? I hope not. Let's try and avoid that.
Finally...
CITE YOUR SOURCES OF RESEARCH.
and...
Did you take or make the photo? If not...
Is it copyright protected? -- DO NOT USE IT.
Allowed to use it? -- CITE THE SOURCE.
The Black List.
Oh dear... Welcome to the dark side of Cheetah.
What is the black list?
It is the place for repeat, unapologetic offenders of plagiarism, scams, spam, or identity theft. This also includes users who attempt to circumvent detection and plagiarize.
Cheetah will make a comment to warn readers that the person has been manually found guilty by a reputable member of our community to be continuously involved of one or more of the above categories. Cheetah may automatically flag you, especially if it is a spammer, so the content becomes less visible.
Is it possible to get off the black list?
Yes - when one makes an appeal (e.g. a post saying they understand) and has clear intent to stop plagiarizing or spamming. They should also join steemit.chat, and make their case in the steemitabuse-appeals channel. Identity thieves will never leave the abyss.
What if I see a post from cheetah saying a user has been blacklisted?
I won't tell you how to vote here. But remember that these users are only the worst of the offenders; so use your judgement by looking at their post history, or use your trust of the user who put them on the black list. I encourage you to be careful upvoting, at the very least.