Some time back, on what must be closing in on a year ago, 
Reposting has always been a bit of a sticking point on Hive as it is dipping into the rewards pool more than once and many, many more times for some people - who farm by continually posting the same content, over and over again. The problem is that there are times that reposts are suitable (in my opinion) as there are times that something from the past is relevant to whatever is going on now, something that benefits users today - but I see this as a rare case scenario that most don't need to employ - yet, some do far too often.
Here is a post called, To Re: or not to Re: from three years ago I wrote on the topic that cited these reasons for reposting.
But read the post if interested in a little more depth.
This week, on my Showcase Sunday post, I got a message from Hivewatchers about copy pasting and reposting and how it is seen as abuse. Yes, it can be abused for sure, but is this particular usage considered abusive? Meh, everyone has an opinion, I am sure.
@Hivewatchers have a new bot that trawls the blockchain for similar content to uncover abusive activity - but I have no idea about what variables they use. This is a bit of an issue for any initiative that looks to unearth and reward past gems (something that is not easy to do with a search), as those who take part will be considered plagiarists or scammers in some way - regardless of intention.
However, after some initial discussions with a couple confidants, we came to the preliminary conclusion that it is better to potentially kill initiatives like #showcase-sunday than allow rampant reposting abuse. However, I do think that in doing so a lot of color and fun might be lost along the way, as well as new followers missing out on the best of an authors past, content that might engage them even further.
I don't know if there is a solution to this issue as something like tag exclusion will get abused and become contentious, author whitelists the same. Abuse is an area that has to be well thought out, but fighting it is treading a fine line between limiting the worst and stifling growth and for now, there is unlikely to be some perfect algorithm to find the line.
What I do know though is that being on a blacklist as a contributor isn't a great position to be in on Hive, as it affects audience perception and the audience may have no understanding of why a person appears there.
I dislike the reposting on other sites where every four hours the same Tweet gets recycled, as if it is a tickertape running at the bottom of the screen on a news channel - but, if a post is 3 years old and is evergreen content, that might be something different, as it is very likely I have never seen it before.
There has been a lot of talk about SEO the last week or two and I do not know how this affects it, but I do think that having a mass of content that can be consumed at anytime could become a significant percentage of the links into Hive as well as support engagement and audience growth - especially when there is decent content discovery mechanisms introduced. Perhaps at some point, there will also be a way to keep content "live" so that no matter when someone comes across it, it can earn residuals - SMTs?
As said, I don't know what is best for the ecosystem, but my past experience tells me that limiting abuse is very necessary, even if it might limit a portion of non-abusive actions. Of course, everyone is free to post and do as they please on Hive, but it generally comes with some level of consequence of action. In this case, I would err on the side of keeping abuse limited, rather than fight for the freedom to repost old work, even if I think there may be value in doing so.
However, it is very possible that there are other solutions that could keep "old post" initiatives alive without increasing the potential for abuse. So, if you have any ideas - add a comment below.
It will be interesting to see what kinds of topics come up around this.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
