For the past few days, this specific subject has become popular among spanish writing steemians and, to avoid misunderstandings, people getting angry or any kind of negative engagement among spanish speaking community members we have decided to tackle this subject as soon as posible.
First of all, we want to be clear on something: Steemit is a decentralized plattform where people reward other user´s hard work and effort put into quality posts by giving a vote to their content.
That being said, we´ve noticed some steemit users, no matter the language they write in, publishing under their account already existent support initiatives or NGO´s projects that help a specific niche or society, and they do this to generate rewards or add visibility to their own steemit profiles. Long story short, they go into an NGO´s website, copy and paste said inititative and they publish it on steemit to get some votes.
This is a mistake and it is deemed as abuse on the most cynical level and it will have strong consequences from the Lince team, towards the post and the author.
I just want to help out other people, why is this considered abuse?
We are not blind, we understand the good intentions behind posts like these, nevertheless, 99% of NGO´s and charity initiatives have their own deposit account where we can transfer donations directly to them without any middle man and this is the reason why this form of posting is considered shady.
There is a commonly used phrase - with some variants - about this idea: "I will donate to this cause every reward this post gets", but this phrase is flawed right from the core:
1 - 50% of the post rewards aren´t liquid and the user must wait at least 13 weeks to transfer the full amount to the NGO / Initiative.
2 - It is so much simpler for any user reading the post who wants to donate, to transfer directly to the NGO the amount he/she wants to help with.
3 - The fact that the author makes a good faith promise of fund transference sets the table for said user to publish some days later another post including the proof of transfer. This post will generate more rewards for the author who only wants to help. And this is only for those who decide to publish that proof of transfer, because there are a lot of users who don´t even do this and keep all the rewards.
4 -On 95% of these cases, there is no added value within the posts and usually they are textual copy/paste from other websites. Mos of the times, the steemit user puts no effort whatsoever, invests no time at all and it is not even his/her idea.
5 - In many cases, not all of them, the user posts something like this looking to get more followers by showing him/herself to the community as someone who cares about other people´s well being and wants to be thought of as a philantropist. We do not doubt they might be an altruist person but, as a cleaning team, we have to distrust almost everyone.
There are many cases of true altruism but...
Steemit is a social network with a limited scope at the moment. We are growing at a geometrical pace, we will be a giant in the near future, nonetheless as of today, if any user really wants to make a good cause go viral, the logical step would be to use the blue social networks. So, why use steemit? Because usually, the user is looking for something more than to just help for the sake of helping.We would like it ot be different but, It is what it is.
How to correctly publish an NGO / Charity post?
It is important to remember that, even though Steemit is a decentralized platform with only some parameters to avoid plagiarism and abuse in our community, these parameters, as global as they can be, are meant to be modified to adjust to every sub-community needs. @cervantes is a respected user in the spanish speaking community and @lince established said parameters for a user publishing NGO related posts. In order to avoid commiting plagiarism or abuse, such posts must follow these rules:
Let´s assume that the user trully wants to help an NGO or Charity and the points listed above does not apply for this person and the published post. These are the rules to follow in order to not commit plagiarism or abuse:
1 - Decline rewards made from the post. You can choose this option by choosing "decline payout" on the box located on the lower right corner of the post edition screen.
2 - Author´s link with the NGO / Charity
a) If the NGO is propoerty of the steemit author or if the user is involved directly with it, the website must include a link to the steemit account fo the author and the steemit profile must include a link to the webpage. This is meant to verify the user is not using other initiatives and claiming them as his/her own.
b) If the user has no link whatsoever with the NGO, he/she must include explicitly in the first paragraph a phrase stating there is no relation between the author and the organiaztion and the post is merely informative/altruist. This specific case is not very good thought of because the author is still gaining followers and making a name for himself in spite of other people´s work, even if they decline all payouts.
3 - The post must include proper sources. If the post falls into poitn 2-B there must be no intenttion of making the reader believe the author is involved with the NGO / Charity.
4 - Since Lince can´t keep track of every post published about any specific author posting about charity, it is prohibited to make a follow up post after the original one in spite of making extra rewards. If the author is donating any amount of money, proof of donation must be included in the first post which has its payout declined.
5 - If the NGO / Charity initiative has a bank account number, online wire transfer number etc. This must be included in the original post.
The rules regarding this subject might be considered strict,but they are like this because the past few days there has been a significant growth in this kind of posts and, most of them commit abuse in one of its forms.
Following these rules are not a guarantee of getting support from the community, especially from @cervantes and its team, it just means that @lince will take no actions against the user or the post.
This is a translation from the original post by @lince: Publicaciones referentes a ONG´s y Caridad and its purpose is to inform the english speaking community about our goals and actions. We will translate every informative post we make in order to keep the community up to date with the @lince (Lynx) project.