3 Days ago @berniesanders posted a quick article with the title:

"Please stop using #steemit just to promote posts!"

Now, in theory I agree with this. It does the community no good if you go to the 'travel tag and see articles about 'politics or go to the #steemit tag and see articles about 'homedesign.

BUT...

#steemit simply isn't ready for the use of correct tags. 

Case in point:

Today I posted an article about getting my credit card information stolen. The post was a call for help from the community since I know there are a lot of security, computer and crypto experts here.

I tagged the post with 'hack and 'help.

The problem is, if you look at the #steemit main page you cannot find the 'hack or 'help tags. This is a big problem, since I genuinely was looking for help, similar to posting a question on Reddit and getting feedback from the tag specific community.

Not only were the 'hack and 'help tags not visible, I couldn't even search for them in the provided filter box. At of the time of writing this post 8 hours later, I can search for the 'hack tag and it now appears but 'help does not.

So, I did, what I thought, was logical. I tagged both #steem and #steemit and added 'money for good measure as these were all visible tags and I hoped my questions would get answered. 

What was the result of this strategy?

It worked. Within the hour I had 4 detailed replies. to my answer and I was very grateful for them. 

Would I gotten those same replies had I left my original tags of hack and help only? I guess we will never know, but given that they were neither visible nor searchable I would have to theorize my article would've never been found.

So @berniesanders....I guess my question is this...Am I #stopusinghashtagsteemit abuser?

I don't think I am, simply because the segmentation on #steemit is not finalized or working at quite frankly.

When articles can easily be found via 'tags or search than yes, I will consider myself an abuser. But as of right now, the only way for content to be found is through visible tags as I am postulating that neither search or the tag filter is used often (again filtering for 'help returns null anyway).

What are others thoughts? Abuse or not?

By the way, I write this article knowing that it could cost my previous point some downvotes for alleged tagabuse but felt it necessary to share my rebuttal with the crowd.

Thoughts?

FYI - apparently tags within the post are used as well and it wouldn't let me post the article with all 13 tags....damn...haha.