Hello Steemians, it’s @Gracehills again. How has the steeming journey being for us?

Sometimes ago, I remember creating contents to help my fellow minnows and guiding new Steemians on how to become successful on this platform. As a member of @Steemnaira and @Africaunchained community, I’ve learnt a lot about steemit through these communities which have indeed helped me. Afterwards, I intended to share these helpful tips with others too.

I engage in some promo-steem activities as a student (here in my school, though I don’t really post about it here for now). I have been able to guide newbies through this little knowledge I’ve gotten about this decentralized platform because I noticed that some people come in without proper orientation.

Meanwhile, I have come to discover that there are a lot of issues that go wrong on the Steem blockchain. The funny thing is that most offenders aren’t even aware of these inappropriateness.

Just recently, a student in my school (of whom I won’t like to mention) approached me and asked why he doesn’t get a relatively good reward despite all efforts. After checking his blog, I noticed that his blog houses a lot of cheetah comments.

How sad. Phew!

As a parishioner of Steemchurch, I have decided to help create educative steemit-related contents to help reduce these abuses. Then I proposed to @Steemcourt and @Steemnaira who granted me this opportunity.

My logo design for steemcourt

WHAT THEN ARE THESE ISSUES?

Among a lot, they are:

• The usage of tags – (tag spam and its abuse)

• Creating quality contents – original and required length

• The issue of commenting

• Plagiarism as thievery of intellectual property (and its forms)

• Image citation and free stock photos

• Referencing of posts etc

In regard to aforementioned issues, I have decided to discuss the first half in this post.

UNDERSTANDING THE USAGE OF TAGS

Tags are generally used to classify contents created on steemit, that is, it makes it easier for curators and readers to locate posts.

For a conventional blog, they are used to categorize contents in such a manner that it helps readers find certain posts easily and it is also easy for search engines to comprehend. That’s why they are important for SEO, (by the acronym “SEO”, I mean Search Engine Optimization).

In this same category (the conventional blogs), tags are most often in form of a word or a compound word which reflects the keypoint of a post. Preferably, tags are like keywords and are one of the pre-defined classifying contents in Wordpress. Some may be important for SEO while it may not be necessary in some cases.

WITH RESPECT TO STEEMIT

Image from Wikimedia creative commons

On the other hand, there are some disparities that exist in comparison to steemit. For example, unlike Instagram, the aim of tags goes beyond visibility purposes. What I’m trying to say here is that here on steemit, YOUR TAGS MUST BE RELEVANT TO YOUR CONTENT, otherwise, it is called ‘tag abuse’.

Such account may be flagged (opposite of upvote) which removes your initial rewards and tarnishes your reputation.
If after writing an article and you are looking for the relevant tags to use, you can click on the following link:
https://steemit.com/tags

Another difference that exists between conventional blogs and steemit is that on steemit, (after publishing a post) the first tag remains unchanged, i.e it’s uneditable. All contents created here on steemit must have ATLEAST one tag. Also, a maximum number of five (5) tags can be used.

Meanwhile, there are other sites or media in which more than five tags can be used. You can use steepshot.io which allows a maximum of 24 tags.

In my own opinion, sometimes using more than five tags may not be necessary. It will look as if you are pressing too much because you want to milk upvotes. It may make you look desperate for attention. Some may consider it as spam too.

Urrm… actually, it was back then when the regular tags were in full usage. Now, many communities have developed that will curate you once you use their tag. It is in this regard that you may need to know more about the two kinds of tags which are: generic and proprietary (the former has a wider range of topics while the latter is more specific).

INTRODUCING STEEMCLEARNERS

For more clarification, you can read more about The Game OF Tags by @Steemclearners (it contains a brief explanation of the 30 most popular tags here on Steem blockchain).

Here’s the link: https://steemit.com/steemcleaners/@steemcleaners/the-game-of-tags

Steemclearners is the steemit abuse fighting team. I quote them:

" Steemcleaners are a group of Steemians concerned with the plague of plagiarism, copy paste, spam, scams, and other forms of abuse that keeps cropping up on our site. Since fighting individually seemed fruitless -- resulting in retaliation flagging, harassment, or other issues, we have created a group account, to stand as a united front in the defence of steemit!" Source

Tag spam and Tag abuse are frowned at here on steemit. The former is when an author intentionally uses a tag that is irrelevant to the post while the latter is undeliberate.

Note: The payout shouldn’t necessarily be used to determine the tag to use, neither does it guarantee you of a good reward using the tag.

THE ISSUE OF COMMENTING

Most people copy and paste even in the comment section. Some spam peoples’ blog with irrelevant comments (comments that are not related to the post). Some may drop comments like “nice post”. Some people might pretend to be the original author of a post without even referencing it.

One must learn to create quality contents. By quality, I mean “original and good length”. You cannot be writing a science post and yet, you publish an article of 50 words.

These abuses occur in several forms.

This is just the beginning of the lessons I intent to teach. In my next post, I’ll be discussing extensively (either orally or in a written form) on “Plagiarism as thievery of intellectual property (and its forms); Image citation and free stock photos as well as Referencing of posts…” etc

Thanks for coming around. You may drop your questions if you do have one.

Image from Flickr, labeled for reuse

All images used in this post are labeled for reuse.