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Well, this was a sad and unwanted milestone. Today, I cast my first intentional flag on a comment/post. When I say intentional, I've cast a couple of flags accidentally before... on the mobile busy website, it is really easy to accidentally hit the flag (thumbs down) button by accident! So, I've cast a flag accidentally and removed it immediately, but I've never cast one ON PURPOSE... until today.

Normally, for posts I've just forwarded offending posts to @steemcleaners, in an effort to not get involved in a long escalation with someone who I'd rather have no more contact with. I figure it is better for a third party to handle the problems. Likewise for spam comments on my blog, whilst for non-content comments, I just ignore them. I've also started to give a small upvote for decent comments (nothing much, but it pushes them up) to help trigger @dustsweeper as a thanks for visiting and reading.

The Straw

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Well, this was the little straw that broke my patience. Or maybe it's just because I'm cranky and tired due to a toddler who woke me up in the middle of the night.

I run a SBI contest, which is pretty easy to enter and only just requires a little bit of thought. I ask a question (or two) and it is always chosen so that everyone can answer, you just need to think for a second or two! Nothing specialised, no problem solving or anything like that... and the winners are chosen at random from the valid entries.

Anyway, this week, I put a @steem-bounty on the contest. Just a little way of giving back to all the people that made valid entries, but didn't win the SBI shares... and it seems to have attracted this @steem-bounty chaser (profile here). I see from his comments he goes from post to post that have a bounty posted and makes little comments to try and get a piece of the reward. Anyway, I have no problem with that, it is a pretty inefficient way to grow your account but his other method of growing his account is by copy and pasting other people's material (which I have to say is also a pretty inefficient way of growing...).

What did get my goat up and caused me to flag his comment/entry was that he just took an existing comment (from a long time follower @giddyupngo) and just ran it through a translator and pasted it in.

So that this:

Good question! I know a lot about laser printers/copiers, but others do not. Many times people will call toner ink, though toner is dry and ink is wet. One thing I don't do well is small talk. I like talking about weighty matters, but really don't care about the weather report

Became this:

Gute Frage! Ich weiß viel über Laserdrucker / Kopierer, aber nicht andere. Viele Male rufen die Leute die Tonertinte an, obwohl der Toner trocken ist und die Tinte nass ist. Eine Sache, die ich nicht gut mache, ist, wenig zu sprechen. Ich spreche gerne über wichtige Dinge, aber den Wetterbericht interessiert mich nicht.

So, congratulations @mazasuarez, you have become my first (and hopefully last) flag. It was a small one (5%), but please please please just don't do it, and change your ways. It was a easy thing to just write something simple. The questions were easy to answer, and if you are not careful, you just will annoy someone that is bigger and less tolerant than me. You will get better and longer term growth by just doing the right thing.

WHY?

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Which leads me to the other question... Why do people do this? The copy and pasting, and the deception? I know that money is at stake and that makes people do all sorts of stupid things to try and make a quick buck, but don't they realise that they could earn and make much much much more just by producing decent and original content? Just take photos with you smartphone, just write about your day and do a #ulog, just write about something that you enjoy or like doing... it doesn't have to be long or world-shattering. I look back on my first posts and they were pretty terrible, but it was a start, and I've never had the urge to steal other people's written work.

It isn't profitable and it is inefficient (unless you control hundreds upon hundreds of automated accounts), so why do people take the deceptively simple and low-paying route?

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