Hey guys, we’re in the second week of the newbies initiative for this round, and the topic for this week is Hive Guidelines, Markdowns and Use of Tags, taken by one of the best hivers and chess players I know, 
Like we do every week, to test our understanding of the lesson, this is my response to the task following the weekend’s discussion. I’ll be making my response an essay like I always do.
My experience on Hive so far
Nothing in life starts out great, and my journey on hive was no different. Starting out was especially difficult because of low RC issues. It’s difficult starting out on hive without anyone to guide you or help with technical issues like low RC and stuff like that.
Aside that, there’s the issue of being lost in this gigantic ecosystem. Hive is a very big and complex ecosystem, and finding your footing takes a while.
I remember even writing this post in a state of confusion about not knowing what to write on and struggling with topics to write on. I was fortunate enough to have erikah come to my rescue and gave me some great advice from experience. She said:
I had just started out and wanted to stay consistent and active, but it was just really difficult for me to keep writing because well I was new, and didn’t really know how to develop my ideas and thoughts into full fledge posts. It took me a while to get a hang on organizing my thoughts into posts. This is honestly even something I’m still working on.
My buddy cmplxty, an amazing hiver I’ve come to like, also dropped a few words of wisdom on me. He advised I could structure my posts based on day-themed topics like monochrome Monday, Three Tunes Tuesday, Wednesday walk, and thoughtful Thursday.
I haven’t been on hive long, but this short period I’ve been here so far, I feel like I’ve been here way longer. I’ve learnt so much, met a lot of interesting people, and even discovered some cool stuff ike presearch (from cmplxty and erikah), a search engine like google but this one pays you in cryptocurrency called PRE tokens just for searching your everyday stuff. I put it at the end of all my posts (something I also borrowed from the two of them haha) but most people won’t notice it because people tend to ignore repetitive stuff.
I also have noticed my writing and typing skills see great improvements. I’m still a novice writer, but I’m a much better novice now than I was when I just joined Hive. I’ve come to enjoy reading and writing here, and the interactions with my on-chain friends.
Plagiarism and why it is frowned upon on Hive
To understand why plagiarism is frowned upon in Hive, we need to first take a look at what plagiarism is to begin with. According to Wikipedia:
Plagiarism is the representation of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.
Doesn’t that sound like something we already know? Of course it does. This screams THEFT!, and we all know that all forms of theft are generally frowned upon everywhere, and not just on Hive.
People’s hard work needs to be appreciated, and we do that by sourcing them if we as much as borrow an idea from them. It just wouldn’t be fair to pick someone else’s work and try to parse it off as your own.
Hive is a blockchain that prides itself of producing quality original content. Fresh content you won’t find anywhere else. Once we turn a blind eye to it, plagiarism will be the death of Hive.
Plagiarists and abusers taste the wrath of the hivewatchers downvote button once they’re established as repetitive offenders. Aside possible downvotes, plagiarists are also muted in communities because plagiarism is an issue that no community on hive takes lightly.
Tags and why they’re important on Hive
Every complex system needs some kind of protocol to keep things sorted. Just like we see books arranged in shelfs based on their topics or subject when we go to the library, tags are the shelves of hive. They sort posts into categories and help both readers and writers. Tags helps writers in the sense that they make it easier for the writer’s audience to find them.
It also make curators or curating team jobs easier because they can easily find the niche they’re interested in curating when they follow the tags. But in attempts to increase their chances of curation, some people spam and abuse tags, actions that can get you downvoted.
Proper use of tags means that your content is delivered to the right audience, hence increasing your chances of getting engagement in the form of upvotes and comments.
Despite the fact that we have communities and cross posting, it’ll still be hectic to make several cross posts, and honestly will be a punishment to your followers as well who will have to see each cross post as a new post on their feed. To remedy this, you can simply post in the community the majority of the post is focused on, and use tags to make the post appear in the other related communities. For instance, a daily blog that talks about a fitness activity can be posted in the daily blog community, with health as a tag as well.
Some tags also have the added benefit of giving you a chance of earning tokens just from using them. A popular example I’ll give is #neoxian that gives you the opportunity of earning NEOXAG.
In every ecosystem or environment, there need to be some kind of punishments or check in place for repetitive offenders who show no signs of changing. Because of this, instead of positive engagement in the form of upvotes, you could get downvotes for using the wrong tags or tag spamming. Tags that don’t relate to your post, or have nothing to do with your post in any way. That brings me to the next thing.
Tags, their differences and use cases
In my understanding, Tags can be grouped into general and specific tags. General tags can be used for almost all posts. An example of a general tag I use almost always is #proofofbrain which in my understanding basically says “yes, I have a brain”. Interesting enough, when I checked the rules of the proofofbrain community yesterday you know what it said? Three simple words- “HAVE A BRAIN”. This is the simplest explanation of the proofofbrain tag we can find. Proof that you have a brain.
Other known general tags are neoxian, blog, vyb & creative coin.
Specific tags are basically limited to certain topics, or should I say they’re used for specific topics. LeoFinance is used solely for posts involving money and finance. It would be absurd to put leofinance on a post talking about love. That’ll make no sense, and could potentially beg some downvotes if it becomes a repetitive behavior.
I want to thank the people behind the newbies initiative for the opportunity they’ve given me and other newbies to learn under the guidance of our various team leaders. 
Who Authored This Post?
I am 
