I will try my best to make this as short as I can while making my point clear on the issue of plagiarism and spinning on the steem/hive blockchain.
Today, the urge to write about plagiarism and how not to get yourself into trouble with the Big Brother here on hive/steem just kept ringing in my heart following that a few members of the Project hope community have been on the radar of Big Brother for Plagiarism, Spamming and Spinning.
The Steem/Hive Big Brother is watching
Writing a post doesn’t have to be as long and boring as writing your final year project, thesis or term paper, who wants to read a boring and long post either ways? For me, I do not even like posts that are too serious as they make me sleep (Just speaking for myself). Like a friend would always say, “there is no perfect writer and we are all a work in progress”, writing a post on steem and hive doesn’t have to be as rigid as writing an employment letter or sending a proposal to the FDA to approve, it just needs to be free and from you even though you had to do researches. When you fail in this aspect first, you are already on the radar of the Big Brother.
Steemit/Hive is not a home to come make quick money because you see the dollar sign beneath a lot of post, it is a place to incentivize user for doing what they love to do best which means if you love writing, there is a home for you, If you love vlogging, then you are welcome, if you are an artist or photographer, this place can fully accommodate you, if you are a sport man, then your sweat is worth rewarding.
What Big Brother Detest;
Not doing Your Home Work/Failing in your Home work
You can write, you can sing, vlog, post pictures and do many more things but one thing Big Brother do not like on Hive and Steem is not doing your homework or not doing it properly. Here, Ignorance is not an excuse. The fact that you did not know that plagiarism is bad is a bad thing, it looks like you are trying to fool Big Brother and Big Brother doesn’t like being fooled. Just like when we were in elementary school, most of us had our homework done by our parent, guardians and family members which to us wasn’t a crime, provided we got good grades but the days when we got bad grades and our teachers asked us why we failed, we just tell them “my parent did it for me”. The question is why should your parent, guardian or relative do your homework for you? Just like your teacher didn’t like hearing that someone did your assignment for you, so does Big Brother hates this excuse that someone wrote your post for you. “Nobody should give you posts small brother, if you can’t write it yourself, then don’t write at all” Big Brother will say.
Stealing and False Ownership
Let me make this very easy for you; do you know that contents labeled free for reuse aren’t yours? Did you think it was yours because you were told you can reuse them? C’mon, you can do better. Giving you my car to cruise around town doesn’t give you automatic ownership of my car, you still have to reference me when the police ask for the papers of the car. This is just the same thing with posting on Hive/Steem. The fact that you extracted something from a page, blog or book or website and don’t reference them already makes you a content thief and Big Brother don’t like thieves. Reference every work that isn’t yours from photographs, videos and other contents. Failure to reference the original source or owners of the contents mean you admit that you completely own the content.
Plagiarism, Spinning and Spamming
Let me look a little into spamming. Hey, greeting Good morning 15 times because you saw me 15 times between 11:00 AM and 11:59 AM is Spamming, don’t you know I have better things to use my ears for? Just the same way I do not like people spamming my ears with unnecessary and repeated talks, so does Big Brother detest spamming. Spamming is bad but Spamming for reward farming is worse (Why not go buy mine Bitcoin instead).
Aside spamming, one thing that gets a lot of users into trouble with Big Brother is plagiarism and Spinning which in literal words mean copy/pasting another authors work (Plagiarism), and stylishly changing part of speeches in the work to make it look original (Spinning). Don’t tell Big Brother you made a reference to a post that was completely plagiarized because Big Brother knows that what you wrote is someone else’s intellectual property and expects you to add a lot of originality instead of completely copying the posts. You can read to understand the rules guiding plagiarism here
What If Big Brother Catches Me
Judgment in this case depends on Big Brother but one thing you should not do to Big Brother is tell Lies. Before making any complain or replying on the discord group, be sure that you have checked properly. Big Brother only gives second chance to sincere people and the procedure is dependent on which of the Big Brothers caught you (Hive/Steem).