I have not been on Steemit as much as I would like due to other endeavors, but I do try to check in as often as time allows. I wish I could post more, but lately I have been content with at the very least curating. During these bouts of curating, I also like to go to the NEW section to find young Minnow Steemians in order to 'show some Steem Love' and thus helping those same Minnows to stay interested in Steemit.com and possibly even become proselytizers of Steemit.

It feels good to give with an upvote, especially to the newer members here on Steemit, but not when these upvotes are going to cheaters and plagiarizers. I realize that Steemit.com is having explosive user growth, and many are joining thinking that there is 'Free Money' to be had here on Steemit. This excitement has some overlooking the rules or just completely ignoring them for the sake of this 'Free Money' not realizing that this Not welcome behavior here.

I can sympathize with Hive account@berniesander 's battle with Hive account@haejin . The Haejin user is posting many times per day, and they are primarily based on crypto coin price analysis. The posts usually receive high payouts, and Bernie argues that it is poor content and stealing from the Steemit Rewards Pool. I won't argue the merits of Haejin's posts or Bernie's point of view and flagging. What I can say is that Bernie feels this is unfair to the smaller users of Steemit, and possibly causing a poorer experience for these same users. Bernie is attempting community self-policing, and I can appreciate that.

So today I was looking for some New Steemians to help support with some nice upvotes that yield some small rewards/payouts. Since some are taking advantage of the Steem Reward Pool, I do have to be careful of who gets up-voted. So today I ran into Hive account@ravindraojha 's account and was going to up vote his posts but as I said, I researched his account before doing so. There I discovered that this user was using stock images and even recycling the said same images and earning small rewards from them. At this point I was forced to consider the Flag/Downvote. I wound up flagging most of his posts from the last 7 days.

I also found one image that was most likely an original image posted to this account which I up voted. I also made a few comments on different posts explaining that Plagiarism is considered stealing/theft and is not welcome on Steemit.com. I explained that this is what led to all the flags and down voting. On the Post that I was able to Up Vote I commented as to why I up voted and that if similar original content was posted to contact me for further support. I prefer to up vote rather than to Down Vote.

So the point of this is to remain vigilant and supportive of both Steemit.com and its users as well. I believe this is the pursuit of fairness here on steemit, and encouragement (up votes and positive re-enforcement) rather than criticism (down votes and no explanation) should be the catalyst to that end. This is every Steemian's responsibility if Steemit.com is to continue to carry us, its user base, on its path to success.

Update: After posting this, user Hive account@ravindraojha has edited his most recent posts by removing the plagiarized images and posting unique images but if you look at his older posts, which he cannot edit any longer, you will see the pattern I mentioned in this post.

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