Curation, plagiarism and the Cheetahbot...

in #steemit8 years ago

Well well, I've just had my first run-in with the cheetahbot at the folowing post: https://steemit.com/southafrica/@grahnite/my-home-country-jumping-on-the-bkockchain

First of all, you will see that the image I use above is MY OWN WORK, from my original post here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@grahnite/steemit-stuck-in-my-brain-this-is-what-i-see

So, back to the topic at hand. As I indicate in my comment on the offending post, a few days ago, a re-post of a news article, was the top post in the "Trending" category.

So, now a few questions:

  1. Are ALL re-posts of news from news sites from now on to be flagged as "plagiarism"? I would say if the Steemit author claims the work as his own, while it is copied from someone else, then it most definitely is. But if there is a link to the source and no claims of ownership are made, then surely this should be fine? The source site would be just too grateful to have a link to their content anywhere else on the internet, including on Steemit.
  2. If ONLY 100% ORIGINAL work is to be used, then all the Youtube videos and meme's need to be flagged as plagiarized. Not so?

BUT, now - do we really want NO content from anywhere else on the 'net to be posted on Steemit? Will it make the site a bit more boring?

These are interesting discussions to be had. Original creators of content need to have their work protected/respected and not plagiarized, but with the proper references, they might be glad for the exposure? But we also want stimulating content on Steemit.

I think the cheetahbot is a good start, but the Steemit community need to think of what we will and will not allow as Steemit matures. Could make for some interesting discussions going forward.

Please post below to raise your point of view.

And hopefully this time the cheetahbot will take it easy on me :D

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I think that if people choose to use information from elsewhere then it should show a link to where it was taken from or explicitly say that it is not their own work. It should also be used merely as a point of discussion too so that the majority of their posts is their own work in my view.

I think the cheetahbot is a horrible idea and an abuse of the system. It tried to censor a real person in one of my threads like it works for twitter or something. I think bots on this platform are a terrible thing and if there's a way to block them from my threads, I'd love to do it. Isn't the whole point of this human curation? What's to stop me from making a bot that posts a new pic of tits every five minutes and constantly trolls other posts commenting with pictures of tits? I'd probably make a million bucks but everyone's bandwidth and time would get wasted looking at tits? ...not that looking at tits is bad or anything, just that there are better places to do it.

Down with bots!

I am starting to hate bots myself.

I kind of view Steemit to be more like Medium than something like Reddit or Facebook, a place where people can write quality original content.

That said, I'm not necessarily opposed to people sharing other content they find if it's good so long as they give attribution by linking to the source which a lot of people aren't doing, and even if they do I'll probably still save my voting power for unique content.

Great response. I only recently realised that one's voting power dilutes as you post. I will be more selective with my voting power going forward. Thanks!

Good to know.
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Plagiarism is always going to be a problem. People will do it regardless. Others will have to call them out on it.

Yep, I guess that is the way of the world. Sadly. :(

I included a link to a fairly good article on content curation. Many don't realize that copying and pasting an entire article even if it includes the source without permission is copyright infringement.

http://www.contentcurationmarketing.com/content-curation-copyright-ethics-fair-use/