Ever get that feeling where you feel like your world is crashing in on itself and you have no control? I had that feeling this afternoon. I am writing this post to both explain the circumstances of my day in hopes to help anyone from making the same error and to introduce you to the shiny new Scorum toy that was let out of the garage.
Today the Scorum platform shut down for maintenance and updating. Exciting things were happening. I eagerly awaited the moment when I would open up the website and I would have access to my blog again and could check out ay new posts that I wanted to upvote and comment on. I also couldn't wait to see what changes or updates were in store for us. I also had a post that I had been waiting to publish.
I logged on and went to put the final touches on my post and upload. Once I was satisfied I hit publish. Once I hit publish there was a pop up saying that my post would be scanned to ensure it was original and free from plagiarism. Without even giving it a second thought, I quickly hit ok and sent my post to the platform. Afterwards, I started searching for interesting content and commenting. About 20 minutes later I saw the little red dot hovering over that notification bell and I eagerly clicked to see what action there might be on my post. That is when I had the most stressful moment I have ever had since I started blogging on the internet and, to be honest, I haven't quite recovered yet.
I scrolled down my notifications and there it was, a notification telling me that my post was only 9% original content and therefore 91% copied.
OMG!!!! It says I am a plagiarist!!! I was devastated.
My post was now only going to receive 9% of the total rewards form votes. I was going to lose all the rewards but that was the furthest thing from my mind. All I could think about was my reputation!
Now, I must preface this with the full and unadulterated truth. The content I posted was 100% mine. However, a large part of the post was content that I had previously posted on Steemit. It was from an article that I had written in the past but prompted by a hot topic here in my community this week with the declining ticket sales for Ottawa Senator games and all the discussion here in town with the trading of Erik Karlsson.
You see, I started blogging on the Steemit platform back in January and one of my passions is sports. If any of you are Steemit users you will agree with me that there is not a very big market or reward for sports content on Steemit. This is part of why I was over the moon excited when I learned about the Scorum platform. Finally, there was a place where one of my biggest passions was valued and would be appreciated. I couldn't wait to get started and have been loving every minute of it ever since.
Back to the issue at hand. During my time blogging on Steemit, I have met many amazing people and worked in many different roles with some great communities. During my travels and discussions, there have been many occasions where the topic of cross-platform promotion of content has come up. I was always of the understanding that it was considered acceptable as long as the content was yours. I have seen many different users post their content on multiple platforms in an effort to gain more exposure and promote their content. I had never had the opportunity to even consider this until I arrived at Scorum. Over my almost 10 months posting on Steemit I have posted some sports content that is still very relevant today and lots of which has had very little exposure to sports-minded people.
If you have any experience with Steemit, you know that plagiarism is a huge issue and one that is taken very seriously. I happen to be a huge supporter of the initiatives in place to combat these issues. One of the things that I was so excited about when I joined Scorum was how actively members are working to keep the platform clean. I have even jumped into the action and started reporting stolen posts. I considered if I should reuse some of my old content on the Scorum platform carefully and even consulted with people close to me to see if they felt that it would be plagiarism if I was to post my own content. In those discussions, we felt that if the content was 100% mine that it shouldn't be an issue. You see. I didn't want to jeopardize my reputation in any way. I have worked so hard over my ten months on Steemit and now in my three weeks on Scorum to build strong relationships in the community and foster a reputation of trust and dignity. My biggest stress this afternoon was the fear that I might have somehow put all that hard work at risk.
Back to the post in question again. I immediately tried to delete the post as I realized I needed to get more clarification about what the accepted practices going forward are going to be. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I already had a comment on the post, I couldn't delete it. At this point, all I could do was try to explain to people that the content was in fact mine and that I didn't realize that posting content on multiple platforms was going to be an issue.
Now, even though I had this experience and have been stressed out about it, I am so happy about the addition of this feature to the Scorum platform.
The Changes
The changes that I am aware of at this point are fantastic and will help to make the community stronger and keep it clean. Essentially, every single time you post on the Scorum platform, your post will be put through a plagiarism checker. The purpose of this is to promote only original content on the platform. The checker will give your post a percentage rating for originality and then your post-payout will be connected to the originality of the post. This prevents people from getting rewarded for stolen content.
The program has a built-in buffer of 20% to allow for direct quotes of the citing of image links. This means that as long as your post registers 80% original or higher then you will get the full rewards. After that, the rewards decrease based on the percentage of content that was copied.
Another really cool addition today was the addition of the rewards tab on each users profile page. You can now click on the rewards tab and see every time you received a reward for either a post of a comment. You can see the comment you made and the amount that was credited to your SP account. I absolutely love this new tool. I have always wondered how much I was getting out of my comment rewards. Comments can be a large source of SP growth for active and engaged members.
In my opinion, this is a tool that will be of benefit to everyone on the platform. Unfortunately, plagiarism is a serious problem on these blogging platforms and it is difficult to always find it and to keep it under wraps. This tool will make it so that plagiarists will not be able to profit from the content of other people. If you are someone who is posting your content on multiple sites the Scorum platform encourages you to post it here first if you want to receive a 100% payout. The program is still in beta and has some kinks to be worked out along the way I am sure but in the end, users and the platform will be better off, as will the integrity of the Scorum platform.
Thanks as always for reading!!! @broncofan99
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