@ryzeonline hi 😊🙏
Warning: Very very long response. Sorry, not sorry 😂😂😂
I tend to be the kind of person who steps back and tries to look at competing perspectives so that I can try to understand all points of view, even if I don't agree with them. The point is "to understand" where people are coming from and why they feel the way they do about whatever the issue at hand might be, without needing to choose between them, although sometimes I do if I feel strongly enough about the outcome and its impact. I believe you have done just this in your story Jay, showing the reasons why each side may have acted and reacted in the way that they did and I commend you for that.
I do think that the key issue here is that when people plagiarise and use other people's content as their own, especially on HIVE, they not only take literary or artistic credit for something that they have not done themselves, but they also take financial credit for it, and in so doing, they deprive authors who are spending valuable hours of their life creating quality original content from earning a fair return. This is because the pool is finite at any one time and if one person gets more, another has to get less. And so the scales of justice and fairness come into play and the intensity of the emotional response is heightened, and this is understandable to an extent. Anyone can copy and paste and become an article generating machine but this kind of behaviour must be checked at some point. In my view, the Hive can be distinguished from Twitter and the like because nobody 'gets paid' on Twitter or Facebook and that is why people don't seem to "care" as much.
I am fairly certain from what you have described, that Cassie is simply a naive teen who needs to be given guidance in what she is doing to bring her back on track (but it is still acknowledged in your story that she must be brought on track and helped to understand that plagiarism is wrong, just in a more gentle manner). When an established Hiver, however, knowingly publishes content without being transparent as to the source, and without doing the due diligence required of every Hiver to ensure that they are meeting community standards, values, and rules, then unfortunately they lay open to this sort of response and ultimately have nobody to blame but themselves for the fallout. This is not to say that other Hivers shouldn't approach the issue with sensitivity and kindness at first, asking for clarification, explanation, and assurances on future conduct, but everyone is different and some may feel that whilst they would give this latitude to a complete newbie, they are not prepared to extend it to someone who, as in today's case on Hive, that they perceive as already earning significant amounts of Hive on their posts, from what is claimed to be as a result of belonging to voting circles, for unoriginal content that has been plagiarised from others and copy-pasted into a Hive post. Regardless of knowledge or intention on the part of the owner of the Hive account, if the content of a specific post is plagiarised, it should be DV'ed. This use of the DV promotes the right values going forwards.
Allow me to use an example: If someone steals a car because they were deprived as a youngster and their parents taught them that stealing was ok, and then they get caught, we can argue that they are young, naive, influenced by the way in which they were raised, and we'd look to rehabilitate them and offer support as the first measure for a first violation, but we wouldn't let them keep the car, would we? Clearly that would be promoting the wrong behaviours and would deprive the genuine owner who worked hard to earn the car, of their right to the asset. Other Hivers (including whales) can't DV the original author, as they are hiding in the shadows, so all they can do is DV the content that is presented to them as being by the owner of the account and which has been identified as plagiarism. The owner of the account cannot then attempt to pass the buck and hide behind his/her co-creators, claiming ignorance, as it is not the actual creator's name against the piece, but the owner of the Hive account instead. I also don't think it helps when a person is challenged on their behaviours and chooses silence instead. Actions do however speak louder than words so when a person apologises for these behaviours, this is not necessarily sufficient in itself, they need to then demonstrate a change in their behaviour in order to rebuild the trust that has been lost. As I have said previously, complete transparency and due diligence are what is required.
Let me be clear though, I don't approve at all of witch-hunts, as this is not a resolution-seeking approach, and so a flippant comment by a whale to DV everything that is being published by said errant author is not an answer in itself. I do, however, understand the response, because how do they trust the content being output going forwards? Do we require the whales who DV to spend their time reviewing each and every post of said account to check for suspected plagiarism? Surely the onus has to rest with the errant account holder to prove a change in process?
Perhaps what needs to happen, at the very least, to reassure their audience of their honourable intentions, is that in today's case, the errant account holder, who in fairness has held up their hands, should have a disclaimer at the top of each post explaining that the posts under the account are written by a variety of authors and that each submission has been plagiarism checked before publication, with a copy of the plagiarism-free proof posted at the bottom of each post. This would give some reassurance at least to the community that the process is transparent, the curators know what they are getting, they can see it isn't plagiarised (in so far as exact use of words is concerned) and they can then choose to upvote or ignore instead of having a need to DV. This is the sort of response that should be given to errant account holders to gain back trust in the community, and probably what I should have offered up earlier today as my own personal advice on the posts that I saw re the DV'ing etc. Sadly, I don't think it helped that the post in contention today had at least one supporter intent on winding up the DV'ers with f-bombs and the like. That kind of language and tone certainly didn't help anyone. And so I think when they were appropriately engaged by @wil.metcalfe, he was unfortunately met with more than a little resistance and a complete shutdown to be honest, which in itself was not the most helpful or respectful response to Wil, who was just trying to help them to understand a different perspective.
Finally, as a parting note, I just want to be clear that I do not use the DV at all and was not involved in DV'ing this person or getting them DV'ed. I simply commented on the post after being tagged in it. I also tried to comment as objectively as possible, not knowing the full extent of what had gone on but just commenting on the scenario presented. Ordinarily, if I have concerns about anything, I will flag it to one or more of the Hivers whom I respect on the platform who have a lot more experience than me and whom I trust to take an objective, compassionate, and balanced view on things and make the right decision for the community as a whole.
I do hope that the community can come together better in the future to resolve issues rather than deteriorating into a mud-slinging pit of awkward discomfort. I personally found the regression today quite difficult and uncomfortable to witness. But I also found the issue of plagiarism and lack of transparency a problem. I could have walked away and chosen to ignore it altogether, a sort of "not my monkeys, not my circus" approach, but I felt this would be disrespectful to the person who had looked to me, amongst others, for input and I felt that although it wasn't my monkeys or circus, it was about my "home" on the blockchain, and as a stakeholder, I needed to stand up and be counted. I had initially decided to take the evening off from writing and curating, however, your post inspired me to write the above response.
Thank you Jay for your generous perspective and sharing of your knowledge and experience. It is always very much appreciated. Using your own language (if I may be so bold and not be accused of trademark or copyright infringement or plagiarism by the peanut gallery lol🤣) let's hope as Hivers, we can all follow your lead and Ryze above this🙏
@wil.metcalfe I hope the above is a more meaningful comment than the one I left earlier during my working day 🙏
This may be also true for other platforms, for example YouTube, Twitch. Even for real life. Financial credit is not Hive exclusive.
True!
Excellent point, thanks for interjecting this. :)
ALSO, OPTIONAL TIPPING IS NOT THE SAME AS SALES REVENUE
https://www.trademarkandcopyrightlawblog.com/2016/10/10-copyright-cases-every-fan-fiction-writer-should-know-about/
HIVE!D
I appreciate your well thought-out response (and the warning, lol.)
I love that you step back to understand at competing points of view. I aimed to include a few them in my narrative, thanks for noticing.
Other commenters have cited 'financial reward' as the main issue here, but since plagiarism, patent, & copyright law have been around since long before Hive, and plenty of content-creators are earning on Instagram and YouTube as we speak, some through plagiarized content, I'm not sure just how relevant that point is. Try telling a YouTuber who had their channel shutdown for plagiarism, justly or not, that Hivers 'care more,' lol. But I do agree with you, whether justified or not, people do seem to have extremely heightened emotions on the matter here on Hive compared to elsewhere, even if I can't pin down a specific reason, lol.
And you raise an interesting point regarding 'established Hivers', 'due diligence', and taking responsibility. The question is how much 'should' the standard we hold people to differ? And is it helpful for a fledgling platform like Hive have higher standards for plagiarism than other platforms before them, or lower, in order to encourage sharing, posting, and engagement, regardless of 'source?' Is downvoting a creators entire body of work upon discovery of a single plagiarized item acceptable? Overkill? Is rallying other voters to enact revenge or punishment good? Bad? Something we couldn't stop even if we wanted to? If an author has to do due-diligence for every source they leverage, isn't it right that every downvoter also do due diligence regarding the author-in-question's true-intent? Etc.
Definitely food for thought.
Your ideas for transparency, adding disclaimers, and so on are intriguing, could certainly be worth a try.
You also make a good point about inflammatory language not helping during situations like these.
This sums up my desire, and I'm honored my post inspired you to write. Thank you so much.
Hahahaa, love it. #TogetherWeRyze :) 🙏
As regards financial rewards my point essentially, regardless of platform, was that when money is involved, people fall out quicker. If nobody is losing anything monetary then it's just the ideological folk who will squeal. Purists who do not like to see plagiarism and theft of creativity. If money is involved, then add the financial element (theft of potential rewards) to the ideological concerns and you have a lynch mob. Thank you for the engagement @ryzeonline. Indeed we shall rise together🙏😊💗
Understood, and agreed.
(Though I could write another 30,000 words on herd mentality, financial motivations, human behavior, etc. lol) Thank you as well! 🙏
😂ha ha that is why there was a warning!!! Feel free to scroll on by my dear. I could have created an entirely new post with my response, as @ryzeonline did with his lol. But I chose to leave it here. If you are not aware of the context within which these two posts were written then you would have missed the complexity of the discussion altogether. This was a direct response to a few people that were involved in a discussion of important issues on the Hive. If you didn't want to read it, and I suspect that you probably didn't, then I have no issue with that at all, but the tone of your comment is exactly what we are trying to reduce on Hive. Blessings.
You have a great day @introvertspeaks. That is certainly what I intend to do. I too have long graduated from this form of social evolution and bullshit so I know it when I see it. Circle jerker? Is that a thing? I certainly am not sure how this applies to me. I chose not to create another post as I wasn't looking to profit separately from my engagement with @ryzeonline. His response, unlike mine, was able to take the form of a completely separate and distinct article. Last time I looked exclamation marks were used in grammar to emphasise a point or show astonishment ...and in this case, I used it both to emphasise the fact that I had given fair warning of my long response and was astonished that you still took exception🤭. The triple marks were also to emphasise just how long it was😂Stop sweating the small stuff @introvertspeaks. I respect you have your views, but I just don't feel that you needed to engage in something that you were given every opportunity to opt out of. If I had wanted to shout at you in text I would have used capital letters, but don't worry you are safe there as I don't shout and I don't bite🙏
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Are you sure? I have read his complete comment. I also replied to it, adding a fact to what he presented as the "key issue". And I am currently on a bus to my workplace. He (@samsmith1971) wrote a long response to a long post, which is fair in my opinion. I think that you would not say "cut the fat my dear" to @ryzeonline. That would be disrespectful. Just like this. Both of them (and everyone else) put time and effort to write down their thoughts and opinions.
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I guess it was missed that Jay's article above was a well-timed response to another HIVE post and to my comment that I had made on that post (tagging him in it). His reply comment ran to 6000 odd words so he turned it into a post lol. I felt I owed him the consideration of a decent engagement given the time he took to respond to the post we were both commenting on and to my own comment 😂Perhaps people should take the time to understand the context within which engagement is occurring before making knee jerk reactions that don't contribute towards engagement, tolerance or community spirit and growth. Thank you for the support :-)
Saying "most people do not want to read long texts" and "that is backed up by a study" is a clear opinion. I accept and respect that. Even TLDR (too long, did not read) is okay. But asking someone to "cut the fat" after he/she took time and effort to write a long and meaningful response (addressing multiple people with his/her message) is simply rude and disrespectful. The attitude, the way you say things is important. Respect others to be respected. I hope that you see the difference. I give you some !PIZZA.
@introvertspeaks! I sent you a slice of $PIZZA on behalf of @xplosive.
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