I am inspired to write this post because of my observation of a fellow steemian, @dammylohar, who incurred the wrath of @cheetah and got banned. 

Who Is Cheetah?

Cheetah is a robot that automatically finds similar content. It was created a year ago by witness @anyx. For the past four (4) months that I've been in steemit, @cheetah has been very active in visiting authors who post content that is not originally theirs and do not do well to cite or give credit to such authors for their hard work. Now, that is tantamount to plagiarism, so I wouldn't be wrong if I refer to such people as plagiarists who are guilty of the ''sin'' of plagiarism. From what I read  in frequently asked questions, FAQ, about cheetah, the bot works very closely with @steemcleaners to discipline steemians who do not play by the rules of authorship, but would like to be rewarded for posting content that is not theirs. By content , I mean both text , images, videos.  Personally, I like cheetah. Many thanks to @anyx, for creating this bot.  

Note: For any content that is not originally yours, make sure to provide the link/source so that you will not be found guilty of plagiarism. Something else that I've learnt in PhD research  is that I could be found guilty of plagiarism, if I refer to a previous work authored by me (e.g Assessment of Some Indices of Oxidative Stress...Aburime et al., ) and do not give the credit to myself for my previous work. The catch here is this (at least in the academia), even when you are referencing your previous work, credit yourself. 

An Appeal To Cheetah

Actually, it was @dammylohar's appeal to @cheetah in steemit.chat that I saw which got me curious about what possibly happened. Cheetah is usually a very gentle cat that gives warning before striking.When you advise folks generally in steemit about certain misconduct, instead of paying heed to what you are saying, they chose to argue with you. Such folks don't usually end up well in steemit. The question now is, will @cheetah do something about this appeal? 

Some ''sins'' that cheetah cannot forgive

Plagiarism

I used to tell folks here that steemit has zero tolerance to plagiarism. Sorry, steemit is not facebook, neither is it twiiter nor instagram. Be sincere with yourself, be yourself and not a copy of someone else. If you know that you cannot create content, I mean original content, then I'm afraid that you are in the wrong place. When you cite another author's work, maybe even copied and pasted it, that should be because you want to share your thoughts about the content and not to claim it as yours. 

Identity Theft

When a steemian steal's someone else's identity or impersonates, posing to be who he is not, he will certainly meet his waterloo before long in steemit. This is the main reason, I think it is advised that you add a photograph or two of yourself in ''introduceyourself '' post, better still a video of you, so that the community will know that you are who you claim to be. It is a kind of know your customer (KYC) procedure, I think. 

Call To Action

Cheetah is only a robot, but we are humans. Let's all join hands together to create a  steemit community free of  plagiarists and identity thieves. 

Image source 1,2,3

Has cheetah visited your blog page before? Feel free to share your views. I would be really glad to hear them. 

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Thanks for reading!