Join me in rising up to meet @rok-sivante's challenge to Make Steem Great Again! Together, we can work toward what STEEM was designed to be, and away from what it has become. Whether you use Steemit, Busy, SteemPeak, or any other way to access STEEM, you can do your part to help actively build a better blogging community and cryptocurrency blockchain!

What made STEEM great in the first place? The idea of a blockchain blog where users actively created and curated quality content.

How can we make it great again? Well, there are just a few simple things you can do, and a few basic pitfalls to avoid.

DO:

Hopefully, you are already doing some of these already. They will help you build your reputation here as a good netizen, so it's worth following these ideas even if you think everything's already hunky-dory here.

1. Post original content! Don't copy/paste someone else's memes or articles. If you do want to share, decline payout and offer some personal commentary on the matter so you are visible to your readers. After all, if they could read the same content from the original source, why would they bother visiting your obscure blog account here?

2. Make substantive comments! Engage in conversation with other people about what they post. Find people posting original content that you find interesting, and ask questions or offer your input. Don't try to advertise your own posts or beg for followers and upvotes. Those will come naturally if you engage with others by following and commenting. And do upvote things you compliment, by the way.

3. Upvote and reply to comments on your posts! Not necessarily everything needs a vote or reply, but if people are really trying to engage with you, reciprocate!

Don't:

1. Buy votes. Bid bots enrich whales first and foremost. Any benefit you receive is secondary at best to that aim. These vote bots do not curate content for quality, they just play an automated quid pro quo game.

2. Spam. Put effort into quality, not quantity. Repetitive empty content just makes it harder for anyone to find quality material here.

3. Plagiarize. If it isn't your content, cite the creator and decline payout!

These activities are detrimental to the mission of making STEEM great again.

"But I already follow those principles!"

Great! There is still more you can do to help, though. There are people and groups already working to fight the torrents of abuse in our system.

@cheetah

This bot hunts potential plagiarism. Sometimes its algorithms are wrong, and it can't tell properly cited quotations from copy/pasted content, but it's a helpful way to watch for bad actors here to follow its posts.

@steemcleaners

This account is dedicated to fighting abuse. Check their page and see what they offer! They have guides, a report form, and a Discord channel if you want to learn more.

@steemflagrewards

This is a guild of abuse fighters who find bad content and share it so everyone can help discourage it with downvotes. They have regular updates of posts that have undeserved rewards from spam, bid bot abuse, plagiarism, and more. All you need to do is watch their listed posts, downvote them, and reply to the account's comments that you have done so. Every minnow and plankton account can help here!

Do you have any other ideas? Comment below, or create your own #makesteemgreatagain post!

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