@luzcypher, wow! Absolutely the best coverage of these dodgy practices I have seen-- resteeming, and worth a rare (for me) 100% upvote!
Not much I can add here because you pretty much said it all... but I'll toss in a cautionary note...
No matter HOW much we all like to think Steemit is "unique and different," and that we are "special" because Steemit is "on the blockchain," it still does not exempt us from dealing with human nature!
On top of what you cover here, it is also somewhat the "duty" of everyone-- and especially those of us who have been here a while to stay watchful and be willing to call out those who comment spam by just copy-pasting the same thing 100s of times... or the relative newcomer who's somehow following over 7000 people in just a couple of weeks.
Yes, I know, "no censorship" and a "free platform" and yadda yadda... but these things can be "site killers." The analogy I used on another person's post was that we can think of Steemit as a good ship we're all sailing on. Sure we can argue that we all should be free to do "whatever we want," but if someone is drilling holes in the hull of the good ship Steemit so we will ALL sink, should that really be part of their "freedom?"
Great post!
Thank you for resteeming this article, @denmarkguy. I learned so much from it. As a newbie, I was following the advice from the person who invited me in. I have already broken some norms by just blindly following someone's advice. @Luzcypher, thank you very much for writing about this.
I would like to second what @denmarkguy states about human nature. I joined two communities about 5 years ago. One was an online community to learn about publishing on Amazon. One was a physical community; an intentional condominium community. 2 very different environments.
The learning curve was fierce in both. Overwhelm, sorting through what was helpful, what was not, trying to contribute but not make people mad left me somewhat crazed for the first 2 months I participated.. I got a reputation in the actual community that I lived in, that for a handful of people still has not changed. They think I am here just to reble/rouse. Regardless of the many hours that I contribute, they made up their mind that I was not a worthy addition to their community. They were one of the founders you see, and they have invested years and much time and energy into it. I however as a newbie, came into it in the honeymoon stage, raving about how wonderful it was, and if we could just change this and this, it would be superb. I never understood the pushback, until just this last year, as I finally see that what to me was a compliment, was to them a criticism.
Having watched new people come to live where I live, and join that online community that I mentioned, has taught me a lot. I would ask all of us to be patient with the newbies. It takes time to learn the norms. Coaching the newbies is really helpful, if you have the time. Taking the time to write a blog post like this is really helpful.
Exactly, we need to school these people on proper etiquette on Steemit or it will degenerate into a spam site. I won't let that happen if I have any say about it. So now when I see it I'll just respond with a link to this post so the can learn and if they still do it I'll mute them.