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Do not Panic!

You may be reading this because you have been muted by the PAL-MSP Moderators. Perhaps you rushed through the start up procedure and didn't read the rules carefully. While this may seem like the end of the world, it's not a horrible thing, and it may even help you to write better posts. People who write good posts are generally better able to attract a loyal audience.

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What is the Blacklist?

Everyone who enters the PAL server is directed to read the material in our server rules channel, which contains our Blacklist. This states that we do not upvote plagiarised content, single images with no words, or other easily abused posting formats.

The Blacklist is a set of circumstances that will cause a member to be muted by the moderators. Muting means that the moderators here on PAL have taken away the ability to upvote posts with our free MSP upvote bot.

Most of the time, muting is a temporary status. The mute lasts for three weeks if you are willing to follow our directions and do the work to improve your posts in order to become unmuted.

Occasionally the moderators may feel that the quality of your work has not improved enough to unmute. They may ask you to improve your posts for an additional length of time before they unmute you.

Read the Blacklist Guidelines

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General Definitions

Here are some definitions which may help you better understand the issues we are discussing.

low quality content - work showing questionable effort or lacking in original content

copy/paste - copying an article or portion of an article, or using an unoriginal or copywritten photo, but citing it with a source or link.

copyright - a law which gives an author or artist exclusive rights to restrict publication or collect proceeds from the use of their written or digital work.

original content - content created personally by you; written in your own words

spun content - rewriting articles by changing a few words, or combining paragraphs taken from several similar articles, with the intent to avoid plagiarism detection tools

plagiarism - copying another artist or authors work without a source or citation, which leads others to believe it is your own original work.

Please explore the articles below for a fuller explanation.

What is Photo Plagiarism

What is Copyright Law

Steamcleaners definitions for Plagiarism

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What is Cheetah and Steemcleaners?

What is Steemcleaners?

Steemcleaners is a group of Steemians on Discord dedicated to eradicating abuse and maintaining accepted standards for content. For the purposes of this post, we are mainly interested in their designation of plagiarism and copy-paste. Steemcleaners uses a bot called Cheetah, which searches for instances of abuse and creates automated comments.

Steemcleaners Abuse Guide

If any of your posts have been commented upon by Steemcleaners or Cheetah within the last month, please pay specific attention to the reason! A comment from either of these names means that you have been suspected of some type of inappropriate behavior, such as copy paste, photo plagiarism or content plagiarism. The moderators at PAL can and will mute you for this.

Cheetah Reports

You must read the comment to understand the specific error. Some comments carry more serious weight than others. If the error goes uncorrected in your future posts and you become blacklisted by Steemcleaners, you will not be unmuted by the PAL Moderators. Steemcleaners puts out a weekly post listing the accounts who have been blacklisted.

Steemcleaners Blog

If you are confused about the comment or error, or disagree with the validity of the comment, you may ask Steamcleaners for an explanation or an appeal.

Steemcleaners Discord Server Invite

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Definition of low quality posting

We look at each post or case history subjectively, taking into account the intent of the post, as well as the native language of the author. Below is a list of some things that might be considered low quality content.

• ~ any plagiarism, copy paste or spun content (rewriting articles by changing a few words)

• ~ unoriginal memes, gifs, cartoons, spinbot, zappl, steepshot, dmania, dlive

• ~ an unoriginal embedded youtube or audio clip with no original content

• ~ posting a single photo or even multiple photos with only a few words

• ~ reposting the local weather, sports scores, or crypto prices without any detailed analysis

• ~ unoriginal art/graphics without proper citation and with little additional original content

• ~ copied recipes, food analysis, plant information, history facts, technical descriptions, or anything else that can be easily accessed on the web or in wiki

• ~ writing that consists mainly of empty filler words which add little quality to the post

• ~ posting content that does not make sense in the language you are posting in

• ~ heavy use of quotes, links or graphics, even if attributed or cited, unless accompanied by additional original content equal to 70 percent of the post

• ~ referral links or repetitive posts where the majority of the content remains static

We consider the above to be low effort and low quality posting and we will no longer allow it to be upvoted by the minnowsupport bot.

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What is acceptable content?

Generally, a post with at least 100 (or more) words of original content is considered acceptable proof of work. Your post should contain at least 70% original material and not be a re-wording of another article or articles.

Below are some guidelines to keep in mind while posting.

• ~ Unoriginal content, such as research, statistics, art, graphics, photos, and quotes should always be properly sourced or cited. If you create a version of another artists song or translate lyrics from an unoriginal song, the content needs to be properly cited.

• ~ While original photos and art work are admired, they should be accompanied by a minimum of 100 words of descriptive text in the form of method, materials, equipment, technique, conditions, location or a short essay in order to provide proof of work.

• ~ You may write in your own language, in fact we encourage it, especially if writing in your own language will increase the quality of your work! We do prefer that the same content in more than one language be kept in one post.

• ~ The material in quotes, headers, footers and links does not count as part of your original content and word count. While you may choose to include an english translation in your post in order to reach a larger audience, the translation does not count as part of the content.

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How Do I get Unmuted?

If you were muted, our moderators came across a post or posts of yours that fell below our acceptable content standards as outlined in The Blacklist. Alternatively, they may have been alerted by Steemcleaners of unacceptable content.

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Please read all of the following content carefully. You are responsible for understanding the requirements and guidelines for the Unmute process.

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If the moderators have muted you for low quality posting or other violations of the code such as copy-paste or plagiarigm, you will need to follow this process in order to become unmuted.

There are NO exceptions or short cuts to being unmuted. Asking several different moderators in hope of a different answer will only delay the process.

This "muted" status means you will not be unable to upvote your posts until the moderators unmute you. We look at the recent history of posting over the past month, not just the last article or two you posted.

You are expected to improve your posts by creating original content for a period of three weeks, (correcting any unacceptable behaviors such as plagiarism).

You may then become unmuted by asking for a review of your account.

Please use the definitions and standards above when creating your posts. If you need help with writing or grammar, please visit our #english-spelling-grammar channel, or see the helpful articles at the end of this post.

Please note, not writing anything for three weeks will NOT get you unmuted. You must show significant improvement. The mods will not unmute you if they do not see better quality posts.

The moderators are asking at least three weeks of continued improvement in posting that illustrates you understand the issue and have worked to address it.

Please keep in mind :

• You will not be automatically unmuted by the moderators.

• Your posts must show improvement, as seen by a moderator, in order to become unmuted.

• You may ask for a review by going to the #help channel in the PAL Discord channel.

• You must ask a moderator to review your case on or after the date given to you.

• Please provide your steemit name, and be prepared to wait for assistance.

• This review does not guarantee that you will be unmuted.

• The moderators will decide your status upon review, and may choose to give you extra time.

• When you ask for a review, please be patient and polite. Rude behavior and bad language when dealing with a moderator will get you kicked.

• The moderators are not always available, so the process may take a while.

• Constant pestering of the moderators may increase your mute time.

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Helpful Articles

The Importance of Citation

Steemit best practices guide to writing

Markdown 101 - How to make kick ass posts on Steemit

Five Powerful "Variety Hacks" To Change Your Steeming Forever!

How To Keep Writing Interesting Posts For Long Time: Use Freewriting

The ultimate guide how to make posts so pretty that everyone must read it

Steemit Tutorials - How to Use Tags to Maximize Visibility for Your Posts and Gain More Upvotes

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We are a networking resource first and foremost.

We are starting to build many communities and channels here on the MSP-PAL server in order to meet other people who participate on the Steemit platform.

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Please be kind, polite and patient.

The mods are are here to help everyone. One at a time.

Thank you !!

from the MSP/PALnet Moderator Team

_{The Minnow Support Project - brought to you by @aggroed, @ausbitbank, @teamsteem, and @canadian-coconut}