Bitcoin Forum

Is the creation of new accounts in order to rank them up and sell them off? I remember in the loans section there was a thread by BlackSpidy who was negatively repped after trying my make a loan request using those accounts as collateral. I am not intending to use BCT accounts as collateral, my main account is associated with my work as a freelancer. I might sell off this account once it ranks up.

If you are using your farmed accounts as collateral for loans with no intention of repaying those loans then that activity is going to be frowned upon. That activity is really a sale disguised as a loan. If you want to farm your accounts and later sell them in the digital goods section then very few people will have any issue with this.

Some people frown upon it but it's not against the rules. jonald_fyookball  left him a negative but it seems he's changed it to neutral which I think is the right thing. Be aware though that if you post rubbish from an account just to rank it up you risk having all your accounts banned. You also don't really get that much for accounts any more either so you'd be better off just using them on a signature campaign if you just want to make money.

If you have to ask, the answer is probably yes, same with most ethical debates.

The forum does not care about farming or spamming unless it is really obvious.

I think the content from them are frowned upon.  If you are "account farming" then you might be focusing on getting posts, or making so much activity.

If you posts start to suffer because of worrying about farming, I would say yes that is frowned upon.   And what is your goal I would ask?   Raising an account to sell is not against rules but I frown upon it as I think everyone should start as newbie and go up.   But no everyone agrees on that. 

I might suggest looking at the amount of time you will put into raising that account it is sizeable.  You will not make a ton of of that amount of time spent farming the account.  There are much better ways you could have spent the time in my eyes.

I created this account to sell to somebody when it hits gets close to hitting Full Member status, then sell it to a newbie who want to get a higher paying signature campaign position. I don't plan to post much from this account so it may be a year's time. I do not plan to use this account with signature campaigns.

there's no problem with that in my opinion then. i think its mostly frowned upon in the case that quickseller pointed out above:

if youre intending to just sell off the account when it hits full member status posting occasionally, i dont see a problem with it, but the mods might if the posts become spammy. minimal effort for a bit of pocket change.

It's going to take you 4 and a half months and 120 posts to get to Full Member and they currently go for around 0.1 maybe even less by then because more will inevitably come onto the market as time goes on, so is it really worth it? If you have a Senior account you can get 0.1 for 50 posts so you're likely just wasting your time.

Basically this. Unless you're living in a third world country and this is one of the few ways to make some money, account farming is a massive waste of time with little compensation. You'd make probably ~ 0.15 BTC from selling a Senior account ($35 USD) and that would probably take ~ 160 to 170 hours to do so, so you'd be making 20 cents an hour for your work. A year or so ago I've heard it was more profitable, but with account prices as low as they are it really isn't worth it at this point.

It's also a poor idea to tell people that you plan to sell a certain account. Often when you do so people will either leave neutral or negative reputation on the account. If a negative rating is left from a trusted member, the account is basically worthless.

There was a time when organ transplants were considered unethical. The discussion of whether something is ethical or not is very important thing in society. Ultimately, I think damage is what we should consider. And also the balance of how stuff turns out, though I wouldn't like to think that the ends justify the means.

Anyways, to answer OP, what damage does one do when farming accounts? None, really. So I don't consider the act of account farming alone to be detrimental. Not unless you are spamming, and deteriorating the quality of this forum. It's OK to have fun, make discussion with funny GIF, etc. making sure to keep on topic. Personally, I would prefer to have more substantial things to use as collateral than an account on this forum... but such is life.

Many people who buy accounts attempt to use them to
scam in various ways including borrowing, trading, etc.

Also, people trying to "build up" accounts will generally create
as mindless and low-effort posts as they can get away
with, further degrading the already noise-heavy environment
of the forum.

Condoning account farming will only bring more of this,
which is why I think it is harmful to the community
and is therefore untrustworthy behavior and deserving
of negative trust.

I believe the primary (if not the only) reason it is not "officially prohibited"
is that it would be impossible to enforce, thus creating
an even more dangerous illusion that people with ranks
are trustworthy.  

Some people have also pointed out
that by allowing the sale of accounts,
it encourages those who bought an account
to resell it in turn, rather than using it
to scam, but to me that is circular logic.

The idea of buying an account simply so one
can participate in a paid signature campaign
seems somewhat unlikely because if someone is
in that much of a hurry to earn a few bits,
they would probably prefer not to invest any
money to begin with (but that is just my opinion)
and also it doesn't seem that good for the community
because if you can't stick around long enough to
be able to participate in a signature campaign,
then you probably don't have enough experience
with Bitcoin to make posts that are valuable.

The fact that account selling is not officially prohibited  
doesn't mean it should be encouraged.
People who are blatantly account farming or selling
accounts will receive negative feedback from me
unless I am advised otherwise by the admins
who felt I should be on the default trust list.

Black Spidy gave a pretty good appeal for himself so I decided to change
the feedback to neutral in his particular case, but I definitely frown upon it.

Pretty much this, unless you were raising them all up to the Legendary tier then that would be quite the achievement but you should have started a year ago ;) (Someday that new forum will arrive guys) If not 100 Legend tier accounts for sale 2-3 years from now would be good trolling.

If your just trying to split up your posts in a way to diversify your opinions instead of having them all in one established account that's a valid reason to have a spare but if its just for the sake of farming then yes it would be frowned upon.

Will the ranks/activity not carry on over to the new forum?

It's been a while so I can't answer that one off hand looking at the forum design document activity will be used in the new forum and back checking through the thread see one named moving over but no wangbus post was in it on that part in particular, his response was to API's.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=892653.0

Whether this implies that all users start on a new slate or not is not specified or how account transfer works someone else with more info knows the answer for sure as I don't recall slickage wangbus or the others mentioning any particulars myself.
(Or maybe we haven't even had a transfer discussion and how it will be carried out although that would be strange -- still drawing a blank though)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bHlm4NQkSzaBTT5tLIqQBmV92wSsbdOX5r-dRR9Dgg0/edit

Everything except passwords* will be carried to new forum software.

* There was a discussion on this and theymos or Epochtalk developer told they won't migrate passwords but I don't know the final decision.

Not to hijack the thread but do you remember where that was cited (*) mean the general topic.

Can't seem to find it myself unless it was in a github discussion thread or I skimmed over it on the forum but it does raise the question that it implies all accounts could be transferred over at that time with the activity and posts included but that would make sense, I may just open a new thread in the new forum discussion and get the question answered directly but wouldn't want to repeat it if its already posted somewhere so may as well ask here first.

P.S. Try using https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=search next time onwards.

Thanks and didn't know which keywords to use to look it up (lol)
But I'll remember that its the data carry over subthread.

As has been said previously, add to conversation in a meaningful way and there is nothing wrong with having several accounts. This especially so, since people will likely have no idea it is an alt unless you straight up say 'I am this person'. If you go around into threads just posting 'yes i agree +1 :D' (Which I see a surprising amount of people doing with no negative consequences, despite reporting them) it is very likely you will not make money from the account, as no one will want to buy such a low quality account, nor will it be accepted into any sort of respectable signature campaign.

I see where you are coming from, but like what has been said by members such as Quickseller in the past (I believe), sold accounts are rarely used for scamming, more for earning off of signature campaigns. I see no problem in this as long as, like I previously mentioned, the posts are of decent and acceptable quality. I believe that there should definitely be better policing towards extremely low quality posts, as they rarely add anything at all to any discussion and serve no purpose other than cluttering the forum and increasing post counts, I am not a mod or an admin however so I cannot nitpick.

Also, please stop using line breaks in the middle of a sentence for no particular reason. It makes your posts significantly more difficult to read in my opinion.

Fair points but I still think it should be discouraged.
The line breaks are a remnant of writing mobile
friendly plain text emails.  I still like it.  Sorry
if it bothers you.

Account farming for the sole purpose to sell the accounts and take loans from every account with no intention to repay is definitely frowned upon. It's necessary to check the accounts that are offered as collateral as that itself solves all the doubts. In fact there are many things that are frowned upon but still allowed here.

@jonald_fyookball: Agree with your post. The main reason why account farming is allowed is because of the trust factor which shouldn't be dependent on the rank but it has many a times back fired as well. Account farmers should be discouraged as except spamming, they aren't beneficial to the community. It's like the same person posting in each section of the forum under different accounts.

That's another good identification.

Also, even if some people can write high quality posts under
multiple usernames, condoning it will attract others who can't.

It's just like laws against texting while driving.   I might be
a skilled enough driver to do it relatively safely, but not
everyone is, so I'd rather it be illegal.  :P