Bitcoin Forum

After watching the "highest merit replies", I've noticed that a majority are in local Turkish or Russian topics, other languages are non existent or rare. Also, the comments that are given +50 merit, are usually some one liners. Has anyone looked into that or..?

Yes many such users were reported by other members. These were also given negative trust be senior members here. You can find all those cases reported here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2823221.0. Add those you saw if they are not reported.

We take into consideration few things here:

1) What is someone abuses the merit system with a hacked account. If the original member gets account back, will he get those merits back to spend on quality posts.

2) If someone did this one day after the merit system, it is possible he might be testing. How will such cases be differentiated from abusers.

You have no concerns because of your rank, you as a jr member have nothing regarding merits, you should post when you have something to say, a beggar with a few smerits shouldn't be worried about higher ranks.

If they are not sources, don't report them. how many hero, legendary members do we have? they might send merits and rank some beggars, it wont last.

The merit system concerns everyone from newbies to legendary.  We are all part of this forum .  A jr member's concerns are just as valid as anyone else.  Stop trying to seperate everyone into class ranks like a kingdom.

No!11!!!!!!!! this ain't a forum for every body, why don't you talk about Bitcoin distribution? some body mining with one miner should complain about not getting the same amount as early adopters?

Should you have 2 Million constructive posters out of 2 Billion people to come here expecting merits on time, earning money by posting?
Beggars will inherent the earth, not.

1. I don't recall reading about these kind of post, but i don't think the original member would get back the abused merit.

2. I don't think it would be hard to differentiate an abuser to not. Who would try and test to give out 50 merits at a single post? Only abusers would do that right? Unless the OP made a very well written posts which he deserve the 50 merits for it, that i think, is acceptable.

Mostly this are people who are negotiating with someone who are in badly need of merit points because their nearing on ranking up which is why they are really in deep need of merit points. Which is why if we found someone abusing the merit system like doing something like this we should immediately report this to the moderators, but before we do such things make sure we gather enough evidenced because we might actually damage someone's reputation in the forum even though they are innocent here.

I've seen some being reported here the first few days. They were negged pretty quickly. It looks like theymos didn't want a quick trigger for negs due to merit abuse though, so maybe people are just making a mental note of them?

50 merit for a one liner is a clear sign of abuse to me though, and they deserve to get tagged for it.

Not hard to make a report to moderator if the account of the owner is hacked

If it was just for testing then 1 to 5 merit or sMerit can be considered, but 10 to 50? I don't think it is just for testing.

One thing also should be consider: your post could be the reason out or scape goat of a person with farming account.

Wow, incredible find! Good thinking. I'm a fan of the "report to moderator" option. Giving negative feedback doesn't offer the right retribution and if there is nefarious activity going on the moderators are in a position to apply the appropriate penalty.

That said, the spreading of merit among Russians or Turks harms the rest of us how? It doesn't. So...who cares about this? We sure as hell shouldn't! If these guys/gals don't spend on their own alt accounts they're not going to spend at all.

It's akin to a small portion of bitcoin becoming "lost" because people forget their private keys or access to their accounts.

That member got the desired number of merits for next level already. It is due to activity that he is Jr Member.

But negotiating for merit is not allowed, because giving merit was depending on the quality of post you been made. Sharing and giving merit as exchange of anything was so annoying, because more users are still continue posting with good quality but the others are earning merit due to fraud. Moreover you have a point we can easily report to the moderators the people or users who abusing merit system.

I do not think that there is something wrong with giving 50+ merits for a single sentence. It depends on how the post presented the idea. It could be written briefly or in 2 or more sentences. So there is no question about the giving of merits to those who are posting only a sentence because the mere fact these sentence could describe the whole paragraph. And as we all know that words are very powerful. Actually it depends upon the one who give the merit. We do not know that the post was informative. So one might think of giving merits. Yet, if the sentence is being commended with merits of that post poorly constructed then it should be reported to the admin or moderator. It could be that a member who give the merit and the one who receive a merit could be one person.

Give me a break. There are only 2 reasons good enough to give 50+ merit points to one post.
1. Somebody asks for something (something really important for him) and offers a reward for getting the answer to his question (normally the reward is known in advance).
2. There is a transaction behind (merit points vs something else). In most cases this is the real reason.

On another note, to say that jr members (or other lower rank members) are beggars and have no saying in this forum is extremely rude. If this is how the high rank members
see the rest of the people here then there is no reason to visit this forum anymore. I hope this is not the case, and that was just one guy on his way to suspension.

I think some of the high ranking members see some of their favorite posts in the context of their Merit.

He could have given that there was no problem of abusing his behavior!

There's a hell of a lot of account farming (and hackings) that go on with the Russian users here so it'll be worth looking into where all the merit is going because there's going to be thousands of farmed accounts that can't really get anywhere without the additional merit and that's going to be something they're seeking out en mass to try progress through the ranks. Take this Russian guy who had 200+ accounts:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1912475.msg18975980#msg18975980

These sort of people aren't just going to abandon their hundreds of accounts so they're going to have to try get merit from somewhere and that's a weak link that will expose a lot of them.

Maybe they just have too many sMerits, and they don't know what to do with them. We;ve been told that if you don't give out merits, then the right may be taken away from you. I think that is the wrong approach for obvious reasons.

It is far easier to give surplus money to the first street corner beggar you see to feed his drug habit, than it is to find a worthy organisation that needs the cash for project like providing defibrillators to schools and community centres.

.It really is obvious but does this have any connections with this? They can really dvide those merits to other random users they want to go and give mertis to . The chance of it happening is very unlikely and for this reason, I support OP's claim that cheating in terms of merits.  in this forum. Then if that is the case, users should be ban for doing it.

I posted to suggest another possibility. Human nature manifests itself in a variety of forms. :)

I believe the answer is to restrict merit awards to a maximun of 2 at a time, or possibly 5, but certainly no more than that.

Hero and Legendary members of this forum have a high number of sendable merits maybe they send it to one of the posts because the post of that one he has merited has really contributed and helped him in his/her transaction let us analyze first before we make an assumption and build up a possible conclusion because we might damaging the reputation of someone without proper evidenced.

It would  impact in two ways,
    Good Impact : It would stop users from sending fake merits as 50 for single line posts.
     Bad Impact : It would allow shit posters to do more one line posts so they can get multiple merits points by their fake senders.This would indeed increase shit-posting on the forum.

Those posts are to generate sig views, rather than to earn merits in my opinion. The answer to that is stricter moderation.

There are still some cheating gaps that can be done, but if we can be selective and also watch over I think it can be reduced. I have seen a lot of events and this proves that the level of merit buying is still found. Indeed we should not think negatively and should think that it is the appreciation that is gained when there are others who feel helped. But clearly for me a post shit is not worth it to get merit. So it can be said that every post that gets merit points should be supervised and investigated about the truth. If it can be applied and there is a real action then we will be able to further reduce scammers and spammers in this forum.

If merit abuse becomes prevalent, I can see a time when the awarding of merits will require a short message of justification, and that will slow down the whole process. Maybe this could be introduced for all awards over a small number - say 2.

Look at this Turkish circle jerk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2895261.msg29766601#msg29766601. They wasted a ton of merit on his useless trash.

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Any translators?

Why you need translator now, when you already make up your mind that "They wasted a ton of merit on his useless trash."

If you found someone please report them in a topic with meta here, i do believe there are TONS of people who came from turkey and russia here are ready to help you figure those posts out are cheating or not for sure. If they're cheating, permanent ban will be the punishment.

They are doing it until they get caught, wait for the time when DT members will reward them with negative trust or they will be banned by forum staff or administrators.
BTW don't worry Staff already knows about this issue.

Is that supposed to be a joke?

You can take it as a joke but it isn't.
How is this even possible that being a staff member(suppose) i am unaware of the problems roaming around the forum?

Buying, sharing, exchanging those are kind of cheating to gain merits, all we need is a knowledge, informative and quality posts. Just try to expand our knowledge regarding posting and don't depends to the traditional way of making posts. Because most of the users are looking for the posts when they are get a lot of information.

This is definitely needed. Merits are limited and there is huge competition for merits. I think merit sources are aware of the fact that they need to spend merits carefully. But members are sending in bulk.

I found some new topics that speak the same but in different threads, should we make one trhead just to be easy to find. for example creating a thread containing a special report of the point smerit. so after giving smerit just report onthe thread.is this a good plan, please consider. thanks.

all systems updated by the bitcoin forum are just for our good. so the problems that occur from the use of merit system is not good. we must report it.
thank you :) ;)

That would mean the 57 members who get sMerit every month would need to find loads more quality posts to get rid of their merits in time.