Bitcoin Forum

This seems strange to me. Since the merit system has been introduced, the forums (or at least I) have been witnessing a number of newbie accounts with some great knowledge posts. Some sound like they've been around for years, and it's something interesting that they've a recently created account.

In simple words, it smells like a surge in multiple accounts to me. ::)

This could actually be a veiled way of sending merits to yourself. Given a good post, few would question the use of sMerit upon it.

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However, this would only be to "new" account farmers rather than older ones since they would just as well post on their higher-ranked accounts and rank them up.

Perhaps it's a new wave of accounts being farmed as the max monthly merit cap is reached?

Yep, i also thinking about this.
But for me, i still don't know. Can we have 2 or more account?
Because I remember, I've found on the bounty. People using 2 different account with 1 eth address.
I don't know, that is allowed or not..

Abusers will always try to abuse everything they come across if they can. There are numbers of new accounts those are trying to make seriousgood posts and they do not have any alts

Me for example  ;D


Read this, there are green signal. (http://archive.is/1Fg1n#selection-1091.0-1091.58)

The worry thing is, if there is new account that created by other who already have accounr here with higher rank and then the new one create a good post and then the old account with the higher rank and have much merit, give merit to their new account's post.
Sorry, a bit difficult to explain it, because my english is not good enough..  :)

I've noticed this as well. Is it a new more intelligent set of account farmers moving in to pick the business as shitposting account farmers are forced out? Or are more Bitcoin enthusiasts joining the forum? I guess we'll find out if these well-informed noobs suddenly start posting is broken pidgin English after they have ranked up a few times.  ;)

There is mentioned, multiple account and account sales are allowed.
Its mean, no problem if 1person having 2 account?

Recently I am policing on accounts with suspicious merit exchanges and I did noticed some of the high ranked accounts are actually giving suspicious amount of merits to some of their new accounts (ALT obviously). I am tagging them with my best. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=1432468)

I do have some ideas that I believe applying will really reduce this kind of alt farming abuses.  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3033480.0)


According to the rule - yes  ::)

It is allowed but unless you publically declare it then it will be considered untrustworthy behaviour and you'll get a red tag. For example, theymos has a second account called theymos_away and everyone know that so he's not hiding anything. If someone has multiple accounts so they can cheat bounties it is another story.

Ahh I see, i got your point.
As long if we transparent with our account and not to scam someone or bounty, then it's okay We have 2 account.. Am i correct?

The best way to do it is to leave trust from each account to the other saying it is your alt and then also post in the known Alts thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2544574.0

That way there will be no misunderstanding.

Laws of demand and offer probably.
With the usual account farming rendered useless and dormant account worthless it might be possible that the prices have gone "to the moon" and older members knowledgeable enough are replacing the usual bots

I saw one thread claiming that merit has reached prices of 18$ or so (which I highly doubt), but still, maybe creating new accounts, posting to earn 10 or so merits and selling them might be a profitable business ....

As long as the merit is really earned I doubt anyone has a problem with it.
Besides it's going to be far easier to see when the account has changed hands in this situation, when the user suddenly turns illiterate.

Certainly. I've seen an increase in the number of newbie accounts with pretty constructive posts all around and I do merit them if I find the posts genuinely interesting or of substance.

It's important to note that a good portion of those are actually people copying posts from other places and passing them off as their own. Check the posts before you merit them and if they're copying, report them to the moderator as well.

I have witnessed this issue before merit system as well where newbies made great posts.

I even asked 1 or 2 newbies that how you know lots of things about crypto while you are just a newbie here?

So the case was simple enough to understand that they are just farming accounts to feed their greed.

But the current merit system has definitely increased the difficulty level for them. The task is not easy for them anymore imo.

This kind of merit farming might go under the radar for the first few merits, but I do not think it is possible to rank up to Full Member and above (100+ merits required) without getting noticed. In any case, once the initial smerits run out and merits have to be actually earned, this kind of farming will come to a slow halt.

That's it. Account farmers will not be able to earn more merit by themselves via their threads. That means their sMerits will run away sooner or later when the cycle of Merits-sMerits between their alt accounts come to the end. At and after the end of the cycle, they will almost never get any more merit. And as you said, it's really hard for them to rank up to Full Member and above without notice from lots of radar in the forum. The only way for them to rank up to Full Member and higher is giving their contributions to the forum through their threads (which they probably never do). I guess most of farming accounts will be stucked at Member rank.

Well, there are some cases that some newbies have actually read most or the pinned posts here or they have been guided by a person whose been here for a long time ago. Just like me, my brother was already a member here last year and then he guided and teach what and not to do, although I still have some mistakes that's why some of my posts we're deleted.
And in some cases, you may be right on it, even though having multiple accounts here aren't tolerated but still they're not giving a damn shit on the rules just to earn big. If you can find again somebody who smells fishy and 2 accounts we're using the same address then Report it immediately or you can also post their profiles so many of us can know about it.

I seem to be the sole idiot who hasn't really noticed what OP's talking about.  He didn't give any examples, so maybe those excellent newbie posters do their thing in sections I have on ignore or something. 

If you can write good English and know just a little about bitcoin, you might be able to garner some merits, but I'd imagine that approach to account farming would be extremely tedious, given how niggardly people are being with their sMerits.  You'd have to be consistently writing posts made out of solid gold (like nullius, for example) to even have a chance of ranking up ONE account, much less a whole stable of them like farmers used to have. 

And yeah, merits can be exchanged between alts, but I think the community is doing a really good job of catching that, and DT members are tagging these untrustworthy, dishonest, merit traders.  Sunshine is the best disinfectant, my peeps.

I've only noticed one account and upon checking his/her posting history it turns out good to be true.
I think those users have been lurking in the community in a long time or rather have a general source of information regarding bitcoin.

I guess those members O.P talking about have been strike with great length of epiphanies and started creating account to show us how it is done.  :o

as DarkStar_ said mission f***g accomplished.

I was going to say something similar: whether the users are posting constructively selfishly or not, it matters very little. If you have a forum of constructive posts, that's pretty good.

And in that regard, "constructive spammers" can't fall out of their posting habits lest they drop below the new status quo of post quality. So by allowing members with high post quality to get merit, we're not harming anyone.

There is one situation that can happen (but will eventually fizzle out): account farmers can try to max out the use of their merit by sending it to their now-constructive account. Again, not a huge problem because it's going to a "good user".

:)

Past situation

People creating multiple accounts just had to complete the activity to rank up and thus they were posting one liners to achieve this.

Current Situation

People making multiple accounts and wanting them to rank up are making quality posts in hope of some merits. Isn't this good for the forum that we are getting quality posts added here ? Problem is with those members who are still continuing with old approach (making shit posts) as they are content with Jr Member rank as they might need it for bumping threads only or sending pms.

Here you go https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3182219.msg32960262#msg32960262

Great question for a first post and a Jr. Member registered September 19, 2013, happened to have the answer ready and earned a Merit for it. Nothing to see here.

Although I do think DarkStar_'s cartoon sums it up rather well. If these accounts get sold to shitposters later on they'll be easy to spot and deal with at the time.

Users in the forum have to adapted to new ranking requirements of the forum due to merit system, in particular low-leveled members. As you said, I can not disagree with you that when spammers adapt, change their attitudes, start writing constructive, high-quality threads, then they will deserve merits. Merits will find them at the right time, at the rigth threads (of course high quality ones) by the right users (mostly high ranked users who has deeply knowledge, and skilled, experienced enough to evaluate threads' quality).
Generally, eventually merit system will change the forum to a better placen, and transform its users to better ones.
Congratulations, Theymos, you have done great work for bitcointalk forum community!

Have you ever use google to search and seek information for you answer a question the best you can?
Answering is not a problem for someone who can use google well, sometime people are just good on sentence construction (or perhaps you are jealous of their talent too?), some people like to read before they make their post don't blame them if they almost read 25% of the past thread in a day compared to you, well the fact that everyone has a smurf account here is not deniable, it is all about how you carry it.

merit is purposely created to make all our post somewhat quality, now you are asking why some newbies are doing it? tsk tsk, oh please!!!!

Surely there aren't people here with more than one account. :)

I must look at that known alt section, I didn't know about that.

OK - I give in, where is that section?

What if it's the other way around? The merit system made you notice the few Newbie accounts with great posts! Before merit, I almost instantly assumed Newbies were spammers, since there were so many of them actually spamming the forum. Now, thanks to merit, I can easily distinguish between the spammrs and the few Newbies whose posts I'd like to read.

I can only think of a small number of Newbies I've noticed. But their merit makes them stand out.

Mission accomplished said a random sticky boy to a known cam girl > alia <. I have posting a lot lately in meta, hence I have decided to distance myself from meta and merit etc. even if I post useful stuff. nobody would merit me. because there is no merit for generic discussions. don't expect to get merits simply because you are on-topic with no broken English. unfortunately for 70% of forum members there will be no ranking up to earn money. established members will compete with each other but will rank up rather slowly.

This is going to be a place for the established members with years of actively posting on this forum. it would mean that you should expect to rank up like always, after establishing your self in this community. there are some strangers among us without any regards for Bitcoin. they have heard the sound of money, they have been here to post and earn. if you ask them for a Segwit address, they will give you a legacy address. for years they haven't learned something as important as Segwit. they have to go. don't help them to learn, they've had more than a year to learn, they didn't because they are not our blood, they are outsiders and trespassers.

They need to go, established members should stay. there is nothing for you if you are not learning while spending your time here. spend your time and show that you have learned something. you will become that established member, you'll have respect from your kind, you'll support each other. merit is forcing the outsiders out. go and never come back, we don't need your constructive English post, Millions of people could make good posts in English, that is not what we should compensate for them with money. you don't get to earn thousands of dollars because you are born in an English speaking country.

Note: OP is talking about members like me.

If your alt account writes like this, I would be surprised if you didn't earn merits, as your English isn't that bad.  I've also seen lower-ranked members getting merits, so it just isn't true that they're not getting them.  Everyone needs to realize that the merit system was introduced at the end of January, and this is the last day of March.  That's two months, which really isn't a long time.  It's obvious that people are here only to earn money because of their obsession with ranking up and how difficult it's become. 

On no other forum would this be an issue as talked about as it is here, and the only thing fundamentally different is the presence of signature campaigns.  The culture here was established long before I got here, and it's one that does not respect people who become a member just to get paid, or who post nonsense in broken English.  All the bitching in the world isn't going to change that, and replacing that culture with garbage spam is not an option that Theymos wants--hence, he introduced the merit system.  I'm sure he's reading some of this, and I highly doubt he's going to change the system based on a bunch of whining spammers.

Although that is a game for those that despair about this system

but in the other side, it probably that is a new account for them that their old account has been banned.

I think in this forum have team to destroy them that cheating. Actually they're the beginning of this system damage that is not running like it should.

Ok I'm going to try and understand what you just said. But I doubt that their accounts have been banned as that would be ban evasion and if they are posting good quality posts then it's unlikely that their old account got banned.

Usually newbies make poorer posts than more experienced members or at least that's what you would expect but there are exceptional instances such as Nullis which is probably an alternate account of a more experienced user but I think it's unfair to assume that all knowledgeable newbies to be experienced members it's one thing being experienced in the forum and being experienced with Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Forum > Economy > Trading Discussion > Reputation https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=129.0

Known Alts of any-one - A User Generated List Mk III (2018 Q2) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2544574.0)

Isn't it nice to have newbie accounts who made and posted lines with creative information they obtain from reading?