Bitcoin Forum

Yesterday, I check the profile and merit history of a certain member to see if he/she is abusing the merit system or not and saw that one of his/her posts that got merited is (Deleted/Off-limits/Ignored). I also checked mine and also found the same thing to a merit that I sent to a specific user.

I am assuming that the thread of that posts got deleted but what if a user posts something then he/she merits it with his high ranking account and immediately after that, he deletes that post in the account where he posts that in. So we will no longer be able to see if that post is merit worthy right?

Ideally, deleted posts should not get merits. If it gets deleted by a moderators, it is probably spam. If a merited post gets deleted by the poster, you also tend to wonder why. Deleted posts with large number of merits would be a red flag for me.

I've also seen one of those last week its a newbie account and already received 5 merits, one of those merited posts is deleted the rest is posted on a mega spam thread. I've reported the spam posts that got merited to our moderators except for the one that's been deleted. This thing should be fixed if a post is deleted either by the moderator or the poster the merit should also be deleted because it can be possibly use on for merit abuse. If a spam post is merited and then deleted there would be no proof of merit abuse.

If it is awarded before getting deleted then I think there is no way we could recover the merit sent back to the sender.

Well, I ought to wonder why too and the only reason I could think of is a merit abuse but it would be too suspicious for that poster if most of his merited posts are deleted right? Although we will have no proof of the quality of his posts.

Not all deleted posts are indicative of merit abuse, but many deleted replies may be considered an index rather than evidence.
Imagine the following scenario:

 1. you create a high-quality post, someone gives you merits.
 2. a lot of people post on the same topic, the topic will contain more than 200 replies and has not locked.
 3. with a large number of answers moderator review this topic and delete it "too many spam posts."

Do you deserve tagged/negative trust?

Currently, the merit history has been available for only the last 120 days. This is a change which was made several days ago, no more than two weeks.
Additionally, the merit system need to be adjusted somehow. With current data statistics of merit red tide are, if those abused ones don't be found within the period of 120 days. It means those abusers are safe. I don't think it's fair.

Especially if two users send high amounts to eachother, both posts get deleted, and they barely send anything to other people.

As far as I know, you can't merit a deleted post (I didn't test it though).

I just checked my merit history: I've received merit once for a post that has now been deleted, and I've given merit five times to posts that didn't last. One of them was a scam warning, it deserved merit because it was worth reading, and it was obvious the thread would be deleted the moment a moderator saw the thread reported.
I must say I'm now curious which posts were deleted after I merited them. Most of them had the entire thread trashed.

If I exclude the scam warning, only 4 posts merited by me got deleted. Out of a total of almost 300 transactions (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3078328.msg36281415#msg36281415), that's less than 2%:

Deleted/Off-limits/Ignored on merit history can be of some reasons:
   1.   You replied in a topic with low quality post but your reply has a “Quality Post”.
   2.   You have a Quality Post topic, with so many OT reply.
   3.   New forum guidelines can also be a factor. Like “service merit” are now being remove.

You cannot delete your own topic, only staff/moderators can do it. In terms of investigations for merit abuses, staff can still see their posts; we are just off-limits to see that board.

But what if it is your own reply? We can delete it.

Well, technically yes, you can't merit a post if it is gone already because it is deleted or am I missing your point here? Because I got confused on how you will test it tho.

Sooner or later, those abusers will run out of sMerits to send to their ring of accounts and eventually we will encounter those accounts. There are a lot of reports for merit abuse in the forum and a lot of people has been banned, so you don't have to worry.

You are missing a point, Kim Ji Won.
Actually, you can't delete both your threads and your topics in serious boards, like Meta.
However, you can delete in other non-serious boards ^^
What you can is moved your topics/threads to archived. That's all.

As far as I know, the deleted post or topic are not being erased from the database immediately and can be restored on the Simple Machine Forum. You should ask the administrator, is it possible to check out if the deleted post was worthy of giving merits.

I agree with you, the deleting a posts can be used to abuse a merit system of the forum.

In my opinion, this staff should be able to see the deleted posts. But still the person abusing merit system and deleting the posts gets an advantage that members will not be able to see and report this. If everyone starts doing this, then it will become very hard to find out merit abuse. Even if someone starts reporting cases when a member is deleting posts, staff will not have the time to check so many cases.

Could deal with it easier, if a person decides to delete his/hers merited post, notification should be popped with the warning, that merits will be removed and returned to the sender. If a moderator deletes a whole thread, merits should stay.

You are right we won't be able to see the post but we can still see that he/she give merit to his account and because of that it will be an evidence if the higher rank account is his main account ang giving merit to his alt account is will lead to merit abuse. I think there are already problems like that reported to mods. It may be checked if he abuse the merit system because there is a log that is listed every member who give merit. Merit Summary of a certain member.

It has been discussed on the Meta section and, of course, can be interpreted under two different points of view:
1.- This is a new kind of farming-accounts system. This is easy: you create anything with your alt account, merit this and then delete the post, for you will never be able of being accused of being merited by writing garbage. I'm afraid it is efficient for those with alt-farmings-accounts.
2.- From the last month mods have been really actives and they have moved/locked/erased many posts, including some with useful quotes. Maybe many merited posts were deleted as a collateral damage, but we will never know.

Some users are talking about losing the merit you had if the post is deleted, but this is not implemented yet. In my case, I rather prefer for them to implement a "Report possible merit abuse" button in each profile section, for merit is not moderated and I think it should be. Many merit accusations have no fundament, for instance in local boards, where there are fewer people, they merited each other, yes, but, as I have seen, the merits are well-deserved in many cases, and there is not farming at all (for instance, the spanish local section, in which you will find many useful posts made by few, and of course, they merited the quality). That's why the profiles should have this kind of button, and merit system should be moderated due to the increment of farming activity.

Tag these members with deleted posts, if they have traded merits and then deleted their posts. you can't just reverse merit transactions, what happens if
They have already used their merits on other accounts? if I give you 50 merits for a garbage post and you give 25 merits to a high quality post.

Reversing the first transaction would cause all the other transactions to be reversed. you should tag me for sending 50 merits to a garbage post. I will also start tagging people for such cases. merit shouldn't be used on your friends, you shouldn't send 50 merits to somebody just because you know them.

If theymos is the only one to decide which merit transaction is abuse and which one is not, he should intervene in all the cases.

The only situation that could lead to that suspicions is, if there are a trade of merits occurred between the accounts involved. We can trace back the merit to its original high ranking account but it will be unlikely to happen as they became smart and they know that it could be trace this way.


This idea is the best solution that will solve these cases.