Bitcoin Forum

I know theymos has no interest in knowing what rank get what bounty stakes in signature campaign but truth is that everybody agrees that signature campaigns are the main root cause of spam.

So I checked various bounties thread and my understanding about stake ratio in a campaign as follows:

Jr. member : 1 stake
Member      : 2 stake
Full Member : 3 to 5 stake
Senior Member: 4 to 6 stake
Hero  member  : 6 to 8 stake
Legendary        : 8 to 10 stake  (in some cases they are treated equivalent to hero only)

It simply look like 2 Jr. member bounty stakes are equivalent to Member  and bounty stake of 5 Jr. member are equivalent to full member.
But Full member requires to get 100 merits while it just require 5 merits for 5 Jr. member.
When you start comparing rank of Jr.Member and Member vs other higher rank , you will clearly see that  bounty stakes are favoring multiple small ranked account instead of one high ranking account.

My personal belief is that it might encourage spammer to create multiple account and get few merits by hook and crook for that account and start one more  new account instead of focusing in posting etiquette and sincerely try to rank up.

I suggest that merit requirement for each rank   should be proportional to  the activity required (or bounty stakes, but look like bounty stakes also based on activity only (before the inception of merit) and still continuing on that old model)

With my above suggestion, I guess problem of spam generation by Sig campaign might be solved but it will cause new problem of ranking up in lower ranks like 25 merits for Jr.Member rank or 50 Merit for member rank.

To counter this problem , I will suggest to reduce the number of merit required to be half to activity for each  rank.
Like 15 for Jr.Member, 30 for Member, 60 (or 50)  for full Member, 125 for Sr.Member, 250 for Hero Member and 500 for legendary. Since airdropped Merits were given to maintain the rank earlier so we should half them also for maintaining the rank.

For ex. A senior Member at the time of implementation of Merit given 250 airdropped Merit and earned 100 Merit till now will be having 350 Merits and still still short with 150 merits for hero (assumed Sr.member full filled the activity criteria.) With new proposition, Airdropped merit will be halved that become 125 and member earned 100 merit, making total to 225 and now short of only 25 merits to become hero  (assumed Sr.member full filled the activity criteria.)

I think maintaining the linearity between activity and merit will discourage user to create multiple low level account for sig spamming.

 Edit: Look like some users are taking in another sense when I am mentioning the word bounty.  My whole intent for this post is to explain that current merit requirement still encourage alt account creation at Jr.Member/Member level  for bounty farming.

Why should the forum change its requirements to conform with some random bounty allocations?

Rather than lowering the requirements for higher ranks, I think a better way of combating spam would be to increase the requirements for lower ranks. Specifically, raising the merit required for Junior Member, and therefore displaying a signature at all, would do far more to reduce spam than making it easier to reach legendary.

LoyceV's data (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5032314.0) have shown us that the one merit rule has had a significant effect on spam. A 10 or 25 merit rule would be even better.

You can read bounty as "Activity" then.
When we says Jr.Member are spamming for signatures then activity based merit system will just discourage them to go on creating multiple accounts.
Anyway I guess bounty stakes basis was "Activity" only.

If you agree Signatures are cause of spamming then you have to create rules that can effectively counter it and it is not equivalent to "forum change its requirements to conform with some random bounty allocations"

Increasing the merit requirement for jr. Members without making any reductions anywhere else is the way to go.

Or just disable signature on Jr. Member rank since newcomers (aka people who genuinely interested with Bitcoin technology/discussion) who don't plan join signature campaign still need feature such as no PM restriction and can post images.

Forum should not change rules due to bounty stake. As you mention problem is signature. Why should increase or decrease merit system? As well as its working fine. Why not just remove signature space from Jr. Members. It has been suggested by lots of user include me. But eventually implemented 1 merit for Jr. Members. It's true that few spamming already reduced. But not fully and it's not possible. Because there is lot of existing user who got merit by Airdrop. A legendary rank by airdrop it doesn't mean he is a great poster.

However spam will never end but we can reduce it more. I don't think need to touch on current merit system for that. Just remove Jr. Member from signature campaign will reduce almost 70% spam (IMO).

You beat me to it with that post. I agree, and would add the point that most new and junior members are unlikely to contribute and boost the image of the campaign product. I know there are exceptions, but in such cases, it won't take them long to become members. The need to acquire knowledge to become a member will benefit both the forum, and the signature sponsors.

I am not sure whether theymos like to disable signature for Jr. Member or increase Merit requirement to 25 from 1 from Jr.Member.

so reducing Merit requirement for each rank is one of suggestion. Whether Merit requirement increase or decrease, it ratio of Activity vs Rank should be constant for all rank.

Agreed. The move to require 1 merit was a long time coming - I suspect it will be several months more before he even considers a further change. The Meta board has been filled with requests for more moderators for months, with no sign of any progress.

I do think it's more likely he would increase the merit required to display a signature than he would decrease requirements for other ranks and remove half the airdropped merit though.

This would only mean that the forum was meant for signature campaign which is absolutely wrong

Besides its illegal for an individual to enter a bounty with multiple account if caught would be penalized so that case is solved.

And if you check it the real bounties that pays in bitcoin accepts only high ranking members so there is a benefit to rise in your rank

And besides some individuals would focus on first getting the merits then after they must have gotten merit required to rise to there desired rank then then fall back to spamming just to match there activities to the rank.

I totally agree on this statement, it would be great if you suggest a better distribution of stakes for all ranks. I can apply it in some of my upcoming campings I guess.
Surely, the stakes are not maintained as per the difficulty of a level to reach as per merit requirements. And the same is applied by many bounties from a much long time.

Agreed,

I'm only wondering if one day the forum will apply like this:
need first 1 merit from others for Newbie to be Jr., wear the signature and post the image.
need first 1 merit from others for Member to wear the signature.
need first 2 merit from others for FM, Sr. to wear the signature.
need first 3 merit from others for Hero, Legend to wear the signature.

It does seem to undiscriminate against only newbies, fair and be spread evenly. And sorry, I don't doubt their our(Member rank & ^) quality one another. I just think this will give their our the opportunity for a while to prove that they we proper their our rank. :D


They won't do that if they remember that achieving their rank is very difficult.

In theory, yes, but we all know full well that most altcoin bounty campaigns will accept anyone - shit posters, plagiarizers, alt accounts, etc. The bounty managers do not care enough to check. Just like the bounty participants, they only care about being paid, and not at all about whether or not they make half the forum unusable in the process. Hell, some of the bounty managers enroll their own alts in their own bounty.



Again yes, but these bounties aren't usually the ones responsible for the majority of shitposting and spam.

Yes plus, make it retroactive like the last time.
5-10 merits are the way to go.
Actually, if one jmember is banned it requires only1 merit to rank up again with a  new account. If we increase this level to 5 it will be harder to rank up abuse, buy/exchange merit and the spam will decrease.

It is still too early to judge the utility of the merit system, so it is wrong to modify it without a study of the consequences.
Perhaps making the upgrade harder, "especially for lower-ranks" makes the forum similar to sections such as Serious discussion.
The goal is not to prevent members from ranking-up but to encourage them to create more meaningful posts.
Adding solutions such as deMerit would be enough to solve that problem.

Is it just my impression or the Merit system wasn't put in place to reward more stakes to bounty hunters with more merit?
Probably I'm missing something here...

The moment we change the rules to fit the bounty/airdrops/whatever we probably should simply close the shop.

But you cannot deny they are bringing problem and where you read that forum rules do not allow to take part in bounty with multiple account?
It is just frowned. Do you have any idea that how much effort is required to caught all these abuser and all this is a voluntary work.

Instead I will say if it takes 25 merit to Jr.Member then instead of going back to spamming in first one and try to achieve 25 in second one look  stupids. It will be better for forum and user that user will try for next 25 Merit to become Member. In current situation many user are suspected that they  purchased
1 merit.



I am not sure what are the exact challenges BM faces in this forum but I can suggest you have stake tier based on merit like this .

1 stake for Jr. member but 1.5 stake for Jr.Member with more than 5 merits.
2 stake for Member but 3 stake for  Member who earned 10 Merits(means somebody become member by earning 10+ merit or  user who was already member at merit system implementation now having 20+ merit will have more stakes than other members)

You can go on creating this chart for all ranks.
BPIP (https://bpip.org/) tool can help you to understand that how much merit a user has earned and how much merit was airdropped to user when you click on user profile and you will see the chart of merit of that user that explain current and merit received. Current Merit - Merit received will give you the value of airdropped merit.






Closing your eyes  is also not going to help you. If you re allowing bounties here then you need to formulate rules for them too.



On top of it, Some got that one merit for whining . If you see B&H closely, Every week somebody open a whining/how to get merit thread. Unfortunately they get successful too in getting that one merit. 

As much as I want to get enough merit to become Hero/Legendary, I disagree with this suggestion. This is the problem for bounty managers, not forum's staffs. If I'm not mistaken, @theymos did consider to separate rank and signature limitation. This separation might be a better solution since Legendary shitposters cannot get benefit from their legacy rank anymore.

I don't like the idea of further discrimination towards newbie and jr. member. Why? Because there are shitposters in every rank and you will drive away good newbies.

So you want to distinguish between Merit based on the source it came from? I don't think that will ever happen: all Merit should be equal.

I think the idea is to require at least that much earned merit (not airdrop) to be able to wear a signature. I kinda like that. I'd make it a requirement per time period, e.g. 1 merit per 3 months or so, to further devalue farmed accounts.

Totally agree with this suggestion. It would level the playing ground for all members of this forum who want to participate in bounties at-least merit wise. Very many underlook certain ranks and think it's only Newbies and Jr. Members who do shitposting since they constitute the biggest number of those trying to do bounties, but honestly I have seen full Members and Senior Members who have never attained even a single merit since the system was put in place(all they have is Airdropped merit). All they post is only garbage to fulfill their weekly post count for signatures.

Maybe the top forum admins would just make it a rule that bounty managers must follow certain criteria when awarding stakes, those that don't do so shall be considered to encourage spamming and risk their bounty thread being deleted by mods if reported.

That'd be great considering the amount of earned merit required should be proportional to the Rank applying for i.e.
100 for Legendary
70 for Hero
50 for Snr Member
30 for Full Member
20 for Member
10 for Jr. Member... Since that'd also be equivalent to x10 of no. of stakes most managers assign to each rank according to the OP.

Honestly, I haven't seen its equal enough, and maybe you passed this :

and that is mostly (or entirely) done by the newbie.

I've also seen a little change from some of the newbies by trying to make more goodquality posts spread in all sections of the board (although some were caught due to plagiarism from other sites or members). Meanwhile...

They are dominating altcoin ANN boards which only support posts for shitcoins and it won't change anything in this world.

This forum is so wide, and I don't see a lot of Members rank^ in every section of it.  Only full of newbie posts that some people think are boring.

If you could know, a BM manager on this forum can face much problems like spamming as bounties board is on of the most spammed from all of them and most number of bots operate there. We have faced situations where people just ruined the campaign with multiple bots.

Still I like your suggestion about increasing the stakes earned to the members who have earn extra merits than airdropped once. As per your suggested distribution of stakes I have managed to put some figures in best proportion to each rank and merits earned.

This is the list of stakes to be awarded according to the earned merits.

---

Jr.member - 1 stake

---

Jr.member ( 5 earned merits)- 1.5 stakes

---

Member- 2 stakes

---

Member ( 10+ merits earned) - 3 stakes

---

Full member- 4 stakes

---

Full member ( 15+ earned merits) - 5 stakes

---

Sr.member - 6 stakes

---

Sr.member ( 20+ earned merits )- 7 stakes

---

Hero member - 8 stakes

---

Hero ( 25+ earned merits)- 10 stakes

---

Legendary- 10 stakes

---

Legendary ( 30+ earned merits) - 12 stakes

---

Your suggestions in readjusting this stake rewards would surely be appreciated. I am trying to make the process more awarding for the deserved members also it will attract some high merited users to the campaigns.

That's a good idea.

Also offer:

Jr.member - 1 stake
Jr.member ( 5 earned merits) = Member = 2 stakes
Member ( 10+ earned merits) = Full member = 4 stakes
Full member ( 15+ earned merits) = Sr.member = 6 stakes
Sr.member ( 20+ earned merits ) = Hero member = 8 stakes
Hero ( 25+ earned merits) = Legendary = 10 stakes
Legendary ( 30+ earned merits) = 12 stakes

Your ideas look good, but it should be adjusted a little bit.
Something like this one, increasing merits required for each rank, higher than required merits at the beginning of merit system.
It means users have to earn at least 1, 2 or 3 merits by themselves from their constructive threads or from merit selling ( ::)) in order to maintain their ranks.
If they are unable to do this, they will be automatically demoted, like Junior Members in September this year.

---

If the suggestion will be really implemented, we will definitely witness a massive wave of demotion from higher ranked users, from Full Members to Ledgendary.
We might see a shocking events in the forum, one of the biggest shocks since the start of bitcointalk forum, including the implementation of merit system, and this one (if occur).