Bitcoin Forum

Since the price drop last 2017, i did not visit the site very often and just rely on the coins i bought for hold. I temporarily focused on my business while waiting for the market to get back on its feet again. As month goes by, i noticed that the forum is slightly changing in time. Here are the possible cause and effects and i take it as an honor if you correct me if im wrong.

THE GREAT FALL OF MARKET
It all started with this one. Eveyone of us becomes devastated when the market consecutively drops from $14K to $4K in just few months. Some of us stay calm but many panicked and dont know what to do. The market become not that profitable so cryptopeople should find a way to still earn and that comes...


SIGNATURE AND BOUNTY CAMPAIGNS
People needs to survive even with the most difficult situation and one of the solution is to join signature and bounty campaigns which causes...


SPAMMING AND BURST POSTING
Just to achieve its post requirement and earn bigger but thats not end with that, people want more so they need


SMERIT
to have a higher payout. People which is greedy in nature obviously wants a higher payout knowingly it is just the source of income they depend on today. Do you think this is greedy enough? Youre wrong because there's more.


MULTIPLE ACCOUNT
ofcourse you can earn more if you have multiple accounts doing signature campaigns at the same time giving you double or maybe triple profit in just one blow. I know that because of the anonimity, this is possible.


This makes the forum flooded by shitposts that are just made in order to get paid on a campaign. Posts with no sense and doesnt solve the problem unlike before. Things really changed now.

The change I have notice is decrease in shitposting in boards much attention have been given like boards in the bitcoin subsection unlike before we now have less shitposters spamming those boards. I just hope the same thing can happen to the alternative subsection too, we need more spam busters on the board. That with a little bit of attention to highlight quality posts can improve the post quality in the board. It happened to bitcoin discussion board, it can still happen to alternative subsection boards

I'm just wondering if reporting has any effect in this situation (that you see less shitposts in the bitcoin section). And also, if there's any effect of the the well advertised reporting badge that will come in the near future sometime :P

Unfortunately, your evaluation of this forum and the changes that occur on it is overdue by at least a dozen months. Meanwhile, during the year (for which you were late) there were many changes - especially when it comes to the amount of spam and multi-accounts set up by users to create account farms.

Fortunately, phenomenon you wrote about has been noted several months ago by administrators who have taken appropriate action first by introducing a merit system which significantly inhibited the creation of new accounts and later modifying it and degrading users, who haven't earned even single merit.

It turned out that these activities resulted in a significant reduction in the number of new accounts as well as spam in the forum (this was also due to the decline in interest in cryptocurrencies since their prices began to fall). This can be seen, for example, here.

 Statistics of user registrations on Bitcointalk 2017-2019 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4685601.0)

Next time before you start new thread do some reading about topic you write (I'm sure that there are already dozens similar threads in the meta section).
As you can see, you were very late with your assessment and you will not earn merit for this post ;(

If the problem is in the signature campaigns, it can be resolved in less than 5 minutes, "Remove signatures", but such solutions will lead to large distortions as you can see the results here.

Over time, reliance on merit sources will make fewer merits for shitposters and therefore less spam. "We need to legitimize campaign managers to make things work."

No matter that the forum changed slowly or fastly, insignificantly or considerably over months since 2017, I have not seen your conclusions (in your opinion) that those changes are good or bad, positive or negative. I read again and again, but can not catch your general opinion.
Nope. Bounty hunters will keep joined campaigns, no matter which price of BTC
I saw patrol page tend to be improve better, and if you check topic on banned/ nuked accounts, there are more and more in the list over time.
What's the point here?
I don't get it here, too.
Things changed since the merit system announced and applied in January of 2018, not since the drops of bitcoin.
There are likely overlaps between them somehow, but changes in the forum, especially spamming mostly come from the merit system, bitcoin fall is just one of main reasons.

Since 2017?  The forum doesn't seem to have changed all that much in my eyes--certainly not those things you listed, anyway.  Then again, I don't venture out much into sections like Bitcoin/Altcoin Discussion where most of the spam happens.  I did create a thread in AC about PIVX, and apparently it got deleted but before it did, the only replies were two shitposts that didn't add anything to what I wanted to talk about.  Unbelievable.  The sections I do frequent, Meta & Reputation among them, haven't really gotten any better or worse although maybe Meta has become a bit more spammy since the merit system was started. 

The merit system is huge, and that is a big change if you haven't been here in a couple of years.  Post quality might have gone up because of it, but shitposting has definitely not gone down.  One thing that has changed since Jan. 2018 is that it is near impossible for members to rank up if they don't make really good posts.  Lots of people are stuck at Jr. Member with no hope whatsoever of ever getting above that rank.  That's an excellent thing, IMO.

I don't know what OP's point is about signature campaigns.  Those aren't new, but the number of new ones has actually gone down significantly.  The number of bounties has increased if I'm not mistaken.  And yeah, lots of alt accounts around here.  That's also not new, though.

You likely forgot about the demotions of Junior Members.
Enhanced newbie restrictions & requirements (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5030366.0)
Due to the demotions and new restrictions & requirements on Junior Member rank, lots of former Junior Members demoted to Newbies and stucked there so far.
They even can not move up back to Junior Members because over months they have not been able to earn a single merit.

The saddest change for me is a reduction in the activities of some of the quality long term members.

Bitcoin is so important in the new world economies, that we need to retain these members, and to attract some more senior industry personalities.

I already do not remember how the forum looked before all of those changes. But i can say that now i meet super short posts really rearly . That may be called as effect of changes, is it?

Yes it did. These shitposters get paid to post and when their post get reported & eventually gets deleted their posts counts reduces that means, they won't meet the post count requirements for the week and possibly they won't receive stakes (payment) for that week or less number of stakes. Now, most of them shifted their activities (spamming) to other boards with less attention like the Alternative subsections to avoid such situations from occuring filling the boards with all kinds of spams.

Agreed, not much have changed since 2017 maybe accept the rise of ridiculous bounty offers.
In fact, if any change happened, I would say it was a change for the better. Amount of obvious scams was reduced, poor quality posts are harder to find, moderation seem to work a lot faster and I think that signature campaigns are still doing good. There are plenty of campaigns to join now, much more then it was a year ago. 

If anything, it was a great correction, not a downfall. We are still way higher than we were some two years ago (i.e. in April 2017). Let's recall as well that the historic rise of 2017 happened within just 3 months (September through December that year). In other words, if we want to see things in their true light, we need a proper perspective

And if we look at things this way, we are pretty well off overall


It has always been the case, and as I just said, the market had been higher than now only for a few months


This has more to do with people getting to know crypto as well as learning about opportunities that it offers (including posting here)


People need to provide better content if they want to earn more. This is kinda normal


If you are enrolled in a high-paying signature campaign with the max post count of, say, 50 posts, you won't be able to use many accounts as long as you care about the quality of your posts. Otherwise, you will soon get kicked, so it is not worth the deal and risks involved

Add de-merrits so we can downvote people who posting FUD. They will think twice before shitposting.

It will just bring chaos. Example: CH (or his group?) will just de-merit suchmoon, TMAN, Foxpup, and other people on his list of system abusers.

Maybe they just got fed up and decided to retire. They got married, got children and are now enjoying their bitcoin retirements far away from here. Real life issues and problems kicking in.  :( 

Seems fair, it will be a burden for everybody especially for newcomers. Perhaps redesign the trust system.

Ore when a moderator deleted a post that person receive -1 merrit, also noted below his total amounth of merrits so everybody will see how many post has been deleted. Next issue will be; can mods be trusted that they will not abuse it.

It makes me quite a bit curious how some of the sort of more reputable names I've been seeing in the past(2017-ish) went away with the bear market. I mean, these reputable and more-knowledgeable people are probably the last people we would expect to leave in a crashing market.

So long as groups of do nothings are empowered to team up and chase away those who are actually contributing to the use cases of Bitcoin, this trend will not change.

Bitcoin is changing at the moment, well it's use case is anyway. Lightning is making a big difference, and the investors who are considering buying Bitcoin as an addition to gold are causing market shifts. The discovery of tungsten in the good delivery bullion bars of the LBMA may cause some dealers to look at Bitcoin as a more reliable exchange mechanism, and this could have a massive influence on the price. All of these factors are interesting to me, and I hope that we can encourage some of the "big hitters" to join the forum.

Alt coins seem to be sorting themselves out as well. I read that 98% of the alt are fraudulent rubbish, but that leaves 2% that we should be analysing, and using. It would be good to discuss these, as I don't know too much about them.

The scams and the most shitty ones are definitely dying out slowly but surely, but yea, some are still up and even on the top 15 unfortunately(I'm looking at you, Tron). They're still getting so much money from people in the cryptocurrency space for some reason. I actually thought that these would die out in the bear market. I was definitely underestimating the ignorance of a lot of people.

Regardless, we should really expect that new scams and new shitty ones are going to arise on the next bull market though. I don't see them going away anytime soon.

Well for sure, a lot of people were weeded out since then. Only a handful of newbies remained and most of them are learning the ropes of crypto and this forum as well.


This has always been a problem even before the 2017 bull run commenced, and mind you, it was already worse before we end up introducing the merit system and some more changes in the forum, so I don't think this has changed one bit.


Same point as the above, and I'm pretty sure it's being handled pretty well.


Merits are somewhat hard to come by especially if one is not a quality poster, or haven't spewed up some interesting information that could help other people in this forum. Aside from the change in the forum's system, not much has changed since in this field.


Heh, multiple accounts are easy to spot now more than ever, and people who are doing this are basically just being banned from campaigns and doesn't receive merits from other users, just from their circle of farmed accounts. The forum has always been flooded with shitposts and rubbish, especially the altcoin section due to ICOs and airdrops. IMO, the forum has changed, yes, but not drastically.

These scams are set to die out eventually

It is just the new ones which are more pervasive, persuasive and highly seductive (as anything based on greed). On the other hand, it is the same as in any other field or domain, so we are moving down fast to the level playing ground with other industries, if I may say so

Anyway, if history teaches us anything, the dotcom era with its abundance of scams and shams ended at a certain point and never came back. In this way, it is a plausible assumption to expect things to level out eventually when the hype subsides and the dust settles (we are well on the way there)

I'm just wondering if reporting has any effect in this situation (that you see less shitposts in the bitcoin section). And also, if there's any effect of the the well advertised reporting badge that will come in the near future sometime :P
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I think that reporting doesn't have big impact. It's just a fight with consequences, not the reasons of spam. I think that fight with plagiarism have much bigger influence. But in general, main reasons why we see forum slowly improving is long bear market and merit system.
I think it's reality of every forum, online community - old members leaving it due to personal reasons - family, kids, job and lack of time in general. But at the same time we see quite many new quality members joined forum in recent years.

One of the changes I have noticed is the less traffic here. As soon as the market went crashing in 2018 and Bitcoin paying campaigns got affected and dried up, a lot of forum members went on the sidelines and occasionally visit here now. Again, the Merit system has also helped to curtail account farming. I should think we have less of shit posting now than a few years ago.

Yep. This makes Bitcointalk pretty much almost "seasonal". I really expect traffic to go back to how it was before, or even higher, as bitcoin's price goes back up. Back in late 2017, every time I visit the Bitcoin Discussion forum, there are always new topics being made.

In this case I think it's a good thing even if traffic got lower. Quality over quantity all day.

This post would have suited better if it would have been posted an year ago. All of the spams, scams, shit and burst posting occurred was more a year ago when compared to this year.
Since then a lot has changed for the better. Scams have reduced since the market was bearish. Spams have reduced since very less projects had been launched throughout the year.
Shit and burst posting has reduced due to the merit system. Overall quality of the forum has increased in the last few months in my opinion.

Just look at the people replying with signature campaigns. They will always increase the word count of the post with crap and repeat what other people have said. The post quality on this site is shit

Posting with a signature is being paid to post.

You can't find a successful PtP forum anywhere...

This is why I maintain that the Merit system is  bias and run on clique. You agreed with my post, yet you couldn't spare a merit. If this same post of mine were made by certain members of this forum (I will deliberately leave out their names. But you should know), merits would've poured in like rain.

God is watching...

I'm not God but I'm watching

Kidding aside, I totally agree with your point. And this is the sole reason why I gave you a merit (just in case). We can't actually expect any better as this is how the society at large works as people will always gather in clans protecting themselves by attacking or ignoring anyone not belonging. On the other hand, the Merit system is definitely the lesser of the two evils, the other evil (the greater one) is the whole trust system

Despite of those challenges Bitcointalk.org was able to survive over the years and we all know that there's a lot of things to improve but it can't happen easily. The post quality of this site are slowly getting better, and only those serious users will receive the reward of their hard work. Everyone can create their account on this forum and make some mess, its hard to control i believe but that won't last.

Bitcoin and bitcoitalk.org has strong relationships, they grown together over the past ten years (more than ten years). I saw interesting thing that sometimes when bitcoin crashed, there are lots of accusation that bitcoin is a fraud, bitcoin is dead, but you know what, I have not seen or heard anyone wrote that bitcointalk.org is a fraud. I have not seen such accusation. Bitointalk.org, in reality, has a very important position in the history of bitcoin, no one can deny the importance of the forum on bitcoin.

All you say basically points to the problem of bounty and yes, I agree with what you say.

The main reason is that the market continues to fall, resulting in when a new project enters the market, the price will decrease at least 10x less than the ICO price. As a result, the hunters should get 100 USD but in reality only 10 USD.

This small and disappointing income has resulted in many people looking for ways to get real 100 USD so that we can see many abusers.

Another change is that some campaigns do not allow newbies to participate. Newbie is labeled as a spammer, scammer, and low quality (I can understand why this rule was applied though)

Exactly true! Bitcoin would have not reached its all time high nearly $20000 in 2017 if bitcointalk.org has not been there for years, and has not been survived as well as grown solidly thorough so many crashes and challenges of crypto market. There are so many changes made in the forum within last 12 months or longer a bit. For example, we have some dramatical changes, including the merit system, the Default Trust Changes, and more actively nuking, banning accounts from both the forum's staffs, and reports from forum users. Together, we all contributed our hands to change the forum gradually recent months.

A coin/token or whatever, is only as good as the community that owns it. That also includes bounty hunters. The price also decreases because people dump their coins well below ICO price on unofficial exchanges so when a coin is officially listed it has already gone through a process of dumping and has a very low value. That creates a chain reaction of even more dumping because people become afraid that they will end up holding bags of nothing.