Bitcoin Forum

There's long been a problem of spammy bumping being used to keep topics near the top, but lately it's become unbearable. Therefore, on these boards, bumping has changed:
 - Service Announcements
 - Announcements (Altcoins)
 - Tokens (Altcoins)
 - Bounties (Altcoins)

Topics are no longer ordered by last post on these boards. Instead, each topic has a bump score which is calculated based on recent "bump events". Posting in the topic once per 7 days increases the topic's bump score. Clicking the new "bump" link (near "watch", "print", etc.) once per day increases the topic's bump score up to 100x as much, but it also decreases the power of your future bump-link-clicks for 30 days. Neither action is guaranteed to bring the topic to the top, since it only increases the topic's score.

I can see several things about this which may not be ideal, so adjustments will likely need to be made, but something is probably better than nothing.

---

What you need to know

 1. Don't worry about it too much. If you behave as normal, you'll do OK.
 2. If you like a topic and you see a "bump" link near the "watch", "print", etc. links in a topic, click it.
 3. If you've been spam-bumping, knock it off, since it's not going to work anymore.

---

Technical details

Base bump power

Your base bump power is the smaller of these two values:
 - The activity you would have if you'd signed up 1 year ago.
 - The merit you've earned in the last year.

If it's zero (as it will be for newbies), then you don't bump at all.

Mini bumps

If you haven't posted in a topic in the last 7 days, posting in it adds 1% of your base bump power to the topic's bump score. Deleted posts count against the 7-day limit, but not the topic's bump score.

Super bumps

Once per 24 hours, you can click a topic's bump link. When you do this, a modified bump power is calculated as something like your base bump power minus 15% for every super bump you've done in the last 30 days, and this is added to the topic's bump score.

The exact contribution is b*(1-0.15*^s/_b), where b is your base power and s is the total you've contributed to bump scores via super bumps over the last 30 days.

Bump score

A topic's bump score is affected by the above two actions over the last 36 hours. Each action's effect decays linearly over the 36 hours, so an event which contributed 1 at the beginning will contribute 0.5 after 18 hours.

Topics with equal bump score (such as topics which haven't been posted in for 36 hours) are sorted by last post time.

Non-default sorting

On the targeted boards, sorting under this scheme is the default. You can go back to the older sorting by clicking the "last post" column header twice.

On the non-targeted boards, you can see the sorting under this scheme by using a link like https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=1.0;sort=bump;desc . I'm not sure if this is at all useful. (It's also possible to super-bump topics on these boards, though there's no real incentive to do so.)

Non-publicity of data

For now, I am intentionally not making it public who bumped each topic, since that way you can't prove that you bumped anything, and this may prevent people from selling their bumps as easily. I don't particularly object to making the approximate bump scores or bump powers public, but I didn't do this yet.

---

If you find bugs, PM me.

Those screams you're hearing are bump-farmers grieving their "business". Great news.


Can you at least make their own bump power visible to each user? Might help with debugging.


So this basically means maximum possible bump power is 364?


Mini bumps don't reduce one's bump power, right?

---

The biggest takeaway for me so far is that zero merits == zero bump power.

I think it will still encourage certain users to sell their bumping power. Like if one dubious member realizes that he/she has good bumping power. Nothing can stop him/her from PMing different project thread starters with screenshots that they can help them bump the thread for a price.

I think it's for the better it remains mysterious

You just used your new-found powers to bump this to the top:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5183454.msg52420105#msg52420105

I would have thought more active topics with more posters would have higher scores than a topic with 2 posters, one of them a newbie.

And of course the fact that critique posts bump the topic is an unfortunate side effect. Most of my own bump power will be wasted on various scam coin threads.

Maybe later. If it's shown somewhere, I'm not sure where to put it.


Around that. It varies slightly depending on how the periods line up. It's as if you signed up exactly 365 days ago.


Correct.


I don't think that people should worry about this. If you're exposing problems, then it's good for it to be bumped for a while. (And if it's self-moderated, then the poster has some incentive not to delete your post, since doing so undoes your bump.) If the poster wants exposure more than anything, such that they're happy you posted to criticize, then - once people get used to this new system -, the topic will probably already have a much higher bump score than what you're contributing.

Another opportunity for few users to start complaining about this change. By the way, this is a realistic move which was needed to take control of these boards. Good job theymos.

There will be no more newbie accounts with first post saying that, "This is a great project and I am selling my kidney to join it" :-P

It feels a bit backwards that my most recently super-bumped thread gets the least bump power. Maybe I just need to get used to it.

If I got the formula right:

First super bump ~364 "points"
Second ~309
Third ~263
Fourth ~224
etc

Because it's a rolling 30-day period (like source merit), I think that eventually people will end up with a fairly consistent super-bump power depending on how often they tend to do it. Note that super-bumping as often as possible always increases your overall effect, even if your one-off effect gets limited.

Does it always increase though? It seems to top out at ~6 * 162, but if I bump e.g. 30 times a month my super-bump value is only ~3 so that's only ~90 per month total, unless I messed something up in my math. The mini bump seems more valuable at that point.

You can do both mini bumps and super bumps -- they don't interfere with each other. If you try to ration your super bumps, then you're just throwing some of that potential effect away.

Hmmm... equally spacing out super bumps over the course of the month seems to result in a lower total bumping effect than e.g. sending a bunch of superbumps in one day, waiting 30 days and 1 minute, and doing it again.

By "effect" I meant "total bump score contributed to good topics". By that measure, your two scenarios are equal assuming the same set of superbumps.

If your goal is to be able to occasionally try to ensure - with highest probability - that some topics are at the top for a few specific days (before your contribution decays), rationing like that could make sense. On the other hand, if your goal is to try to continuously keep some topics as high as possible, you would want to spread it out as evenly as possible due to decay.

But really, people should just superbump good topics whenever they think to do so, and not worry about this sort of strategizing.

Will these changes be extended to some boards such as Digital goods (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=93.0),  Invites & Accounts (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=234.0), Services (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=52.0), and local boards (Announcements (Altcoins)/tokens)?

Are there any changes to the old topics in the discussion boards? Those with dozens of pages.

I'm not concerned that much about my own bumps, just looking for loopholes that farmers could exploit. It looks like if they have ~30 high-merit accounts they could keep one or two threads super-bumped to the front page. Likewise if they have a bunch of high-merit accounts they could also mini-bump multiple threads. That might be more feasible since mini bumps don't cost anything (other than maintaining earned merits) but they would need a lot of accounts to overcome the 7-day limit.

Those sound like very costly scenarios so likely not a big deal.

I don't think this is correct.

If you assume someone has a starting base bump score of 100:
On month 1, a forum member can make 30 superbumbs, and collectively add 660.68 to bump scores.

If the forum member made one superbump per day, and continues doing so, on the 31st day, the additional superbump will add an additional 1.056 points. The same number of points will be added on days 2-60 because she will continuously have made 29 superbumps in the last 30 days immediately prior to making that day's superbump. The total collective bump score from superbumping this way is ~31.68 from day 31-60. If someone makes 30 superbumps on day one, waits 30 days + one second, the first superbump on day 31 will be worth 100.

---

I think this sorting should only be applied for topics last posted in the last x amount of time, and if not, to sort by the default last posted date. As a test, I was able to bump (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=98441.0) a topic last posted in 7 years ago, and someone else bumped (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174253.0) a topic last posted in 2013. By allowing very old threads to be bumped like this, you may be inadvertently be encouraging non-relevant threads to be nerco bumped.

Great change.. This will make it possible to actually find topics in the Altcoin sections that at least have some working teams/ intellect behind them rather than simply being bumped by "Reports" and such.
 
I stopped looking at the Altcoin sections because they are all the same. Now if the topics show some real intellectual possibility, they may become easier to spot. Whether the Altcoin section falls to farming or not will now depend on how many of the honest users actually spend time their. If the majority of honest users are maximalists or have given up completely on Alts (which seems to be the case presently at reddit and twitter), they will still fall back to the farms.

I have found a bug:

I created a sockpuppet account with zero merit and activity, testing321 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5183581.0), created a thread in service discussion, and moved it to service announcements. I am not sure if it got superbumped or not, but I presume not, and after moving the topic, it is the 5th highest thread (http://archive.is/w8ecs#selection-959.0-966.0). I am not sure how it is being sorted, but I don't think it is by bump score.

Will such a system be introduced in local sections?

My Suggestion:
Have this Message be pinned on Boards that applies this new rule.

2nd Suggestion:
Add another column for Boards that applies this new rule. Maybe between the "Replies" and "Views" ...
https://i.ibb.co/WHDhPcZ/Screenshot-20190911-143538.png
Or
Maybe beside the "bump" button
https://i.ibb.co/zP6Wnbr/Screenshot-20190911-143848.png
Or
Beneath under the Title of the Thread. (or maybe have another hover feature on the Title)

(img was caught by using on Mobile)

Admin already globally displayed the message, that is enough, in my opinion. After logging in, users will see it under their avatars.

Oh well, I just stated my suggestion for I think it's quite useful other than making it a news.
(Lazy Me: I didn't see that news actually, not until you've mentioned it, I rarely look at that portion of the forum,... 😅)

How about the Service Announcements(altcoins) board?
I think that board could also use this feature since it also sometimes attracts bumpers

Does this mean we should no longer report thread bumps to the moderator?

Not a Chance. There will be still crazy users that will stay using the old bumping method. So we You can still report them as usual. (we you should still report them) (I just report when I feel it so I don't consider myself to be one of you good reporters 😊)

Finally a solution to this problem. Thank you theymos. Looks a bit complicated at first but if I understand it correctly I should be careful where I post if I disclose a spam or scam so I don't unintentionally bump their topic. Sometimes I post just to follow whats happening on the thread.
Anyway I'm closing my other thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5182784.0).

Are there any intentions to bring this to other subs too ?

I am explicitly thinking about subs which are for information exchange (Development & Technical Discussion / Technical Support / Beginners & Help).
IMO this would make it way harder to keep track of all (new posts) in a topic where questions might have been asked.

Can we be assured that there are no intentions (yet) to bring that bump button to these boards which highly focus on the exchange of knowledge ?

You can sort by last post time with one click, even if this new sort order gets implemented.

You can also "watch" the whole board (https://bitcointalk.org/watch_board.php) so any new topic gets added to your watchlist.

I'd rather not do this. I include single topics into my watchlist where i know i might have to reply later (because of technical issues / questions / to help / etc.) and topics which i am interested in reading.
My watchlist is already large enough  ;D




You are right, i didn't think about that  ::)

That kidney part is really funny  ;D

Well that means newbies and thread pumpers will be forced to find another way

I'm selling my power bumps for 0.001 BTC a piece.

https://media.tenor.com/images/02dd636859fcd1b36d64b1e3eca00818/tenor.gif

No but seriously, its a great idea. I'm not going to be reporting self bumps in these sections anymore, which will cut down on my reporting by 90%. Sure the mods won't mind too much.

A day ago......


Theymos:
Hold my beer!

Stompix:
I think is great...altough I'm still not 100% sure if it's not exploitable in some way. When it comes to breaking rules some spammers are really creative.
I think I'll check some threads full of bumping and see if any of them make it back to the top page and if they do for how long!

LE:
Seems like it starting to take effect:

https://i.imgur.com/ZoXJoFf.png

Ps
@nutildah, lols!!!!

This can happen at the end like merit, ANN bumping, trust. But theymos will keep record the thread bumper and their statistics, so it's pretty easy to track down them and ban the user as well as trash the thread (this will also have a flaws). In that case, service fee may vary  :D

Unless I am missing something, which is possible, a potential issue I see is that a few people with a lot of posts and merit can band together to keep a pet project on top.

Odds are it's not going to happen, and I might be 100% wrong on how I am reading it, but couldn't a band of a few high post / high merit legendary users keep the davecoin post on top?

-Dave

Is there a reason Bounties (Altcoins)  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=238.0) isn't included in this list? Those topics get their exposure from spamming "Proof of"-posts, and if those posts don't bump the thread anymore, bounties that don't allow spam stand a chance too.

That was my first thought too. One could argue that was always the case, except that my post now has a much higher bumping power. It would be nice to be able to turn that off for certain posts. Or I may need to use my LoyceMobile or even LoyceBot for certain posts.

So you're saying you don't use the Watchlist yet? See theymos' explanation (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=121853.msg1311529#msg1311529).

Lol :D
Just like Merit, Trust and Flags, theymos managed to come up with something that I have to read several times to fully understand it's potential! I'm curious to see how it works out long-term.

Damn, I was thinking the same, if we can switch off the bumping option and post only comments as "newbie" or I have to create an alt for this (I hope not).
BTW the Bounty section also came to my mind as there is also a bumping competition, maybe it will be added too.

I bumped oldest (not locked) thread I could find and it seems working.

We should see how this is working in a few days, when spambies realize that their weather forecast discussion won't bump threads any more.

A logical update. But it will be interesting. I wonder how it works.

Certainly they will try, but it will be much more difficult than before, which is what is important.


Was it this one by any chance?

https://i.imgur.com/miUbS4K.png

I saw it and thought, hmm, maybe there's a bug introduced somehow, because the OP didn't bump it.

~30 high-merit accounts does sound very costly, close to impossible.. I think most people are lucky to have a single account with any significant amount of merit, and this is merit earned in the last year, so old farmed merit will go out of date and they will have to keep farming 30 accounts with fresh merit..
What they will need is a constant stream of fresh merit to retain their bumping power..

I think this also means your last years accumulated activity, like you have to have actually hit all of the activity periods in the last year to get your 365 max..


I think Theymos could add a way to sage your post if he wanted to..


It's getting to the point to where one needs to be quite educated in all of these systems to really understand how the forum works.. The users manual is getting thick but it's not even all in one manual.. Also the evil system, ranks and badges, account recoveries, captcha bypass, etc. before you even get into forum etiquette..
I don't mind this really.. It's another way to distinguish who has put in the time and effort to get to and stay in the know about it all, but past the point where I would expect any but the top users to understand everything..

Bitcointalk function quizzes sound fun, something like https://play.howstuffworks.com/quiz/can-you-name-these-engine-parts-a-onesentence-description..

Yep.

Hmm, this got me thinking a bit, especially because of the not locked part.

It will cost spammers a lot to bump their topics now, they will have to get merit, try to bribe members who normally won't risk their status for a scammy shitcoin...but, is something like let's call it the opposite also possible?

So, in this scenario older members with a lot of merits would bump old topics from now-defunct or not interesting coins purely out of spite for shitcoins (yeah I call them shitcoins, not altcoins or tokens) so that no new project will be able to make it to the first or even second page, thus sabotaging the entire board?



 

Do you think this is the best solution?



1/ Some of the smartest and capable devs in the alt section don't acquire much merit at all, some have hardly any. When they post an important announcement like fork or even something more time dependent then this will maybe not even bump the thread to the top or at all?

2/ Some people who like to unjustly attack and derail threads often are held back because they have to weigh this against bumping the thread and giving attention to it. Now they can do this by just registering an alt account and not worry about  the bumping aspect. Competing projects can just derail and keep spamming their "better projects" without worrying about bumping the opponents thread.

3/ MORE (untrustworthy and selfish reasons) negative and bogus reasons to apply merit to certain members who promote your fav projects now. The more financial incentive we keep giving to abuse merit (well you can't even abuse it in it's current form since it is totally subjective and even when the post is debunked clearly people still apply merits because they want it to be true ) the more it will just become used for selfish gain and nothing to do really with the objective MERIT of the post.

Seems rather crazy to keep heaping financial rewards on those that abuse the merit system successfully.

While merit is not anywhere near a reliable or safe metric we need to reduce dependency on those scores to the max.

The only objective metric we have is activity. Activity takes "the min same time" for everyone to accrue. Activity needs to be given max reward for positive and max punishment for negative behavior. You try to base anything off of a subjective easily gamed metrics alone and at the same time place reward  for successful gaming of it = folly.

Solve one problem, more problems will appear.

Get the foundation layer you are trying to build things on top of solid first and at least difficult to abuse first. You are building on quicksand right now.

There is no solution as good as an objective standard of moderation and rewarding and punishing of a  NON gameable  objective metric like activity. Use the min time required for all members to gain high activity as the basis for these systems. Merit is broken what more proof could you have than meta board lol.  

Higher activity higher bump power - with under 50 having zero. A small merit weighting.
Get caught in fake conversations ( a sensible and effective activity reduction and sigs turned off for a year)

Let's get merit to a standard that it actually represents anything tangible before we start giving more incentive to game it.

That's our suggestion. However, since you have not seemed to realize clearly that merit is used to create echo chambers and serve as a tool to ensure those controlling it use it for their own personal financial gain then we know it is near pointless to expect any kind of reasoned debate on it.

It is likely less dangerous to allow anarchy than to concentrate power and governance to a tight knit circle of proven scammers and trust/merit abusers. These are free now to increase their own power in many effective ways and punish in many effective ways any that dare to notice, accountable only to themselves. Thread bumping payments will be the next thing meta board gang will be into.

A for effort
D for net positive effect

probably better than doing nothing... perhaps.

Sorry just our honest opinion. Why not recognize merit is not a reliable metric and is actually dangerous?

It is possible we are not fully getting this new proposal this time, so feel free to debunk these points, since we are open to finding the optimal solution.

Sounds even more costly than keeping one thread bumped to the front page so I'd say it's unlikely but TBH what possible "new" project could genuinely be worth to be up there? If something truly innovative comes along (like Ethereum, Grin, etc) I'm sure there will be enough support to push it up.

I just checked the last page of some topics that are on the top of Announcements (Altcoins) board. Except a few ones, all of them include posts by high-merit users. Now at the time of writing a random topic which has posted in 2014 and has not received any reply is on the second place. I think one of high-merit users has bumped that only for testing. (It's great that it is affected only in 36 hours)
It's great that I can see the threads that are of interest to high-merit users.

two suggestions:
-Now the effect of clicking on the "bump" button is 15 times the effect of making a post on a thread. As a user can give bump score to a thread once per 24 hours by clicking on "bump" button and once per 7 days by making a post, the effect of clicking on the "bump" is much more.
I suggest to decrease the effect of super bumps.
-A bad review shouldn't help a thread bump. So, users should be allowed to make posts on threads without giving them bump score.

Edit: Now it's really difficult for new topics to be on the top. I think the effect of topic starter can be considered more. In this case, If a thread is started by a high-merit user, it has a more chance to be on top at least for 36 hours.

So basically this will mean that the Chipmixer ANN is going to be pinned on the top of the board for... for ever?
Or really, any ANN from a company where more senior members here have a vested interest in bumping the topic..?

Maybe an unintentional side effect, but that's really a massive advantage that they'd get over other companies/etc.
Or not... I don't know.

Bitcointalk seems to become more and more of an esoteric meritocracy.. Where people with higher ranks, or those who spent more time here, now also have a more powerful voice? Hmm. (Or am i understanding this wrong?)

As much as i disliked these threads with account farmers talking to each other, i don't know if such drastic measures are warranted, or if this is the right direction for Bitcointalk to move towards to. (Although i must admit: i haven't visited the altcoin boards in a long time, if ever.)

It is possible and it could create mess. Imagine, first 4-5 pages filled with old dead threads.

Solution for this could be to not allow "old bumps", for example, making bump button unavailable for threads which are older than X months/years and/or no one posted anything in last X months/years.

I am going to report you to your signature manager right now  ;D

85 times actually, but it decreases with every super bump.

Hmm, I don't think we have enough to fill a full-page, and the ones that have proven themselves have fled and are running their own forums, giving little attention to their original ann that made them famous.


The cost thing is a bit different here, or at least in my opinion.
Trying to bump a topic requires money, sabotaging the alt board requires hate.
And there is a lot of hate for shitcoins (yeah, I won't play the innocent kitty card here), and most of it comes from older members with a lot of bumping power...

And speaking of power, is it something wrong with my internet (I'm on 2g near a mountain top  ;D) or the topic bumped my marlboroza is still the second one on that page and the one he "mini bumped if I understand the term correctly is 4th?

Also, one tiny request to our friendly AIs, although I'm pretty sure we will see the stats soon, can somebody log the activity in the new boards so we can see the impact? If there will be any, of course.

Lol, until I read your post, I didn't even realize that thread is on a board that's influenced by these changes. And indeed, it's on top of Service Announcement (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=84.0).
I posted there before realizing it uses my new bumping power.

Mt. Gox thread is up there as well, so it balances out.

While the side effect may be providing long time users with an advantage, ultimately I think the primary goal is to restrict new users, simply based on the fact that it is simpler to set up sock puppets on newer accounts to spam. I am sure if it was possible to prevent abuse otherwise, Theymos would let noobs post without even logging in. Sadly that is not possible.

Longer time user = more advantage in bumping with no other consideration would be okay. There is a very very strong merit anchor to their advantage. So some of the devs there will not be able to bump their own threads and they are the most important announcements.

Legend members need earned merits or they are noobs now.

Merit is becoming a very financially rewarding metric to game and it is wide open to gaming. You really want old members that also have LOTS of earned merits if you want to push your project regardless of whether they make good posts or are valuable real members of your community. CHipmixer is going to do well and so are any projects pushed by the SAME GANG. This is going to push scampaign managers to not even bother with manual review of posting quality now.... projects will want MORE MERITS pushers now regardless of whether their posts are good or not. This defeats any idea of getting campaign managers to review people manually for post quality and trust not just accept gamed metrics. The projects will insist they suck up the gamed merits score junk.

It is good activity is at least included here, but merit is given too much weight again.

junior with some small earned recent merits now trumps legend developer even regular posting legend devs who just don't get much merits because merit sources " don't bother with the alt sections according to them since they have them on ignore " lol

We best get the devs of any projects and their key community members over to meta board to apply for merit source or at least get feltching for merits.

The incremental advantage to being a long time member stops at one year in relation to their ability to bump after a year. I don’t think it is unreasonable to give those who have been around less than a year a disadvantage for these types of threads. This favors more established businesses who are less likely to end in losses to customers.

The weather forecast discussions that took place in several threads were the lowest of the low type of bumping along with the one word posts in their fake conversations.

Got to laugh at spambies though  ;D





I have some concerns too if I am reading and interpreting the OP correctly.

I am not sure if those having higher ranks should automatically be given a more powerful voice by default. There can be a mechanism in place to select users as representatives by a vote based system but this should be fair and consistent if implemented.

Scammers will always find a way around any form of censorship so that should be at the forefront of the debate.

I love it, it's like we have three new board with really valuable information that I can peruse.  I even found some threads worth reading (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=740159.msg8362345#msg8362345) at the top of the Altcoin Ann board.

The only trouble is I'm tempted to reply to threads that haven't seen daylight since 2015...  ::)

Some are already using their powerbumps to bump shitcoins, it would appear. Some people have no shame!

Also its funny to see 3 Piston Honda comments on the first Alt ANN page  :D

I'm already enjoying this quite a bit.

That's pretty much the idea here. Multiple high-merit users - if you can get them interested in davecoin - constantly (keep in mind the 36-hour decay) posting in your thread or super-bumping it would result in a higher bump score, vs newbie spam farms bumping threads with fake "conversations". It's possible to game the system but it seems that it would be quite hard to do so and you still have to compete with popular projects that "organically" have high bump scores.

SWEET. 

I honestly wasn't expecting Theymos to take any action on the crazy-ass bumping fiasco going on in the ANN and related sections.  I figured it was going to remain the responsibility of the mods and the motivated members who do the reporting.  Great to see that Theymos came up with a pretty creative solution--and though it's long overdue, it's much appreciated.  This crap doesn't affect me in the least, since I haven't visited any of those sections in quite a while, but I'm well aware how most threads are being unscrupulously manipulated in order to keep them visible and thus attract the most suckers.  That's always been a bad situation.

Not surprising.  Anything that can be abused on this forum will get abused eventually.  And usually it doesn't take too long.

Me as well.

I just sorted the topics on Announcements (Altcoins) by the last post. 21 posts that were on the first page when sorted by bump score remained on the first page after new sorting. It's 64% of the topics on the first page. (The total number of topics that are shown in the first page is 33). This percentage should increase over time. Gradually, number of the spam posts that used to make on some topics decreases and posts shown when sorted by bump score and the last post becomes more similar with each other as spammers leave the board.

I think reporting posts within the last 36 hours could still be worth it as those posts can potentially affect the bump score.

We also need to keep an eye on the shitbumpers spilling over into other boards, like Altcoin Discussion,  Service Announcements (Altcoins) - this one should really have the new sort algo applied, etc. I don't think they will give up easily.

For example - covert ANNs in Altcoin Discussion:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5183790.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5183777.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5183667.0

Almost all of those shit posts on tokens threads are made by users that have not earned any merit in the last year and their bump power is exactly zero.
But generally you are right. Any one spams should be reported. No difference it affects bumping or not.

With that its more shity to find the Fake ANNs and the Malware posting idiots !

Sad   >:(  >:(

Bad move with that in my opinion  !

This thread was last posted in 2015: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=740159.0


How and why is at the top of the list in-between recently posted threads: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0


How does the new system make that even possible?


I am lost...

Lafu the following link displays announcement threads that are posted last. You can easily find and report them.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159;sort=first_post;desc

;sort=first_post;desc works for every other board/section

Thanks for that ! looks good !

But why make it easy when it goes difficult lol !

Some one has bumped it . There are two kinds of bumps. 1. Mini bump 2. Super bump
For mini bump you must make posts.
For super bump you only need to click on "Bump" button.
A high-merit user has likely clicked on the button. ( Maybe more than 1 user)
As the bump power decreases by time and becomes zero after 36 hours, such topics cannot remain on the top.
Some one has misused the bumping points or some one has tested it.

I am trying to find this but I failed.  :-[

What is mini bump and what it does? And how?

As theymos describes it, it's simply posting in the thread.  You don't reduce any of your bumping power by posting in a thread, but if it's the first time you've posted in that thread in the last 7 days 1% of your bumping power is directed towards the thread's bump score.

But, less exposure for them to the majority of the forum which is even better. You know the saying "prevention is the best cure"? I think that applies here, even if I don't tend to agree with it in theory its correct. Not many users will see those that are posting the fake announcements, and malware which should reduce their effectiveness against those that are unaware. Those that are aware report it, and it gets dealt with.

Look at the bright side, If it's hard for you it means also is hard to find for normal users that might fall for it, so fewer scams will happen BEFORE the topic will be discovered by either you or the mods and nuked.


What hosseinimr93 didn't mention it's the obvious conclusion that a superbump from marlboroza has more power in a super bump than all the users that posted (mini bumped) in any topic today.  ::)



Now, for you enjoying your popcorn while refreshing the altcoin page, imagine what will happen if this will be bumped by a heavy merited user (no I won't do it, even if I'd have to strangle my mouse to keep it from clicking  ;D (

GIVEAWAY - Cryptonium CRN (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=415077.0) January 14, 2014

It even says:

For sure it has some good things if there are some pump bots !

But whats better ?

Not seeing or find the Threads from the Idiots that make that Fake ANNs with Malware and trojan downloads and its possible they dont get tracked down ?

Or just see them easy on the first page and take action before someone fall into the trap ?

I guess i missed a few maybe already in the last weeks and month and maybe there are already some still alive !

Just saying its harder now to catch them and to find them and everytime to add in the adress " sort=first_post;desc " after switch between threads or search them is a bit crazy!

Anyway its just my opinion and as long its more positive for the Forum its good ! 

Sorry, but it's Biddlebaddleboo (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=379471.0) time!!!!


Looking forward to the sig spam.

Can the bump score change (aside from decay) after the bump event occurs?

For example, a zero-merit user posts in a thread and later gets a merit. Does the thread gain any bump score from that or not?

Can we implement a deactivate button for the mini bump? For example I dont want to bump this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5167679.msg52426587#msg52426587) when I post a comment if I'm able to deactivate my bumping feature and post as a newbie it would be perfect.
It can be restricted to one nonbumping post per 24 hours or something.

Mkaay...

Lets see if I get this right.

Lets say my bump power is 1000. My super bump increased thread's bump score by 100X and it went to top of page #1.

So, my bump power went down by 15% and it is now 850, but, if I post something in thread, that thread will get 1% of my based bump power or score 10.

If I bump several threads within 30 days my bump power will go to 0, but I will still "give" 10 points to bump score for 1 post in thread every 7 days.

What will this 10 points do? If 10 accounts give 10 points, will thread go to top if all other threads have score bellow 100, or?

---

edit: ok, I tested it and old thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=409506.0) went to page number #1, thread #24. Second bump did nothing, unfortunately, I can't remove bumps duo "rules about deleting posts in altcoin".

Thank you for the explanation. I still need clarification on something please, if I may....

From what I can see the way this is set-up is open to a different type of abuse, a kind of out of the frying pan and in to the fire type of situation because the bump-power can be purchased as well as mini-bumping still going on directly from posting.

This new strategy does not exactly fill me with confidence - unless I am missing something from the OP

Max power is 364 or so (limited by max activity in a year).


It will not go down to zero. It's reduced by 15% from the previous value, not by 15% from the original value, so something like this: 100% -> 85% -> 72% etc.


Those mini-bump points are exactly the same as the super-bump points so yes.


Only users who earned merits in the last year can bump and their bump power is proportional to the amount of earned merits and it's not unlimited. That's a HUGE difference from what we had before when any newbie could bump by posting any nonsense any number of times.

Oh, yes, I looked whole activity and rounded it to 1000.
That is base power minus 15% and then modified power minus 15%. This confused me a little:

---

I have to see this in combination with morvillz7z's (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5182187.msg52426410#msg52426410) post (@mod I promise I will delete posts).

He he great news :)
Thanks @theymos

I saw few of that BUMP tabs before I read this Topic,
but I was not sure what that is.

Let's see how it works in real life forum situations

PS
Would be nice to see dump option also  ;)


EDIT:
I think that Service Announcements (Altcoins) should also be added
and Bounties (Altcoins)

It's reduced by 15%


i.e. the 0.85 multiplier is raised to the power of super_bumps_last_30_days. So if you've done 3 super-bumps your fourth super-bump will be 0.85*0.85*0.85 strong or about 61%.

I've bumped a few threads in a row and each subsequent one is definitely getting a lower score, so it appears to work as described as far as I can tell without seeing the actual numbers.

Well that alleviates some of my concerns about the new system. I guess over a period of time things will become clearer as and when sock-puppet newbies post but they fail to pump the thread then hopefully they will give up and leave the forum.

I wouldn't sweat it, but the basics (as I understand them,) are your super-bump power is caped by your earned merit or your activity for the last year, whichever is less.  If you've been steadily active for the last year, and you've earned a boatload of merit you're base bumping power is 364.  If you've earned fewer than 364 merit in the last year, your base bumping power is equal the number of merit you've earned.  If you're activity for the last year is 14, and you've earned more than 14 merit, your base bumping power is 14.  Then the power of each user's super-bumps decays with use.  So it's somewhat exclusive to those who are active and contribute, and the decaying affect helps make it resistant to abuse.

But as theymos said:

So, there are two components to sort topics (by default option):
- Topic bump score
- Post time.
Between two components, topic bump score is the first priority.

Topic bump score depends on:
- Bumpers' bump power: depends on activity and earned-merits last year.
- Mini bump: through post
- Super bump: through bump button

It almost means that users with more earned merits last year have more bump power, because earning merits is issue, not earning activity.

I imagine that will we see another type of abuse, bump power abuse?
- Thread owners can pay fees to bump their threads, both through mini bump (posts) and super bump (bump button).
- If it actually happens, how will the forum deal with it?
With data on user bumping activities, that admin is likely has; and new rules added to unofficial rules of the forum, that I am not sure.

The minimum period between bumps to get maximum effects on bump score is 36 hours (when previous bump effects on bump score entirely decayed), so one user can sell their bump each 36 hours, or nearly 19 times per month (I use 28 days/ month for this calculation). I think it is still a significant effects, and might lead to another black market.
Do you know where the idea of bump button come from and when did it occur?

Wondering about one thing.

I guess topics are first ranked by "bumping" and then by latest post if I'm not mistaken.

Does this function's implementation mean that using posts to bump topics in said sections is now forbidden and should be reported?

Exactly. I mentioned above and theymos wrote in OP. Topics will be sorted by topic bump score first. Then if two topics have same bump score, they will be sorted by the second factor, which is latest post time.
It is what topics will be sorted by default options in those three boards, but if one want to use old sorting option, s/he can modify it by using non-default sorting.
I don't think posting will result in reports if users make good posts. There are two ways to bump topics, through posts or through bump button. I just don't know that bump through posts will be counted with "Bump!" posts (that is likely what you asked) or with "Contentful posts (not Bump!)" or both of them will be considered as bump through posts.

I read that. That's why there is an actual question with a question mark under that line. But thank you for your effort.

Since you've posted there already, I have a theory for you to test. Based on this:
The way I read it, you can delete your post so it still counts for the 7-day limit, but doesn't add to the bump score anymore. Then, you can post there again, and it won't add to the bump score because you've posted within the last 7 days already.
If it works, this is a workaround I can live with :D

Unless I misinterpret this, and theymos meant the bump score won't be reduced after deleting a post.

To level with you I was just being sarcastic and self-deprecatory, as it was my own ANN thread that I was referencing, for a coin actually named "Shitcoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=740159.0)." (It died in 2015  :'( ). I fully expect a new economy to form around the bumping of shitcoin threads going into the future.


I was just testing out the power of my powerbump, which is quite powerful apparently. Then two other people have recently posted in it, so its back in the #2 position. Maybe somebody else even powerbumped it, I don't know...

There are a few aspects I’m not quite sure on:

1)   Is the bumping score transferred to the thread taking into account all decimals, or is it truncated, rounded at some point?
i.e. A profile with 1 earned merit over the last year Mini Bumps a thread (by posting), and thus adds 1% of his base power -> 1 earned merit * 1% = 0,01 bump points transferred.

2)   Mini Bumps do not reduce the Base bump power, and I believe that Super Bumps do not reduce it either directly (since they use a “Modified Bump Power” base_power*0.85super_bumps_last_30_days).
That would mean that Mini Bump power is in no way affected by Superbumps. Is that correct ?.

I figure that monitoring is internal to the forum (which is probably good), although I don’t know how “abuse” may be detected/handled (i.e. people selling their bump power). There are, as of last Friday, around (I have not/cannot cross that with activity in that period of time, nor crossed against banned profiles):

109 profiles that have earned >=  364 merits in the last year.
122 profiles that have earned  between 180 and 363 merits.
184 profiles that have earned  between 90 and 179 merits.
308 profiles that have earned  between 45 and 89 merits.
454 profiles that have earned  between 22 and 44 merits.
1142 profiles that have earned  between 10 and 21 merits.
7913 profiles that have earned  between 1 and 9 merits.

From my understanding Modified bump power is calculated and is only used for super bumps. If the points users give to topics by mini bumps was supposed to deducted from the base bump power, It would be mentioned by Theymos as it is clearly mentioned for modified bump power which is affected by super bumps.

So,
1. Mini bump power only depends on base bump power. If you mini bump 100 topics, all of those 100 topics will be affected by a same point as long as number of your merits doesn't change.
2. Super bump power depends on base bump power and number of your previous super bumps. (That's why modified bump power has been introduced)

Thanks for the explanation. You have a powerful superbump, what a way to test the system  ;D

I had my finger on the 'bump' link on a couple of occasions to test the power of my bump but never pressed it. Am waiting for the right time to see what it does...

The Altcoin ANN section is in perfect order right now. An actual bona fide shitcoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=740159.0) is at the top.

---

I was trying to test it in this topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5160697.msg52426061#msg52426061

But I need to wait 24 hours to be able to delete the post, which means it will contribute to the score for at least that long.

---

Yes:

---

Posts can still contribute to bumping the topic but only if the poster has earned merits and only once per user per 7 days. Rules haven't changed AFAIK, so if there are multiple posts in a row you can still report them.

I think asche is referring to those posts that are made only to  bump a topic without any other purpose. For example some one just writes "bump" and post it.
Before these changes in bumping of topics, users were allowed to do this once per 24 hours. Are they still allowed to do that?

I think so as it can contribute to the bump score.

Can we still bump if we have 0 merits?

No. I mean you can post but it will not bump the thread.

I would be more happy if bump scores or any kind of proof that you bump a topic would remain private indefinitely since people will just take advantage of it just like whaf they did with the merit system. And you are right allowing a public data on this kind of system would just give members a chance to sell it as some kind of service just like what some other redditors are doing now on selling their upvotes.

This is a great and much needed change, especially to ANN and Tokens section. There's a lot of criticism and trying to understand how the system really works, but a great step forward towards legitimatizing altcoins on BTT once again.

I have now deleted the post but the thread remains where it was. Not sure if the change in the score was not sufficient for it to drop down the list or what. Based on this example:


I would have thought that deleting my own post should have changed the score.

Edit 20 minutes later: now the thread dropped to page 6 so perhaps it does subtract bump points of deleted posts, just takes time to recalculate scores. BTW Altcoin ANN page 6 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.200) is where the zero bump score threshold currently seems to be. The thread I was testing is total crap and likely has zero score and all the other threads around it are neatly sorted by last post timestamp so I guess they all have zero scores. All those fake conversation bumps that are still going on would get them no higher than page 6 ATM. Sounds good to me.

Another thought: AFAIK the 24-hour post delete limit in ANNs was implemented to prevent shitbumpers from deleting their previous bump. Now that the bumping system is completely different perhaps the limit is no longer needed.

This works both way: even without showing who bumped a topic, someone could still sell a bumping service. For example, someone could say: "Pay me $10 now and you'll see the topic bumped within 2 minutes". That would be enough evidence for the buyer to know the seller can deliver, while there's no evidence for spam-hunters to identify which accounts are being used.
If bumps would be public, it would at least be obvious which accounts are used, and unlike before these changes, bump services can no longer use worthless Newbie accounts. Once caught, they stand to lose their limited supply of accounts that earned Merit.

There are dump guys will sell their bumps, as some sold their merits with batches of 25, 50, 100 merits in early days after merit system began. If they are dump enough to sell their merits, their trust, they will be dump enough to sell their bump power.

Honestly, I don't have issues with such bump changes, and I think other good posters don't care. Why they should care about Bump changes while they only posts when they have good things to say?

I do believe that it has at least three main purposes:
- Reduce bumping spam.
- Help healthy topics get into places that belong to them.
- Catch abusers, and somehow eliminate or destroy their accounts.
We might see another type of Appeal: Bump Appeal. :P

But there is no real rule to how the bumping power is used. I mean, ethically there is, but distinguishing a "professional paid bumper" from a "I like the topic" bumper type (as in "News: If you like a topic and you see an orange "bump" link, click it. More info.") would be based on quantitative/frequency type analysis to begin with + view of what’s being bumped.

Determining someone as a "professional paid bumper" would be circumstantial or suspected really, with no clear objective delimiter where the balance tips to one side or another. Even if someone is deemed as such, what then? It doesn’t sound like a DT tagging derivate, nor is it banable as per the rules stand.

The alt ann board is looking nice! Nice coins on top..
I superbumped a few of em or so that I like and it worked.. I don't know exactly how much bump powers I posses but it's probably a good amount..

An account with good bump power is worth a lot, their is a lot to lose trying to sell bumps, so they will be expensive and rare I think..
It might not be obvious who did the bumping but you will probably be able to tell what threads are getting paid bumps when scammy crap gets on the first page..

I can't imagine this being a big business since it requires a steady flow of merits. I think it's fine to keep it hidden from the public. Nobody needs to know which shitcoins I'm bumping to the front page :)

I would prefer to have some visibility of my own bump power and super-bumps I've done in the last 30 days and mini-bumps in the last 7 days. No big deal though.

Yes, that was kind of my point. I think it would be better for this info to be kept indoors, as the opposite will inevitably lead to dramas based on subjective terms, with not much room for objectivity as to the intent. The system can always be tweaked later on to allow less number of bumps (i.e. less bump power) if anything weird is detected internally, although, as I said, intent would need to be inferred, and there is no clear path to that.

The numbers I drew-up earlier on in the thread do leave a bit of room for some to make attempt to make some sort of business from this for a potential of a few hundred profiles. It’s more of a technical feasibility that a factual situation I would expect from the majority.

Seeing one’s own bumping power would be nice though I figure, allowing those that intend to use it a better means of (self)control.

Should this implementation work as intended the big projects will be highly favoured and the small coins will be cut out forever, IMHO.
To make things work in a fair manner just make each next post published in the same day having 1/2 bumping power of the previous one: to bump one thread one would need to publish 1 post for the first time, 2 posts for the next time, 4 posts for the third time in the same day and so on.
So to bump a thread just one time each hour one will need to publish 201326604 posts a day.
To bump a thread each 30 minutes during a day one would need to publish 1,407374884×10¹⁴ posts a day.

I have a feeling people will be using the bump to their advantage. I feel like it will be the same thing as people selling merits... That or people will be trading both merits or trusts for bumps in a thread.. or as LoyceV said give me $10 and I will bump your thread. Only time will tell. I dont think selling bump power will be a huge issue though. Just because you are first on the list doesnt mean you will benefit from it. Shit projects will still be shit projects. Maybe if you see a shit thread being bumped post in the thread bump abuse or something like that... I wouldnt mind doing that but I worked hard to get where I am I would hate if someone just red trusted me over calling out Bump Abuse. Is there a way we can report bump abuse? Maybe we keep it to where noone knows how much bump power they truly have one day they go to sell some and then they relize they are out which then causes the buyer to leave a red trust  or neutral trust saying they tried to selll some bump power?

I do like the idea though. I just hope people use it like they are suppose to. Use it for good not evil!

As if they were not "cut out" before - by shitbumping threads making a mockery of the frontpage.

You can still promote your project any way you want, including a sig campaign right here on the forum. At least now if you can get your project to the frontpage it's likely to stay there for more than 3 minutes.

For instance I'm working on promoting SLM as you can see.
I publish one post a day with something I consider interesting.
I was getting something like 100 people a day visiting the thread now I have 5.
So it doesn't make sense for me to write anything interesting on this forum, not in the appropriate section at least.
I can make valid contributions to the other threads to promote my signature, but it doesn't work that well.

If you make valuable contributions elsewhere in the forum and earn merits - your own bumps to your thread will have more weight.

If you just post in other threads trying to get views for your signature - it might backfire.

Yeah good solution but it was difficult to understand.
I had to read the whole OP post 3 times and then i could understand how this new bump thing work.

Like what theymos said there is no guarantee that the topic will move up to the top spot when a user bumps their topic since it only affects the bump score, so if a bump seller just bumps a thread and it doesn't move up then there is no proof that a bump really happened.


This would be the main benefit if the bump score became public in these sections, but how do we suppose to catch them? What can convince a DT member if a user just bumps a thread without any evidence that a sale even happened? Members right now doing illicit activities are also selling their merit sales outside the forum already and its already hard on catching them because of it. Now the ones who are selling merits will also have another mode of earning ones they try to monetize bumping as a service.

Great changes! Hopefully it will cut back the 'paid bumpers' and signature shitposters.

Unfortunately in my experience getting merits has nothing to do with good content.
And in the mean time this bumping system kills every initiative that is not promoted by big guys.

Sadly that does seem to be one of the downsides to the whole new bump system. If any initiative as you put is not pushed by prominent users then others might get left behind.

We need to give it time to see how it plays out.

That's a statement which can only come from someone who has received a total of one (in numbers: 1) merit.




Let me rephrase this:
[..] this bumping system kills every scam promoted by newbies.

By other hand just consider one of the most important functions of bitcointalk.org for the cryptoworld: The new currencies announcements.
Let assume me, with other people here, are about to create some interesting new currency.
The 99% of the founders try any kind of tricks to get an important piece of cake before anybody else, the typical solution is the premine. In the early days the premine was a no-no, now it's almost accepted as an inevitable evil, but still there are many trying to make their currency and their acting appear fair.
So they try any kind of tricks.
I gathered a very large collection of this cases, the most funny ones are publishing announcement on the New Year's Eve, publishing the announcement on some unknown site pretending there are many people interested in crypto there, not mentioning the launch date and so on.
With this new anti-bumping feature the "fairness" of new currency is almost automatic.
Let me explain it better.
So me and other people here are working on the new currency and of course (I'm ironic here) we want to get the biggest piece of cake possible before anyone else.
We don't need to hide anything, we can publish our announcement months before the launch because we won't bump it and everybody that will suddenly come across our announcement won't bump it either, because he'll want his part of a cake too, so why should he advertise the announcement to the others?
The above seems to me another use case of the forum that is not coming out well from the anti-bumping feature.

It can appear like that, but it's not so. I think I know how to earn merits without manipulating others into and without buying them, but consider one who has some ideas that are too new and people will need many time to get used to. He will get basically no merits.

That's the positive aspect of this bumping system, but it will also hurt the action of people that have been in crypto for many years and that have something to say which is not just promoting the first 10-20 coins.
How many bumps can receive Etherium? And how many bumps can receive some small fair coin whose developers are working hard?

I don't think so. It's Bitcointalk, not Anntalk, and really - how many "new currencies" could we possibly need.

The handful of alts that home some sort of value or meaning will nicely fit on the first page of the ANN board and the rest of them won't be missed if they move down to page 6+ or disappear altogether.

Edit: and there you go, multiposting right here in this thread. Have some shame.

Take a look at the url, bitcointalk.org. I wouldn't mind if Theymos decided to remove the entire Altcoin section, would definitely save a lot of mindless spam.

I'm very ashamed that I'm answering to each post that is being answered to me.
And yes we have something like 5000 cryptocurrencies out there that are not solving anything at the moment.
So we should expect one that will begin finally solving something.

There is an "Edit" button for that.


When this MessiahCoin shows up I'm sure it will be on page 1. If not - let me know and I will personally bump it.

Edit - oh FFS (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=514599.0). "Revolunary" coin... I guess there is a coin for every word in the dictionary.

My goal is not to upset anybody here but to help brainstorming.

I think I've expressed my concerns at my best. If it can help I'm happy if it's just garbage I'm sorry for having polluted this topic and am ready to delete whatever I said here.

This is unlikely to happen as the buyer was also involved in the transaction and would also get tagged for unethical behaviour.
It is a new system and we may have to give it a few weeks to fully gauge and access it's flaws (if any) and make modifications where necessary.

Bounties (Altcoins) is added to the targeted boards. For other busy marketplace boards such as Digital goods, I'd like to wait a while and see how this goes, but they are possible later additions. For local boards, local mods can PM me to request that the boards be added to the list if the first page of the board is always full of topics with a last-posted-in of today.


You're right. I think that the auto-stabilization property I described actually is desirable, though, so I changed the system to provide it. Now your super-bump power is: b*(1-0.15*^s/_b), where b is your base power and s is the total bump score you've contributed via superbumps over the last 30 days. This gives the same result as the previous algorithm except when any 30-day period overlaps with another.


I don't see this as being inherently a problem. Maybe the old thread is still relevant and deserves to be bumped. This is why mods are instructed to not lock old threads or otherwise try to stop necro-bumping unless specific cases are somehow disruptive.

If this does seem to become a major annoyance, things could be changed.


That's because at that time only 4 topics had any bump score.


Definitely not boards like Dev&Tech because a newbie bump has a high chance of being interesting/substantive, and there isn't that much traffic. Last-post ordering is not ideal in those sections, and some reform there could be useful, but this system would be worse.

In order for boards to be eligible for this bump treatment: 1) The first page of the board must always be full of topics with a last-post date within the last 24 hours, and 2) there must be a clear incentive for abusive bumping.


Yes, it'd be fairly easy, but I'm thinking/hoping that mini-bumps will have a low enough effect in most cases that it won't be necessary.


I don't expect anyone to have a perfect understanding of these things. Exactly how eg. merit translates into forum rank is supposed to naturally support good forum operation, and it's not important that people know exactly how it works. I provide the technical details because some people will be interested, and I welcome suggestions for improvements.

Probably no single individual understands how eg. the YouTube recommendation system works...


It does not. Also, when a user receives their first merit, they may not see the "bump" link for up to an hour due to caching.


Correct, though I wish people just wouldn't worry about it... Note that due to caching it may take up to 15 minutes for any post deletion to affect the bump score.


It uses floats, so there will be some error. You won't be allowed to superbump if you would contribute less than 0.001 bump score.


Correct, neither affects the other.


Maybe, but let's see how the new system works.

The angle you put on this situation is interesting because it exposes some of the possible flaws in the system and how it could be counter productive.

It is clear the search for a solution that is fair and consistent will be more difficult to achieve than previously thought if removing a merit based system. I still do not know what would be a good way to proceed and do not know if it is appropriate to have a view that newbie accounts will probably spam and other accounts will probably not.

I have a concern about the implementation.

It introduces a new sorting scheme while bypassing the existing sorting controls. It is possible to select
sorting by last post, or any other column, but no way to return to bump score sorting without jumping through
hoops (I don't like jumping through hoops).

IMO the way to have implemented this would have been to create a new bump score column which can be
used as a sort key like any other column.

An added bonus would be to have a user defined default so people who prefer last post sorting, like me,
don't have to constantly set it manually (more jumping through hoops).

Just bookmark the board with any sort order you prefer, no hoops needed.

Thanks, but if I do that I can't switch to bump score. With the current implementation the only way
to have bump score sorting is by default. If you switch to somthing else you can't switch back.

It's contradictory that bump score sorting is forcedencouraged by being the default but
it can't be selected manuallly.

Just click the navigation under "MY MESSAGES": Announcements (Altcoins) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0) brings you back to default sorting.

Or edit the URL:
Remove the last part to go back to default ("bump") sorting:

Thank you for your kind words, I'm quite used to my points not being understood for quite a long period initially so it makes me pleasure to meet here someone who can take into consideration my opinion.

To contribute a little bit more to this discussion, I'd like to say that this anti-bumping feature may paradoxically enhance the spam bumping.
Let's consider the situation of any honest promoter.
With the old bumping system it was possible to get some attention here, for instance posting once a day like what I'm doing.
With the new anti-bumping system to get some attention one needs to go around, posting things here and there to gather some merit, maybe expressing opinions that are not what he thinks but that make pleasure to someone and only then he'd be able to bump his announcement and/or his additional posts.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'm saying that at some point it may become easier to pay some professional bumper.
And the fact I can't see who actually bumped my thread is not that relevant, as I can agree with the bumper to bump my thread at some moment in which I'm able to check that the announcement is actually bumped.
The professional bumpers will always win with this complex procedure of bumping, because they will create large merit farms that the small promoter doesn't have time and resources to create, and of course the community that doesn't have any kind of promoter will disappear here in oblivion.
The above along with the merit system, paid accounts for anonymous users, interested moderating, almost insurmountable wall of Google re-Captcha erected against the users with anti-tracing plugins will scare people even more out of here. And this forum may become more and more a ghost with professional promoters speaking to each other. So I agree with someone who has said here "Doing something is better than doing nothing? Maybe.".  

Merit abusers have been called out by the community since the introduction of Merit, and eventually the abusers will run out of sMerit to send to their own accounts.
To earn large amounts of Merit (from large Merit sources), they'll have to create actual good posts. If "professional bumpers" start posting quality content to keep their business afloat, I'd say that's a win for the forum :D

I hope so, but good posts may be bought and by other hand not everybody is able and should be able to create a quality content. If everybody were creating good content here, only very good content would receive merits. And if everybody would create very good content only the excellent content would receive merits, and so on. And in the same time is one who is able to create/buy a quality content is more capable to judge other's people content? (in the real world the writers and the critics are two different professions)

I made a graph to fully understand what this means. With 1 Super bump per day, it takes a couple of months to stabilize to a certain Super bump power.
http://loyce.club/other/superbump.gif

---

Just a thought: New topics still show up on top, so I can imagine someone creating the same topic every day, while archiving the last one.
Update: I was wrong :)

Stop talking sense around here. Have you not noticed this is the twilight zone yet. Theymos is intent of automating everything and along the way turning this entire board into an echo chamber based on his brilliant "merit" design.

So now those that cycle the meaningless, misleading and dangerous junk will AUTOMATICALLY control

1. rank
2. other peoples paid2post eligibility
3. other peoples paid2post rates
4. the volume of the entire board in that now you your voice will not be heard at all unless you have a nice amount of EARNED merits.
5. their own personal access to the highest rates of paid2post
6. The trust system eligibility and selection process (what a shock they all feel EACH OTHER are the most trustworthy even though many are PROVEN scammers and financially dangerous.
7. The perceived trust of other members and themselves.
8. Therefore other peoples ability to trade on this board.
9. Peoples (public opinions) via wanting to obtain merits and not get red trust.
10. Idiots perceived opinions since they look at merit score as some kind of validation of true value.


So what controls all of these things. I mean surely the warden of this entire board would not base ALL OF THAT on anything other than the most solid and reliable metric right?

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Hey "select few members" already having a ton of scamming and financially untrustworthy actions in your past... here have some magic points to give out to WHO YOU THINK SHOULD HAVE THEM based on ..... well just WHO YOU THINK SHOULD HAVE THEM based on what you consider a "good post" and "bad post"

Hahahahahahhahahhaha

Brilliant Theymos. This is genius work.

Perhaps take note of suchmoons statement good poster and bad poster are MEANINGLESS TERMS if there is no definition or strict criteria

This bumping being based on earned merit (with some activity consideration) is again nothing but saying the SAME PEOPLE YOU HAVE GIVEN CONTROL OF THE BOARD TO ALREADY are now going to control the volume of peoples voices.

Every action you have taken here lately simple "CENTRALIZES" control or CONCENTRATES control to a handful of chipmixer spammers.

Even the Lauda situation demonstrates that you are NOT SERIOUS about getting rid of these scamming, self serving scum bags even though the proof is right under your nose daily. That now his abuse is more entrenched in support than before the black list is a spectacle of how dreadful these designs are.

Merit is garbage and whilst you keep basing all these NEW AND CLEVER designs on top of it they will remain damaging garbage.

The DEVELOPERS who are not bothered with the shitty merit system and have no merits earned in the last year will not even have their voices heard under this new stupid design.

Suchmoon just said to some the person we are replying to " THAT HE WILL NEED TO CONTACT HER AND SHE MAY BUMP  IT "   LOL yeah I'll tell all the developers who have produced some excellent and inventive designs to ASK SUCHMOON IF THEIR VOICES CAN BE HEARD.

This forum is becoming a laughing stock. Well done theymos. A place where scammers and their supporters control every aspect.

Of course you will not DARE debate any of this and ignore or delete it like usual.

DISGRACEFUL.

ALL SYSTEMS BUILT UPON MERIT = FAIL

try to understand this simple concept.

Like the governments that do everything they can to prevent the little guy at the bottom not getting squeezed for every drop of revenue they can whilst ensure themselves and their friends are given EVERY OPPORTUNITY AND LOOP HOLE to keep their ill gotten gains from widespread corruption and gaming of the unfair systems. Whilst making sure the little guy has no voice. Whilst making sure there is serious punishment for speaking up.

Satoshi would be horrified at this centralizing of control into the hands of a few scammers and their supporters.

This is Undeniable so there shall be no debate. Theymos says well everyone in meta board agrees with my brilliant ideas so you must be the odd one out. LOL hahaa#

Meta board = the bunch of scumbags that have from the start been ensuring they grab all the power. Actually the meta board has long been the place we notice that all those seeking power have been attracted to hanging around in. This is NOT a representative sample of the entire board theymos.

It is impossible to tell really if theymos and the 40 thieves in meta are all part of one gang or that theymos is really the unwitting and naive leader who REALLY BELIEVES in the advice the 40 thieves ply him with daily. Whilst pretending to stop the bad guys taking over the board.

We keep hoping it is the latter but every time he keeps heaping advantage and centralizing control to his fav merit cyclers then it seems impossible (in light of the evidence that we keep shoving under his nose that merit is gamed and misleading garbage) that a person can be this dense. So it is concerning to see this MERIT metric again being used for gaining MORE advantage here. In theymos mind a developer who could have produced a novel design then his own words deserve less volume than some scamming moronic highly paid sig spammer in meta regarding his OWN PROJECT. So now they will have to ask the likes of suchmoon or tman please can you comment on the fork I have just been working on for months please on my thread. Sure says tman for a small fee that could be possible. Or if they ask nutildah then who knows what will be required.

What comes next for the "meta cycling gang" I mean there is only so much advantage they can be given now they control the volume of peoples voices.

It is undeniable that this latest move is just ANOTHER move from theymos to hand MORE power to observable scammers and their supporters.

Even if the intentions are good basing they systems on merit are simply giving power to the corrupt and greedy.

Are you sure about that? I don't think I've seen a new topic on the front page of the ANN board yet since the bumping change.

https://i.imgur.com/QSpcWkB.png

Tested and it appeared near the bottom of the first page..

Maybe my bump power worked on the OP? Not sure how minibump power works on new OPs..
Moved it to archival..

I'm pretty sure it works the same way as any other post so that's what probably made your topic appear on the front page.

No problem, your opinion is as equally as important as everyone else's. The forum needs diversity of opinions and open debates. I am sorry you feel that on occasions it takes time for others in the forum to fully understand your views by the manner in which you express them.

Going by your views the professional bumpers are in a win-win situation because of bump power but in the end it is an impossible task to make everybody happy and to get universal endorsement on a subject with as much polarity.

I understand where you are coming from but in the end a decision has been made by the forum owners/moderators and we just have to see how this works in the coming days and weeks. After that we all will be a in a  better position to comment further and ask for modifications if necessary.

You may be right, the new topic I saw was from a user with high Merit earnings.

WADR, I'm not looking for a workaround. I reported a design issue in the implementation of the feature
and its effect on usability. I also suggested a way to solve it. It's a matter of UI consistency.

Hey @theymos - might want to factor in detecting the same IP for daily bumps if you know what I'm getting at.

This feels great. My only worry is that good new projects could be getting buried by old ones.
People could be bumping based on their past/recent experiences with old projects. Good new projects with "nothing immediate to offer" could get ignored. Few would be willing to go through whitepapers and stuff like to understand the potentials of "weird new projects" . I guess the new projects will be tempted to offer indirect incentives to encourage people to bump.
This is a great improvement nevertheless

It is still possible to sort the topics by the last post.
New projects can run signtaure campaign to be visible on all boards of the forum
New projects can advertize their token/ICO/IEO in other platforms.
New topics can be super bumpped by a user who is interested in the project.

The issue of (alleged) incentives behind bumps is a real concern for several users just as is the possibility that good new projects could indeed be buried by old projects.

The only way to provide real commentary would be to give this system time and then see what happens.

I remember that this issue regarded to bumping the threads was discussed in this January. Now the algorithm has been implemented. I like the idea suggested by theymos. The "Bump" button should be useful.

I guess that the bounty hunters will bump the ANN threads of the projects in which they participate. Is it allowed?

For bumping a topic you should 1. make a post on that or 2. click on the "bump" button ( If you have merits)

1. make a post (mini bump)
It is not allowed to ask bounty hunters to make a post on a certain thread because:

2. Click on "bump" button (super bump)
It's impossible to track who has clicked on "bump" button. Also, bounty managers have not access to the amount of bump power of bounty participants.

Mini-bumps - as hosseinimr93 mentioned - still fall under the same rules as before (low-effort incentives, spam, etc).

Not sure yet if we should be worried about incentivizing super-bumps. It doesn't seem that the usual bounty hunter crowd would have a lot of bump power to begin with. Right now the "zero bump score" threads start on page 4 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.120) of the Altcoin ANN board, used to be page 6 a couple of days ago. So it looks like after wasting the initial super bumps there is a lot less bump power to go around. This could mean that even a tiny bump could be valuable, or maybe some projects would be willing to get to at least page 4 and would still use newbie shitbumping "services"... we'll have to wait and see how this evolves.

And I actually recognize the names of half of the alts on the first 4 pages! Some good oldschool stuff on there..

We all probably played with our bumps when it first came out like we all played with merit when it first came out.. Big spike on the first few days..

People are finally beginning to figure it out. Today was the first day I checked the Altcoin ANN board and didn't see my Shitcoin thread on the first page!  :D

Going to look for other fun things to test my powerbump out on.

The digital goods subs, and to a lessor extent, the service sub, generally have a target audience who are not forum members, or are less active forum members. I would suspect many of these businesses have very few, if any customers who can bump their thread.

The service announcement and the altcoin subs listed in the OP have businesses that are likely to have a wide range of forum members, and they should have customers who have the merit and activity to bump these threads.



I simplified your formula to as follows:
b*[0.85^(s/b)]

I am fairly confident the above is the intention, but have no way of testing if it is implemented because I have superbumped threads in the past 30 days. If the 's/b' is an exponent, I can rule out the '0.15' from being the base because if someone has never superbumped any threads, the exponent will be zero, and the parenthesis would be simplified to '1-1', or zero, and if the 0.15 is multiplied by 's/b' the rolling 30 day cumulative superbump score (assuming 1 superbump per day) varies a lot for the first 90 days after the first 30 days of superbumping. Using an exponent to 0.85 results in the superbump power stabilizing within 60 days if someone superbumps one thread per day.

I have charted both the above exponent formula, and 0.15 being multiplied by s/b below:
b*[0.85^(s/b)]
https://i.imgur.com/2hnzXD3.png

0.15 being multiplied by 's/b':
https://i.imgur.com/ndeyjKN.png

I have also charted the individual superbump power if someone bumps one thread per day based on the exponent formula:
https://i.imgur.com/v4c29Rz.png

loyceV charted (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5183553.msg52441317#msg52441317) individual superbump power based on 0.15 being multipled by s/b.

I have uploaded the underlying data to a google docs spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1asZ3PV8UFleO4lg5WzVxtkqIx9JAXw_oZfNkWn4NVNA/edit?usp=sharing).

I am still experimenting, but my current hypothesis is that the multiplication formula can be gamed by stopping superbumping for several days when the superbump value gets very low, while the exponent formula stabilizes quickly enough so that this strategy of gaming will not work.

IMO, the 30 day cumulative superbump score is more significant than the individual 30 day superbump score each day (assuming one superbump per day). The 30 day cumulative superbump score will show how easily someone can game the system by bumping many threads at once and waiting 30 days to superbump again.

I am a good user, I come on here to chat in my favorite coins threads. and somehow I am unable  to "boost" the thread and no one else on here has the ability to see the thread to reply?? I will not longer use the platform.


Where is this so called "Boost Button" located anyway??? I do not see anything by my print button????

The “boost Button” (Super bump really) appears on the top right quarter of the screen, next to "reply| watch| notify| mark unread | print | bump". Since you have no earned merits of your own over the last rolling year, you do not have any bump power, thus it probably does not show for you. In addition, your regular posts on those threads will not inherently perform a Mini bump for the same reason.

Maybe you should take time to read the OP to understand the new bump format.
Your activity and earned merit in the last one year have a big contribution to your bumping power.

If you no longer want to use the platform because of this nice update, then you are free to go. The major aim of this implementation is to avoid spammy topic bumping which has been rampant in the past.

First of all, very complicated system.

Also, this seems that it will give an advantage to a cartel of established merit farmers or Bot accounts who will merely analyse this "bump" system and further game it to ensure only their pet projects appear in the catalogue. as opposed to the anarchic first-come-first-served bumping scheme originally in place. 

there are many things that need fixing with this forum but this was not one of them.

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/16/bloba462f26f845eab32.jpeg

(You're welcome)


I'll try it out...

A calender month as in every 30 days, or 31? (or 28??)

---

Am still a little unclear about the deleted posts how they count.

You are one of those that triggered this measure.
This is your contribution to the forum:




Sorry to tell you, but you probably won't be missed, especially after this:

It's 30 days. I assume it works the same as source Merits, which means it's 30 days exactly up to the second.

You can only bump by posting if you haven't posted in the past 7 days (and it doesn't matter if that post was deleted or not).
Your bump is only valid if your post doesn't get deleted.

My one merit enables me to bump, however after a little bit of experimenting, I came across this:

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/26/blob4484b2a5179adb57.jpeg

Become more active, make quality posts and earn more merit and then you may have more bumping power  ;)

It's starting to bite in on people who thought that making quality posts and gaining merits was useless

Your first bump contributes 1 "point" to the bump score, your second bump 0.85, and so on. You've done probably around 40-50 bumps to get to this:

As time goes by we learn more and more about the bump system and bump score

My one merit gives me a "bump" of 1.0 - yes?

---

As I said, I was experimenting...  ;D

---

Your multiple merits entitles you to a "bump" of 1.0 - yes?

My one post earning just one merit therefore weighs as much as all of your posts earning numerous merits when used to "bump".  - yes?

---

Must be nice to have friends give you nine merits to say what a great guy someone is (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5129486.msg50519256#msg50519256). - yes?  ::)

Initial bump is worth 1.0, each subsequent bump is worth 15% less. Assuming you will continue to have 1 earned merit in the last year, your total bump power will not exceed ~6.7 (1.0+0.85+0.72+0.61...) in 30 days, no matter how many times you bump.


No:


So it would be ~177 for Bitcoin_Arena.


If you're implying that Bitcoin_Arena is my friend - well, we haven't met so I'm not sure if we'd get along unless you know something I don't.

Dope. This improvement beats the hell of the last significant change to this forum. I don't want to trail off-topic here so I wont mention how s***** the merit system is. I definitely wont bring up the fact that I want to give out merit to worthy topics but I can't because I'm not sitting at the cool table. Bump changes..... Right on target.

Some positive effects....

All of the sock-puppets pumping the Bankera/Spectrocoin scams are finding their posts not going to the top of the board after they post. That is the primary reason I have stopped posting there and I have those scammers on IGNORE anyway.

Maybe if I have something to add or maybe if a respected member posts in that thread then it might push the thread up in the listings but other than that they deserve to lurk near the gutter because these scammers are disgusting thieves that use their sock-puppets to try to fool people in to believing their scams are "real" projects.

I'd like to ask one thing.
Will a professional bumping activity (quality posting to gain merits and then selling the deriving bumping force) be banned here?

Everything related to any kind of bumping business will be chaised and reported. I'm pretty sure that if there are enough evidence of such services, the related accounts will get what they deserve.
It will be quite expensive service and very easy to loose a valuable accounts.

I'm more worried that probably the marked for tagged,
merited accounts will be more active.

I don't think it will be banned but
1. It will be harder for the bumping service providers. I mean they have to farms 10 - 20 accounts to have good activity and merits in the past 1 year which is one hell of a hard job  ;D unlike in the past where on just had to have a dozen brand new or newbie accounts

2. Bumping power will keep decreasing with each bump making their life even harder

3. Bumping services will even be more noticeable and the culprits could easily be targeted and have their bump posts reported and promptly get deleted by the mods. So it will be all for nothing

Imagine losing about 10 ranked up alts due to bumping to red tags from DT members and having to start off with new accounts all the way from Newbie rank. The bumping service providers would eventually give up

I think having only one account is enough for bumping a few topics if the user has big number of merits. Even if someone bumps 1 topic per day, the effect of the super bump will be 18 times the effect of a poster than mini bump a topic. I have made some diagrams (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5184313) to compare the effect of super bumps with mini bumps.
Any way, I guess every user misuse the new pumping system, will be punished by moderators.

If bump spammers change their business model in such a way that they create valuable content and make quality posts, I couldn't be happier ;)

This may happen, but the business model is not going to work as it did in the past. An account can only bump a thread via posting once per week, removing most incentives to have fake conversations in threads. Each account can also ‘superbump’ only so much before the effect of each additional superbump has nearly zero effect. If someone is farming merit amongst themselves to get a higher base bump score, and those accounts are all systematically bumping the same threads, this should be obvious to the admins and their base bump scores can be reduced (but not zeroed so to not make it too obvious to those behind the farmed accounts).

I predict this will result in more signature advertising and higher prices for forum ads because businesses will have more difficulties promoting themselves with a thread alone.

If only life would be that easy  ;D

Spammers and scammers will continue to do what they always do. They are easily capable of posting content that is considered worthwhile but they opt to go down another path.

There are costs and risks for sure but the rewards are much greater too. Previously a bump to the ANN frontpage would last just a few minutes. Now if you get a thread to the frontpage it may stay there for hours, so one strategically executed bump could be worth possibly hundreds of "old" bumps.

Besides even the "old" bumps still work, kinda sorta. Threads with zero bump score start on page 4 and get sorted by last post date from there. Not sure what's the relative value of being on page 4 vs front page is though. Perhaps theymos could share some click stats. Some threads are still being relentlessly shitbumped so it must be worth something to someone.

I bumped a bunch of old coins I could think of and think I have the spammers pushed back to page 5 now..

Can you guys think of any more unbumped ANNs to bump up and give newbs a read?
Maybe some epic scamcoins to give them a good education of what can happen?



I almost think if this bump change happened before the last BTC pump, BTC would have gone to 50k or so and ETH and all it's scamcoin children wouldn't have stolen the incoming investment to BTC into the hands of all those scammers..
All these stipud ICOs really hurt BTC in investment and image IMO.. Shame..

Edit: LOL, I Put the top first 8 threads on page 1 in Announcements (Altcoins) just now and like half the rest on page 1..
That is some serious bump power..

You're overestimating the spammers involved in this business, do you think they read the meta section or the forum announcements?

I'm sure at least a few of them don't have a clue about the new system and think they are still bumping the service to the first page,  some have been paid for a period of time and they are doing this to get their money even if they know their task is almost useless but they are probably keeping quiet from the owner of the shitcoin. Also, there are probably some new "projects" that have zero posts and again the owners are paying those just to fake some conversation and interest in the coin.

If theymos could display for a week or a month this change on the alt boards in a similar style to the flag system at the top of the topic, not the small news link which probably 99% ignore then we will see them on page 24.

You'll get bored before I do... (even Lauda has fallen from first place onto second or third page)


My meagre 284 merits can out-bump your 84 merits (and no doubt someone else will out-bump me...)

No, they can't since eddie13 has also some 500 ninja merits as back-up.  ;D
He has earned 585 not 85.

Seems like the zero bumped posted have made it to the middle of page 3, and in my opinion it shows only one thing, there is little to none interest in altcoins from  high rank and merited users, a few of those topics making it to the first two pages are just super bumped but the people doing so haven't made a single post in the topic. I'm really bad at predicting things but probably in a month or so we will see the bumping bots advancing to page 2 and maybe 1.

According to the OP, only the merits that have been earned during the past year are considered.


And According to what is shown on Loyce.club (http://loyce.club/Merit/history/580327.html), eddie13 has earned 521 merits in the past year however eddie13 is still much more powerful than Timelord2067. ;D

Bump power must expire or wear off of threads pretty fast then.. I don't remember...

Ah there it is..
Maybe that is a little too fast..

I kinda like it, this means one user's post can only keep a thread up for at most 36 hours, while his next post has to be at least 7 days later for another bump.
Superbumps don't have that limitation, by bumping every day one user can actually keep a thread on top.

I stand corrected...


Merits come and go ...

Heh, lets not get into all that, but I have probably missed atleast a couple activity cycles in the last year so I doubt I have max bump power due to the 364 cap of merit or activity in the last year, whichever is lesser..

But you are right.. I got bored of it, especially them only lasting 3 day, now that I have that in mind, I have less incentive to go bumping stuff..

I feel with this decision you are going to be turning people away from BitcoinTalk, at least consider a bump option for an activity level every few days etc as "no Merit = no bump" is a bit to unfair.

There are thousands of those, and almost all of them will struggle with the same problem. The old system, in which spam threads won, wasn't fair either.

The Merit system was created in January last year. Being around longer doesn't necessarily mean earning more Merit: many old users barely earned any Merit, and some much newer users earned a lot.

I took a look at your topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5097906.0), and it looks exactly the same as thousands of other shitcoins.

The problem with Activity level is that account farmers can and will farm thousands of accounts to do this.
A paid bump option could actually work: the forum knows the current bump score of each topic. Based on that, it could offer a certain price to instantly reach a certain bump score and thus a certain position on the board. After that, the normal bump decay would apply again.
Maybe $10 to be on top and a bit less to be half-way the first page? If the forum offers a paid option, it could take business away from commercial bumping services.

I don't think that would work - how would you deal with multiple threads requesting a bump to the top?

If there's a commercial option I would prefer a separate page for it and a bid process to get one of 20 (or 50, or 100) spots on it guaranteed for e.g. 24h, randomized with each load perhaps - somewhat like the current forum ad banner. But given theymos allergy to ICOs it's unlikely that he would want to make money off that.

They'll have to compete with each other for the first place.

I've suggested before to sell "sticky" spots, but indeed, I don't think it's very likely to be implemented.

A welcome change. Thank you for your continued effort, Theymos and staff. I assume there will need to be some tweaking, because I just see too many moving parts for a "bump" system.

So you're selling me the top spot, unless you also sold the top spot to someone else, in which case I'm getting maybe 2nd, 3rd, or 57th spot?

Scam :)

Maybe selling a fixed amount of bump "points" would be more fair (shittier threads would need to pay more to get to the front page) but that's awfully close to selling merits...

one suggestion regarding bump respectively to spam bump.
Is it possible to implement a ban or automatic deletion thread where is a lot number of posts deleted by the moderator because of spam?
For example thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5185523.msg52484428#msg52484428, where I have more than 100 spam post reported and all of them, are deleted by a moderator. Usually "good project", "amazing project" etc... There is no one single constructive post until now.
Also, a new way of spam is a lot of Newbie or bot accounts posting useless discussion and OP "answering" or thank for the support. It is a fake conversation which produces useless posts. I follow a few these threads and 100% of my reported posts from there is deleted. Either 99% of posts in thread deleted because of spam.
So I spend my time to report (I'm not complaining), moderator spends his time to review my reports and all the work because of the obvious spam. I think it is not necessary to emphasize all of these threads is possible to find in scam accusation section.

If anything automatic would be implemented it will lead to abuse.
I could create 100 accounts, post "great project" in a topic I dislike and then with my usual account report them and see the topic trashed. Probably something with a bit more knowledge would be able to automate all of this and maybe delete 10-20 topics a day maybe we're going to see even genuine topics ending in the trashcan.

Let's assume there is a topic with some shitcoin that has a few bounty hunters not happy with their treasure trove, they could do this and I'm willing to bet that 99.9% of the people in meta are not going to believe the OP is innocent and he didn't buy the bumps himself.

how about just a "bump counter"?
(i didn't see anybody suggesting this) it would be interesting to have this field on each topic and the new row added called "bumps" in the list of topics to both show the counter and give the ability to sort them with their total bumps.
https://i.imgur.com/OFGmdGn.jpg

i (super) bumped something yesterday for the first time and it has been staying on top for two days, i was very curious to know how many bumps that topic is receiving.

That is a great idea.

It would be partially transparent because it would show the number of pumps but not show the people who pumped the thread. Maybe a clickable counter which would then open a page to show the number of pumps alongside the name of the user and date/time would be good.

Showing name of the users who's bump thread gives you the option to prove your bump, which is a great opportunity for paid bump industry and that nullifies the purpose of this improvement.

Yes I suppose that is a downside to it but how does anybody get any transparency? If somebody is a paid bumper it will be seen and therefore action should be taken such as 'x' bumps per month or something else.

It's not easy to prove that the user has been paid for bumping. The user can claim that he is interested in the topic very much and has the right to bump any topic.
Also, if someone is really interested in a topic might not bump that regularly to not be accused.
It will be same as merit system, It is not easy to prove that a post has been really helpful to someone or there is another reason behind that.

Wait until all the scammy projects figure out that they should be paying for super-bumps and bumping power and not newbie accounts with fake conversations.

In a sense, the new change will completely anonymize the bumping services/industry.

Look at Nyancat (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5170788.0) thread in Tokens section, they have 60 pages of absolute nonsense, posts made exclusively by shill accounts with 0 to 2 merits. That thread is being top 5 for the past week throughout the entire day. I don't see anyone interested in that garbage outside the shill accounts. I guess it's a good thing we don't know which accounts are making it stay on top.

To be fair, the Tokens board has so little bump power that zero-score threads start about halfway down the front page (sorted by last post). So apparently no one is interested in any of those shit tokens.

Yeah, you are right but still...they have someone bumping it otherwise it should have plunged at least to the bottom of the 1st page. But it's constantly being on top, 24hrs a day, and it's annoying.

The whole point of the Crypto revolution is to mine your own coins and use them in various markets, not to buy pre-mined tokens - that's what governments do - mint money.  Little wonder Tokens are so on the nose just about no one is prepared to waste bumps on them.

Desperate times, desperate measures:



Is this allowed? Doesn't sound like the usual giveaway since it requires something more than username/address and is more like a service review but since this is no service, just a white paper.... ??? ???
I'm a bit confused over this!

It's very close to a 30 day ban:
They could argue they only pay for substantial posts, but that's not very likely on the Altcoin boards.

Seems that the marked for red trusted accounts (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5187730.0) is also wakening up. What else you can do with tagged high ranked accounts? Often those have earned some merit, and can be used for a bumping and make more bumping accounts if there is still smerit left. If you get an army of 30 accounts you can bump a thread once every day.

user Operatr (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=92499) was one of a dozen or so red trust UID's that were bought by txbtc (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=369706) (come to think of it, it might have been other way around) to "promote" something or other... perhaps now would be a good time for one of you good folks on the DT to spread some love and see if they've been abusing their merits?

I have suggested Administrator to adding some board
- digital goods (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=93.0)
- invites & account (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=234.0) , And
- Service (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=52.0)
Because of those boards has a lot of spamming bumps, Member always against Rules No.13 and 21 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0#post_rules).

When Member can't delete old bump, he makes a new bump, and make a new one as a counted post.
I did a lot of thousand good reported for those board. I won't take a break a while.

Like today, I catch it 50 reports undeleted bump:
- http://archive.is/FAFbs
- http://archive.is/eBWG3
- http://archive.is/Whfmy
- http://archive.is/lSOiO
- http://archive.is/O655k
- http://archive.is/rgmC0
- http://archive.is/VliGo
- http://archive.is/d7cSS
- http://archive.is/msuYq
[seems all good, deleted all by moderator today]

Fiveth ~ 185
Sixth ~ 146

Thanks Sir

If that is the situation then what is the solution? As long as any system exists there will always be those wanting to find a way to make it work for their own agenda.

Look at users flooding this forum with "cryptotalk.org" signatures, the majority as posting pathetic nonsensical messages just to increase post count. One particular new exchange owner has removed his signature promoting his exchange and replacing it with "cryptotalk.org" because somehow he is happy to receive his payput from the posts than promote his exchange. It cannot get more ridiculous than that.

When people see a system, determined ones will try to find a way to get past it. So far parts of this bumping is great because low level posts (like from the sock-puppets flooding coinsbit/p2pb2b scammers) are being made but the threads are not being pushed up in the listings pages and are floating around pages 4 and 5 so their sock-puppets are having no effect but a simple bump from a purchased account or paid service would change that.

I have another suggestion for those boards: scammers have been using locked sales-threads (with either "auto buy" links or Telegram names) for a long time now. I'd like to see the bump score reduced to zero the moment a thread gets locked.

If you have seen paid bumping services before, then you will agree with me that it's actually so easy to spot them once you come across any in a thread.
Their posting style with different accounts is simillar and the accounts tend to be activate and inactive at specific times.
The accounts also usually comment on only specific threads

I agree that there always some people abusing the system as well as there are many people abusing merit system. But I think Making the bumpers list public will cause the situation to be worse. In that case, I expect the number of bumpers to increase.

This is exactly why I am not in favor of publicity of bumpers list.
Crpytotalk signature campaign participants are spamming the forum to get paid. If the bumpers list becomes public, I guess some bumping campaigns appear too. Now, all merits data are public. I have seen some users that receive 100% of their merits from 1-2 certain accounts. I have seen a few legendary members that has not received any merit, but send all their smerits (Those that were distributed when the new merit system was introduced) to a certain member. But it's not easy to prove abusing merit system. There will be a same story for bumping abusers too.
Now, I think the best thing can do is what Theymos is doing. It's better if the list of bumpers is not public.

The main concern is super bumpers. Those who mini-bump the topics are no longer very effective. Also, they have zero effect if they have made a post in that thread in the past 7 days or they are newbie.

When you put it like that I suppose you are right, making a list of bumpers would have negative consequences that outweigh any possible positive ones.

I never realised to which extent merit abuse took (or is taking place) as I did not look in to it but going by what you wrote that too was an issue when it first started.

It would appear almost nobody has caught on to the new bump feature, or else their bumps are not very powerful. I bumped all of the following non-bolded threads within the span of about half an hour. Commenting on them secures their position on the top.

https://i.imgur.com/ouUj2Ex.png

Eventually people will catch on, as I think market forces will dictate that people learn the system to continue promoting their projects. But until then, good. Let people be confused and have to learn the new system. Really the ANN should be listed on a project website or other social media, and then people find it that way.

I've been following the progress of ANNs that hired Vitor Services (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5160199.0) to bump their threads. Some have stopped participating but some are still paying these schmucks to leave pointless comments in their threads, probably unaware that they aren't doing jack except for cluttering their thread with spam.

Most people who know about superbumps have probably wasted them early in September. I know I did. Waiting for the "replenishment" in a few days.

Posting in altcoin threads is tricky now. The ones that I'd like to bump - I don't have much to say about them that hasn't been already said so I would sound like a spammer. The ones that I'd like to criticize - I don't want to bump them.

I think criticizing them is valid and even though you have significant bumping power your post provides the thread with only the minimum bumping power the you can generate.  Also, I don't see anything wrong with bumping a thread that you feel needs to be criticized, it'll give exposure to the fact that you feel it's a shady project.  Just my opinion.

I don't know if that's really a good thing. The thread is going to be on the front page of the board for a day or so, and presumably get a slight boost in Google rankings, with my comment buried somewhere on page 400.

The other thing that I can't quite get my head around is how the weekly post window works. If I post on the thread every day then according to the formula in the OP:


it would seem that only the first post will bump it, since every subsequent post that is still in the 36-hour window will have up to 6 previous posts in the 7-day window... so no bump?

According to What Theymos has said, if you post in a thread every day, 36 hours after your first post, your contribution in thread's bump score becomes zero and will be zero forever.

Here is an example.
GeoCoin (http://archive.is/JVZD8) is now in page 5 of "Announcements (Altcoins)" board (http://archive.is/DF1zY). So its bump score is zero however weifa (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=343375) has posted in that thread today. This user has earned 21 merits in the past 365 days. But his contribution in thread's bump score is zero. Because he has made another post on that thread three days ago.

That's the way I interpret it, so if you really don't want to bump the thread you can still feel comfortable posting in it without affecting it's bump score for 7 days.  Deleting your post and posting again won't add anything to the threads bump score.  Since posts are always fixed at 1% of base bumping power it wouldn't help to wait until you've used up your bumping quota for the month. 

I'm probably missing something obvious but this seems to penalize genuinely active projects quite severely. Only some occasional/accidental posters (who post more than 7 days apart in the same thread) will ever be able to mini-bump the thread, is that what this is? Anybody who posts regularly (less than 7 days apart) would never bump it. Intuitively I would expect the minibump to work again once the previous minibump has fallen off the 7-day window, even if there are other posts in between.

I would expect the users who post in that topic to also click the "bump" button once in a while, which has much more power than posting anyway.

@suchmoon
I just sorted "Reputation" section by bump score (http://archive.is/DIRqs).
LoyceV has made a post in this thread (http://archive.is/6jVBa). The thread has been bumped to 12th place, however there is another post by LoyceV on Sep 30.

If you want to test the function, you can test that in non-targeted sections more easily. Because super bump is not available in them.

Only if you use it less than ~700 times a month :)


Interesting. It does appear to work the way I would have expected it to work and not quite as described in the OP. Good point about non-targeted boards. I'll play around with it.

Now that I'm more awake than last night, that does make more sense indeed.

@theymos: can you confirm my edits in your quote (in bold) make it correct?

Your post bumped this thread (http://archive.is/6jVBa) on October 3. So the post you made on September 30 shouldn't have bumped the thread. But there is no post by you in September 24-30.
Have you deleted any posts made in September 24-30?

lol this new system makes for bizarre

i am not awake enough to try and fathom this ingenuity
it's just bizarre the 2014 and 2016 threads that are floating up.


https://i.postimg.cc/V1WNB78h/wut.png

---

oh i see, it's super bumped..
doesnt require actual posting  ???

Yes, to be honest I was just doing some experiments in the name of research.

I'm amazed that nobody has caught on to the "bump" system, outside of a handful of threads. People are too ingrained in the old way of doing things to notice change.

i dont see any bump button,
possibly because i havent posted much recently?

--
i have to say i was amused by your choices

Keep note that it only appears on the boards where these changes were applied


I can see the button in these boards, but not in this one, for example (because it's on Meta).

Yes (http://loyce.club/archive/posts/5255/52559362.html), on the 26^th.

well i cant see it anywhere

https://i.postimg.cc/0yN21YmD/wut2.png

Yelp, you probably don't have any more bump "power".

I just checked that thread and I can see the button (I never post in the Altcoin board, so my power must be higher than yours).

So your statement is 100% true. This is more reasonable and more fair.
If what Theymos had said was true, even if 1000 high-merit users are active in a thread and post every day, they would never mini bump the thread. That was not fair.

He has never had bump power from the time the new bumping system was introduced. Because he hasn't earned any merit in the last 365 days.
His bump power will remain zero until he earns a merit.

My phrasing was inexact: when you post in a thread, the system checks whether you minibumped the thread in the last 7 days. If so, there is no bump effect. If not, you minibump the thread. But separately, at bump score calculation time, minibumps from now-deleted posts are not counted, even though they will continue to count for the 7-day window.

---

It sounds like people really want a "do not bump" option, so I'll probably end up adding that.

You might be on to something there but adding more functionality after recently adding the "bump" button might not be a good idea. Giving consideration to more modifications after allowing time for familiarity with the current ones might be better.

Since its now nearly 4 weeks as the bump changes was added i have changed my mind of it to a good one.
Specialy for the first days it was hard to find the fake anns but it has an positiv effect for that and there is now less fake anns as before!
So well done on that theymos.

Yeah, it's an awesome feature.

The Fake ANNs have been reduced somehow... Anyway in case you need to look out for fake ANNs more effectively since they are usually new. You can just add a few characters at the end of the url to a certain board.

For example on the Announcements (Altcoins) board;
Will get you the most recently made topics.

The thing I noticed is that sock-puppets are continuing to post in their threads but they are no longer rising to the top of the listings page, in so many cases they are languishing in pages 4 and 5 onwards. When users with some history post they do have an effect in rising the listings page. That in itself is a positive thing for the forum.

I hope sock-puppet operators such as coinsbit and p2pb2b scammers leavbe this space for good since their posting has no effect on the listings page and their fake conversations to each other are not generating any new users to join their scam exchanges.

Some stats on the likely effect of this change:

Number of new posts during the two-week period between August 18-31 (before this change): 131219
Number of new posts during the two-week period between September 22 - October 5: 142907
Increase of 11688 posts or +9% (helped in part by Yobit I would assume).

However the number of new posts on the 4 affected boards (for the same time periods) is...

Before: 58406
After: 46781
Decrease of 11625 posts or -20%.

And probably it will get even worse..or better? Hmmm, not sure what to use here! ;D
Give the spammers the required 3 month period in which they notice changes in the forum policy and since crypto talk has opened its doors probably half of those numbers in 2 months? Not even counting the bear market, the decline of ICOs and everything else.

The only thing that saddens me when looking in the altcoin section is that even some once quality topics and interesting coins are almost deserted and only used to spam exchanges or mining pools.....I assume it's even worse in the token section.
But anyhow, that's reality, those boards were destroyed by spam, maybe beyond repair now.


Suchmoon_mobile :P I was thinking of creating and alt myself just to tell all the morons who are still bumping the topics about the changes.


Maybe an option in the user panel with "I don't want my posts to bump topics" that can be disabled at will?

The thought crossed my mind but that sounds kinda CH-level-shady if I create an alt just to troll some shitcoin threads...


I'd prefer a checkbox next to the "Post" button, checked by default, and if you uncheck it - no bump for that one post. I would forget to change the global option and would end up messing something up.

I didn't bump for nearly two weeks and nearly 24 hours later, [SXC][NSFW] Sexcoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1272422.0) is still sitting in pole position.

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/16/blob848c55aed22e0701.jpeg

 ;D  8)  :-*

Yes anything Vitor Services related remains in the doldrums of the listing pages where not many people watching them. They only seem to appear in the first page of the listings when a genuine user posts exposing them as a scam.

I am fairly sure those projects are aware of the fact those spam posts they paid for are doing nothing except cluttering but they are still increasing post count and thread pages thus giving the impression there is some activity for those that are gullible enough to believe it.

The new system catering for a "bump" seems to have badly affected the sock-puppets and paid shills business.

Six days later my one bump has put SexCoin in poll position for the last ten or twelve hours:

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/16/blob52bac946d50319dc.jpeg]https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/16/blob52bac946d50319dc.jpeg

Thinking about an issue here. There are new posts coming in all the time into altcoin announcements that are virus / malware. With the default sort as of now they get buried for the most part. Then can get reported and removed with little exposure. (I hope). However, if I go in and post in big red letters. Don't download it's malware the topic gets bumped way up.

So, do I setup an alt account to do it or not post in the thread or???

Just food for thought.

-Dave

I'd go for reporting in the malware report thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5182222.0); and then report the post adding a link to your post in the thread while posting nothing to avoid getting it bumped

That is what I do report & post.
But, looking here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5182222.msg54529552#msg54529552 I reported and posted close to 3 hours ago,  The OP of the malware thread has it moderated so he keeps removing the DON'T DOWNLOAD MALWARE posts that people make.

I just do not want to keep bumping these threads when I post not to download.
Will probably just create an alt that has no bumping power and do it that way.

-Dave

If a thread is buried under many pages of threads, how much traffic do you think it would get in the span of a few hours?

You can give it a negative rating to warn others. You should also be including evidence of malware such as a malwarbytes report if you aren’t already.

Was the bump button removed?

I dont see it anymore  ???

No, it's still there.

Did you bump so many topics that your super bump power is less than 0.001 now?
See:
And:

Are you looking on the correct boards? Have you bumped the thread within the last 24 hours?

The bump link will disappear for 24 hours on that specific thread after you click it, and obviously it's only visible on the 4 boards that have this feature. Plus what LoyceV said.

Gotcha, thanks guys.

Didnt know it would disappear then.

I'm not sure if there's been a discussion about this before, but whether it can be a disabled bump for locked topics? If someone locks topic if it has fulfilled its purpose, they no need to stay up anymore. Also, this is used a lot when user offering something and lock topic avoiding any further discussion of his service/announcement...
I don't think they deserve to be near to the top.

For example (I hold this to ignore)
https://i.ibb.co/tYGr8Mr/image.png (https://ibb.co/L9F7nz7)

Read the post below.
actmyname suggested applying "negative bump" to locked threads.

Bumping (pun intended) with a request:

Can you share some statistics on how often the Super bumps are used?

In the past 30 days, there have been 397 super-bumps from 57 distinct users contributing 11355 bump-power. Over the same period, the total bump-power from both mini-bumps and super-bumps was 88127.

In the past 365 days, there have been 8850 super-bumps from 308 distinct users contributing 222971 bump-power. Over the same period, the total bump-power from both mini-bumps and super-bumps was 1041245.

That's 12.88% Super bumps.

That's 22.41% Super bumps.

Thanks for sharing statistics. The results surprised me, I would have expected the Super bumps to contribute more than the Mini bumps.

After reading your post, I realized that the stats I gave were highly misleading because mini-bumps occur (and super-bumps are possible by playing with URLs) across the entire forum, but they only have practical effect on certain boards, and the stats I gave previously were global. Restricting it to only the boards where modified-bump-ordering is default, it's:
30 days: 12901 super bump-power out of 13492 total bump-power
365 days: 220802 super bump-power out of 232874 total bump-power

Thanks for the correction. Now it's 95.62% and 94.82% Super bumps, which is more in line with my expectations. It also shows that bumps from posting are very small compared to bumps from clicking the bump button.