Bitcoin Forum

The lack of self-moderation in the meta section prompted me to think about the need to add a "Lock newbie" function when creating new threads.

---

This proposal aims to improve the Enhanced newbie restrictions & requirements (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5030366.msg45810047#msg45810047) and touches all old and future threads. While this won't stop spam, it will definitely help.

https://i.imgur.com/fmOL0YY.png

• Despite the innovations in the Altcoins section, the problem with "shitposters" and "bumping" still remains.
  ^{(It's not as effective as it used to be, but annoying nonetheless).}
• I think it will likely boost the average quality of content in posting.
• If someone is impatient then they should buy a copper membership (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=credit;promote) and then they will automatically be whitelisted.

Since there is little we can do against those projects that choose this marketing method, such a decision can help all those who continue to make reports. It's pointless to report such accounts, because almost all of them are newbies and they would just make new account after getting ban to continue spam.

Moderators are not ubiquitous, and "control" over spam and account farmers that are published in the Altcoins section should be implementing ICO and OP projects. This "Lock Newbie" feature is just a kind of spam control tool. And this has nothing to do with "Newbie-jails", because good beginners do not publish messages in the Altcoin section, they first start to understand the intricacies of the forum and communicate in those sections where they can learn something new for themselves.

As far as the merit system is concerned, some tweaks are needed as the definition of a “good” post is rather vague. Users ^{(including sources of merit)} are more likely to consider a post to be good when a thought matches their own opinion. I would also like to add that it would be better if it took 5 merit to achieve Jr Member. Writing a quality post and getting one merit to bypass the blocking is a fairly easy task.

---

If this proposal gets support it would be interesting to see how this affects the number of messages sent, in particular on the Altcoin board.

---

---

* Added some comments

1. Much as we are trying to fight spammers, bumping services and bots. It's also important to note that there are genuine new members out there just like you were at one point, and for the continuity of the forum, we shouldn't make life too hard for them. Some of them will be the future of the forum. The bumping rule that was introduced is good enough to fight the pointless bumping of threads using bumping services in a few selected boards where the practice was rampant.

2. Sometimes it's not just newbie accounts that are spammers, it could be Jr member or Member accounts. Does that mean even Jr Member and Member profiles to be should be blocked from posting in certain threads?

You must know that account rank doesn't always determine about post quality, there are many newbies with good post quality.
Don't forget that we don't fight Newbies but spammers. Not all spammers are newbies, they can be varied, even a legendary can make spam posts. I don't think to restrict a newbie on the Meta section is a good idea, it is a place for all members, it becomes unfair if you don't allow newbies on the Meta section. In my opinion, it is more than enough to deal with the spammers by reporting them via "Report to moderator". I don't see any problems with this way so far.

Well, initially the idea of ​​blocking newbies only concerned the Altcoin section. And I doubt the good newbies you are referring to will first start posting in this section before they start grasping the intricacies of the forum.

And I believe that the "control" over spam and account farmers that are published in this section should be carried out by ICO and OP projects. A decent project can easily understand the policy of the forum, so yes, the "Lock newbie" feature is just some kind of control tool.

Are you an active reporter? Would you like me to show you three threads of 500 one-line, meaningless messages from newbies, how long will it take you to report? Nobody is talking about adding this function to the meta section, this section is devoted to various questions on the forum.

Yes, I am. Do you have a problem if I am an active or passive reporter?

Am I a single reporter here?
As an active reporter, you must know there are many active reporters in this forum. I think it is not necessary to tell you more about it.


So who said above?  ::)


Where you will suggest to apply "Lock newbie" function? In my understanding based on the statement above, it should be applied on the meta section. Correct me if I am wrong!!

I gave an example that prompted me to think.
And below, as you can see, I emphasize several times that the topic of conversation in particular concerns the section of Altcoins.

Uhm, not a bad idea in theory.

But like, considering how MANY members are leaving the forum, I would NOT restrict newbies more than they currently are. For me at least, even if there is 1 genuine newbie who wants to partake in the forum discussion, I would rather have him take part in conversations, even at the cost at other shitposters making shitposts.

Newbie jail was a thing, its not a thing anymore for a reason. Let the free forum spirit be as it has always been. If people wanna spam, well fuck them. Its the cost of the Internet.

I appreciate the effort here to present an idea to clean up some of these boards but IMHO I think this would overall not be the best approach.  When I first signed up I remember how much it sucked being a noob, how little respect you get from the know it all's etc..it wasn't welcoming what so ever.  I think we need to try and make this place more welcoming, despite all the newbie shit posters not here for the right reasons at all.  I could see some brilliant minds coming here but being turned off from not being able to participate in certain topics, and losing them would suck for the community. 

As far as others already have written the newbies have a lot of restrictions and it would be not an good idea to add more to them!

And because you specialy write it should be for the Altcoin section in my opinion this would be bring maybe 1% to get less of spam and scam.
I reporting a lot of there and the main problem there are not the Newbies at all , the problem are the sold Accounts with merits and some posts and activity on this Accounts.

If somebody wants to scam or spam there they just buy an other Account then and do there thing anyways.
You will be have always Users that try to doing that.

Just report the thread and the post you think it should be reported .

We can't just lock out newbie or make more restrictions for them, unless we don't want any more new users on the forum. A better approach will be to disable the making of new accounts. I think we should treat newbie as normal member of the forum but take strict action against them only who are spamming or scamming.

Our activity are quite few and only left are those posts from shitposter left in the forum which we can see in the major board discussions. Online members too are quite few to which out of 2M + registered users having only hundreds that are online seems there is something wrong with the forum. Take note of the screen shot I made with one of the posts here dedicated for the forum to check the forum activities and the online users for real time basing on OP's posts I created bitcointalk Stats Live Counter (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5241019.0)
https://i.imgur.com/5O23QDe.jpg


What do you think of this? Do we still need to restrict someone just to eradicated the shit posting activity? I can agree with you that it is best to eradicate shit posting activity but should not limit all the ranks here in the forum including newbie. If this is all about human race then we can say that there is a discrimination with the human race. Like the black people that are always fighting for the same rights as other human race did.

We should not be like that for newbie does only need proper guidance and they will eventually going to learn here in the forum. Not all users joining are good users fast and easy learners. Some may take time to learn especially if they do not have some friends locally that could teach them in for better understanding and learning about cryptocurrency. If the information that they will going to need will be limited then how will they learn? In my own opinion shit posting are those users wanting to earn and not wanting to learn. If you want to the forum to remove those kind of users then ask the admin to remove all the bounty hunting activities. Pretty sure that those bounty hunters to which some are shit posters will going to left in the forum.

How does a new member register an account here if new account registrations are disabled?

Precisely. I don't like generalizing things and thinking everyone is the same. All of us started as newbies at first. Putting unnecessary restrictions on new forum members will just stop many of them from coming here. While many newbies might be spammers, 1 or 2 could have the potential to become valuable forum members.

Even the evil points aren't sometimes working the way they should. (Not sure where I read this, I think it might have been in one of the local sections). A forum member got a friend interested in Bitcoin so he decided to make a new account here. We are talking about a complete newbie who has never used Bitcoin or had an account here. When he registered, he got a notification that he needed to pay an evil fee.

What do you all think goes through his head at this point? Will he associate Bitcoin and the forum with freedom, equality, a better monetary system, or the exact opposite? He didn't pay the evil fee, and why should he, he didn't do anything wrong. He gave up on being a member on the forum and we lost a potential member.   

I don't think this will ever happen:

There's no explanation "under" the Merit button, and I have no doubt some users use it as "Like".

I've seen many suggestions to increase Merit requirements for several ranks, but it hasn't been implemented.
I don't see it as a problem if a few (thousand) users reach Jr. Member from Newbie, even though their posts aren't great. It's no longer hundreds of thousands of users, so the main flood was stopped.

As a Merit source, I often send 5+ Merit at once to a Newbie anyway ;)

• There will be no new Newbie-jails. I recalled when theymos enhanced merit system, made demotion on zero-merit-earned old-era Junior members, he emphasized that the forum will no longer has newbie jails (rejection on further restrictions from community).
• Newbie-jails has a chronogical history as below:
  
  • Newbie restrictions (Please discuss forum policy here.)  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=15477.0) (need 1 post to send PM).
  • Newbie restrictions (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=15958.0) (PM, avatar, signature)
  • End of newbie restrictions; ban changes (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=423995.0)
• The forum already has Ignore button.
• You can use it in various ways to ignore one user
  
  • Click on Ignore line under avatar, username.
  • Use Ignore list (in profile settings)
  • Use Personal Message options to ignore PMs

For last 2 methods, get it done by simply add username of the member you want to Ignore into a box, and click Change profile.

Ignore list

Personal Message Options

And sadly, bounty hunter activity is a big part of what makes the forum live, and has a big impact.

---

And for OP, you will not agree to this if your account is still a newbie. This forum is free to use by public, since the rank level has become the limit, you will not kill newbies anymore. Only quality determines, that's all, new people with good knowledge/ learning want to join the forum or those who buy Hero, Legendary rank account? No one knows

I was saying that if there are too many restrictions on newbie account so its better to stop allowing making news users on the forum because in a way we are making life difficult for the newbies. Also check the topic of this thread  "Additions to Restrictions for Newbies", we don't want to increase the restrictions on newbies  :(

You make a good point about merit requiring some further criteria and definition rather than " you think it's a good post "  , since everyone will have a different definition of what makes it good then merit score is meaningless in terms of objective post value and quality.
That loose subjective guide to giving merit was cancer to the forum for which the implications are very far reaching in a negative way.  


Meta is such a tiny board it is very easy to moderate.

Any posts which actually break the rules here can easily be removed.

There is no real financial incentive to spam, scam etc on meta it will be immediately noticed by the " police " and would be far easier and have a far more gullible audience on other boards.

With most new automated restrictions you impose to prevent things we may view as undesirable the collateral damage and implications on valuable activity and volume is negative.

Some people are justifiably unwilling to earn " privileges" if there is not an observable and provably fair and clear way to do so.
Some will be unwilling anyway to work for privileges they consider should be automatically given because they don't understand why their necessity or advantages to the forum that are obtained by such restrictions being there.

The answer is not to try and remove all low quality posts here, but to prevent them having negative impact upon those that wish to have only high quality discussions and debates. Both can bring huge value via advertising, investment traffic, etc. Doesn't have to one or the other. Trying to cut them out altogether will create a less productive environment all factors considered I believe and certainly way less revenue for the forum. Also you could rid the forum of its negative snitching and punishing to large degree and replace with rewarding and appreciation.

But yes merit needs to be tightened up to be more objective and reliable or completely removed.
The forum will not progress well if merit remains simply pal points or political points.

The problem is that most newbie accounts are like myself are here to:
Learn more about bitcoins and crypto currencies,
And also contribute positively to the benefit of every user in this great forum and the world.
While others are simply banned members using alt accounts coming with the purpose of scamming and spamming messages here. So instead of condemning all newbies i'd suggest simply reporting to the moderators and let them do their part.

Yes, theymos did a great job and I also remember his comments on this. But as I said above, and at the same time stressed several times that the topic of conversation, in particular, concerns the Altcoins section.

Moderators are not ubiquitous, and "control" over spam and account farmers that are published in the Altcoins section should be implementing ICO and OP projects. This "Lock Newbie" feature is just a kind of spam control tool. And this has nothing to do with "Newbie-jails", because good beginners do not publish messages in the Altcoin section, they first start to understand the intricacies of the forum and communicate in those sections where they can learn something new for themselves.

Or, for example, the theymos can make it so that newbies can post messages in the Altcoin section only when their posts are approved by the moderators.

And this solves what actually? I've seen similar proposals like this and most of it are all related at hindering the freedom of a new member to post in a thread just because of their rank being a newbie, yeah I'm sure a lot of people in this rank are mostly spreading spam or shitpost but I can say the same thing happening in Jr. Members to even Full Member ranked users here. IMO restricting a user to post just because of his rank won't make him improve his stay here in the forum. Maybe trying to utilize the "report to mod" function to threads is more useful on trying to improve the low ranking members.

That's certainly true, but I sure as hell wouldn't mind having a "block newbie/Jr. Member/Member" button to select in the Currency Exchange section so I wouldn't have to include a local rule every time that half of them don't bother to read anyway.   

I'd say that it's probably Jr. Members that might present the most problem as far as shitposting goes, though I don't have any supporting data for that.  What I do know is that it's very easy for a Newbie to acquire the single merit necessary to rank themselves up to Jr. Member.  They can do that with a higher-ranked alt account, from a friend, or they could always purchase merit.

You wrote basically what I said about Jr. Members being a problem as well, so we're in agreement about that.  And no, I don't think there ought to be an option to block any particular rank from posting in your thread--except in Currency Exchange or Lending, where they can actually do real damage.

Not all newbies are really newbies, some are actually old users or ban accounts of previous users while others could actually be a new user as the case may be. But then, not all newbies are spammers or plagiarisers as some newbies have learned to do their homework in skimming and scanning through the various boards in the forum to better acquint themselves with the way the forum is moderated and how to navigate through the boards without breaking any rule.
Again, locking most sections or boards as a form of newbie restriction would discouraged and scare them of making contributions in boards or topics consisting of active forum users. This in turn discourages originality and drives them to the bounty section which is most likely the last resort for scared posters. The restriction is useful though, especially in a signature campaign and also threads intended for particular rank participation in seeking for information only experience can offer.

When fighting shitposters and spammers in forum, I think the best way to do is to report the users. Aside from that, no one is a good option. It seems like it is not fair enough to newbies that there are certain topics that they couldn`t replied even they have the ideas. How they will test their level of knowledge when there are certain topics that they are restricted? Besides, the reality of the forum is quiet irony. A lot newbies I have seen that are greater in posting than hero and legendary members even before the merit system. It looks cool only because of their rank but when it comes to the content there are newbies who are trying to give some potential scenario or idea which may help the discussion of thread. I do not involve all higher ranks, but there are higher ranks that has low quality posting than a newbie in forum.

We should be aware of what we want to modify in forum, I understand how we want to fight against spamming activity. But is it really fair enough if there are restrictions to the other? Do you think that it will become a positive effect as a whole? It may just downfall the number of users in forum. Well it is good when it comes to spamming, but take not our industry needs some popularity because projects are going here because the number of users are high than other forums.