Bitcoin Forum

I woke up this morning to find four messages explaining that I’ve had 4 posts deleted - fine it happens !
Intriguingly all 4 posts that were deleted were all for saying all the same thing - Thankyou !!!
These posts were all in the collectibles section of the forum and were
- 3 posts - saying Thankyou for operating a free raffle and giving me a slot
- 1 post - for saying Thankyou to a member who started off a free raffle that I was running .

Now I would like to ask
1. Why were these reported and which forum rule these posts are breaking ?
2. In the collectibles part of the forum , free raffles, general information and a lot of help is given to fellow members and a response of Thankyou is given thousands of times ! Will all of these posts be deleted now ?
There can be a lot of negativity and spamming in this forum , surely this can’t be classed as spam and surely positivity breeds positivity .
It costs nothing to say THANKYOU
Thankyou in advance for any members and mods who respond :)

My guess is this:

I would say that forum moderation tends to be quite strict in terms of posts that doesn't really add to the discussion (I know there isn't a lot of discussion in the collectibles anyways). It would be quite detrimental to the forum if all the account botters flocks to collectibles and starts spamming useless posts.

I don't think it's particularly fair to remove posts that express gratitude but perhaps giving a merit would be better.

Thankyou for your reply - I’m assuming that Rule 1 - would be the answer in this case . But again I’d like to argue that saying Thankyou has a lot more value than some of the nonsense posts and threads on the forum.
And totally agree with you on the collectibles , we do get very little spamming - touch wood !

The context seems relevant so we can not tell it off-topic or low value posts. The examples were given are:  


All of these should consider spam if there are not enough thoughts and not relevant to the context.

One post was deleted from this thread - for saying Thankyou and congrats
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5286455.0
Another post deleted for the same in this thread
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5290208.0

I’m a firm believer in manners maketh man . Sometimes I don’t always have merits to give !

Saying thank you for (free) raffles and congratulating people in said raffles (or even auctions) should not be counted as "zero or low value, pointless or uninteresting posts". Those kinds of posts are usually only deleted if the poster wears a signature campaign. You do not, you just promote a fellow cryptocurrency collectible creator. Plus, you are an active part of the collectors community.

If it was a random newbie (or someone with a signature campaign), I might understand, but I fully understand why you're pissed and, in my opinion, you have good reasons to be pissed.

They don't seem to have been reported.

So a global admin/administrator just randomly removed his posts without them being reported. That's odd...

Curiously, I also had 3 similar posts deleted today. All of them were thanking to the OPs of free raffles from Collectbles board, where I was a part of. I didn't think a lot about why they were deleted, although it seemed curious. But now, seeing that it was not an isolated case, makes me wonder why they were deleted... I thought that maybe they were deleted by mistake, but it seems it is not that, since other such posts were also deleted. Then I wondered if someone considered that being polite means to write a zero value post, saying thank you.


Hilariousandco, are you kind, please, to check also my 3 deleted posts? Thank you in advance.

Sorry - having trouble with my image resizer

https://i.imgur.com/Hzr5lfv.jpg

None on you either. Maybe someone reported somebody else's thank you post and then a mod just deleted the others they saw but I can't see any reports on any threads containing raffle. Maybe message malevolent and the other globals like mprep and rickbig.

Moderating this kind of forum is not a  easy job OP. Heavy post are being posted everyday especially in the major board discussion.

In your case, my opinion is that why your posts was deleted probably mods had been seeing it as scam threads where mostly fake giveaways threads or posts are rampant and that mods had deleted it without reviewing it again before deleting posts. Mods may had been exhausted and you are not lucky OP to which most of your posts had been deleted. Well, let us be patient I know it is difficult to see that number of posts deleted but we still need to trust mods to do their job as well. Let just say that it was an unfortunate events to your posts.

@Mbitr
I have a feeling your case somehow falls under the same category as crackfoo's case (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.msg55185031#msg55185031) and this was mprep's response to that case:

---

But merit should be given to high-quality posts and such posts are the exact opposite.

@SFR10 Thankyou

Now I suppose if I’d left at at a simple Thankyou, this post would be deleted   :)
Reading through that thread section , this does seem to be the case - you NEED to add something extra !
I suppose this is logical , but certainly goes against my personal preference - as I say - manners maketh man.

I was the one who deleted the "thank you" posts. I use a tool that scans new posts for low value content. I manually go through the results periodically and manually delete any posts that violate rule 1 from https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0) or any other rule.

Right on the money.

You are free to thank people in posts that contain other constructive content. If you don't have anything to add, you can also just thank the person via PM.

I try to apply the rules consistently and unless there are exceptional circumstances, I'd rather not give select communities a pass "just because". AFAIK I haven't deleted a single "thank you" post from a raffle winner and have skipped over numerous others since while they were borderline, they did contain something more constructive than "congrats and thank you".

Many thanks @mprep for your response . I can certainly understand why you’ve reached this decision on deleting such posts and I respectfully will not post such comments again. Personally, I don’t agree with it, but again understand the situation.
I’ll lock this topic now to avoid spam
EDIT - unlocked for other members who want to further this discussion.

instead of using a bot to determine what gets deleted - why not actually look at the posts? the ones being deleted should not have been deleted... after all, you are paid for what you delete, right? should take the time to make sure it is correct and not just some flawed bot logic.

I don't think a post by saying only ''thank you'' ''Good Luck'' ''So Sad'' etc is looking good to see or has a good value. But if you really need thanks to others I think it's better to write some other things in a constructive way and later at the end of post ''thank you'' should be added. Or if nothing to say more without giving the thanks then simply sent merit it will act as ''thanks'' LOL

He literally said the script finds possible low value posts and he then manually checks them. FWIW I deleted lots of "thankyou" from newbies and don't see rank or type of signature making any difference.

Actually it does make a difference. And that is, a newbie saying "great project", "thank you for the great project" etc. is part of a group of spammers / shillers which are interested only in bumping an ANN. In Collectibles board, those expressing their gratitude for a free raffle are not shilling anything; are not spamming; are not forcing to bump the respective topic etc. They are simple people, which were part of a raffle and, being polite in their nature, are expressing their gratitude for being offered the chance to win something.

So, yes, there is a difference between your mentioned newbie and another user from Collectibles board, especially inside a raffle topic. And the difference is huge: one wants to spam the forum, while the other is a polite person. This is the difference.

I agree, although some members might not have merits to give.

Just writing "Thanks" or a short phrase to express gratitude is pretty much the same thing as "nice project" or "joined" or any of those types of posts which are banned in the altcoin section.  But I'm not sure a thank you should automatically be deleted or even reported, because it's not quite as spammy as those other phrases I listed above. 

In any case, OP, if you want to thank someone in a post (and I hate to even suggest this), perhaps try padding the post a little bit with more content.  At least then it's not likely to get reported and deleted.  And yes, moderation here is strict as far as low-value posts go.

In this case the PM option can be used if all you wish to do is 'thank' the op. Imo, adding fillers so as just to make the post look less low value is not necessary, especially if all you really want to do is appreciate the OP. Rather than writing 2 words using 50, just private message the user.

I believe@ranochigo meant the user meriting the original post they were appreciating, in place of the reply. And not merits to the seemingly low value (thank you) reply.

While context matters, I believe consistency should also matter in moderation. Such replies are probably deleted cause they require zero effort and can be used to bump a thread by shills and spammers. In this case that's not the intended purpose, but the mods may be trying to remain consistent in their actions, as the replies still require zero effort.

Don't compare apples with durian fruit. In the same board, same topic, same reply... almost no difference :) Although polite and well mannered... not a fan

@mprep

Why is this bot being used to remove posts on self moderated threads?  Doesn't self moderated mean self moderated??

As I've mentioned in my previous post, I manually look through all posts the bot finds (twice actually; once in the bot itself and then on Bitcointalk) before I manually delete them (that is if they're actually against the rules).

---

The end result is similar - clutter. You're free to express gratitude as part of a larger post or through a PM.

---

The bot doesn't remove posts - see details on how it works at the start of this post. As for self-moderation, see my post SFR10 already quoted in this thread (emphasis added by me):


The Wall Observer thread is a partial exception to that rule though (try reporting any post on it to see the details of said exception).

You know what I am getting from this? Instead of being thankful and being concise and to the point - we should make our thank you posts full of bullshit and fluffy spam so that they don't get deleted....

in fact, some of the posts deleted are not even simple "thank you" posts - some are longer but simply start off with "thank you"

Collectibles is a bit different than the rest of the forums when it comes to someone saying thanks - now if it was someone who did not participate in the raffle - maybe that would be terms for deletion. But what was done here was stupidity - I see it simply as a means to ensure some lazy mod gets paid. And by lazy - I do not necessarily mean they do nothing but that that what they are doing is being done lazily - without actually understanding what is being done - simple "hey they said thank you - delete that fucking spam!" - is maybe suitable elsewhere on the forums but it is not that cut/dry here in collectibles.

And if they do not understand that - then they should not be moderating this area of the forums. Let them get paid for deleting spam elsewhere.

This is even worse in my opinion and it's what we saw when campaigns started requiring minimum character counts on their posts. Users will just fluff their posts to meet the minimum making their posts even more unsubstantial and spammy when it should be analysed on the content of the post.


I doubt that this is the case. Staff aren't paid on a per deleted post basis and you could probably delete a thousand posts and it wouldn't make a difference to their pay. It's more about how many reports you handle and given that these weren't even reported then it's a moot point. There's more than enough reports to handle and staff really don't need to go looking for extra things to do. I agree that these sorts of thank you posts should probably be left alone though as they're not doing any harm. I don't think just giving them merit is ideal either. Not everyone has that much merit to go around but anyone could build up a lot of merit just by doing giveaways and I'm sure people do that already, but it would become more prevalent if merit became the common way to thank people for a giveaway. Maybe we need some sort of thank you button or something here instead.


A self-moderated thread wouldn't exclude it from being moderated by staff or abiding by the forum rules. Self-modded just means that the thread started can moderate it how they want and to be aware of that, but mods can and will enforce the rules there.

It it you making this comparison, not I. I just stated that a newbie spamming with "great project" is not the same with a polite member of Collectibles board, expressing his gratitude for having the chance to participate inside a raffle.


Well, that says it all, doesn't it?! It is good to know that you are not a fan of politeness. Thank God, many of us are still polite and appreciate politeness and kindness.

---

Mbitr's posts, as it already posted (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5295266.msg55724515#msg55724515) them, and mine as well, were not just a "Thanks". They were short expressions, yes, but not a single word.


And if this would be a workaround, this would mean to actually spam somehow, in order to be allowed to say a thank you, which is exactly the opposite of what raffle participants intended. So this solution means the following:
- raffle participants which are polite thank to the raffle owners;
- their posts are deleted for being considered spam / zero value
- as a workaround, the participants would spam with more words for being able to hide a "thank you"

Makes sense? :) Lol.

---

In my case, one of the three deleted posts stated (https://loyce.club/archive/posts/5561/55611620.html) the following:

true, there should be exceptions in 'which thread and who' the word 'thank you' can be pronounced freely...
A newbie who has just joined is certainly a spammer when he/she says the sentence 'thank you' in any thread. I think things like this should be given more attention because the conclusion I have drawn is that I have to make a long sentence for saying the word 'thank you' only.  ;D

I just found out that only the word "thank you" can be considered a low-value post, regardless of the reason for saying it. But it doesn't seem like a big deal because we can write more words before thanking him. If it's just "thanks" and not have sMerit, just send PM. That's the solution. ;)

If you want the Collectibles board to have a special status, petition the administration for said status. Until such status is granted or at least til the administration instructs me to handle these cases differently, I'll treat it as any other board.

Let's put that theory to the test: https://loyce.club/archive/details/topic_5286455.html

https://loyce.club/archive/details/topic_5290208.html

special status? no. I just want moderators that are not ignorant. Following cookie cutter ideas/concepts and trying to apply that same concept to everything is just a sign of ignorance. To moderate should require an IQ above that of a corpse.

How, from a non-emotional and non-biased perspective, is someone posting a "thanks" for being able to participate in a raffle different from someone posting a "thanks" for an interesting post, good advice or some other action that the poster feels like it deserves gratitude? Because posts that can be boiled down to "thanks", "wow" and similar short phrases without really losing anything are already being deleted forum-wide.

Also, real classy move calling me stupid just because you disagree with the way I moderate.

I'd advise mods (especially mprep) to delete all my posts containing a "thank you", thus bringing me back to my Member (maximum Full Member) rank where I belong! Considering that I am a polite person, very, very many posts of mine contain these words. As a consequence, deleting them all would ruin my activity points, therefore I'd probably end up being a Member and Full Member again. In case of need, I think LoyceV could give a hand and point out exactly all my posts containing the act of Lèse-majesté forbidden words, thus mods could easily delete them all.

I hope this helps and I also hope that I'll be ranked again where I actually deserve, after deleting all my posts where, among other things, I was polite to someone, thanking him / her for one or other reason.

The attachment of some users to their own posts is quite comical TBH. If you get posts deleted by mods ask yourself:

1) Did you comply with all rules, even the ones that you don't like?
2) Do these posts bring value to the forum?
3) Does deleting these posts harm the forum?

If you can honestly answer "YES" to all questions then perhaps you could re-post - creating threads asking about deleted posts should be the last resort after you've read an re-read the rules and can't possibly imagine why your masterpiece could have been deleted - but 99% of the time you're probably just being dishonest. Considering how much garbage is not being deleted I would say mods are extremely lenient.

I forgot to mention: additionally, if my posts containing gratitude words also received merits, I vouch for having also those merits deleted, as it is obvious that I only spammed the forum with the respective posts. And it would look ridiculous to receive merits for spam, right? This way, true justice would be made, at least in my case: leave me with 15 merits and 20 posts. We all must work together to keep the forum clean!

I did not call anyone stupid - simply stated that to moderate requires thought and a functioning brain - if you have those, then my statement does not apply to you.

As for your question:

How, from a non-emotional and non-biased perspective, is someone posting a "thanks" for being able to participate in a raffle different from someone posting a "thanks" for an interesting post


Simple - the people that participated often in these raffles have paid to be part of the raffle or are partaking in a raffle where the participants pay nothing and the host is the one incurring the cost of gifting the item - often including free shipping. There is tangible - real world objects at stake with these raffles. Sometimes, the value can be quite high - take for example the last raffle involving the silver Litecoin wallet/block. The crypto value is 12.5 LTC, then add the value of the silver content - this is not a simple post of an "interesting" topic.

People posting "thanks" on an interesting topic, have put nothing into it. They simply read it.

That is why if someone is going to moderate the collectibles area, they need to understand that a blanket policy simply does not work.

Some of my posts have it too, but (like yours) it's part of a bigger post. I post weekly thank you posts in this topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5121375.msg54009741#msg54009741), but it's more than just "thanks" and that thread often gets derailed about time travel and flux capacitors anyway.


My opinion: In general, just saying "thanks" is insubstantial. I've reported posts like that many times, but probably not on the Collectibles board. I usually don't report them either when it's a Newbie posting what looks like a sincere thank you on the Technical boards. I can imagine it seems unfriendly if a Newbie gets his post deleted when he was just happy because he found the solution to his problem.
I've seen forums where it was actually recommended to thank users who solve something for you. It's being polite and (in my opinion) justified in certain cases.

---

---

Just a thought: a count down timer to self-delete a post would be a nice feature. Post "Thank you so much for doing this!", click "auto-delete in 24 hours", and in the corner of the posts a count down appears. For Mods it's obvious it isn't spam and will clean itself, and the user gets to say thanks without sending an unsolicited PM.

yep for me, this is a good idea/concept...
providing an "auto-delete in 24 hours" option on a comment can be made a feature here *in the future, so that misunderstandings like this don't happen again. :-*

It seems like the actual problem here would be solved, like many of the forums problems, by eliminating signatures.  No signatures, greatly reduced incentive to spam, no need to have bots deleting suspected spam.

While I understand your position, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree. I don't think effort of producing the item being thanked for should factor into whether a "thanks" post should be allowed or not.

---

Interesting idea. Something for the new forum software perhaps.

---

I know I'm being pedantic but the bot doesn't delete anything. All it does is point out posts which I then manually review and (if against the rules) manually act on.

I guess you haven't seen this yet: https://loyce.club/badposts/spam.html

Or, even better,

- ban any member participating in a signature campaign (and delete all his post history)
- ban any member which participated in the past in a signature campaign (and delete all his post history)
- ban any member which ever wrote "thank you" or similar words (and delete all those posts, but to be sure you teach him a good lesson, better delete his entire post history as well)
- enforce other gulag rules each possible time, in order to make sure that nobody ever dares to break the rules.

Seems a bit much

so we should be rude? and ungrateful? or just pad our posts with more nonsensical words so it does not get deleted? If the purpose of the thread is to do a raffle or a sale - then posts thanking the OP are befitting that thread. Sometimes instead of just saying "thank you" is a bullshit post, let's delete it - maybe look at why the person is saying thanks. Is it because they just spent 1.2 BTC buying an item - or is it because they said "thanks" because they simply read a post?

To say that both situations are the same and to delete posts as such is not logical. So much trash is allowed on the forums, scammers, ban evaders, bounties and such yet what is deleted? Common courtesy and gratitude.

Yes, we are going to have to disagree.

Is it possible to get new moderators for collectibles? Ones that understand the purpose of the collectibles area?

If you want to be polite or express your gratefulness, you're free to, as I've mentioned several times, thank the person via PM or add your "thanks" to a post that has something more substantial than just that. As for different mods, global mods can moderate the entire forum:

I don't think so. Most of the campaign managers (at least nowadays) have a minimum post character requirement and stuff like "Thank You", "Thank you for organizing this " doesn't get paid for. So if someone is actually doing it, it means it's either out of their will to genuinely thank someone or they belong to a campaign that is poorly managed. So the problem boils down to not eliminating signatures but eliminating bad managers who run the campaign.

BAN, right away
https://media.giphy.com/media/xLzCooWgQlta9hhGH5/giphy-downsized.gif

---

I'm not a friend of deleting per bot, it should be decided manually by a moderator but I can understand the mods here, in some way giveaway congratulations could really get the new "Good project, Sir! When exchange Listing? / When Binance? / When Moon?". If someone really wants to congratulate, sending a PM would be ideal. Just imagine if everyone from a 100 spot giveaway would congratulate the winner and thank the OP for starting his giveaway.  :D :D
Best solution would be Bounty Managers rejecting such posts and most likely the problem would get better.

Obviously, I don't have any insight if / how bad this problem has become, I'm not a moderator, so I'm trusting the mods here.   

---

Most people would just add fluff to reach the number of characters:

"Thank you very much for this giveaway. I'm looking forward to your next great giveaway where I'm hopefully participating again.(+and winning (+this time))" - 107 characters +10 +8
"Congratulations to xy (winner). Even despite the fact that I didn't won this time it was a pleasure to participate in your free giveaway (+of a xy coin)." - 106 characters +9
"Congratulations to xy (winner) for winning the giveaway. And many thanks to OP for starting this giveaway, it was a very valuable price (+users could have won here)." - 114 characters +21
...
 :D

Bounty Managers should review each post which was made every week and reject those with congratulations + fluff to reach 75 / 100 / 150 characters. But of course, most Bounty managers won't care.  :-\

Tbf these posts doesn't sound like they add anything to discussion.

The bot does not remove posts, mprep themselves does:

If you want something changed then petition the admins. This can be done both for requesting new mods and rule changes. Just create threads in Meta about each issue and maybe theymos will take note or act on them. Theymos doesn't like to have rules set in stone anyway and hence why they're the "unofficial" ones. With that being said, rules are always open to interpretation by each staff member as well. One mod may see them as unsubstantial and unnecessary whilst another may not be bothered by them and either ignore them or mark them as bad (though the latter probably wouldn't be appropriate unless the rules are changed). I see both arguments as valid though and mprep didn't do anything wrong by the rules, but I do think it's harsh removing them and maybe there are certain rules that should be amended or changed. At the end of the day it's common courtesy to thank someone and not doing so could seem rude or ungrateful. I think people should be allowed to thank people for something without writing an essay also, but I also see how it could be an issue if there's just pages and pages of people just writing 'thanks' etc and we saw this abuse in the alt coin section with aidrops and giveaways etc. Maybe there needs to be more discussion on this topic or a thanks button or something implemented. I think that would be a better solution personally.