Bitcoin Forum

I'd love to hear what you guys think here about which is the best option for users to make when they want to contribute to the forum.

So far I've noticed that there are quite a number of forum users interested in becoming a cheater hunter as opposed to a spam buster. Both of these contribution are a form of user contribution to the forum but have different effectiveness.

The contribution of cheater hunter is more specific to finding cheaters who cheat because they join many accounts in one campaign or bounty where it will be very effective in helping altcoin projects and campaign owners who are in the promotion stage to pay their participants fairly ^{[1 account for 1 participant]}. While the spam buster works behind the scenes to find spammers from various signature and bounty campaign to report to the moderators which is quite effective in cleaning the forum of junk posts and zero value posts without any contribution to the forum.

Are the contribution of the two types of users above really needed by the forum and must also appreciated and which of the two assumption below do you think is correct.

• Be a cheater hunter, you will get more merit, have the opportunity to become a DT and you get the trust of many forum users and you will get your rank faster.
• Be a spam buster, even though you work behind the scenes but your contribution is really needed by the forum to keep it clean. You will find it difficult to get many merit if you do not want to expose your work in public. You still need to be a quality poster to get merit and rank up. You have to put in a lot of effort to earn the trust of this community. It will be less likely to be appointed as a DT.

As you said, a spam buster mostly works behind the scenes reporting posts to the mods for them to take action, while in cheating they would need to publicly post for the campaign manager to become aware; So you cannot notice which members of the forum are more involved in.

• I do not think anyone would get merits simply cause of the work they do in the forum, Sure you can get a couple but as a strategy to rank up, you would still need to be a decent poster.
• That's why theymos suggested the reporter badges and posted the top reporters (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5360879.msg57980000#msg57980000) over the last year; to recognize those who work to keep the forum clean, they also have the opportunity to be appointed as moderators.

Are you certain this is about contributing to the forum?

But to answer your question, I'd say both of them are valuable contributions but depends on what you want to focus on. Busting spammers would contribute more and cover the "cheaters" too since cheaters are the main spammers and if they are not even if you bust a cheater you are mainly contributing to that campaign to not be cheated not the forum to be clean.

Both are important, at Bitcointalk and both are very helpful Forum and members from spam attacks and Alt accounts, bottom line.

• Spam can be said to be dirt means: posts must be reported and put in the trash, that's the main point of spammers.

• Alt account or cheating in the campaign has a broad meaning, if explained, who has an Alt account, can also conflict with some Bitcointalk forum rules.

1. If a member has an Alt account and registers in a campaign, let's say they entered 3-4 alt accounts, while only 5 members received in the campaign, here it is clear that 3-4 opportunities for others are lost.
2. Collide with the rules [18], [25] etc. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0)
3. Can commit fraud that can harm other members by involving accounts 1,2 and three, to carry out its blowing action.
4. Greedy is only selfish to collect tokens/coins in Bounty, most managers do participant behavior involving alt, they don't like it, feel cheated.

Conclusion: for me, both are important in contribution, both are different responsibilities, definitely different in position, I mean different crimes they committed.

You're wrong here: bounty campaigns who pay their bounty spammers in made-up tokens don't give a shit about being fair or post quality. All they care about is to spam as much as possible on social media so they can cash in on their useless token and move on to the next one.
I think it's a total waste of time trying to find alt-connections in bounty spammers. Newbies with high Activity and no Merit earned have nothing to lose. My assumption is a small group of spammers controls the majority of bounty spam accounts anyway.

My advice: don't try to "become" a spam or cheat hunter, just report it when you stumble upon it.

I wonder why you didn't include scam busters?

It really doesn't matter how someone contributes to the forum, as long as it's in a positive way.

Both of them have parts that might be inaccurate ^{[the latter seems to be more accurate, but only due to being in a specific scenario]} and there are certain users that do both of those contributions.

• e.g.
  
  Quote from: _BlackStar on November 01, 2021, 04:15:15 AM
  • Be a cheater hunter, you will get more merit, have the opportunity to become a DT and you get the trust of many forum users and you will get your rank faster.
  In most cases, that wouldn't/shouldn't be the sole reason for getting into DT2/1, and doing such things, doesn't automatically equate to other users trusting you!

I second what Loyce said about not trying to "be" anything -- just contribute and do the right thing. That's how Loyce became LoyceV, after all... there was no roadmap for that prior to.

I personally enjoy the puzzle of connecting accounts. I also enjoy trying to present it in a way that would be convincing to a judge and jury... some people don't care about that aspect of it at all, and it brings down the entire artform.

OP, nothing personal, but your question suggests that you do not just want, as you say, to be useful to the forum, but choose what can be beneficial for you to quickly rise in rank.
And if you put the question differently? Just be an active participant without thinking about the benefits.
There is a famous expression, "just do it"
If you see spam, cheaters, scams, plagiarism - send reports to the moderators. If you have free time, choose what you do well, but in any case, do not forget that this is a bitcoin forum. And you will be a very useful user if the information comes from you, specifically about bitcoin.
Everything else is game.

I don't think you can do much to help those who participate in bounties. They know that there is a big possibility they will receive worthless tokens or no tokens at all. They still participate because those few dollars (that they sometimes get) means a lot in their part of the world. Many use multiple accounts and some managers who run the campaigns don't really care. It's all about getting the message out their as much as possible. Promotion and presence, especially on social media.

Other bounty hunters are new to the scene and believe there is great money to be earned from bounty campaigns. They are not going to read scam accusations and research the projects they participate in because they already see it as very rewarding.

Try and find scammers if you are interested in that kind of thing. Find those who have scammed in the past and are back looking for more victims to scam.

Just contribute on what you can and don't overcomplicate it, OP.  Just because a contribution does not get noticed that much does not mean that it is not a contribution.

Please don't be offended, OP but I feel like you are chasing on what can raise your rank faster on the last two lines you wrote inside your assumptions as what lovesmayfamilis mentioned.
More merits or not, if it contributes to the forum, just do it.

Nah, cheater-hunters tend to get a decent amount of merits when they link a bunch of accounts for instance or expose a scam with a lot of evidence presented--and for the most part that merit is deserved, because those posts have a lot of time and effort put into them. 

Spam-busting is something all members should try to do if they care about the forum at all, and without regard to any status or recognition it might bring.  I agree with the others that OP seems to be a bit focused on increasing rank and building a reputation here quickly, which does make some alarm bells ring in my head.  On the other hand, he's a decent poster so far and hasn't been outed as anyone's alt account (which has happened with members like mdayonliner and one or two others I can't remember).

OP, just keep doing what you're doing and you'll be fine.  Don't jump the gun, because it takes a while to become a known personality here and if it even appears that you're trying to do precisely that, it'll backfire in an instant.

Thank you to all of you.

Actually I'm very excited to respond to your comments one by one but I can't do it. Have send 1 merit for every comment and opinion you submit.

Basically I know that each and every one of you will have one assumption you want to make depending on how your habits shape your perception of the efforts of others. There will always be support and opposition from any problems submitted by forum users so we must really have a thick skin in any case and filter out the best suggestions to develop ourselves.

This thread aims to find out what the forum and forum members expect from most other users who want to contribute ^{[cheater hunter and spam buster]} so I believe the opinion you give can be a basic reference for anyone. It's up to you how you rate this thread, but look at the thousands of other spammers, those who keep posting trash and they didn't intend to contribute to the forum in the first place.

You should really see something positive in every user's contribution efforts on this forum and don't let the merit system keep you paranoid about any user's efforts. As I said, I have a commitment to continue to contribute to this forum in my own way regardless of whether you agree or not because that is the best way for me to achieve the targets that have been set.

Merit is the best reward for forum contributors in my opinion. Some of you have been spam busters and cheater hunters for a long time, I support your efforts and willingness to contribute even though these two things are not required for every user. Finally I can say that I will not complicate whatever I want to do because I just want to ask for your criticism and opinion as senior people in this forum. I really don't want you to misunderstand my current attempt, peace.

Thanks the pharmacist, I understand what you want from me.

Even though the OP looks like he really want to be a star, but he still doesn't shine like his name _BlackStar :v
Sorry OP, I was just kidding.

Recently I've also noticed the OP is very active on the forum as a spam destroyer where he manage to have good 100% report stats as I can see in the last picture he posted. He progressed quite fast and managed to get quite a lot of merit (https://bpip.org/smerit.aspx?&to=_BlackStar&start=2021-10-02T16:06:39&end=2021-11-01T16:06:39) in a short amount of time and he almost reached his new rank but he had to get 5 more merit and 30 more activity. I agree with you, she has to go through many stage to become famous. But I think he will be famous soon if he is able to maintain his consistency in this forum.

The best way to contribute is to do you part in engaging in only quality conversation and ignoring the generic topics all over the forum. You posting there only encouraging others to do the same as your post technically gives more visibility to the topic. Not everyone can be a alt hunter but everyone can be a spam buster. Do this things without expecting anything in return. Considered them as your way of giving back to the community.

With a direct answer, I'll say do both. I appreciate both categories mentioned above equally as I have been in a position to benefit from them. The hunters of alt cheaters, are doing an excellent job because they make my work as a manager a little easier. I once manage a campaign that after investigation was carried out, 90% of the participants were alts and they took up space of other genuine members making me close forms for new applicants. Luckily they didn't get rewarded.

In my previous signature campaign, the spam busters have also been of a great help. Both categories of hunters are needed for the forum to function properly.

If I'm being honest, actually I don't want to be famous just because I reported quite a lot of spammers to the moderators, fame is not my main goal but I just want to make a positive contribution to the forum. As CryptopreneurBrainboss mentioned, any user can be a spam busters ^{[transparent or secret]} but there are many other ways to become famous like being a cheat hunter, high quality posters and many other things that can make a user famous faster.


The Pharmacist, skarais, CryptopreneurBrainboss, thanks for your good advice. It's true as you said, I shouldn't be pessimistic that what I'm doing will make me a useful user on the forum. I would love to do it ^{[help or not]} and I will continue to do this without wanting to hurt anyone. I also want to engage more in quality discussion because I know that just by being a spam solver I won't get better especially about bitcoin.

For now, this result of my report:

Exactly they don't just care about the quality at all and their only aim is that promotions on social media so as to create hype about their token which has been created from scratch and have no utility as most of them are too bad and the rest work is done by bounty spammers at the best possible way with shilling about the project on social platforms.Then what happens next is they will get listed on the exchange somehow and then they will dump the coins to cash out profits and then there would be no liquidation for the investors and even those who received the tokens so what's the fun at all? There are mostly alts taking part in bounty campaigns and you will find similar address for many as they are lazy enough to to that also.But you can still try to do your best to report them on good basis but they will continue the same way.

Most of projects do run their bounties like you said. They consider the forum as the landfill for them to expose their companies with garbage posts.

If they do care about reputation of their project and the cost they pay for their bounties, they will stop running their bounties shortly after they have analysis for results they gain from bounties.

The project I work for, ccFound decided to stop running bounty because their team realize that bounty hunters don't make anything good, even effect from exposure is too low, lower than what they expected.

Lol, here's one Spam Buster's personal story.

Every morning while drinking my coffee instead of reading the news I was hunting for spammers, just because it makes me feel better when I report shitposters. It's a weird addiction and makes your start of the day way more pleasant. With the time it tensions more and more, because you start finding connected accounts, farms and even whole "villages" of "farmers" with bots and man, this is even more addictive.. at the end I end up as a "report junky" lol. It wasn't because I was aiming for merit nor trust (you don't earn that this way), this was even before Theymos announced the report badges, I just love the forum seeing still posts from satoshi himself and damn, see it that polluted with all that shit just made me angry. So combining the anger with the addiction it's like a whole new purpose of life, amazing feeling...
Bots and cheaters became more sophisticated after the merit was introduced so you get even bigger challenge to find those new strategies and expose them ... oh I love the time with the homograph plagiarism attacks, that was the best time for me to satisfy my crave for reporting "smart" spammers. Everyone can report "good project" but a totally messed up characters copied from a few pages back and scrambled with synonyms, that's what I call challenge and there were 3-4 years old accounts.. insane.

Now the spammers are the old school "good post", "when moon" type and the excitement is gone but I still report form time to time, when I'm here ;)

If you do all because of the Trust or Merit, you doing it wrong. If you do it from the heart, one day you'll be rewarded for your work one way or another.
Don't push it, just find your passion.


P.S. Lol, someone (tranthidung) is wearing an avatar with me on, lol :)

Probably not really an attractive one but I just wanted to create one after seeing the story! :-*

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/02/mdFvc.jpeg

To be honest both spam hunting and scam hunting is not an easy task, as @TheBeardedBaby we start at something but end up finding a whole farm but the time needed to do all this things need hours and hours in a day so real kudos to everyone who is consistently doing it.

And I know many people stopped reporting the posts because its like we have to do it forever but if the spammers can do it all the day then why not we? ;)

It's not easy, and yes it's never been easy. You have to sacrifice a lot of your time every day if you want to be one or both of these ^{[spam busters and cheat hunters]}. Is it a waste? No, of course not if this is done for contributions because in my opinion these two things will only help the forum reduce spammers and cheaters ^{[not eradicate]}. As for addiction, yes I feel addicted to doing it so far although it is usually a little tinged with anger.

Cheaters and spammers will always be around, so take a little 5-10 minutes to find some of them each day and report them to a moderator. This is much more useful than just getting involved in drama.

---

TheBeardedBaby, I'll tell you honestly that it's not about merit, it's not about rank, nor is it about trust and fame but it's about a good initiative to have something useful for the forum. I happy hearing it and enjoy your story and advice.

Hi all, is it when moderator tagged our report as ^[bad], we can no longer access posts and threads?

Of the 642 posts that I reported the results were 640 tagged good, 1 bad, and 1 not handled. The problem is I can no longer access posts that are tagged bad, I really want to know what the reason is. Did you experience the same thing as me while you were a spam buster?

The post and thread seems to have been deleted by the moderators, but is there a reason why the report was tagged bad?

https://i.ibb.co/chGF6v4/Screenshoot.png

Your report history only shows reports made in the last 30 days. The "bad" report is most likely older than that.

The report I did on November 1, it's not an old report. The thread seems to have been deleted by a moderator.


https://i.ibb.co/wzt89VS/Screenshoot.png

@_BlackStar, it's probably that your report was actually good, but the moderator mistakenly marked it as bad - it happened to me a few times. As far as I know, only the admin can change this status, although there is a possibility that global mods also have these powers.

When I take a closer look maybe there is another possibility why is post marked as bad, is it possible that you report the same post twice?

I think I misunderstood you earlier. If a post gets deleted, the topicID changes. I guess (some) Mods can still access it, but normal users can't.

@_BlackStar, try to ignore your stats. Bad reports are also a result. You will soon begin to figure out what you did right and what the moderator disagrees with.
It is also possible that you misidentified your complaint, and therefore the result was poor.
I'm sure everyone who started submitting reports got bad results, there is nothing tragic about that.

Cheat Hunting, Spam Hunting, Plagiarism fighting and Scam bursting
These are voluntary community(forum) services whose primary aim is to sanitize the forum. Without users involving in these services, the forum would have been a total mess as only the moderators cannot handle. I am unsure that the reason people join the services is for merit. However, when any of the above is done correctly, it attracts merits as reward in exception of spam reporting which cannot be made public because of its nature.
Most times, people after reporting a user for plagiarism also tend to create thread with it, either to acclaim praises or whatever reason, thereby giving the accused the opportunity to modify or delete the post and hence escape the punishment.
Among the aforelisted, I love one most and will be willing to do it anytime, and that is Scam bursting. All other ones are beneficial to the forum and its users, but Scam bursting is much more important because it can ruin someone not only in the forum but in the real life.
My unreserved respect to all the Scam bursters 8)

I don't want the mod to change that, I'm doing this because I want to know what's the reason. Maybe after this I won't care too much about the report stats either, but it would make a lot of sense when a lot of reports are tagged bad which means the difficulty of finding spammers is getting higher.

No, I don't think so. But maybe because I have a fairly short interval between the first report and the second report and so on. But now it's good for me to forget that and continue my activities.

---

I will gladly consider your suggestions. Because basically these statistics will not have much effect on the handling of reports. 640:1, not as bad as I thought.  :D

Hai all, this a new milestone for my report. 180+ today, a bit tiring, but hopefully it will help reduce spammers and change their mindset for the better. When they actively post only for money by only meeting the weekly quota ^{[without any contribution]} then I only advise the manager not to accept it again in the future. But who cares about this?

Now 900, will soon reach my first 1000 reports in the next few days.

https://i.ibb.co/D4PTTZK/Screenshoot.png

In total there are 44 reports that have not been handled since February 4 2022 until now from more than 200 reports that I submitted to the moderator. I may not mind this, but is it possible that this report will be addressed soon or will it stay like that forever and turn into a bad report?

https://i.ibb.co/424k7w8/screenshoot.jpg

I know that this kind of situation has happened in my previous reports, but the moderators are starting to deal with it sooner than I expected.

If they are not handled for more than 30 days, most likely will stay unhandled forever. They won't turn into bad ones automatically. I have many unhandled since the time of the homograph attacks, as the mods didn't know how to address them because they were not fitting into the rules, but were cheating attempts, without solid proof.

As TheBeardedBaby have already written mostly when its unhandled over a week or 2 it will be staying as unhandled.
Depends also on the case what kind of reports we are talking about or what you have reported.
Sometimes the Moderator are not sure how to adress the report and its marked us unhandled.
I just can speak from my unhandled reports as they was longer as a week not finished , its unhandled.
Dont worry about it as long the unhandled reports are not bigger as the good ones  ;)

As I said, I actually don't mind this unhandled report but almost all the posts I report have the same reason because I believe they are spam posts created just to fill the weekly post qouta on a campaign.

I almost don't report newbie, jr or member posts because I'm more interested in capturing spammers whose rankings start from Full member and above to Legendary. It really got me addicted to keep catching it.

Yes, I know the numbers aren't worth the my good reports, after all it's only been a few days of unhandled. If possible, I'd still like the moderators to handle it faster whether that's good or bad.

There is a difference, what you think and what a certain moderator thinks at a given moment may be different - of course, you think you are right, but the other side thinks differently. Realistically, 70% of posts violate forum rules in some way - and the fact is that at least half of it goes under the radar, or someone pretends not to have seen some things in the sense that it's not worth wasting time on such things.

However, don't be discouraged - most spammers quickly give up when they get a private message every day that at least 5-6 posts have been deleted - realistically, it's much easier to report a post than to write it ;)

I don't know exactly why the moderators didn't handle the report while I was doing it. So far my 49 reports haven't been handled by a moderator (maybe more than 1 year), but I don't really care about those stats. Afaik, moderators have their own way of handling reports and every reporter may have to accept the fact that not all reports will be handled when the moderator can't decide whether it's good or bad.

_BlackStar, don't really care about those stats because your contribution is much more important than just having good stats for each of your reports. Keep reporting posts you think are spam and continue your contribution without worrying too much about the stats. You may need to worry if 80% or more of the posts you report are not handled or tag badly by moderators. For now, you're fine with those stats.

Cheat hunters and spam bursters are like the front-end and back-end developers.
While the cheat hunters work would easily be seen by all and maybe rewarded with merits and trust as alleged by OP.
Spam bursters work behind the scene to sanitise the forum, and I believe the admin would be the one to see and maybe reward them with trust or they may have chances of becoming moderators.

While the cheat hunters help the managers to hire one participant in a particular campaign, spam bursters help the moderators to keep here neat.

It is also worthy to note that majority of the cheat hunters and spam bursters do not do it for reward. It is passion.
Ratimov wouldn't have made 100,000 good reports if he wasn't passionate about it.

Spam buster and cheater hunters are doing great here in the forum they are doing these to maintain the forum clean. Without them for sure in this forum, there are many shitposters, cheaters and other violence created by another user who does not value the forum. For now many user who report spam post and cheater to mods and the mods take an action in it.

Question for spambusters: It seems the mod is running slower lately at handling reports, really?

I have increased my activity to report a number of spam posts and shitposts to the mod especially during the month of March. But I think the mod needs a little time to handle the reports so my number of unhandled reports is still above 200. Do you feel the same?

https://i.ibb.co/bHfbJR0/screenshoot.jpg

Yep - I believe there’s been a huge increase in reporting by spambusters in the last few months and I’ve certainly noticed there can be a lag sometimes (1-2weeks) until the mods catch up - they are definitely being kept busy  :) Just keep up the good work everyone  :)

The reports so far have been handled manually by the mod in my opinion and it takes a lot of time. You have to be patient to get the results because it is possible that many other contributors will also increase the number of reports. My advice, continue your report even if you have to wait a little longer for the results. Good jobs.