Bitcoin Forum

Let's see this profile: S A KHAIR (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1111727)

I will leave aside the fact that he promotes a known scam site which as we all know is not moderated in this forum.

What strikes me is that in 5 fucking years he has not been able to earn a single merit and here he is getting paid for writing garbage because the account was created before the merit system was implemented.

I think consideration should be given to either derank such accounts or give them a signature ban until they are able to earn the 10 fucking merits that enable them to wear clickable signatures, as it happens to accounts that were created after the merit system was introduced.

To earn 10 fucking merits in 5 years is clearly achievable even for a low-quality poster who cares to contribute positively to the forum.

Edit: in light of the discussion, I think the solution would be to remove all airdropped merit as NeuroticFish suggests.

Edit 2: you can find many more morons on page 2. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5400685.new#new)

Next time you better respond to what I am saying and not something else that has nothing to do with what I am saying. I'll make it clear to see if you can see it:


I am not talking about signature campaigns or 1Xcrap.

I'm talking about that kind of people who have not been able to earn a single fucking merit in 5 years should not be entitled to wear clickable signatures by the simple fact of their registration date.

In this case, i do get your point... But what if somebody that used to be very active and a real asset of the forum took a leave of absence just before the merit system was introduced and wanted to come back right now? Wouldn't he/she be entitled to the same perks as the rest of us instead of being stripped from his/her merits just because he/she didn't log in for 5 years? There are plenty of cases of really helpfull people that just went away, but they used to be super helpfull. I'd still like those old accounts to be able to wear a sig, even if they haven't posted for years... And if they come back, they should still have their merits, their signature, their rank,...

But i do get your point that it's frustrating to see people that have never earned a single merit spamming just because they have been a member for so long that they didn't have to work for their merits... I'd personally just hope that such a person gets banned or receives red trust sooner or later, that way their spamming days should be over...

Apart from wearing a scam gambling casino site, the fact that the user has not earned merit in the last 5 years is a clear indication that the person is making meaningless posts that may result in bans.

The question is whether there are few to no reported posts by that specific user, allowing him or her to be exposed to banning, which could serve as a stepping stone toward improvement. Or the forum has become less stringent in dealing with these types of people.

If you want solutions, there are solutions. The forum could put a signature ban until people earn 10 merits and in those cases that you are saying, those who returned to the forum would be able to earn 10 merits in no time. They would have their merits and rank intact and their clickable signature right away.


The guy in the example has red trust, but it serves him to get paid to write garbage, although I don't want to focus on that as I said before.


Thanks for that. I am going to report him.

But you're still giving them a sig ban right now, right?

I was thinking about an IRL example, and i found one pretty fast...
This means, for example, cdecker (who is doing very valuable work for the bitcoin lightning network. He used to be active on bitcointalk, but hasn't logged in since 2018, but he still remains very active in the community... Just not on bitcointalk) would see his signature removed, eventough it contains a link that he might still want to show. If he didn't log in, his signature would be lost forever, and if he did log in, he would have to jump trough the hoops to make at least a couple of posts just to gain some merit to see a privilege he has earned restored.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not disagreeing with you completely... I'm just trying to make a point that it isn't black and white... If you make rash decissions, there will be victims. If you use any kind of algorithm, inclusions, exclusions,... it'll be costly (either in dev time, or in moderation time) and there will still be loopholes and victims... It's not something you should do without considering every angle... And the most probably outcome i predict is Theymos telling us everything will stay exactly the same (but that's just my gut feeling).

There are always going to be exceptions but I see more cases of people like the one I put in the OP than the one you mention, and in that case, I think the merit sources that know him would give him the 10 merits so that he would not lose his signature. Wouldn't you give him some merit so he wouldn't lose the signature? In that case, even I could give him some merit if I had smerits at the time.


We both agree on this.

Imho you are only partly right.
An old account posting useful stuff has probably received some merit already, even if the posts are ancient.
An old account coming back after 5 years may not be interested in signatures / earning (unless sold or hacked!), may probably be more interested in the actual discussions (which will probably get him merit fast).

So yes, you are somewhat right, demoting users would be "not nice". But it may solve more problems than it would create.

Maybe Theymos would start thinking at least on slowly decaying the airdropped merit (and related rank), and that's for everybody, no exceptions.

For this suggestion to be practical and unbiased, then it would have to apply to all ranks and the perks that come with it;
• One would have to earn 100 merits to be able to wear a avatar regardless of their airdropped merits,
• A member would also need to earn 500+ merits to be able to wear a hero/legendary member styled signature.

This would come with lots of intricacies and unnecessary drama. Meta would likely be spammed with regular tons of garbage complaint posts, plus is would be confusing to explain why a member with a certain rank cannot act in the same capacity as others; This then opens up a discussion about whether or not they should be de-ranked, and by extension de-merited.

A random shitposter joining a scam campaign is not a worthy reason for the admins to open the can of worms that you're suggesting, imo.

I would go further. I think the solution lies in removing airdropped merit from everyone. They have had enough time to earn merit.


Such as removing all airdropped merit.


There is a contradiction in this imo. If the problem is a random shitposter I've encountered, how would there be tons of compliant posts. If there were so many, is that there are many people unfairly with clickable signatures without having earned them.

This has been suggested many times in the past, IIRC.

How I have come to view the situation; These members who were here before the merit system and before the forum was 'as popular' are partly the reason there's a forum for newer members to register later on.
I had not heard a thing of Bitcoin in 2010 thought to 2016, but yet users kept discussions going on here, donations, moderating, reporting many of such tasks which came with no reward.

Airdropped merits is sort of proof of the effort put in before a certain time and scrapping it out is an extreme action, imo.

Some would argue that there are tons of merit worthy posts made before the merit system which did not get any, cause it was not a thing.
Members went back to merit popular posts and members, but many more replies in random threads went without notice.

I don't see it that way. Airdropping merits is a socialist measure that I don't know how an ancap like theymos implemented it. I guess he saw it as a lesser evil. What that measure does is equalize those who wrote good posts and those who wrote garbage.


I don't know why they argue that. I have seen a lot of posts written before the system was introduced that have received merit.

You're right, but somebody coming back can pretty easily ask around for his post get reviewed and (some) merited if it's the case.
I don't know if there are so many users coming back after 5 years (again, without being hacked or sold).

I have the feeling we try to fix a problem we don't have instead of fixing one we have.


That's what I tried to say, but maybe my choice of words was not the best.
The difference is that I proposed to diminish that slowly, since then:
* users getting some smaller amount of merit will not be demoted instantly and get one more chance
* on the other hand users who didn't get any merit for so long will be demoted, starting to solve this problem

But yeah, any of the two will do :)

During my years at the forum, the only reduction in signature capacity for existing accounts was when theymos Enhanced newbie restrictions & requirements (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5030366.0):

Allow me to quote theymos (again):

So the shitposters buy 10 Merit with the account they bought, and continue.

Sometimes it feels like theymos is years ahead:

I don't expect old accounts to ever lose their "perks". Reducing "grandfathered" Merit has been suggested many times before. Losing 1 Merit per year would be enough to downgrade many old accounts. Or 1 Merit per 100 Activity, or 100 Posts. But none of this would stop the spammers: they'll just buy/use a higher ranked account and continue shitposting with one rank less. A current Legendary would take forever to lose enough rank to reduce signature value. Or they'll buy a few Merits somewhere.

The only way to get rid of their spam, is reporting their posts. But to do that, I'd have to actually read it first, and I can't get myself to do that. So I've given up on reporting them, whenever I see a user with that scam-casino's signature, I click Ignore (http://). On the Gambling board, many topics now have many Ignored users posting in a row. That makes the whole place quite useless.

Allow me to be the first to complain: why should LoyceBot (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=949024) drop back to Jr. Member?

I was thinking more to something like some percent, to not take forever.
And maybe I live in a dream world, by buying merits is not so wide spread (as buying accounts) and risky (or riskier) too. And if it's risky and expensive it may not worth the price (one can hope...)



Reporting does help, but I feel that it's an underused feature.
Ignoring them helps them; the shitposts don't get reported, the signatures get spammed, the newbies get scammed. You know the drill...

That could work, 10% per year would take some serious effort to keep the Rank. But I don't think it will happen.

The spammers promoting a scam get tagged the moment they show their signature. They don't care about negative feedback, so getting tagged for buying Merit or accounts doesn't matter to them.

I know the drill, but ignoring them means I can spend my time reading more good posts. That's why I'm here after all.

Could it be easier to do everything? There are far fewer signature managers for companies than there are participants who want to take part in these companies.

If you create rules for admission to your companies for participants who have earned more than 10 merits within three or six months,

In my opinion, the number of applicants will decrease drastically, and those who have no problems with receiving merit will not feel disadvantaged since they will easily receive this merit.

But of course, a lot depends on the managers.

I know most signature campaign managers have a 10 merit earned in 120 days rule in their campaign application. I don’t know if the same rules are applied for bounties. I think bounties are more loose with their rules. The participants in these bounties and low quality signature campaigns are usually accounts that just woke up or member rank accounts.
I doubt Theymos would want to make any huge changes that can disrupt the system.

This is actually true and will not favor the later but only the former. The campaign managers are the moderators and can decide what they want in their campaign. But being considerate to others who are yet to perfect the forum well and earn merit within a short time will be better and appreciable. The little merit earned within the last 4 months before participating in most campaigns gives more hope and  action to do more for the upcoming members in the forum. This should not be much regularized or changed.

I don't understand how this account can even be active in forum when he is doing ban evasion for years... so wearing a signature or not is much less problem in this case.
It was proven since 2019 by coinlocket$ that farhansadik (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1081124), Nilima-Temp (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1082338), btcboss71 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1103801), SAKHAIR (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1111727), cryptosabbir120 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1123265), rifatfor (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1133114) are all connected, and two of this account are banned while others are inactive.
More details about his accounts can be seen here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2544574.msg50410794#msg50410794

That (campaign) rule already exists in most, if not all of the signature campaigns on the forum, such rules are established by the managers of signature campaigns cause most of them are reputable members of our community, and they want to make sure that spammers do not earn through campaigns run by them. But what of the situation of the bounty campaigns, or scam related signature campaigns, the managers of these kind of campaigns do not care, their managers are more often than not newbies, or users that haven't earned any merits themselves in a long while/ever, tagging them doesn't even make any difference to them, they still go about their business unscathed.

The only way what you say can be wholly adhered to is if it is made a forum rule, and not a 'voluntary' campaign rule, but that is never going to happen, the forum doesn't even have an "official" rule on more salient issues.

Though I don’t have stats, I think there are users who haven’t posted in the last 4/5 years and among them, there are Legendary, Hero, Sr member and they already have seen the rank when the last time browsed the forum.
Now, if the airdropped merits are taken away, they will someday discover that they aren’t anymore Legendary member while I think the true Legends are the OLD users.
That would be something outrage I think.

While I agree with most of what you say and thank you for the detailed response, I will quote where I think you are wrong:


The same way they buy it now? All the threads we see like "How can I get merit?" "How can I get high rank in BCT?" are because it's not that easy to buy merit and there are many who are stuck in newbie without moving up in rank. If we thought that way the merit system would never have worked because all shitposters could buy merit and would have no restrictions on getting paid to write crap. When the reality is that it has worked and buying merit is far from being widespread.

On this I agree with neuroticfish again:


To get down to the specific case:


Thanks for that. Although I am raising the general issue here of why accounts of this style are entitled to clickable signatures, it is good to know. I will quote you in the ban evasion thread.

That's my position too. Solving that issue should lie within the jurisdiction of campaign managers to sieve out users without earned merit over a period of time. Sadly, the site the accused is promoting doesn't require any restrictions to get it. A campaign that scams and accepts red tagged users accused of scamming can't do better that what they're doing. This brings be back to the issue of why isn't scam regulated in the forum. Plagiarism is seriously frown at here; why not scam?

If you see you will find out that most of the signature campaign have the rule of having 5 earned merits in the last 120 days and there could be slight changes in some of them but most of the managers have this condition of selecting the potential members in that campaign so as to reduce the spam through that signature.

But if you look at 1xbit or 1xbet signature campaign participants you will see they all having negative tags for promoting scam campaign on the forum but still they are getting paid and they shitpost as the rule of the campaign says these tags don't matter and paying high rates to them.So these members don't care at all as they only want to earn and also getting paid for writing up shit post and this needs to be tackled seriously.

Speaking of bounty hunters then they are not posting to the forum and scope is limited to submissions only with hundred of post doing the same thing as discussed many times and it can't be solved.

Airdrop is a reward given to early adopters, either for doing some jobs or for believing the system at it's early stage. Let's assume that some people recieved bitcoin airdrop 10yrs ago, but because the persosn are unable to recieve more bitcoins, then the airdropped bitcoin will be retrieved from them. It doesn't go well to my view.

Speaking about the account in question. It could be that it was dormant for 3 to 4years until 1xbit came and it resurrected and joined the campaign. Since it joined the campaign, most of them spams alot and doesn't have the chances of receiving merits.
I do not send out merit to anyone with legitimate red tag, no matter how quality it is. I believe some persons are together with me on this. So anyone promoting 1xbit has a very slim chance of receiving merits.

Well, after the merit system was implemented, Jr. Member can also wear a signature and needs only one merit. Anyways I agree with your point of view but then it will just create things more complicated. Why not we report these spam posts and their account will be automatic ban after extensive deletion of posts.



This should have been implemented when the merit system was introduced. Don't think it will be wise to implement this at this moment  ???

I am in the know that you are only attempting to drive home your point by comparing these two (dissimilar) situations, but even at that, this example is wrong and inapplicable, Bitcoin transactions once signed by the sender, broadcasted to the network and validated by a miner who gets the mathematical problem correctly, cannot be reversed. So even if we make an imaginal situation like you have done, it is not feasible as a result of Bitcoins irreversible nature; airdropped merits on the other hand is incomparable to Bitcoin transactions, it can be removed or reversed by Theymos if he feels the need to do so, or when he feels it is being of more harm that good, it is reversible unlike Bitcoin transactions, making it easier to achieve.
Members with legitimate red tag can also make quality posts and deserve merits. The trust system and merit system are independent of each other, the trust system is for warnings and information about how trustworthy or untrustworthy a member is, leaning more on matters of trade and commerce. The merit system is for quality posts, and i have read some members say you must not even agree with these quality posts to give merits to them. So an untrustworthy user (in trade and commerce) can make quality posts and should be merited for them, no less that other members, only users that post spam should be deprived of merits.

Same feelings here. I think the airdropped merits should be taken away. Even though people usually don’t rate airdrop merits as merits earned, hence the self congratulatory posts for new ranks and merits achieved.  

Majority of the campaign participants are accounts that woke up recently. The accounts could have been hacked or bought by them to participate in campaign, nothing more. It will be difficult to make posts that deserve merits when your intent is to spam your way to complete signature post requirements

OP, I completely share your frustration with jokers like S A KHAIR (and I'm labeling him such not because he's in the 1xbit campaign but because I've looked at his post history).  This is the first post I saw when I pulled it up:


This is the typical bloated shitpost written in vague generalities that satisfies character quota without actually saying anything interesting, novel, or important--or adding to the thread which it was in, in any way.  Not surprising he hasn't earned any merits, because his posts probably don't even get read.

Sadly, if you asked this fuck what his job was, he'd probably tell you he's a writer, and I'd find that very sad because technically it's true.  It's just the lowest form of writing imaginable and done for the wrong reasons to boot.

As far as his rank goes, this is one of the members who got lucky--and also one of the lucky ones who stuck around until now to continue shitposting for money.  The bright side is that unless accounts like his get sold, they're going to drop off as time goes on simply by attrition.  At least I'm hoping that's the case.  And by the way, the suggestions you made, OP, I'd support them in a heartbeat.  There's still a shitposting problem that hasn't been entirely alleviated by the merit system, and just a little bit more tightening as far as restrictions for newbies and members like S A CaCa here would be well-received by those of us who care about the forum.

It seems we have a lot of users who only focus on making money on forum just by sending spam. Most of them are bounty hunters and they don't get any merit as long as they are active in the forum regardless of their rank. I got some high ranking users ^{[Sr-Legendary]} who just take advantage of any contest to get merit and try their luck joining the signature campaign, luckily they got accepted although I believe they are spammers who have filled my reporting history to the moderators.

I don't really know if the campaign manager is aware of that but I can confirm if they post anything other than on the gambling board then it's likely that the post will be removed as it's of bad quality.

Such users would not make it into majority of the campaigns around as the managers have some sort of entry check in place to select the participants that get into their campaigns.
Luckily for them, and unfortunately for the forum; once in a while scam campaign or one which does not care about the users that promote them comes around and pays them to spam the forum. It's not ideal, but there's little that can be done about it.

Removing airdropped merits would surely help to an extent to curb how such users apply for campaigns, it only ejld have a bit of effect to other regular users who contributed to the forum.

It was a reward for loyalty, and you want it taken away? It wouldn't solve anything, and I'm not sure how many of you would be active if the merits and signature campaign is taken away from the forum.

The majority of those spamming the forum are newbies and those who don't care about the merit system; you'll see a lot of them if you go to WO and P&S.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if someone took 1000 merits from me, I didn't ask for them or invent the merit system, and I had already reached Legendary rank before the system came to life. However, I do not think that we should go to such drastic measures to punish some individual cases that behave like leeches on the forum, but that airdropped merits could be taken away from those who really proved to be members who have no contribution to the forum.

Yet if you consider that the issue of removing airdropped merits has been the subject of debate many times, and that there has been no concrete response from the admin (as far as I personally remember) - I think such a move is very unlikely.

---

Don’t confuse loyalty with the fact that before the merit system, every (literally) spammer and shitppster could get hold of any rank without writing at least one quality and meaningful post. The member listed in the OP is a classic example of someone who would never become a Full Member in today’s system, so we can’t say that his airdropped merits are a reward for loyalty.


Most of the new members who started from scratch are not in any danger of being deprived of something, and most of the active members have collected several times more merits over the years than they received based on the rank they had when the merits system was introduced.

We are approaching the issue from different angles. While you are focusing on theory, I am speaking from the practical aspect of the matter. No matter how independent the trust system is with the merit system, they compliment each other.
No matter how quality your post is, once I see negative tags and check the reasons for the tag. If they are legitimate, I'll not send a merit to you. I believe other members of the forum does same, no matter how good you are, immediately you have legitimate red tag from reputable members of the forum, your chances of receiving merits are slim.

Since scam is not moderated, which means a notorious scammer would not be banned, that's my own means of paying back scammers. Well, it doesn't actually matter because I'm not a merit sourece.

The merit system and trust system are two completely different systems and they do not complement one another in any way i can think of, let me quote Theymos' post regarding sending of merits
A member with a legitimate negative tag can make high quality posts and deserves to be merited, it should not put them in a different position from another member that has no negative tag. It is yours to decide how you give your merit, what i am just bringing to the fore is that negative feedbacks is not and should not be a criteria when sending merits, you would be better of looking at the quality, helpfulness, effort, post history and other things, but not negative feedbacks. A member you should not merit is one that posts spam.
Tag them and warn other members about their bad reputation; but if you see a post of them that is worth meriting, you should merit it, but well like you said it doesn't matter, your merit is yours to use in a manner of your choosing.

I am against this proposal of removing airdropped merits. It doesn't affect me personally, just as it doesn't affect you, but that's not the point. If a decision was made to introduce this system, which also entails airdropped merits, it seems a bit unserious to make changes to it now. The system works, it is not perfect because perfect doesn't exist.

And hopefully it stays that way. I would rather have more people come to the forum, than finding ways to drive those who are here away. If they break rules, use the ban hammer.

Let's update this thread with the bunch of morons who are applying for the new 1xCrap signature campaign (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5401757.0):

Sweminer777 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=521755) 0 merit earned.

crunck (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=307195) 2 merits earned.

MoonOfLife (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=437109) 0 merit earned.

Party24*7 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=382132) 0 merit earned.

ipanks (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=877521) 7 merits earned.

watergold  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=946210) 1 merit earned.

Nanbaka (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1180139) 11 merits earned.

pieppiep  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=49366) 2 merits earned.

gabriela1999 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1236339) 10 merits earned.

SamboNZ  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=240458) 3 merits earned.

lulumiya (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=242323) 4 merits earned.

tazmantasik (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=558299) 6 merits earned.

(o)(o)ilikeboobs(o)(o) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=827265) 5 merits earned.

Jasad (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=508432) 0 merits earned.

muratsink (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=897308) 6 merits earned.

vvikkass (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=368471) 0 merits earned.

mrongoz_imut (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=549389) 0 merits earned.

Roidz (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=821374) 0 merits earned.

We clearly see that the vast majority of them would not have been able to reach full member if the same rules had been applied to them since the merit system came into force.

And this is only on page 1 of the campaign thread, so there are a lot of accounts that are taking advantage of this.

I doubt that there would be at least 1% of active members who would support such a move even if such a proposal were put to the vote. People are basically very reluctant to be deprived of something they got and I have no doubt that a real rebellion would break out if something like that happened. In addition, if things get out of hand - an option that is already on the table is a complete ban on signature campaigns.

---

There is no doubt that these are members who are completely worthless to the forum in every sense, and they should be prevented from having signatures. The question is how to do it if removing airdropped merits is not a realistic option and the scam is not moderated by the forum?

That's not the point Lucius. Or at least not the point I am trying to make.

My point is that those morons shouldn't have the right to wear a clickable signature just because they registered on a certain date, and I think that on that we agree.

If theymos wants to put a solution to this, there are solutions. Some have been discussed and there may be others but let's not focus the debate on how supposedly difficult it is to remove the clickable signature to these morons because it is not.

Of course, there are always solutions, but the question is whether the administration of the forum considers it a problem, and consequently does it have the slightest intention to do something about it? I have only listed two possible solutions that would automatically disable such members from having signatures no matter how much I find it impossible for that to happen.

I have been on the forum since 2015 and believe me I have witnessed a dozen similar threads discussing how to prevent bad people from doing bad things on the forum - the only thing that has happened in 7 years is the merit system which has in some ways made it difficult for future spammers to thrive, but it did not solve the problem of old spammers who retained the benefits of the pre-merit system.

It is not technically difficult to remove signatures from individual profiles because even global mods can do this, which we have seen in the case of plagiarism penalties. The question is who and on the basis of which criteria will make an assessment that someone will be punished in this way, will the removal of the signature be permanent or temporary...?

If theymos wants a 70-80% decrease in forum activity, banning signatures and removing the altcoin boards altogether is a great way to achieve that. But I doubt that is something that is being considered.

But the admins obviously don't care about who wears what signature or if they wear one at all. Generally speaking, the interest of the forum is not to restrict people from doing anything. Do what you want but you have to be willing to face the consequences. 

Well, I commented earlier in the thread that I don't think theymos will do anything because you can see that he likes to think things through very well and from what you comment.

But I have the right to expose the problem and open a debate.


What consequences do they face?

A legendary member in the 1xCrap campaign with 0 merit earned, a person who would not be able to wear a signature if he had registered in the forum post-merit system earns at the level of the second highest paid campaigns of the forum, $100 per week. The only thing he gets is a red tag that does not prevent him from receiving a good salary if he lives in a third world country and a good extra income if he lives in a first world country, for writing garbage.

Sooner or later, that 1x campaign will end and the casino might get tired of throwing money on people who aren't capable of reading and writing properly. The consequence is that no other reputable project, campaign manager, or forum member will want to do business with them anymore. Of all the streets in the city, they can only walk on one while you can walk on all of them.

That happened already, after the introduction of Merit restrictions for Newbies. We're now at 48,000 posts per week (https://loyce.club/active/7d.html), that used to be 280,000 posts per week (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5032314.0). It dropped by more than 80%! The crypto bear market might have had something to do with that too, but even in last year's bull market the maximum I've seen was still less than 80,000 posts per week (if I remember correctly, I didn't check this data too often).