Bitcoin Forum

It seems that a new addition was implemented by theymos, which is very useful for reporters: the age of a post.

https://i.ibb.co/m87rY5g/77k955n.jpg

As far as I see, this message

Old post: We generally do not moderate posts this old for on-topicness, substantiveness, multi-posting, and other "cleanliness" issues.

is displayed when attempting to report a post made more than 6 months ago.

When reporting posts made within past 6 months the message is not displayed.

Practically, this message is supposed to help both reporters and mods: reporters don't risk having their reports flagged as bad for reporting old posts (even though the respective posts needed to be reported) and mods don't have to moderate reports for posts older than 6 months, which reduces dramatically their workload.

For those unaware, those which used to report old posts risked to have their reports marked as bad. If I remember well, in 2021 or so, you could report posts from 2018 without risking having your reports flagged as bad, yet reporting posts from 2017 would lead to have your reports marked as bad.

So now this risk is mitigated. However, I believe that the 6 months is a very short life span for a post to be eligible to be reported. Maybe allowing reports from 2-3 years back would be more useful. For a long time now mods are not overwhelmed by the number of reports, therefore limiting the reports to only 6 months seems too short...

Nevertheless, the message is a great addition, especially for those aiming to reach / keep a high ratio of good reports. Thank you, theymos, for this implementation!

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In the end, I have a small question about this part: We generally do not moderate posts this old for on-topicness -- shouldn't it be off-topicness instead of "on-topicness"?

However, thanks for updating us on this new feature implemented on the forum, but in regard to the statement given above, I think it would have been We generally do not moderate posts this old for off-topicness (i.e a post found to be off topic), and not We generally do not moderate posts this old for on-topicness (i.e a post found to be in line with the discussion and on point), because if a post is on-topic, I don't see any reason why someone will want to report it to moderators.

Secondly, I think the 6months time frame given for a post that can be reported is not a bad idea, at that will give moderators less load, and ability to act on every report very quickly.

Yeah this means that if the post which is reported is six months old, the mods will not check it if it falls under the following reporting criteria.
However, it can still be acted upon if it is reported for plagiarism.

It might not seem like a short time but, 6 months is still a long enough time for information on a thread to have attained the much publicity it needs on the forum and should it be something worth reporting, one might have noted and done that. Its half a year of we dont really realise that. Still, I don't think it's something that won't be acted upon if looked up. Its very much up to the moderators on that as we all know.

Still, the rule might not directly ask moderators to act on it but, its not justification that you've escaped some adversities that could come by the message you passed. Rules still remains rules.

I have realize it after I read this topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5449190.0) since mid-April, and of course the policies taken by the admin according to the expected standards are worth the time.

For me 6 months is not a short amount of time, so it should be long enough to mark an old post that may not be worth reporting even if it's only for the purpose of reducing forum spam. Something dangerous is still expected to be reported even though it was made years ago and only recently discovered, and I think the moderators will handle it well.

I noticed that new rules earlier this week when I tried to report some old posts from our local board. I didn't realise it was a general rule; I thought it was exclusively for my local board.



I'd say 6 months is great. Is there any reason to report an old post when we have a ton of current spam reports still unhandled? Old posts will only be moderated if they fail to meet the criteria mentioned on the report page, an old topic without a single or few spam replies is likely to get moderated .

https://i.ibb.co/Fxkx6B0/Screenshot-2023-05-05-21-58-15-85-e4424258c8b8649f6e67d283a50a2cbc.jpg
There are no update for those who never reported yet  ;D

There is. The warning is only shown when trying to report old posts. And for beginners too, including beginners in reporting.

We have some reporters who report at times tens of thousands of posts per month. They likely purge the altcoin boards and this will slow that type of reporting down and give moderators time to focus on actual issues the forum faces rather than just off topic posts in a section noon e cares about.

That's a good one, as i see some users getting smashed with deleted posts notification from posts of 3-5 years ago, worst is much longer. I don't know how reporters have that kind of motivation in reporting from that timeline of posting though.
The multi-posting is probably the reporting of old bumps of a user ^{(probably newbies on its service or selling threads)} each post instead of the reporting the thread itself.

I think the sentence reads fine as is. It's the "issue" that's being referred to (in the sense of "a matter of discussion"), instead of the "problem", I think (i.e. if you replace on-topicness with off-topicness, then you'd also have to replace substantiveness with non-substantiveness).

I think that a period of 6 months is sufficient to report the post. If the post was not noticed during all that period, then it is most likely not deserved.

Also, this reduces the pressure of reports on the moderators if the period is left longer than that. In general, after 6 months have passed, I do not think that anyone still reads the post except by chance.

A spam post, low value post, off-topic post should be deleted whenever it is reported or seen by moderator. The age of that post is not important to decide deleting it or keeping it in one topic.

I disagree that limiting the age of post to 6 months + to consider deleting it or keeping it. Considering about its quality and off-topicness, contribution for discussion in that topic, and making a decision to send it to trash bin.

Forums are living with their own life. What happened a couple of weeks ago is usually old already and what happened several months ago is ancient. If a topic is not some kind of educational or containing rules, likely mostly no one will read anything that old as a half of a year. So necroreporting is only making moderators work too hard but has little sense. It's much more important to keep clean most actual topics.

Have you actually read entire topic?

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Hmmm... you have a point but I am not convinced yet. I guess it's debatable :)

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Your name really caught my attention... (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5433028.0) Have you read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged...? If yes, you have my sincere congratulations! May you convince other as well to read that impressive book...

If you didn't read it though then you should... especially for wearing this name :) At least, it is much more worth to read that book than some topics I found recently in Off-Topic board (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5448858.msg62163983#msg62163983) O0

Well, i will first say that this is a good observation OP has brought into discussion here, i also thought about it and see that sometimes, there are topics or posts that don't get noticed on time which are off  topic posts and i will have to applaud so many members who have taken this their duty in reporting post that are off topics to the moderators, but for incase of the ones bot reported and escaped the catch from the moderators can have this function as another means to get  apprehended, i may not say much about the on topic posts.

Any unreported spam that is 6 months old should be regarded as an escaped spam ;D

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With this recent implementation, does it also mean that any plagiarism that isn't detected with the space of 6 months can go unpunished?

That may well be the case, the positive side is there will be no backlogs, I think the 6 months are calculated to ease the backlogs and concentrate on the new incoming spam posts, they did not just come a number of months there is a mathematical calculation behind these six months.

And besides it's very surprising to get a notification that your posts back 4 years ago were deleted you will even be surprised by your posts you can't even recall some of it, but getting notifications that you have posts deleted within the six months period you can recall your posts and you can improve your posts to avoid that kind of posts.

Then, this will be an advantage to plagerists who post in Mega threads where their posts can be easily buried and maybe they may never be detected.


I don't think that theymos did any special maths in this case. The only maths is that six months is a good time to catch a spammer, any spammer not caught within 6 months should escape. Besides there's always a warning when one wants to post in a thread that is more than 120days old.


I don't understand what you mean by recalling a deleted post. Do you mean going to inbox to repost same deleted post (maybe editing it or not)?

Sadly, I did not see lately too many action against plagiarists. Most reporters complain that their reports were handled as good, the respective posts were deleted, yet the plagiarists were not banned. The topic Report plagiarism (copy/paste) here. Mods: please give temp or permban as needed (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.msg62182030#msg62182030) receives daily or almost daily updates yet I did not hear about someone being banned recently.

MinoRaiola was caught with triple plagiarism (yes, triple!) yet he is still around.

If the problem is to ban someone who plagiarizes (at least temporarily), what about those who post a report for some other reasons that can be very questionable? There is a big chance that such reports will remain unhandled or be marked as bad, so it really seems that those who spend their time on reports are doing so in vain.

Regarding plagiarism as a violation of forum rules, we were already in a similar situation as now, when many reporters complained that posts were deleted without any punishment, and for some reason it is happening again. I think that this could result in fewer and fewer reports, of course to the joy of all plagiarists and fans of AI posts.

I don't think so, plagiarism will be handled specifically by moderators so you can report the case even if you find they did it more than 6 months ago. The same is true if you find malware or something harmful to forum and users, as Halab said.

This is a very great feature in the reporting box. But one thing I will like to talk about the appearing of the reporters' email addresses. This forum believes in anonymity pseudonymity and personal privacy. But the email address is part of someone's identity base personal address of the resident so revealing one's email address to the moderators when making a report might against the pseudonymity policy of the forum. If not they can handle issues without the email. Well theymos and the moderators know it better. Probably it is part of the email messages we receive whoever there is a message from the forum. Once again, op thanks you for bringing this notice to the public.

You don't need to worry about that, because it has been confirmed several times that this feature doesn't work for a very long time, which means that e-mail addresses are not shown to moderators when someone makes a report. Judging by this post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5200148.msg53042229#msg53042229), that feature was disabled during 2018.