Bitcoin Forum

In this simple suggestion it will help a lot to stop abuse from those already tagged users with high ranks.

If an account is already tagged as a merit abuser or anything their merit will be automatically disabled.
In this way we can instantly stop their abuse to send merits in creating new accounts.

Benefits to the forum and community:

1. No more merit abuse from that account: It will lessen reports that already tagged because if that account has many sMerit he will surely create a new account and pass his merits to the newly created accounts (that is happening right now).

2. It will be easier to clean the community: If their merits is disabled they cannot abuse anymore, and they will surely start from the start, and learn how to use the forum in the right and fair way.

3. They are forced to forget the account that has red tag: If their purpose is to join a lot of signature campaign which is the only reason for them to spam the forum, for sure that account with negative trust will never be active anymore because it has no use for them.

An possible example of one account that have already been tagged and trying to make a way to distribute his merits to his alts.
LINK: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3189979.0


Disadvantage: The only disadvantage of this that I see is that those accounts with negative trust and still active because they are promoting their service and others cannot send merits anymore, but its okay because there are only few of them.


Any other positive or negative suggestion's are welcome and will be appreciated.  :)

This is a good suggestion in my opinion because:

1) It helps to prevent wastage of merit points. I know that the merits sent by a person with red trust will be examined more strictly but we should not forget that those merits get wasted even if further abuse is topped.

2) In order to avoid the wastage mentioned in first point, once the merits are disabled for such user, the remaining merits of that user should be added to quota for merit sources so that those merits are still in circulation.

Well, First of all, that's really good idea of yours. But I think
Is not the only disadvantage of your idea. Because not all account with Negative Trust are abusing Merit/Merit System. For example is this Guy Mr. Wesimon
Profile: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=882355
As you can see, Yeah he's account is tagged with Negative Trust. But I can prove that he's not abusing his Merit. You can check this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3175633.msg32872726#msg32872726 made by Mr. Wesimon. This thread is a "Free merit for quality posts". It only proves that he's not trading or abusing his Merit and I'm sure that he is not the only Member with Negative Trust who uses Merits for good.

What do you think?
Not because some Members here have Negative Trust doesn't mean we're gonna trash them. Some Members with Negative Trust already regretted their mistakes in the past and now moving on to a new world of peace. Lol

I know your higher ranked than me but I want you to search deeper on that Wesimon's profile and read my report about that and you will see that he is just hiding to that event to trick the community and not get noticed that he is transferring his merits to his alts.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2290127.msg31592514#msg31592514 3
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2726080.msg28395901#msg28395901 2
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2372313.msg32626889#msg32626889 4

to this post and your post only gets 1.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3092808.msg31919039#msg31919039

I can assure you that this is a diversion to trick the community.

Are you talking about that "Dingdong7" account? Because yeah looks like you were right, it seems like he transferred most of his Merits to that account.  
Well, if your suspicions were true. It means he just fooled me and other member of this Forum :-[
What a shame :(.

But yeah, let assume that Mr. Wesimon really is a Merit abuser . But, don't you believe that there are still some Members with Negative Trust who who contribues well in this Forum? We can't asaure if those tagged accounts really are abusing Merits. Maybe there are still some of them who didn't abuse it.

You should change "merit" to "sMerit".

---

I like the idea but at the same time, I can easily argue on both sides. If this was part of the current system, then we wouldn't be able to easily spot alt accounts of these abusers or those they're connected to.

---

Instead of that, I'm looking forward to this:

The underlying premise here is that the ability to award sMerit should a privilege and not a right. I agree with this, and also the suggestion that any member who abuses the merit system should be deprived of the ability to award sMerit.

This creates another consideration - Who should be trusted with the ability to award sMerit? I believe that everybody should be trusted initially, from brand new right up to Legendary. Abusers of this trust should have the ability removed, and it may be useful to have an appeal procedure.

What if somebody is really generous awarding users with sMerit? If you take away the ability to award from some of the users, it'll be ten times harder to earn one. Not to mention, that in these days it is already almost impossible for newbies to get award

I don't think anybody is suggesting that. What is being suggested is that merit abusers lose the right to award sMerit. For example, much to my surprise, I seem to have picked up a couple of merits. If I were to award an sMerit to Jet Cash, then that is clearly an abuse of the system, and should be punished.

It isn't impossible for new members to receive merit. They just have to accept the primary purpose of the forum, and not look on it as a free lunch.

I'm sure I'm the minority in this who would disagree with this proposal. And i'm sure Theymos and crew would too.

Why? Because currently sMerit abuse isn't a hard and fast rule, unless you're sending it to alts. And there's so many avenues that one could abuse the merit system without there being a catchall provision. For example, selling merit isn't illegal, but it's negative trust-worthy. You can't suddenly freeze an account's sMerit just because they sold sMerit, which is not illegal. To give an official punishment for a crime per se, rather than an official crime, is an unfair exercise of power.

That said, I agree with the other person on this thread that people who gain a negative trust, then realize they can't use their account for sig campaigns, they end up holding free sMerit giveaways for people with quality posts. I've seen such threads. If you totally lock their sMerits, it disallows for this kind of opportunity.

I'm unaware of the current status of sMerit flow -- is it capped, is it flowing freely, are people just not sending them? Who knows. But I'd say that it isn't a good idea at this time to lock down sMerits from someone with negative trust who may or may not have abused the merit system.

Besides, if someone sends sMerit to an alt, that alt will no doubt spam the forums and be weeded out too easily and receive a negative trust... and the number of sMerits that alt can give gets halved anyway. It continues to get halved until none are left.

We're simply waiting on a radioactive halflife called SsMerit (Spammer's sMerit). It decays by 1/2 for every account banned. It's only a matter of time before the harmful radioactive decay depletes itself.

Who says that selling sMerit is not illegal?
Isnt it unfair that they abuse signature campaigns many times?
They already get a big profit here from cheating bounty campaigns, are they not contented with one account?
This is the perfect time to clean the forum its time for them to payback.

May I know the reason why do you think that they dont deserve to be punished?

No they didnt, they just distributing their merits to their alts.
Please read the report.

If someone gets tagged they either abuse the system, cheat or scam...

Can you catch and report them all? we are looking for a better way to stop those farmers instantly.

As theymos already said that the negative trust should be in extreme conditions.
I don't think it is needed as people still have to put some efforts to get more point and to achieve a higher rank. That is what we want(Quality). Isn't it?

Does merit abuse isnt an extreme condition? Because for me merit abuse is an extreme condition, the system is introduce to reduce spam and eliminate farmer accounts.

Yes, we want quality but we also want to reduce spammers and farmers.

Or... you are just not considering it because you once done it?

https://i.imgur.com/i6IcRXT.png

Sorry for this but most of the time I check the profiles of those who are replying on my post.

This isn't really a solution. If a user has already been tagged for merit farming/trading then it would be pretty easy to spot his other accounts because that's likely where the merit will go. Besides, feedback can be removed so would that mean their merit comes back magically? I really can't see theymos implementing this and it probably would do more harm than good in this instance.

I didnt think of that, this sentence makes sense.
But what if it is only disabled and not vanish, only some of the comments here that concludes that their smerit will vanish or gone.

Do you think that was the abuse of merit system? If yes, think twice before you speak again. I don't think any explanation is necessary in that case.

Haha i thought of this before, this guy will go over the limit and going rampage and suspect anyone of merit abusing.  Come on 1993jochico, your merit abusing accusation to  SM23031997 is kinda funny, if you really want to suspect people, please give valid and enough evidence rather than just seeing to other person merit. So what if anyone gives 20 merit to a post? I got 20 from QuestionAuthority and a lot of people got +20 from him/her, so you would suspect him/her giving merit to his/her alt account by using a giveaway method too???

Remember, your action can lead into a destruction

Im sorry to say sir but I have to say Yes after seeing this.
https://i.imgur.com/zCMaLU4.png

I think we can base on Jet Cash's statement.

I not judging him...yet, and if I do I will add this to my report but I didnt because I know that Im lack of evidence.
"So what if anyone gives 20?" Its totally abuse especially if it is your alt.
Dont compare your 20 from QA its an event reward and you deserve it.

I can clearly see that QA's event is legit unlike the link on this OP.
I know that all of us can notice the real and fake events.

EDIT: I just want to add sir that he twice send 20 merit to his alt in one day.

System says "You have soandso sendable merit (sMerit) which you can send to other people. There is no point in hoarding sMerit; keeping it yourself does not benefit you, and we reserve the right to decay unused sMerit in the future."

That day I found a guy who deserves a rank up. So, I helped him. Interestingly he never came up with a new post and hence never received merits from me.

Most of the time these kinda post come from legendary members who don't need a rank up.

Still, I Have 30 sMerit left and love to send them in bulk but for that, I need someone who deserve them.

In this statement you admitted that Craige288 is your alt, but anyway this is not the right thread to talk about it.

Lets go back to the topic.

If you read those posts/threads, user Craige288 has obviously spent a lot of time and effort to compile lists of abusers, get them red tagged, and therefore help the forum. In my view, that is far more merit worthy than multiple spam posts consisting only of a celebrity's name. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3199334.40)

I think smerits farming are already been discussed, even the users who are giving away smerit to unworthy posts, sooner or later they will ran out of smerits to give,  farming smerits are easiy to be spotted, it depends on the smerits giver if he will waste it on a smerit farmer, having a merit is the top priority of users these days, it helps this forum to be of quality. Do not worry about farming. It will go away naturally, well, technically speaking.

Me??  :D
Craige288 admitted that not me(He's lying).
Craige is not my alt account, nor my friend and not related to me in any way. Merit sent to him due to his remarkable work in catching farmed account, nothing else.

Lets go back to the topic.

Well. OP, Mr. 1993jochico. It seems like you're great in investigations and with these detective stuffs. I admire your spirit. You came up to reveal something related to Mr. SM23031997.

To Mr. SM2301997, I really agreed to the OP. Its a little bit fishy. I also suspect you when I checked your Merit history and found out that you sent a total of 40 Merits to Craige288 and consolidated by these post by Craige288

With this statement by Craige288, this may somehow prove that you are the user of this account. But, as a wise man and a Hero member. I'm sure that if you are Craige288, you will not admit that you were SM23031997 in the first place.
That's why this is not enough to prove that you're a Merit abuser. And I will not judge you.

I'm out of Merit now, stop talking about that shit now.
Hope you won't come up with a new accusation that hilariousandco is my another alt.  :D

Gotcha, you sent 30 Merits to Mr. Hilariousandco. Its your alt account isn't? Come on admit it.

Just kidding  ;D

Well that craige's word is kinda bias towards the question, it can be that he/she is agreeing to the fact that he/she used the list of the other member to get meritted, or he/she is admitting that he/she is the same person as SM23031997. It is kinda hard to know the true meaning of his/her words in that post, and that is why it is better to gather a valid and enough evidence before we make an accusation into other person.

I just came across this thread and check 1993jochico's previous posts, it's very funny and interesting that in his thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3182306.0, he claimed about me with this "...merit abusers I strongly believe that they dont deserve to stay here anymore they cheat to this forum for a long time" and this "Wether these 2 are friend's or alts this seems still a merit abuse."

I dont think he should judge me with these words. Before writing these words, at least he should do some researches. People like who like them, so they could give merits to anyone they like. Also, I dont think he could make thing better with this kind of actions.

Yuph, you were right Sir. That's why I also said to my reply that "That's why this is not enough to prove that you're a Merit abuser." because it doesn't mean that Mr. SM23031997 is a Merit abuser just because he sent Merits to Craige288. And it is obviously that what Craige288 said is a lie. Because if it is really is Mr. SM23031997, he will not admit it, even you or me. If I'm in that kind of situation, I'm not going to admit it as well.
Also, there's no doubt that Craige288 post doesn't deserved Merits. I checked Craige288's thread and it is really a good post. Giving an amount of Merit is up to the sender that's why it is just fine to send Merit as many as you want.

Agreed.

https://i.imgur.com/I7yqUCR.png


Just to clarify it, those words are for merit abusers, those sentence are before the the date of the report.

https://i.imgur.com/qG8xysS.png

Please appeal to the right/appropriate topic, Im going to answer your questions.

Haha why you snip on my merits: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=1107745

Anw, I think I'm ok to be listed on your thread. So I dont think I need to discuss any more about your words or your actions. Nothing is perfect so you should not expect a perfect merit system, as I said, people like who like them, that is one of the human nature. I bought a lot of window licenses from dof. as I's building my rigs or for my customers, he helped me through the processes even gave me some bonus., so what's wrong if I gave him or he gave me merits? Btw, as I see, you're looking for some merits from Sir. QuestionAuthority. So you could check on the previous post on that his thread, you will see how he gave me some very wise words. Ok, I stop here.

yeah you should stop replying your off topic post, thanks.
If only one of you just sent merits you did not violate any rules, but since that is merit trade its prohibited.
read the rules.