Bitcoin Forum

This might be somewhat unpopular, but is popularity the goal? A good resource should be the goal IMO, I exclusively read this forum for about 1 year before I felt knowledgeable enough to post at all.


Getting the signal:noise ratio up can probably only be achieved using real resources. I'd be very happy if a BTC cost was introduced for posting:

• Nuke the old rank status for all members, re-adjust according to merit only
• Charge BTC for every post, low rank = highest fee
• Set the charges incredibly low to begin with, slowly increase to tweak the quality level

Lightning payments would be necessary, of course. Maybe I'm taking too hard a line, but if I have to pay even 500 satoshis per post, that would be a small price to pay to improve quality again.

Look at the inverse situation: 1000's of accounts are posting meaningless, obvious, copy-pasta or troll content, only in order to get paid per post by sig campaigns or trolls-in-chief.

Price discovery can solve this problem, it's a geniune "tragedy of the commons" issue after all.

Im dont think this work and will end up in lot of people not using btctalk any more.

s/people/“freeloading spammers”/

Exactly, there would be fewer people posting: and the posts would be good.

Would you pay to post the above reply? Apparently not. Kind of ironic that your own post is contradicting your point (and validating mine)

This is a stupid idea. Bitcoin was supposed to give power the people. Although that's just an idealistic rhetoric it holds true to a lot extent. And if Bitcointalk charged me for posting stuff, I wouldn't post at all. And I am sure many well poised valuable members of this community would feel the same.

The moment you start charging people to have a discussion then you are instantly taking the power away from people that have shallow pockets, and then by that egregious logic, anyone without money would essentially be deemed unworthy of contributing to this forum.

If you've got something really important to say (i.e. if everyone else is informed, then you benefit), then you'll be willing to pay. You obviously don't have much confidence in how useful your posts are, either to other people or for yourself.

It's not the posters who should have to pay - fine the sig campaign managers for allowing spam posting.

Nobody is going to pay for every post they make and theymos would never do this. The best suggestion I have come up with is that nobody has a signature at all unless they pay a one off fee (like Copper Membership but higher), but theymos doesn't even seem to want to do that so he's not going to charge people to post. I think if we charged something like $500 for a signature it would significantly reduce the spam and people signing up here with x amount of accounts and pretty much kill account farming instantly. It probably won't effect trolls though because they just troll for the fun of it regardless of signatures.


Also this. Badly run campaigns who are causing all the spam should be punished with bans and signature blacklists because if they're not nothing will change.

I would. You're not reading these posts, are you?


I also said "this won't be popular", and I'm being proven right. Very few people will stand by the quality of their own posts or how useful the information is in their posts. What a massive surprise, because easily > 50% of posts on Bitcointalk.org are now execrable garbage

I was going to suggest that various features of the forum be unlocked through payment - a freemium model in which you can join/read for free, and maybe post to a newbie section (which I understand the forum used to have); pay a small fee to unlock posting anywhere; pay another small fee to unlock the avatar; pay a higher fee to unlock a Jr. Member sig, more to unlock a sig with links, even more to have more than 3 lines/colors/whatever.

If I had to pay each time I posted I wouldn't pay at all, and it isn't because I don't think my posts are so good they would bring tears to @nullius' eyes, but because I place a non-zero value on my time so if I choose to spend some of it posting here I damn well am not going to pay to do so. Frankly, that sounds rather like Brazil (the movie).

I think something like that could work also. I don't think it would deter the outright trolls though.



Well, it depends how high the fee per post was set. Would you pay 0.0001 satoshis for 1 post as a Legendary member? See how this works? The price mechanism is powerful, if the price was just high enough to erase all spammers aside from the richest trolls, it would be a price worth paying IMO. And it might even lead to identifying the trolls (and wasting alot of their money).

Hmm, yes. I didn't even think of the effect pay-to-post would have on the trolls; rather chilling, I imagine. If pay-to-post was implemented this would likely be one of the first major forums to do so and would itself make an interesting social experiment.


Right, well, that is such a small price it qualifies as dust on the mote of dust, so, no, I wouldn't object to that aside from the principle of not wanting to pay to voluntarily contribute my time, that is. A possible compromise would be to make posting free once Legendary rank was reached, however. I don't seem to have nearly as much of a problem with that, though I'm not entirely sure why.

Yep. And this is probably one of the most trolled forums on the internet, I should imagine.



Right, but nuking current rankings down to acquired merit rank levels would be very much needed if any free to post rank existed, too many trolls have Legendary accounts already from the old days of the activity-based ranking scheme.


Maybe another way to reward quality members would be universal tipping, everyone is given a tipping address (Lightning again) whether they like it or not (or every account is forced to supply a Lightning address). I don't publish a tipping address, but if I was forced to, I'd take any tips if I was given any.

Tips could easily help to offset the cost of posting, even if Legendary members were paying 0.0001 satoshis per post.

You make sense on that to make this forum slowly to become more better by your objection. However, we were not born in the same country. We were not born in the same family. Incase the destiny make it so still we have our differences even we born in same place. My point in this, not all of us have the same opportunity to avail satoshi. Not all of us can provide to pay even a small price of posting because there are necessary things that must be prioritize.

When this forum control by so called payment of posting then more corrupt will follow. Why not make it donation for particular foundations that proven legit and not scam? I think it is meaningful and enjoyable and not burden.

Is this a joke?

That's probably the best way to make people leave this place.
People come here not because of the quality of the posts but because they can make money...and you want them to pay? Huhhh...try and in a month, this forum will be dead I can assure you of that.

No-one would ever have been paid anything if there wasn't valuable advertising space for sig-spammers to use. What gives the advertising space value? Quality.

Visitors to this (or any) site come here because there's good information here. They wouldn't come otherwise, who wants to swim in spam advertising for fun?

Your reply was the BIG JOKE! Remember this if you are here to collect and earn money then I see you in the future as shitposter. Mark my words change your perspective while you have a chance before you become spammer. In addition as a friendly advice please handle your emotion. Don't deal the situation base on your emotion but base on what the needs in the situation. You have a potential according to your writings.

Well there is the root of the problem.

Delete all those twitter and facebook promo posts, and delete low value posts. Who cares if that means the leeches leave the forum.

Personally, I prefer to add more decentralization to solve spam problem using systems like the tree system.
image URL: https://i.imgur.com/YOiGm0R.png (https://i.imgur.com/YOiGm0R.png)
https://i.imgur.com/YOiGm0R.png

reporters list: they can delete any spam post.
Moderators: When 10 posts are deleted by reporters list, an auto alert sent to moderators (this user is a spammer). Moderators can ban users or keep them posting.
Global Moderators: When moderators ban an account, an alert with alt accounts (through IP) sent to global moderators to ban other accounts associated with this user.

Ok, do that... delete signatures as well and let's see how many people stay and what quality you'll get out of it.
Zero !The place will be a desert.

Why stay here when you can find info on cryptos on social networks and so many other places ?
Even reddit is much better quality wise because it's more organised and easier to read.

Bitcointalk works because of the bounty campaigns and that will never change whatever system (merit or else) you put in place.

What part of " Bitcoin Talk" don't you understand?
Bitcoin Talk isn't working, and that's why all these threads are appearing. Some of us don't want to be associated with a spammer and scammer forum. and we are trying to repair the damage that the bounty hunters have done.

Not in favour of this at all to be honest, I learnt a lot from this forum & people like achow saved my ass from losing dozens of bitcoin with personal help. I don’t think paying to post here is a good idea, sorry.

Maybe the bitcoin part which is about...making money.  ;)
Like I said, just do it, delete bounty campaigns and let's see how it goes.

Bitcointalk isn't working because the people in charge don't care about this place anymore.
If they did, there would be more mods, better mods, scammers and spammers would be banned ,alt accounts would be checked and forbidden, the merit system would work or be replaced by a better one... meaning there would be changes,well there would have been changes a long time ago.
Too little too late if you ask me. Merit system clearly doesn't work, it didn't change a thing, it only pissed people off because they can't move up, it only gave more power to high ranked members (didn't they have enough already ?) and increased the number of ass kissers. Quality of posts is still terrible.

Anyway I swore I would't debate about the merit system, no point in that. Everything has been said already.
Just saying that having people pay when they post is ridiculous.

You're happy getting paid to post though, right?


Interesting that the people with advertising in the sigs or avatars are 100% against the idea (thus far anyway).

I still dont get a lot about your idea. If, i use if, if i have a valuable information about technology of bitcoin or anything valuable about bitcoin price analytics, why would i share to other people while i must pay? Doesnt it works the other way, people pay you when you have something valuable? I say this because i see people share their analytics about bitcoin price and what will happen if they are charged to post in here?

I dont support spammer, but we need to see this idea in a whole perspective.

How about this modification then.

All money collected from posts is divided as follows:

• 30% goes to Bitcointalk.org
• Newbies get nothing
• Jr. get given 1%
• Members get given 2%
• Full members get 4%
• Seniors get 8%
• Heroes get 16%
• Legendaries get 39%

Note that I'd currently be a Full Member, not a Legendary, under this system.

So, any money you lose while ranking up gets paid back to you in future by any trolls that just refuse to leave 8)

I actually like that alot, getting paid to write sincere posts by trolls :D

this is some absolutely not a sensible idea. Are your messages so valuable that you agree to pay for them? Publish in magazines. At your own expense.This option does not solve the issue of spam and account farms. The one who could buy himself a ,dozen or two accounts, will find a few satoshi in order to bring the messages. As this will bring more profit. And then it's absolutely not clear who and from what you want to save.
You read the form a year before writing this. It seems, that you did not read it carefully.
Exclusively my opinion.

Even If I was not wearing a signature my version would be the same as follow...

Imagine your friends telling you: wanna talk to me? Paid me first..

The forum is a community, you can't ask people to pay to be part of a community. Forums are supposed to be used to talk, to share, to learn, to teach, to meet people. Why not paying your friends so, for each sentence you want to say
Imagine someone learning cryptos and having some questions, what then? Oh no, need to pay to learn, fuck this.

You have a total wrong way to think about others, think about others and remember this is a community. Your solution will only create more damages than anything else (and not only for the forum)

OP is constantly missing the point, to the point where making a comeback statement here is useless because he is not ready to see the invalidity of his suggestion.

He thinks the rest of humanity has free money to burn just like he does.
He is assuming this forum is only made to share information when someone has something important to say. It's not, its supposed to be a community where enthusiasts, newbies and vested parties in crypto come together to discuss.

A discussion in a community should always be free. Irrespective of the depths of the community member's pockets.


Instead of expecting other people to pay for their convenience, why don't the rich snobs like OP with deep pockets put in their own money to hire a few dozen more moderators who would keep this place clean?




How about you get nothing? How about you get charged everytime you visit this place, because there'll be people here to clean up the place for you. Like the sound of that?

Carlton Banks's suggestion sounds like something an academic economist would suggest--or something overly complicated that Theymos would have thought of.  Either way, I'm in favor of the wait-and-see approach to the merit solution, and part of that is because I don't think Theymos needs to be charging people to use the forum, even if it's a super-small fee.  I don't think people would leave in droves, but an idea like that amounts to gouging people, and I'm against that.

It's not quite been three whole months yet.  I've run out of sMerit, and I'm sure a lot of others have, too, so shitposters have less chance now than they ever did of ranking up--and I can see very clearly that people are having a hard time doing so in general, so the spammers aren't going to advance.  That's a victory in itself, and I'll take it.  Gladly.

I certainly understand and somewhat find it to be a potential meaingful way to tackle the drivel, but I just don't agree with how people here lose the rank they have been building up throughout the years, and also have to pay in order to post. It's quite a drastic change for something that can easily be solved anyway, which is by completely getting rid of any sort of paid incentive to be active here. In other words, get rid of signature campaigns and all related roots that make this forum what it is today. That very likely won't happen, which means that I think it's safe to say that the Merit implementation is the best possible way to tackle spam in the most friendly possible way. DarkStar, Lauda and Yahoo are doing a pretty good job in accepting only the best candidates according to their opinion and judgement, and thus far the campaign participants managed by these managers, per ratio mostly deliver one of the highest quality posts on this forum. I wouldn't be against an 'unofficial' rule that signature campaigns and other related roots should only be managed by a select group of managers with a proven track record.

I'm sorry Carlton that I've to speak like this, but paying for posting is something so damn hilarious to even think of. I didn't expect to see such an idea from someone so senior. Bitcointalk is the best and largest forums of crypto-currencies, we all are well aware of it. I've been a part of two big forums (blackhatworld & emoneyspace) before, and have seen them getting dead within a few months just because of their bad policies, I don't wanna see bitcointalk suffer the same fate as them. Bitcointalk is currently almost in the top 1000 websites of the world (according to Alexa ranking), and I think each and every policy should be thought of a hundred times before being implemented, along with community giving out their inputs. And never mind, but this suggestion of yours, if implemented, would be enough for an instant death of this forums IMO. :P

Merit might not have been something super-effective, but now we all have to admit that, to at least some extent, it has worked out pretty good. I think considering the following options can be good for bitcointalk:

-increasing number of moderators
-creating more awareness of "report" button

I consider this forums my second home, and I'm sure many others think the same way as well. I don't want to pay for just speaking up (and mostly, just for helping others) right in my home, and I don't want to see it die either (like a few deaths of forums I've seen in past).

Either pay per post. or post for free per accurate report.

sorry in advance for the length.... :-\


you might find---for the most part---the only people willing to pay per post are advertisers.


regarding the sig campaigns, it seems like a more obvious solution is to restrict or prohibit them or address negligent managers. or just disable the signatures.

regarding trolls, traditional moderation should be enough. i guess it becomes problematic when we have high-volume spam though.


what if the price people are willing to pay to freely discuss things tends towards ~$0? there's a spectrum between zero activity and endless spam, and your proposition might land near zero activity.


but as you say, you are a contrarian. how much forum activity do you realistically expect if we had to pay per post? i'm sure theymos has to find some balance if the extreme means a 99%+ drop in traffic.

if you want a forum that's just a circle jerk among a few dozen people---if an informative one---you can make a private forum elsewhere. why don't you do that?


i don't think anything will deter outright trolls. that's what moderation is for.

maybe the forum should hire more moderators. are there people with high report rates who are willing to do the job? i saw the recent posting about the politics board (and someone was hired), but that's it.


i'd much rather they delete signatures than requiring pay per post. i'd stay if signatures were disabled.

but i'd probably never post again if i had to pay for the privilege. maybe a small one-time fee to unlock forum-wide posting as MagicSmoker mentioned, but otherwise hell no. there are plenty of other places to waste lots of my time.


how do you keep the system from devolving into nepotism? consider the merit system and how merit is handed out among friends and social circles. merit is not objective.


it's like a walled garden.

it's like the bitbounce or earn.com models---spammers (and everyone else) need to pay to get your attention. the problem here is, there is no way to target and incentivize the quality posters to post in the first place. advertisers are still willing to pay for your attention. but what about genuine forum posters?

the only solution offered is rewarding based on the merit system, which i think is highly subjective, flawed, and prone to rewarding groupthink rather than useful and merit-worthy discussion. :-\

I fully agree with the first part here--bitcointalk would indeed dry up.

The second part I vehemently disagree with.  We need people like Jet Cash much more than the bounty participants.  Desperately.  Can you imagine if bitcointalk turned into simply an advertising machine?  It would cease to exist as a forum for discussion, and all we'd have left would be the shitposters.  I don't want that, and I don't think anyone else does either.  Not even Theymos.  If this forum stops being a place where intelligent discourse happens, it becomes useless.

Jet Cash is a good guy, too.  Don't drive him to a intellectual ghetto like reddit, where intelligent chat goes to die.  No offense to the fine folk at bitcointalk who happen to frequent there.   ;)

Well the results are interesting.

Most of the people who dislike the idea are -

1. sig campaigners
2. not picking up many merit points
3. high ranks as a result of the activity based ranking system



Whereas JetCash, who has much more earned merit than me (or anyone else in the thread) was kind of neutral.

And 3 straight Members with relatively high merit (Magic Smoke, nebuch & bitperson) were kind of positive. Interesting ;D  

Oh, and @Pharmacist

You might be right that Merit hasn't been in place long enough to do what it's capable of. I'm just reacting to the fact that there's far too many 0-10 Merit accounts (seemingly more than ever) who seem oblivious to the idea that ranking up is in their interest (some come across like bots). Spambots cannot think rationally about ranking, but the owners of the spambots can watch the whole strategy disappear, spraying the walls of the boards with 100's of annoying bots would suddenly become very expensive under this proposal.

i have observed gay lobby groups giving each other merit. not because an article was well written but because it suited their interest. and out of "love" and "support" for each other

this fractioning and party creation will happen, anyway. i have a clear point when i think about merit:

i ignore merit, if someone has a lot of merit, for me this is just someone who is longer in this community than those with less, its not a more trustworthy person just because he has more merit, you cant trust anyone in cryptoeconomics, no one has any idea whats going on all run their agenda or are driven by someones.

there are very view players that know what they are doing.

you should expect people to be rational. ;)

but it's probably more accurate to shorten this to:


like i said:


but i know it's more compelling to talk shit about people rather than address arguments, so carry on.


calling this neutral is a bit of a stretch:

I would consider to pay a really small fee (like dust) per post if it would help the forum on the long run, but I think this won't help a lot in the current situation.
According to my understanding, spammers are here to earn money with sig.campaigns. Sig.campaigns and bounty campaigns are usually for advertising ICOs, services or something similar, so someone, who is interested in being visible on the forum pays the members (bots) to post and to wear the signature.
What if we implement the payment system for posts? If I try to oversimplify it, these guys, who runs the signature and bounty campaigns will pay the fee per post instead of the members and they will deduct if from the members (bots) campaing payment at the end of the week.
This pay per post would only prevent trolls (who are not in any signature/bounty campaings) to spam the forum.
I was shocked when a few weeks ago I thought that I found the solution against copy-pasters, but someone enlightened me that if we give merit for reporting a bunch of copy pasters, the merit abusers would create even more copy-paster accounts for themselves and will report them with their original account, to earn merit. That time I have realized that spammers are not only a few undereducated poor folks from worldwide but groups hunting for the profit they can earn here. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3275350.msg34148476#msg34148476 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3275350.msg34148476#msg34148476))
Also, a few hours ago, I have wrote a small post about trashing spam megathreads, which makes the spammers lose post count and this can be really bad for them, even worse if they don't rank up because the lack of merits. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3335348.msg35031143#msg35031143 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3335348.msg35031143#msg35031143)
So I agree that something has to be done, but we need think about a really effective solution, and this is not easy at the moment... I can imagine that the merit system, combining with trashing low quality post and topics will help, but there's also a need to somehow force bounty campaign managers to stop the one liner spammers, and I don't have an idea how we can force them...
I know TLDR :)

I'm not really neutral, maybe just diplomatic. :)

I've been on a lot of boards over the years, and I've started some and moderated others.

I was a member on a paid to post forum, and managed to make over 1,000 posts in a day in a posting contest with another member ( what a way to waste a day, but it was fun to do once ). You have a lot of problems with moderation on these boards. I'm a member of a small private webmaster forum with no public viewing, and it gets about 10 posts a day, but it's very friendly and helpful. I was a member of the DN forum, but left when it converted to paid membership. I'm a member of a casino forum, and that is split - there are a number of boards for new members, and a much more interesting private section, which you have to apply to join after you have been a member for a while, and if they think you are OK, you get promoted. All of those allow signatures with various restrictions. I don't like forums that don't allow signatures, they are a type of payment for posting, but they shouldn't be abused. I use my signature to promote services that I use and trust, and to link to some of my sites. I experiment with the messages to see which ones get clicks, and this is useful for me.

Two things are guaranteed to generate a lot of spam. The ability to create multiple accounts, and a system that rewards posting volume. It's easy to generate discussions with yourself to boost threads and post counts, and it is usually not of great benefit to the forum.

Theymos said all people have the right to use this forum to make money. The problem lies within shitposters who only post either to get paid or to rank up their accounts. That is why the merit system was implemented. You will not rank up unless you have the required merits and activity. Also, the problem is within the managers who accept these kind of people. They are the ones to blame. Let alone Theymos do what must be done.

How is it going so far? do you think you could rank up anytime soon?

Merit is acting like medicine in this forum but when tooth is decayed too much then dentist extract the decayed tooth instead of giving medicine.

So I donot think Merit can control spam but it will be able contain the spammers in their ranks.

I find that interesting but probably in a different way than you do. In effect imposing a fee to post would be a form of regressive taxation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_tax). Those with the highest income from their signatures would be paying the lowest tax rate and those with the lowest income from their signatures would be paying the highest tax rate. Then those with no paid signature, if they couldn't afford the tax, would be forced to join a signature campaign or leave.
So it is those in the best position to pay the tax that are most against it.


That's not a bad idea in my opinion but when it was suggested here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2823134 theymos said:


That was part of what got me to thinking of other ways to tackle the signature spam from accounts that are already of high rank and I came up with Merit Phase 2 - Drain the Swamp (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3122415).

tl;dr Hide the signatures of anyone who doesn't get any merit over a certain timeframe.

If those bounty participants earn a lot from posting in this forum, why should they not pay a fee for each post. Hero, Sr, Full members who has not even received 10 merits in the span of 3 months must not be allowed to wear signatures. If such a system is implemented, we would be free of shitposting Sr and Full members. Most probably, Hero and Legendary guys are the one who joined the forum in the timeframe of 2014-15, so most of them would have signed up for learning something and earning. But 2017 era was the worst part were all those Third World shits created an account, spammed and became Sr and Full members.

Why a low rank member should pay higher fees than a High ranked one?
There are some shitposters in Legendary too.

I requested for a   Altcoin Technical Discussion board  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3315093.0) for saving Alt holders to retrieve their money back. I am not a dev to help those guys who are seeking for help out their in the Alt board. It could help those guys from the insane amount of spams generated in the Alt Discussion board. But I didn't get a positive reply and bumping the thread.  :-\

They just want to increase the marketing not the quality of the forum.

There are two kind of user here.

1. Post just because they have to post
2. Post just because they need to post

However both kinds do sig campigns. The first kind should be eliminated.
Introducing merit based sig campaigns is the best option in my opinion.

Ok, let me rephrase that: everybody except for you... and possibly a few others. This really isn't the best way to solve the spam issue here. A much easier solution would just to be ban signature campaigns/remove signatures.


Nothing will get rid of a detemiend troll, but why don't you do what trolls fear most and ignore them? Trolls only post to annoy and get a rise out of people but if you just give them the silent treatment they usually get bored.


I doubt it. I don't think there's that many trolls here or at the very least they're drowned out by all the sig spammers.  There will be far worse forums for trolls out there but it's probably the biggest for shitposting seeing as people actually get paid to do it here.


I wouldn't be so sure of that. Theymos has already said that if the merit system doesn't work then signatures will likely be the next thing to go. They only people that would leave are the thousands of shitposters and nobody will be sad to see them leave.


It's a silly idea regardless of whether someone has a signature or not. I would rather signatures just be removed than having to pay to post here.

Those who have lots of BTC will quickly dominate the forum and we don't have recourse to prevent them from posting any spammy things they want because they 'pay' for it, this forum will quickly become ads medium by people with lots of BTC

Have to pay to share ideas, thats probably the most ridiculous rules for a community based open source projects, will turn the BTC into centralized development project only rich people can participate

More like burn your house to get rid of mosquito

bitcoin has a begininng and therefore also a centre

if you dont like it best way would be to leave and join start new project

you cant escape pyramid systems except you run your own one...

I don't understand what are you talking about
When discussion is limited to a group of people it will be same like closed source software where those who have huge amount of financial backing control the projects goals and futures, BTCtalk is place for everyone to discuss freely about BTC, should you put any fees to post anything you start to limit the discussion, there is no more freedom to have any says about BTC development anymore.

There is nothing to do with me or anyone liking it, that is how open source project run everywhere.

i am not scaring you away, i am just explaining you the systematic behind pyramid systems, you cant avoid them they are everywhere, if they claim not to be those they still are. like the banks and financial system in the west.

Normally I read a lot of comments before posting a reply in a topic that already have few pages of replies however for this one I lost my patience after reading few replies on the first page.

This is what I am having in mind after reading the original post...
Are we talking about a forum here or a membership club for any service?

We are living in a free world (Look around).
The best media of all: Facebook
The best search engine of all: Google

You are talking about paying bitcoin. How about if I say I am paying more valuable asset than bitcoin to leave this comment?
- It's my time.

Anyway take it easy fella. Every idea has pros and cons. The adopters will thrive.

I kinda agree with Carlton Banks.. I believe bitcointalk has reached a stage where everything has been answered... most of these posts by newbies are repeats.. Like how to export wallet key etc.. They keep on repeating the same stuff.. They need to learn how to use the search function.. Plus the general discussion section gets spammed with shit posts which are repetitive and are in broken English, which ruins the reading experience for other users.. Like if you believe you have something super important to add to the discussion which has been missed by other users then happily pay a 500 Satoshi fee... Also i kinda like the repayment idea.. Like if your reply gets merited you get back your 500 satoshi.. This can work and can do wonders for this community.. But on the other hand i believe the merit introduction has been working wonderfully.. So far the posts i have read have been less shitty.. So by giving it more time it will eventually give us the same result..

An alternative way of banning signature campaigns/remove signature is to have a merit requirement for participating in one. This should be imposed by all campaign managers out there especially in altcoins. Also, it may be better if only Full Members or Senior members and up are the ones allowed to participate in campaigns. Let's see how lower ranks thrive to make their way up to the forum.

I agree with you, but with a pay-to-post system will not help anything. To be honest, I got into this Forum because I heard there's an easy job that can make a lot of money, and that's a Signature Campaign. I think that pay-to-post or delete signatures will not help reduce spam. In fact will make this forum more lonely because if just talking about Bitcoin, we do not need in this forum. We can discuss on Facebook or Twitter that has features more easily and more sophisticated.

Do you think that requiring a payment for posting can really satisfy your demand? I don't think so, why do they bother to make a payment if some of the serious members here are contributing good replies or comments inside the forum?
Spammer/Account Farmers/Merit Farmers/ Scammers are being handled by the administrators. If you don't want to encounter such low posts, then stop using BCT. Do not implicate us.

This is the real problem.. This perspective needs to go away.. Do you expect to get paid when you use facebook? The short answer is no! so you shouldn't have a mindset like this here at bitcointalk.. If you want to discuss technology then its fine.. But why do you need to be that desperate for some extra cash? Also i feel sad for people who think that they can live their life off through signature campaign earnings.. you guys need help.. Do something better for yourself... There are far better things and ways to make a living than spamming a forum.

With thousands of posts, the search function does not guarantee the specific question of a newbie.
Not all good posts can have merits, that is the problem of the community.

What if we don't allow newbies and jr. members to open a new topic everywhere, just let them to open a new topic in the off-topic section? (this is not my own idea, I have read this somewhere, but I like this idea).
(Newbies can buy copper membership, if they really want to "grow up" earlier...)
They will have to use the search function, if they have a question, not randomly open a new thread for every type of headache... and if they don't like the forum's own search function, they still can use the google one, like searching for "bitcoin price increase /site:bitcointalk.org" and voilá....
If they find the proper topic (because as you have mentioned, 99% of the newbie questions has already been answered, most of them several times in several topics), they can still ask a question there, and it would be on-topic post, so it would improve their posting habits as well...

If people have to pay for their post do you think they will ever post BTC development enhancement for free from their part or they will post bounty related material so that they can earn back some reward, furthermore once we set some kind of fees they will post whatever they want and without fear of getting caught because they consider their posting as paid posting that more like advertisement then anything else

The forum is wall-to-wall shitpositng but I don't think this is the solution. Simply banning the crapcoin campaigns that do nothing but pay for any old broken English spam would go a long way and is the bare minimum we should be doing but if we were to charge for anything it should be for a signature. If you get money back for receiving merits it will just lead to even more abuse and the system is already heavily exploited by those giving merit to their alts and "friends" so this would just happen in even greater numbers when there's cash refunds on the line.

Hah, my suggestion to charge for sigs has taken hold subliminally!  ;D

I did think there might possibly be some merit to charging a fee for posts that varied inversely with rank, but upon further consideration I now think this is unavoidably regressive/centralizing. Dedicated spammers/scammers will figure out a way to game any system so I am starting to warm up to the idea - which is not at all original - that such offenders be automatically temp-banned if, say, x different members mark any of offender's posts as "shitposts." A possible implementation would be to scan for keywords in a moderation report such as, shitpost, bot, spam, scam, off-topic., etc. Temp-banned users could appeal via a single thread in meta - same as now - which only non-bots would attempt. If the same user is auto-banned three times then make the ban permanent.

Agreed...

Hmm Interesting perspective.. Didn't thought of it in that way...

Not quite. I've been suggesting we remove signatures from ranks for years.


I don't think they'll be able to game paying a hefty fee for a signature, but any way of being able to achieving anything here naturally will be gamed/abused though.


This would be abused. People would just report or bot people's posts they don't like.

Hence the overly-smiley emoticon... I didn't think that suggesting charging for sigs (or avatars, etc.) was terribly original, either.


That's why I said it had to be x number of different members, where x is greater than 1 (and less than, say, 10), and that the temp-ban could be appealed in meta - if a moderator/admin looks at the offender's post history and sees that they are not, in fact, shitposts/scams/etc. then it would be those who unfairly reported the posts that get the ban.

That said, I have long since grown weary of "free" services/sites on the internet. How is that Facebook doesn't charge any of its is >2B users yet still brings in >$12B in revenue each quarter? Well, that's because you are the product... Honestly, I would much rather pay for a service like that rather than exchange all of my privacy for the proverbial beads and trinkets; same applies here - it is undoubtedly costly to host this site and paying an annual membership and/or to unlock various accessories/accoutrements would not only be fine by me, it would be preferable.

I agree with this part only. This would be the first pay to post forum, sure its revolutionary, but more likely it'll fall flat on its face.
Like if you started to charge for breathing air, then people will just go somewhere else to breathe

I really don’t believe paying to post inspires conversation and theymos has made it abundantly clear that while he intends to continuously moderate and promote people to moderate, he does not want to inhibit the discussion at all. It seems to be one of his main goals when determining who is capable of the responsibility.

I believe signature campaigns are still fine, but I don’t understand why there is a necessity to make people post x amount of posts in a week, that should be against TOS because it incentivizes posting. Those that are higher ranking got that way because they’re active already and don’t really need to be told how to contribute to the forum and those who are lower ranking shouldn’t be as active in an ideal situation so why are we okay with bounties telling them to be?

Also- I feel like we’re all focusing on punishments or deincentivizing current activities. I don’t think this works well with any problems we encounter that include others. I believe what we actually need is a reason for the spammers and trolls to stop posting here. Eliminate jr member, make newbies and members have a scaling post limit(% result of posts/merit) until they get to full member at 100 merit and create a very very slow merit drip site like in a telegram channel that allows spammers to earn .5 merit after 500 posts but have a bot that deletes duplicates, spam, links and advertisements. I’m okay with someone posting 1000 posts on a chat channel to earn 1 merit if it eliminates the 1000 posts that individual would have posted on btt and earned 4-5 merit for. Plus if they do it too much, telegram has anti spam capabilities already monitoring the users that would allow mods to remain focused on the forum itself and promote personal responsibility because it might have an effect on their telegram account. OR.. you know, just have a scaling post limit.

The entire situation reminds me of dealing with children. Telling them what they can’t do rarely works as smoothly as you’d expect, but distracting them by telling them what they can do works like a charm. We need to give trolls and spammers an avenue that allows them to benefit, because they will find a way to benefit regardless and we're currently trying to stop an entire flood with a bucket. Isolating them from the communal aspects of BTT is a strong approach and I'd be surprised if they didn't go willingly to something they believe benefits them more than junking up BTT.


We all have our suggestions and there are reasons all of them won’t work. Merit is pretty new so it wouldn’t come as a surprise to me if they revamped their policy with new specifications in the future.

I still don't think this would work. There are a number of members with large numbers of alt accounts who could still easily abuse this, and mods are busy enough as it is without having a bunch of fake bans to review.

Okay, so you don't like my suggestion but didn't suggest an alternate approach yourself... Forgive me if I don't take your rebuttal too seriously, then.

Providing an alternative is not a requirement for disagreeing with someone's point of view, and not providing an alternative does not make my argument any less valid. Your system is too open to abuse and manipulation.

That's pretty close-minded, mate. Rejecting opinions just because others don't offer a solution to a problem isn't logical. It's just ignorant.

---

That's something along the lines of a Russell's Teapot argument where you place an onus on the opposition.

You definitely cannot do anything in which users have administrative power over others. The red-trusted scammers would have a field day just using the system against the people who had sent them the feedback.

Pretty much this. Under this system most of the default trust network would be banned within the hour as all the scammers and spammers they had red-tagged retaliated against them.

Probably charging for posts is too much, but it could be acceptable to require some amount of PoW instead? Say, mining one of the Cryptonote based currencies for btctalk account?

That's got to be the wackiest idea yet. Is there any particular reason that you think spammers can't mine?

Well, spammers can mine, spammers with $ can pay, merit can be traded, accounts can be created in masses.

I got it the way things can be improved only, not totally fixed.

PS. But thank you, I at least won "The wackiest idea" prize :)

I gave my reasons I disagree with the OP here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3345485.msg35059537#msg35059537

Paying to post is effectively a tax that the spammers could pay. Making it mining is just a different payment method of the tax.


You earned it.  :D

There's a number of good suggestions about. The most effective would be to ban the ICO bounty campaigns from advertising here. They've already been banned from taking out banner ads on the forum and extending that to signatures would reduce spam dramatically.

No, providing an alternate solution isn't a requirement - and I didn't say it was - but if you do provide one (and, even better, the reasoning behind such) it certainly makes me pay more attention to what you have to say.

As of now your argument is merely that members with lots of alts could "take down their enemies" by reporting posts maliciously, and that relying on admins to police this abuse would add to their workload. I agree that both are possible, I just don't think that this kind of abuse would happen often enough.

But I'll allow that I might be putting too much faith in my fellow man to act responsibly.

I now think it won't really resolve the problem but rather create new ones. And it will be worst. I can imagine another type of "campaigns" coming from behind the scene of the forum, and you can imagine the result here...

@Carlston Bank

Yes, I have a signature but as I posted, even if I didn't, my opinion would be the same.
When you're in a community you have to think about others, it's how a community works. You surely forgot my question, but what about if your friends are now asking you some money to talk with. (I know you can say, Bitcointalk users are not your friends but you get my point)

How can it be good to ask people money to share their opinions with others, or someone trying to learn, etc? Bitcoin is not a private club and the forum either...

Your solution is rude and not really friendly. This said I would pay if I have no choice but would consider the forum as not so friendly and a kind of "private club" which isn't what I am looking for.

Paying a membership to be allowed to have a signature is something I would have no problem with. I used to pay xxx$ per year in some forums to have access to either some sections or to be allowed to open some topics related to sales.

Theymos is apparently thinking it isn't a good idea, but believe it or not, there are a lot of people who will have no problem to pay for something like this.  

I aslo wonder what do you think would be the criteria to estimate the price to post here

Is there a price scale that's too high for low-ranked spammers, but also low enough for high-ranked genuine posters?

Say,

• Newbies - 100 satoshi per post
• Juniors - 5 satoshi per post, + 1% returned
• Members - 2 satoshi per post, + 2% returned
• Full Members - 1 satoshi per post, + 4% returned
• Seniors - 0.1 satoshi per post, + 8% returned
• Heroes - 0.001 satoshi per post, + 16% returned
• Legendaries - 0.0001 satoshi per post, + 39% returned

(keep in mind I become a Member under this proposal)

I'm pretty sure that the 80 page shit-post spam fests, titled "can my Freindz still makes monies of Bitcoinz in thhis days?" would all just disappear completely. Instantly.

Could trolls afford it? Most couldn't. And those that could would end up paying for the Seniors (and above) to post.


I don't see the problem. I'm not afraid to rank up, or to pay, under that kind of system.

Carlton Banks, your idea may seem okay, but it has many disadvantages more than advantages. Before ideas like this are implemented, one has to weigh the  difference between the advantage & and the disadvantages.

The payment and return rate you stated may seem okay to you, but have you concerned that there will be tendencies where people will accuse the admin of not being fair with their return rate payment. Now this will be another matter arising for the admin to solve instead of the normal forum issues. It's just in people's nature to complain.

There are some newbie whom just open account in this forum to ask for technical help and have gotten some positive feedbacks.  And this is part of what made this forum the top of all cryptocurrency forums. Asking them to pay to ask for help is just odd. If another crypto forum can provide this help without asking for any payment why should they care about this forum? This will just drag this forum to zero.

You personally,  might want to pay to post, but do you think others verten users will do this? Or else if you want this forum to be a participation of some selected users.

I believe the admin has a better plan of stopping the spammers which he is yet to unveil.

what's the metric for ranking---same as now, but only accounting for merit? wouldn't that make you a full member with your 141 earned merit?

in theory, i agree with what you're saying. in practice, it seems problematic, subjective, if we're basing it on the merit system alone. especially because doing so would erase all past activity prior to this year. there definitely are/were ways to game the merit system (particularly by exploiting social dynamics), and it seems kinda bullshit to ignore any and all contributions over many years in favor of some centralized gatekeeping system that began in late january.

like i said earlier, if you don't completely fuck me on a one-time fee where i can pay and have my account debited per post (at low cost), maybe it could work. i shouldn't have to bother with lightning at a low enough cost. but you're definitely flirting with the idea of encouraging a lot (perhaps most) genuine posters leaving the forum. turning a free forum into a paid/closed model would be a dealbreaker for a lot of people---for good reason even if we ignore the spammers.


yeah, the whole posting quota thing is over the top. it's like an implicit agreement between campaign managers and advertisers to mutually profit at the expense of the forum: unpaid overages and unpaid under-quota = free advertising. it's one thing to pay people for shit they're already doing---it seems like quite another to turn it into a job with a contracted quota.

Despite some thoughtful replies, I still feel everyone is missing the point.


Price is a very effective mechanism. Most people are saying "I won't pay", but they won't specify how much. We can do micro-transactions now, very effectively. We can pay the equivalent of a tiny fraction of 1 cent to make a post, like 0.0000001. Is that too much, if it cleans the forum up?

Why not tell us how much is too much, then we might start to get somewhere

---

Maybe I've got too much of a bias to 2012 and 2011 when I started to read the forum: it was much better. This place was full of computer science types, sound money enthusiasts, math people, electronics people, old luminaries of the cypherpunk era, and totally anonymous people like today as well of course. I'm not saying everyone has to be some kind of polymath, but the conversations in the thread were usually motivated by earnest and genuine enquiry, people discussed all sorts of stuff. 2013 onwards, this forum just slowly filled up with sig spammers and trolls. Lots of the old crowd don't even come here anymore, the orgy cesspit of mindlessness that the Discussion board turned into pretty much killed the previous atmosphere. It seems like alot of people want to fight for keeping this place how it became after it went downhill, not for how high the quality here used to be.

will it clean the forum up? and if so, at what cost? those are some questions i raised.

if i expected to pay more than ~0.002 BTC across the life of my account (something like copper membership), it's probably too much. more importantly, i don't want the inconvenience of paying per post. for someone like me, the idea of requiring an LN node just to post on a forum is absurd. just, over-complicated.


you're viewing things in a vacuum. i've been here for like five years; i know the forum has gone downhill. i just see no valid solution for how to fairly determine rank (if we're going to retain any signature/rank system). merit seems like a shitty/centralized extension of the shitty/centralized default trust system. you give all the power to a centralized few and then people pass around merit within social groups. the more emphasis you put on these centralized, authority-driven mechanisms to determine privileges, the more you can expect conflicts of interest and abuse. that's discouraging to genuine forum members and i think the extent to which that's true escapes people---particularly those people that benefit from the merit system.

But that’s the way every forum works. Someone (a single person or some kind of multi-member organ) is in charge and can delegate power to others. People don’t have to have identical opinions about everything to make it as members, but they need to have enough in common to hold the community together. I don’t think it’s realistic to strive for some kind of utopian Bitcointalk where everyone, including people who have no interest in the Bitcoin project except getting rich quick posting random garbage, would be happy.

I say continue with the concept of ‘authority-driven mechanisms’, rely on admins to fix any gross excesses, and accept the fact that a lot of people will find their happiness elsewhere (which, in fact, should result in *less* conflicts here on Bitcointalk).

OK - I'll make the statement. I won't pay anything to post on a forum. I never have, and I doubt if I ever will.

In fact I don't post in any forum if I don't receive some benefit from it. I've been a member of paid to post forums, and the quality of posting is often pretty low. Technical advice forums such as Audacity, are great for solving problems and discussiong projects, but I tend to be an infrequent poster if I don't have a problem. I guess that's a bit selfish, but I feel that with low to intermediate knowledge, I may not be giving the best advice, so I tend to be a bit cautious. Allowing the responsible use of a signature is one way to reward posters, but it needs to be monitored to ensure that signature posting is not the member's primary motivation.

Social netyworking is another great advantage of a forum like Bitcoin Talk. Paid forum or boards are really only useful for financial deals between members, and where reputation and integrity is important. However, the deals need to be at a reasonable level. For example, it isn't worth having a closed board for $10 domain name sales. If the sales are for names in excess of $1,000 ( say ), then it may be worth it.

That would only work if it was combined with resetting the ranks by removing the initial distribution Merit. I'm mainly counting that option out based on what theymos has said.


Based on the numbers from yesterday (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3078328.msg35185058#msg35185058) it would make theymos the only Legendary member, Lutpin and Lauda the only Heros (satoshi, and nullius don't have enough activity) and only 24 Sr. Members. That would be fine for me as I'm one of the 24 but I can't imagine how much uproar there would be from the thousands that would lose out.

So if that doesn't happen then all the sig spammers can afford to pay the tax.


That's a very different issue to spam and I really don't know how well funded or what motivates each individual troll.


I think most of us replying in this thread share the same objective but just disagree about this being a workable solution. When I think back to when I first started reading this forum in 2012 and then joined in 2013 only because I wanted to buy mining equipment. If it had been pay to post at the time I would have just done the deal by PM and probably remained a lurker. I'm glad that didn't happen and I got involved in talking to people here and became part of this.
Pay to post would put off anyone new to but genuinely interested in Bitcoin, but would just be seen as a tax to be paid by the signature spammers.

There's a number of other solutions to the spam problem from the extreme of banning signatures altogether or what I would prefer, getting tough on signature campaigns that pay for spam. Set some strong rules for campaigns and then appoint one of the moderators to monitor them. Give that moderator the ability to ban those signatures from the forum. Extend the advertising ban on ICOs from the forum banner ads to the entire forum. Trash the altcoin bounties board.

what you're talking about is moderation, which is objective. admins establish rules and moderators enforce them. i support hiring more moderators (seems like a no-brainer) and additional forum rules that discourage spam. these things are objective---we (the regular plebs) can observe that.

but merit is unmoderated. it's subjective. there's certainly no requirement that thoughtful or high-quality posts receive merit. there's certainly nothing preventing people from passing merit among friends or those they agree with rather than awarding quality. * so, solely using merit to decide forum privileges means trading objective standards for unchecked power. that's the distinction.

* wild speculation: i'd guess from observation that merit distribution follows the pareto principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle), with post quality being the underlying motive the vast minority of the time.

That's interesting, and I hadn't of the Pareto principle. I suspect that it is true, but with a slight variation. I think there could be two basic models. The forum members who are here for discussion and information exchange, and post quality may apply there. The other model is in the world of the bounty hunters, and 80/20 may still apply, but priority may be given to rank upgrades for alts and bounty promoting members, rather than post quality.

My issue with charging to post (in whatever form it takes - sign up fee, fee per post, etc) is that I don't believe it will end spam. Signature campaigns already pay people to spam. What is to stop them paying people slightly less to spam (and we all know there is no shortage of people willing to spam the forum for pennies) and using the money saved to cover the fees the forum will charge?

I don't think most of us are missing the point; we're just saying that this won't work nor will theymos implement it any way. I know paying a price would be a very effective mechanism against people to minimise the spam and is why I've suggested people have to pay for signatures before because at least that doesn't effect people who just want to come here to talk about bitcoin or get a question asked, but let's say we go with your suggestion. At what price would it cost to make a post here? Fractions of a cent? A Cent? Fiddy cents? A dollar? Five dollars? Sure, if it was a fraction of a cent I'd likely pay it but so would many others including trolls and spammers. A cent, probably the same? Fifty cents? Maybe, maybe not. A very determined troll would also likely have no issue in paying a fee no matter what the amount. What then? The "bitcoin is a ponzi" NLC troll has been trolling this forum for years with literally thousands of bot accounts and he must have spent quite a bit of time, energy and money paying the evil fees over and over again but he still pops up every now and again (usually when the price tanks) to troll once again.


A lot of us feel your frustrations about the decline in quality here and many of us including myself have put forward numerous suggestions to try curb spam, but trolls are a part of any forum these days and this one is just a huge victim of bitcoin's success. As long as bitcoin is worth something or has huge potential as an investment then people are going to flock here in droves to try earn it for free and I don't think paying a 0.0000001 fee every time they want to make a post here is going to change that. All it will do is put off innocent people who just wanted to come here to get a quick answer to a question whilst the ones that will benefit are the people who are prepared to pay it. If you're looking or hoping for the good old days where it was just satoshi and few cypherpunks having an intelligent discussion about a technology that could change the world then I'm afraid that time period has gone and probably isn't ever going to come back no matter how much it costs to post here.

People giving out merits may behave differently, if everybody had started on zero merits. Right now, they tend to focus on lower ranking people who may require merits to rank up. You can imagine what will happen if the merit sources also started worrying about how they are going to get merits.

The proposal to charge for posts would clean up the spam, but reduce traffic to the site. I don't think that is the desired end-result. Personally, I wouldn't mind paying a small amount. People with paid signatures should typically be charged higher (or should pay a one-time fee to get their signature spaces activated).

How about paying a fee per post in order to have your posts counting up and if you are not going to pay a fee, then no matter how many times you'd post, You wouldn't have any post counter. if you have 100 posts, the next post would still count and show 100. unless you are paying a fee like $0.3 per post?

No post count, no activity, no ranking up. posting without paying a fee should also disable you from receiving merits. it wouldn't stop innocent people from asking their questions.

Who are these trolls that this thread is talking about? I would say that trolls are less of an issue than spam that originates from signature campaigns.

And there would be a way to suppress those: by removing signatures entirely. Another way to decrease the popularity of them would probably be with removing hyperlinks/styled text and bbcode visual options in signatures.

Paying to post would destroy a lot of trolling and spam, yes. But it would also close off the community to (what I would assume is) a tiny group, who are probably going to just talk on IRC or some other media.

I think he is referring to those people who disagree/have valid issues with his idea...  ::).

I think he probably means accounts like freightjoe (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1096474) and Anti-Cen (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1423316) who spend a lot of time posting about how much they hate Bitcoin and why it's doomed to failure.

Shills would pay $5 per post if they have to. I thought OP is talking about garbage spammers. I even merited some of the Bcash shills when merit was new. Not because I liked their posts or agreed with their posts, because I was looking at them without judging their behaviour. I stopped giving merits to posts outside of meta. let other sources do that.

@OP, if you think charging a fee to post could stop trolls and shills, you are wrong. they have enough money to pay any amount. their posts are not simply to troll, they have purpose and have a leader telling them what to do.

About a solution to seriously fight account farmers and their spams, I guess the best solution is to charge a fee per post to receive merits and rank up and have your post count up every time you post. free posts should not add to your activity and post count.

Sorry for repeating myself again.

Merit system i dont know what is the reason why it have been created. To suffer the users?to find a merit? Or to make it in the same rank forever? It is hard to ger some merit if you are hard to speak in English and hard on the grammar. It is possible to remove this merit system?

Why do you need to rank up?  Surely as a newbie (and eventually a Jr. Member) you can still enjoy reading or learning about Bitcoin, you can post and interact with other members of the community.

Perhaps you could detail for us why not getting merit and not ranking up will make you have a bad user experience here.  How the lack of rank will inhibit your ability to learn and be apart of the crypto community?

The merit system was created to curb people signing up here with multiple to unlimited amounts of accounts just to make low quality contributions to earn from sig campaigns. Now no matter how many posts you make over the months/years you will not rank up unless your posts are deemed worthy to be meritable. Sure, merit could be removed but I don't think it should. The alternative if it doesn't work will likely just to remove signatures.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzJVH6OdqWo

http://www.networthq.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Morgan-Freeman-Net-Worth-How-rich-is-How-Much-Money-7.jpg

I've started several projects to try to help people to improve their English, and I have had minimal to no success with them. It seems that all you and your peers are interested in is to scratch a few dollars by polluting this forum. and you are not prepared to put any effort into improving yourself. The merit system was introduced in the hope that it will stem the influx of beggars, and that most of the existing ones will leave. It does seem to be working, and that is a relief to those of us who are interested in Bitcoin.

And of course, you are ...a full member lol.
Ok then but let's all start from zero then buddy.
We'll see how many centuries it takes you to get to that rank.  ::)

I don´t see a way, a forum will survive a "fee per post" payment. The easiest solution in my opinion, is just to forbid every signature campaign in this forum, maybe even delete signatures at all. No one would care this much anymore about activity, post count or merit. Spammers would leave, because there is nothing to earn anymore.

But please consider, you will get rid of all the unpleasant visitors here, but i´m very certain that some valueable member will leave as well because of that. If we are honest, a big % signed up to this forum to earn something and not to contribute to this forum.

Maybe the Merit thing was intended to solve this issues, but the way it was implemented, is realy disappointing. Yes i know, im just a member and only registered since late last year and i only have to produce high quality content to earn some merits... (you don´t believe that yourself) I´m seeing so many "good" posts by lower rank members, which are getting no merit at all. Then i see some stupid one-liner by some hero members, who get 10 merits for that. The newer members, who came this or last year, dont have any more motivation to write "good" posts, because it won´t be rewarded with this new merit concept and therefore signature campaigns.

One of the more "popular" ways to earn merit nowadays is to earn it by reporting alts, spammers, ICO´s or to beg in some "giveaway" campaigns from higher members, that they give you some merit for your post. Do you want that as the direction for the forum?

Another issue i saw often is some arrogance by higher members, which is realy concerning... (maybe i would have the same position, if i were them). Some of them promote merit as the holy grail, because it just strengthens their position in this forum (who know, maybe they just spammed 3 years earlier and are now hero members for that). And then i see even worse people, which are for a "fee per post", of course with a lower fee for higher ranks... :-\ (PROTIP: LEGENDARY OP).

IF you really only want to get more quality content for this forum, just remove signatures at all.  But I guess, many of the higher members wouldnt be okay with that, because they want to keep their priviliges and want to earn with them.  But please stop promoting even more benefits  for higher members after introduction of a Merit-System, which is so much in favor of them.

The merit system is really only of financial benefit to somebody above member rank if they are part of a bounty programme. Apart from that, it is a way for the community to encourage good posting, and to indicate their approval of various posting practices.

I registered my account the same month that you did. I'm not a hero or legendary member, I don't personally know anyone on the forum, and I had the same starting disadvantage that you did. I continue to privately report scammers and spammers, and have never asked for or earned any merit by doing this, or by using giveaway threads. I have earned 150 merit, you have earned 2.

What's my point here? Two things. Firstly, your argument that merit penalises lower members is nonsense, as I was a "lower member" like you when it was introduced. Merit penalises shitposters. Which leads us on to my second point - the difference between you and me. The vast majority of your posts are shitposts in [ANN] Or [Bounty] threads. The reason you aren't being merited is because you don't deserve to be merited. You see merit as your right, and this forum as nothing more than a tool to earn money.

The spamming and faking accounts still working on this forum, but we cannot blame Merits system for this.
While there are bounty campaigns accepting these accounts, they will multiply.
Instead trying to punish regulars and respectful users, we need some kind of control system over managers and campaigns.

I didn´t claim, that i deserve more merit than i have today. Neither i see merit as my right. I just don´t like the attitude of some, who behave like god, because they have an old account with many smerits.

I just wanted to point out, that in my experience in this forum since the merit introduction, i saw many posts of people (i DONT talk about mine), who didn´t got a merit for a realy hq post. I´m happy for you, that u made it somehow to a higher rank, but maybe you are one of some exceptions.

I am an exception only that I don't spam ANN, Bounty and megathreads with the same old vacuous nonsense, like the vast majority of lower-level accounts. My individual posts are by no means exceptional - I simply add to the discussion by posting original thoughts in coherent English.

I'm not short on merit and I hate spam, but I'm not in favour of paying per post.
As discussed here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2858894.msg35028439#msg35028439), I wouldn't have joined this forum 3 years ago, if that would have meant paying for it. I agree paying per post would stop many spammers, but it would probably stop at least a few knowledgeable people from joining the forum too.
However, it pay-per-post would be introduced now, I'd pay, as long as it can be covered by the earnings from my signature. As much as I like this forum, I'm not willing to shill out my own money to post here.

I agree this should eventually happen though. I get that theymos can't just turn everybody into a Newbie instantly, but long-term, the "free" merit should be taken away again. Something like half the amount needed to level up naturally (=1 merit per day) will do.
I value someone's posts much more if he earned 100 merit by himself, than if he's Legendary but barely received anything.
Meanwhile, it becomes increasingly more difficult to see if someone earned his merit, or got it for free. Decaying free merit would solve that in the long term, and puts high ranking people with bad post quality back where they would have been if they didn't rank up before the merit system was introduced.

I've read a few claims that some people are paying $20 per merit. If they're willing to pay that much for a small fraction of their next rank, they'll pay a lot to keep posting too. 0.0001 satoshis per post isn't going to stop spammers, and a million times more won't stop it either.
The forum has 8513 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=stats) posts per day. It would be interesting to know how much is earned from those posts to know how much people are willing to pay for it. About half the posts on the forum are in bounty threads now, I have no idea what that's worth per post. High ranking signature campaigns pay up to several dollars per post.

I've collected pros and cons of tipping micropayments (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2269985.0) last year, but there isn't much interest. I prefer the merit system now.

That's not why I'm against it. I'm pretty sure nobody would post here if a post would cost anything close to what my signature pays.
I'm glad to say the one in my sig also advertises on the forum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3289439.msg35491906#msg35491906), so it's not only taking advertising that doesn't earn the forum anything.

Or even worse: a Newbie has a problem with his wallet, and is happy to pay some dust to get help. But the people helping him, have to pay for that?

Sounds like a ponzi :D

Quality comes at a price: the ones now accepting bad quality posts don't have the budget to be more picky. I've only shortly managed a signature campaign (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2432864.0), and it's a lot of work. Without merit, I had to check many spammers' posts, and some of the good participants were quickly snatched up by a better paying campaign.
Giving a small group of managers a monopoly to run signature campaigns would probably end most of the spam, but I don't think theymos would want to limit freedom by creating a monopoly.

This actually makes it easier on the manager, as he has much less accounts to check. But only high paying campaigns can be this picky.
FYI: Just 14,000 out of 2 million accounts have earned at least 1 merit.


I'm not done reading yet, but my day is up :P

This would not work. If users are asked to pay before making posts, some persons who have been impacting positively on the forum might feel otherwise and stop contributing to the forums growth. If memory serves me well, not everyone here does signature bounty campaign as signature campaign presently is bringing  all this chaos to the forum. Maybe there should be another means to stabilise and filter the forum not this fee approach.

The merit system was created to curb people signing up here with multiple to unlimited amounts of accounts just to make low quality contributions to earn from sig campaigns. Now no matter how many posts you make over the months/years you will not rank up unless your posts are deemed worthy to be meritable. Sure, merit could be removed but I don't think it should. The alternative if it doesn't work will likely just to remove signatures.

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The merit system has proved to eliminate multiple accounts and encouraged members to create quality posts. I agree it should not be removed but still need to be reviewed periodically for improvement. And paid system is not part of improvement though it is very cheap.
I suggest we involve members if they find unqualified post which is merited and report to moderator. If moderator think the same, they could cancel merit given. And yes, I mean merit can be reduced. This would make  distribution of merit are more transparent and I believe it would encourage member to make quality posts. But that’s just my personal opinion.

Stop here and just think for a second. All these problems with account farming and spam are because of bounty campaigns. Bitcointalk should have special rules and implement a system to control bounties. I mean rules for everything from moderators to posts quality check. Only moderators approved by BTT, only quality posts checked manually on weekly basis, only higher ranks, etc.

I think if BTT has the power to control this campaigns, spam and account farming problems could be finally resolved. This will be in favor for Bitcointalk and their members but also for ICO's because the quality of their bounty campaigns will be much higher and there will be no abuse which means no money lost on scammers. That is why an interested project should be willing to cooperate.

This maybe looks simple but simple solutions are usually the best.

I agree pretty much with everything you wrote, except the part about a simple solution. I think it would be very difficult to have an efficient control over all bounty' campaigns, but I hope we can do it in the future.

Copper member? You said what? Pay some small money to have a big signature.

Carlton Banks why not create a poll and see the result. I said it before and again saying it now, it's not a membership service site it's a forum for open discussion. I not joining a membership site to learn about Bitcoin and stuffs where I can have information available using search engine (FREE).

If BitcoinTalk would offer a paid membership then Bitcoin would not become what these days it now. BitcoinTalk playing vital role to market Bitcoin (did and will do IMO)

That's $9 for 1000 spamposts as a Newbie, and dust for any higher ranking account. A Legendary would pay less than $0.01 per million posts. At those rates, it can just as well be for free, using my computer costs more.

People pay much more to buy an account. Asking dust payments isn't going to stop them. The obvious next solution would be to increase the price, but that will kill off legitimate users too.

Opening a LN channel will cost several orders of magnitude more than a fraction of 1 cent.

Trolls are a totally different problem than spam. In my previous post, I more or less assumed the main goal of pay-per-post would be to reduce spam. And while it may help reduce low-quality posts, I don't think it will do anything against trolls. Trolls are trying to damage Bitcoin and benefit whatever they're shilling for. While spam is easily recognized, many users could still believe trolls, especially the ones who are spamming the serious technical boards with thousands of posts.
The spam attack on Bitcoin transactions must have cost many millions of dollars in fees, I have no doubt trolls can find funding to trashtalk Bitcoin here.

Those where the names that came to mind indeed. And the fact that I recognize their names, means they've accomplished at least something.
Trolling is against the rules, I don't get why they aren't permbanned. I remember freightjoe spamming and bumping hundreds of old threads, and I think Anti-Cen has had his third (and hopefully last) temporary ban already.

I do not understand why people should want to pay for posting?
And also for bounty hunters, this doesn´t solve any problem, they will pay fee and then they will post like before.