Bitcoin Forum

There's also a visual version (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5180759) of this thread which is broken down to a much cleaner, and shorter version.

In an effort to encourage the community to report more, and ultimately result in a cleaner forum I've decided to create a "guide" to reporting. Also, I hope this will prove useful to those who report already, but are looking to improve their reports.

 There are several reasons that people might not make reports including, but not limited to:
- Lack of time.
- Not knowing what to include in a report.
- Caring about their percentage too much.
- Lack of knowledge of the forum guidelines.

I'm hoping this thread helps for those which #2, and #3 apply to by providing explanations of how to report with examples/placeholders that can be used as a template when reporting. Moreover, those that care about percentage I hope that the provided information will result in them making a report rather than skipping it in case it gets marked bad. It's fine if users don't have time to report, but this whole thread is aimed at those who would like to help, but maybe don't know how.

I'm going to try, and keep this post structure alongside mpreps Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQ (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657) so that both can be cross referenced when reporting for a specific guideline. I've also included examples which are numbered relative to their explanations within this thread.

Table of contents  
Explanations (#post_Explanations)
Examples (#post_Examples)
How do I report? (#post_Reports)
Additional tools (#post_Tools)
General advice (#post_Advice)
Benefits of reporting (#post_Benefits)

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Disclaimer: This is just my personal policy/format, and isn't endorsed by the forum.

1.When reporting pointless/low value posts make sure to include why you think it's pointless.

2. When reporting off topic posts include information about the topic, and why it's off topic.

3. When reporting a post for trolling it's best to specify why you think the post is trolling. Generally, a post that is trolling is usually off topic too.

4. Ref spam is generally quite easy to spot. Normally, it's followed by "r=" or by a unique code at the end of a link. However, if the user has hidden it behind a markup url such as http://<ref link> it would be best to specify  this.

5. Again, urls which direct to a ad earning site are usually easy to spot, and verify. Just ask the moderator to check the link.

6. When coming across Malware or a phishing site it's best to be as clear, and in depth as you can. This will prevent the moderator dealing with the report from being potentially compromised as well. When dealing with Malware it's always best to include any virus scans that flag positive for malware. A good site is virustotal.com which can scan URLs for known malware. If the malware is injected through code on a website then specify this also.  Phishing sites can generally just be specified as a phishing site.

7. Begging can usually be identified when someone posts their cryptocurrency address, and is asking for "donations". Specifically, any post that is begging for monetary gain should be reported , and if required due to the post being lengthy include a quote.  

8. When reporting death threats etc, I would advise that you quote the threat so it's easier to identify.

9. Reporting posts for not being English in an English section it should suffice. However, if it's a thread, and you know the language spoken you could specify where to move it. Otherwise, these posts are normally deleted from my observations.

10. Not safe for work (NSFW) refers to any image which wouldn't be deemed appropriate to view whilst in work, or in a public setting. If it has tags within the title then it's usually fine, and doesn't need reporting.

11. Reporting of illegal sites can be tricky, due to the vast amount of law differences between countries. However, report anything which is considered illegal across all jurisdictions.

12. When reporting someone for duplicate posts/threads include a link to the others. It's probably best to include the report the newer, and less active threads when doing this.

13. When reporting a user for bumping more than once within a 24 hour period. Make sure to include as much evidence as possible. Either link to the other bump or include a archive of the page.

14. Any post which is in the wrong section whether it's altcoin related or not should be reported. If a post is posted in the wrong section then specify where it goes. For example, if a thread in Bitcoin Discussion is related to Altcoin Discussion, then specify where it was originally, and where it should be moved.  A thread asking a question related to the forum which has been posted in Bitcoin Discussion should be reported as some variation of this: "Wrong section doesn't belong in Bitcoin discussion. Move to Bitcoin Forum > Other > Meta. as it's asking a question related to the forum."

15. Generally, the on forum giveaway rule is violated via announcement/campaign threads which offer an incentive/bonus to post on their thread in order to bump it up, and give false impressions to those who visit the thread. When reporting only report the all the threads which are offering an incentive, and not the individual posts. If a bounty campaign thread offers an incentive to post on another thread then reporting both of these topics with the relevant information is probably best.  I normally quote where they are offering an incentive as announcement threads can be tedious to go through, and sometimes they offer incentives offsite such as Twitter, Discord, Facebook or their website. If linking to one of their social media/website include a warning within your report that it's an external site.

16. When reporting a user for having more than one active thread in the currency exchange section include a link to the other(s). I tend to report the least active threads. Otherwise, I just report the newer threads, and link to the older ones. The moderator can then decide on which ones to delete.

17. When reporting users that are trading of illegal goods it's best to report only if its illegal worldwide as it's very difficult to know where someone is located. Unless, you can prove that the user resides in a particular country then you can supply that information within the report.

18. Do not report a user for just having multiple accounts. However, if you have identified that they are breaking the rules across multiple accounts or are ban evading, and can provide evidence that they are connected then you may report one of their posts, and include the information to prove this within the report field.

21. When reporting multiple bumps it's best to report the earliest bump and only that one, and include a comment in the report field that there's more in the thread.

22. Posts which have been made for the sole purpose of advertisement in another users thread should be reported.

24. When reporting a thread for including an advertisement make sure that the post isn't substantial or useful. This can be fairly subjective, and therefore you should try to include an explanation why you believe its not substantial enough to warrant placement of an advertisement within the post body.

25. When reporting someone for ban evasion include a link to their profile, and the topic/post that proves they are the same person.

26. When reporting someone for not following local thread rules. Quote the local rule, and explain why they have broken it. for example, if a user has broken a local rule that specified that there would be no discussion within the auction thread, and only bids, but has ignored that, and asked questions etc.

27. When reporting automatically translated texts you should verify it via public resources, and link to these if possible. For example, a post which has been automatically translated via Google translate should be reported, and a link to the Google translation should be given.

29. When reporting a personal message I would try to exclude admins unless it's a very important matter. If it's just for someone sending your spam then just include moderators/global moderators. Admins have several other duties such as account recoveries which your report would only hinder as its likely that the other moderators will deal with it anyway.

30. If a user has listed similar marketplace items across multiple threads then include a link to those threads.

31. When reporting a user that has a Not safe for work (NSFW) avatar then reporting any post, and specifying that it's not the post that's infringing, but the avatar should be fine. Alternatively, you could contact a moderator via personal message to alert them of the user. (the latter is probably the better approach here)  

32. When reporting a user that has posted multiple posts in a row which aren't for the purpose of reserve posts for the topic owner, and bumps try to specify this. It's probably not necessary to include links to the messages as they should be fairly easy to identify.

33. When reporting plagiarized content first make sure that they haven't included an original source. If they haven't then provide the original source that the content was plagiarized from in the report field. There are several tools which can identify plagiarized content as well as manual searches via a search engine.

1. "To the moon" or "This is great" are generally low quality posts. Report this something along the lines of "Spam/Low value post. Does not add anything to the discussion."

2. A post within a mining thread about forum moderation is off topic. "Off topic, the thread is about mining. However, this post is related to forum moderation."

3. "Trolling/off topic <specify reason why you think the post is trolling>"

4. "ref spam" should normally be enough or if the user has hidden it behind url tags: "Ref spam, hidden behind a URL tag to appear as a normal link"

5. "Link shortner which requires viewing of an advert to view the content. Please check the link."

6. "This link directs to malware which. Here's a scan via totalvirus <totalvirus scan url>. or if a phishing site: "This link leads to a phishing site" should suffice.

7. "User is begging. Has included his Bitcoin/altcoin address, and is asking users to send money there."

8. "Death threats/threats of physical harm. '<quote of threat>'

9. "Not English; in a English section." you could expand with "This x language, move to <local board>.

10. "NSFW image which has no warning/tags", "NSFW image which is embedded within the site" or a combination of both if both apply.

11. "Link to a site which is universally illegal"

12. "Duplicate post/thread: <link to duplicate>

13. "Multiple bumps within 24 hours. <link to the bumps made under 24 hours of each other>"

14. "Wrong section, doesn't belong in <section> move to <section>"

15. "The original post is offering an incentive to its users for posting on their topic. '<quote of text offering the incentive >'.", if quoting to an external site "The people behind this thread are offering an incentive to its users for posting on the topic. External site: "<quote of text offering the incentive>."

16. "This user already has other active threads within the currency exchange section: <link to thread(s)>"

17. "Trading of illegal goods that is considered illegal worldwide."

21. "Multiple old bumps in the thread which have not been deleted."

22. "This post was made for the sole intention of advertising a service/product within another users thread."

24. This post/thread does not warrant placement of an advertisement, because it's not substantial enough. <specify any additional reasons>"

25. "This user is ban evading: <link to profile> here's the post connecting the two accounts: <link to connection>"

26. "Broken local rule. <quote of local rule>"

27. ""This post is badly translated, and doesn't make sense. Suspected automated translation. Please check here for an identical translation: https://translate.google.co.uk/#auto/ar/This%20is%20an%20example"

30. "User has posted marketplace items which are similar in other threads: <link to thread(s)>"

31. "I'm reporting this user for their NSFW avatar, and not the contents of this post."

32. "User has posted multiple posts in a row which aren't bumps. <optional link to multiple posts in a row>"

33. "plagiarism without providing a source: <link to original source/post>"

Every thread/post in this thread has a "Report to moderator" button at the bottom right. This can be clicked, and will take you to a page with a text field which you can include the above examples, and any other information for why you are reporting the thread/post. I'll include a image below of what this button looks like.






Patrol  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;patrol)
The patrol page displays all recent posts of users with the rank Newbies/Brand new. This page is quite useful in finding infringing threads/posts due to many new members are unfamiliar with the guidelines of the forum. It's also proven useful for finding bot accounts.

Report History  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=reportlist;mine)
Only users who have reported 300 good reports have access to this page
This is probably one of the most useful features related to reporting. Basically, this shows you a history of your reports, and whether they have been marked good, bad or are unhandled. This page can be used for ongoing evaluation of your reporting habits. Use the information on this page to improve the quality of your posts.

This tool can be accessed through the "report to moderator" page. The button to access this page looks like: https://i.imgur.com/4u1LzJ6.png

This will bring you to a page which looks similar to this: https://i.imgur.com/cZair3R.png

This is the time that the report was made.

This is the topic which was reported or the post that has been reported. By clicking on this link it will bring you to the reported post, unless it has been deleted.

This is the user that was reported. These have been blurred out specifically for this thread for privacy reasons , however on your report history the username will be shown.

This is the status of the report. If the report has been dealt with, and marked either bad or good they will show this. For example, Good reports will be marked "Good", bad posts will be marked "Bad", and unhandled reports will be "unhandled".

 Modlog  (https://bitcointalk.org/modlog.php)
The Modlog is a log of deleted posts, banned users, and threads that have been removed. This can be used to track how users are dealt with, and researching a user that you are reporting. Sometimes you might find that this user has had several posts deleted recently, and might want to include these log(s) within your report to further your point.

Other than that you can check this page periodically to see how much work the moderators are actually doing. (a lot)

Seclog  (https://bitcointalk.org/seclog.php)
The Seclog is a log of users that have recently woke up from a long period of time or changed their credentials. (email/password) This can also be used to further the quality of your reports. If you are reporting an account for spam for example, you may want to check the Seclog if you suspect the account to be compromised due to change of posting style. You could include the quote of this log, and this could be investigated further by the mods.

Plagiarism checker  (https://edubirdie.com/plagiarism-checker)
There are many different plagiarism checker tools out there, but I've found this one to work pretty damn well for me. Of course, you can do manual searches through a search engine, however this just makes it quicker, and easier.

One-click mod report  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5103488)  
This script was created by the user "Suchmoon" to provide a user friendly tool to report more effectively using a browser extension.

Expand report field  (https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/35345-replace-input-with-textarea-bitcointalk-report/code)
A greasemonkey script created by user "Minifrij" to adjust the report fields columns, rows, and text area.  



When reporting users that are spamming/paid bumping of a thread, check the original topic, social medias, and website to see if they are offering an incentive to post as this is usually the cause of the spam. If they are then you don't need to report each of the spam comments individually, and can just report the thread following the explanation, and example of number 15.

A few of these examples may be a little too in depth for the majority of posts being reported, and a thorough explanation isn't always required for simpler reports. However, the clearer you are the better. This doesn't mean that short, and to the point reports aren't sometimes better. Generally, I only include lengthy explanations, and evidence on the more complex cases. However, I've had a few reports marked due to not elaborating enough the first time around which I've later included the reasons why I reported, and then its been marked good. Remember, just because you have seen a phrase repeated multiple times through a thread, doesn't mean the moderator reviewing the report has.  

When using the patrol page CTRL+F which opens a find bar in your browser can be quite useful in finding infringing threads/posts. For example, you could type in common phrases which are copy, and pasted or perhaps searching for "r=" which is a common identifier for referral spam.  

It's almost always better to use the "report to moderator" button than posting a thread, and reporting them publicly. There are many reasons why it's better, but generally this results in less spam within the Meta section, Easier for the moderators because it goes straight to their queue, and finally protects the privacy of the user that is being reported. Not all posts that break the guidelines should be dealt harshly. There are certain guidelines such as plagiarism, and ref spam which are a little worse than others. However, if you can protect the privacy of a user then please do so by reporting using the "report to moderator" button. Sometimes opening a thread in Meta to report multiple users could be beneficial, however this is usually when reporting a large amount of users, and particularly complex cases. As a general rule if you can use the report to moderator button then do it instead of opening a new thread.  

Sometimes your reports will remain unhandled because they have been left for a higher ranked staff member. For example, a dedicated moderator of a section, might leave it to a global mod/admin to deal with because it requires looking into things that the dedicated moderator might not have access too. However, reports can stay unhandled sometimes due to the staff member not marking it good or bad. This could be because they weren't sure whether the report was good/bad. For example, you might report a spam post, and the moderator might agree that it's mostly spam, however it might bring up a point which justifies it being made, and not removed. This situation could be a prime example of when a report might remain unhandled. Don't worry too much about unhandled reports as they have no bearing on your report percentage.

When using the report comment remember that pressing enter will submit the report, and not create a new line. There are scripts available on the forum to expand the report to moderator comment field. One of these scripts has been included in the additional tool section of this thread.  



1. It results in a cleaner, and more readable forum for everyone.

2. It can help move threads to their appropriate sections, and results in a better categorized forum.

3. Helps the moderators by allowing them to act on reports rather than them actively looking for infringing threads/posts.


 

 

If anyone would be willing to simplify anything above that would be appreciated as I have a tendency to waffle on sometimes.

It would also be cool if anyone would be willing to help with the following:
- Making explanations more clear
- Providing better examples/placeholders
- Finding mistakes/misspellings
- Crop image for "report to moderator" button
- Crop image for "Report history" button (thanks to mdayonliner (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4519248.msg40835858#msg40835858))

If no one can help with the images I'll eventually get around to it. This thread has been in creation for a few months where I would drop in a few times a week to add something to it so there could be some points which might be confusing/repeated. I've tried to proof read it, and tried previewing it as much as possible before posting it, but probably missed a few things.

Obligatory 5 merit sent for creating a guide.  :)

(Edit:  some guy tried to match me so I left you another.  I always need to be the best lol)

I also like the way you put [Guide] in the title - if everyone did that, it would be easier to find them.

Yeah, I'm not sure if it's technically a guide as it's just some explanations, examples, and some advice. But, I'm not sure what other tag would be more suitable.

That some guy is his alt >:(

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Welsh, awesome work dude. Really cool stuff that would help out reports. I just use two words and end the report.  :P

I guess it's now confirmed I'm part of the cartel, and a probable Lauda alt. ;)

Sometimes simplicity is key! I frequency have shorter reports which consist of two or three words for the more obvious reports especially when reporting spam. But, the more complex cases I tend to follow the information above.

Moderators probably don't want a life story every time you are reporting simple posts.

Also, if you care about your percentage, if you report a post asking for it to be moved, write something like:
Services -> Announcements (Altcoins)

IIRC a mod said that it helps them & prevents your report from being marked as bad if the thread was already moved prior to handling the report.

Very useful topic for me. Because I have reported many post almost 93% accurate. Anyway i will try to follow your guidelines. It's very important for forum to report post to reduce spam.

This post should add on pin post list. So that every one will read and learn about it. And they will little bit motivate.

I'm probably going to put in anchors for each set of example to that you can click on the number related to the explanation, and jump straight down. Also, I might be able to link straight to the explanation/example in the replies then when discussing a specific one.


Yeah, that's why I usually follow example #14, and include something along the lines of "Wrong section, doesn't belong in Bitcoin Discussion, move to Meta".

Would be cool if this did happen, although we've already got a lot of stickies in the Meta section. I'm going to continue to bump the thread anyway, because we need as many people reporting as possible if we are going to win the fight against the spammers etc.

I'm probably going to put in anchors for each set of example to that you can click on the number related to the explanation, and jump straight down. Also, I might be able to link straight to the explanation/example in the replies then when discussing a specific one. Plus, a few things still need to be simplified I think, and explained a little better. So there's still plenty of work for me to do to the thread.

Probably need to make explanations on #18, #19, and #20 just for clarity.

I don't do much reporting. The main reason is that I don't get any feedback on my reports, and this is my current reporting summry.

6 reports where the mods couldn't be bothered to consider my opinion. and 2 where they didn't agree with me.

Yeah, the report history does acts as a indirect way of receiving feedback from your reports. When a post is marked bad on there you can generally 'guess' why by having a look at the post again. Unfortunately, this only unlocks after you've reported so many posts. I'm not entirely sure why this is, and if I remember correctly a user said it unlocks around 200 reported posts. I don't know whether that's 200 total reports or 200 good reports.

Sometimes unhandled reports stay unhandled because the staff member reviewing it doesn't know what to do with it. Generally, most reports are seen by someone, and handled. I don't think there's too many instances of reports  being missed completely, and remaining so.

For example, when reporting something which is borderline spam the moderator might partially agree, but thinks the post does add a little something to the discussion. I've seen posts which are majority spam, but then bring up an interesting discussion point. (probably on accident) The moderator might then not opt to remove the post, but also think it's a little too harsh to mark the report bad.

I should probably add something about unhandled reports. Although, I would not worry about them personally. I've got 43 unhandled reports.

I just finished reading the whole topic. Congrats mate for making it possible to bring everything in one place. You simplified this hard task with very easy instructions.

Spot on for me including the Examples section...



PS: I think, instead of the html text filed - we need html textarea for the enter comment section on the report to moderator page. The current text field does not help that much when you are going to write in details about the reason of your report like: 8. "Death threats/threats of physical harm. '<quote of threat>'


HTML textarea example:

Another thing you might mention is that you can't submit two lines in a report. One of my bad reports was a double post resulting from my submitting a partial report, because I wanted to include a qualifiction on a second line. I don't think that should have been flagged as bad, as the subject post was deleted. I don't like being at 97%. It makes me feel as if I am out of step with forum policies. If the mods want us to report posts, then they should do something to encourage us, not make us feel as if we are wrong.

Out-freaking-standing! I didn't know about seclog so learned something new; I changed my password a few days ago and sure enough it showed up in the log.

One quibble, though, is that entering "r=" or "/r=" (with or without quotes) into a Google site-search or the forum's native search just returns results for "R" and that, of course, is totally useless. At least it does so for me.

Agree, this post is really useful to encourage the self‐cleansing action of the forum.  Indeed there are already 6 stickies in Meta but it is still worthwhile to add this post, and even I think it would be good to pin the link to this thread in other section just like the link to mprep's unofficial rule thread in the Altcoin section.  Great job, Welsh.

It really does not matter. OP was explaining the referral link spamming things. In a URL, it could be anything depending on the developer of the site. However, most of the time we see like this: r= or ref= etc.

Truth is, the variable can be anything even your or mine username like : mdayonliner= or  MagicSmoker=   :P

I suspect you misunderstood me - I was saying that using the search terms "r=" or "/r=" to find posts with referral links does not work because both Google site-search and the forum's search engine act as if you searched for "R" instead. That would be a brilliant way to find ref-link spam, otherwise.

I've made that mistake a few times. It's just natural to press enter for a new line especially when you've include a link to somewhere. I'll be sure to add something like this. Thanks for the suggestion.

The only way to fix your percentage is to report more ;). I've had a few thanks off staff members when reporting especially involving more complex cases, and I've also received some words of encouragement via personal messages.

I haven't really said to use Google/forum search to find referral links this way because it's incredibly inaccurate. However, I have suggested using the CTRL+F on the patrol page for it as that has seemed to work for me. I also included that r= is a good way of spotting whether a link is a referral link. But, unfortunately there's many different identifiers for referral links. However, I'm struggling at the moment to come up with a way to precisely explain how they would look. For example, a ref link might be Bitcointalk.org/1646356. There's no real universal way to search for referral links via a search engine/forum search because of the varying identifiers.


Honestly, this thread took more time than I would like to admit.

I'm hoping that users will be able to use the example sections for placeholders when reporting. Although, I found myself giving examples in the explanation section, because I wanted to keep the examples section as clear as possible so people can copy, and paste and then fill in the blanks if they wanted too.

I concur that the report field is far from perfect, and the suggestions you made sound great, however it does the job.

There you have the answer @MagicSmoker
When I read your reply, I had the OP stuffs in mind. So, I did not actually read the whole thing from you.

I'm not sure what the criteria of a sticky post is, but I would appreciate it if it was. Hopefully, then it would have more exposure than me just manually bumping it. (After 24 hours of course ;)) I'm sure if theymos thinks it's worthy enough of a report to sticky, and is useful he will.

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Thorough 33 point. With about 2214513 users. Vod's website, active, 1,008,300 users with BCT stat's, it's around 500 registrations daily. Copy/paste, single line/one word/good project/may the project have good achievements in future.

It ain't going to stop, water getting through is more than floodgate can handle, no matter how many are reporting.

Incentive to reporting, read in one of the threads, it ain't a solution, more a disaster.

Bounty managers: We do have a list, but still someone with copper membership can create an ANN thread. Additional restrictions can be put on it. We do have copper, silver, or gold membership. None of these would mean on someone who wants to nitpick the participants.

Restricting bounty payout in Bitcoin/well-know alts, still ain't a solution. If adverting through BCT with Bitcoin or alts gets more in token sale. They would opt for Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency, couple of hundreds more in advertising and still they will get away with a thosands.

Like discussed in other threads, I guess the only solution is upping the rank to have a sig, earn it rather than spam it. The approach shouldn't be the managers, but the participants.

PS: Numbers aren't favor of those who want to get something more better of spam.

I used to use Vod's website to see if a user was banned, because he used to collect that information from the modlog. However, since the re parsing of his site I don't think he includes this data anymore. AFAICT anyway.
It's not going to stop, but It will definitely result in a cleaner forum than if users were not reporting. I don't expect people to dedicate hours a day to reporting. Just when you see a post which is infringing the guidelines.
I considered contacting theymos to see if he would allow me to run a report competition where the top reporters of the month would be rewarded in BTC which would come from my personal stash. However, I dropped the idea due to the abuse which would happen, and the lack of data to verify it which theymos would likely have to supply. I did consider requiring users to include screenshots or reports of their reports including the archive evidence of the post they reported to try, and verify it. Where I could possibly determine whether a user is abusing via alt accounts etc. However, that's entirely subjective, and just isn't a good way to go about it. It's too much of a headache to do.

Although, yes I am against the idea of offering monetary gain/merit to reports due to the abuse. However, if we could eliminate that abuse somehow I wouldn't be against offering some sort of reward. Honestly, I think public stats on reporting which would be optional to toggle on or off would probably be enough incentive for some people.

Well I tried this already... and I think some of the moderators are a little bit busy just like this Trash (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1996607;sa=showPosts)

I reported him about posting the same posts in different threads he/she've made.

another thing I spotted a lot of scammers lately in bounty campaigns I already make a report in reputation but I think no one cares about the growing population of the scammers lately. Most of them are alt accounts which I can prove.

Scammers/scams are not moderated, and just because someone has a alt account doesn't mean they are breaking the rules. Alternate accounts only come under moderation if they are breaking the guidelines. Especially, if they are ban evading with alternate accounts.  This is absolutely a topic best discussed in reputation.

It's not going to work mate, the incentivizer's and then abuser's would get through within a day, rest of the day, would end up with the greedier. Why? The line between incentive, abuse and greed is thin. It wouldn't work.

theymos has to take a stance. Keep it, Bitcointalk forum or like jetcash mentioned, Bounty Talk Spam Forum. One post reported, twice post has to be reported, thrice comes up...not going to work.

It does the job no doubt. My concern is to have a better user experience. Anyway, it's not a big deal yet. I am sure we have other priorities to look at than this like: Better way for account recovery, plagiarism problem, stopping posting bots etc.

I think joining all of their alt accounts in the same bounty is against the rule right? All of them are in the same bounty.

But anyways this is a different topic, thanks for your time  :D

Great work,man. I learned a few thing myself.

This post should be pinned, to push more people to report. Mods, please I'm sure I'm not the only one supporting this idea.

I think that’s not a bad idea but it could be a start of something close to that. It could be helpful if a lot of people would collectively verify and then confirm if it’s really worthy of the report/abuse that is happening. It’s definitely a headache but if it’s a team that give effort, why not?

Brand new accounts that have post spam should be easily reported with patrol but with the members with high ranks, those who abuse/spam would be worth reporting. Incentives are not bad, it’s to motivate.

I’m all in for it too. It would even be better to have it on the actual Report to Moderator pop-up screen as a link to the guide, being therefore more effective than a pinned post, although I figure we won’t see this happening.

I would be happy to see this list as a drop-down list when you hit the report to mod button, it would be quicker to select the spam, scam, reflink, etc. from the dropdown list...
I know people are lazy enough while browsing, if something needs keyboard, they usually skip it unless it's absolutely necessary for them... so reporting with a few clicks (without typing job) could maybe help to have more people to report

EDIT
Just found something interesting:
Archive (http://archive.is/P5vfu)
Post/Topic:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4524527.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4524527.0)

So if I want to report this, it's not nr. 33 copypaste, because the source is included....


Maybe this fits the nr. 1 'pointless' type of post, but I have to describe why it's pointless. It's pointless, because it's a copypaste of some other member's post, but the source has mentioned, so it's not a copypaste, so I'm stuck.
The reason why I'm asking this that I don't want to ruin my 99% accuracy (have nearly 650 reports and only 10 bad, so if I can reach the 1000 reports with 10 bad, I hope the system will round the 99% up to 100% :D )

To encourage forum members to actively report to moderator managers better, there are bonus points for accurate reporting.

I like this idea. Hopefully theymos sees this suggestion, and at least gives it some thought.

Reporting it for low quality content is probably the best. They are just linking to one of their threads in order to gain more exposure. It's sort of a duplicate post, but I think just saying something along the lines of "Low quality content" You could go on to explain that they've copied the first paragraph, and just added a link to their thread. However, it's probably not needed.

In fact their recent posts on their post history page is doing the exact same thing for other threads.

So this thread encouraged me to do reporting more actively, I think step by step we'll clean this forum from shitposters. But the thing which I noticed and it looks weird to me when I report somebody my report count and accuracy increases instantly, it's at 100% accuracy right now, but reported posts stays in the place, without any actions. Is my account somehow broken and I can't report anyone, because looks like my reports didn't even get to the mods.

I'll be adding a few suggestions made by others later on today, and fixing some errors that I see. Hopefully, when this topic is perfect, and doesn't have any major problems we can either see it stickied or as a pop up on the report page. Possibly both?

First of all good job on reporting that's exactly what I was hoping this thread would achieve!

If you've reported it, and it hasn't been moved or marked as bad it's likely that the moderators haven't seen it yet. However, it could of just remained unhandled due to the moderator not knowing what to do with it. (quite common if a topic could fit into two sections)

Wait a little bit as it's incredibly unlikely that just your account is broken. Remember, there's several factors that you should take into account when waiting for a report to be dealt with. Depending on the complexity an admin might be needed to verify information that moderators can't see. Also, if the user is higher ranked then it usually takes a little bit longer as well as if the section hasn't got a dedicate moderator it's normally dealt with by global moderators then which can take a little bit longer because of the increased amount of reports that they have.

Did you see that I'm stsrting another project to categorise accounts. It's at the end of this thread -
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4523196.0

I've also started a chat about it.

If their post history is the same, maybe it can be reported both, mentioning this in the report, to let the mod have a look too and decide if this means spam or not...
What happens if we report a user with copper membership? (Paid membership). I haven't reported any copper yet. Does that mean any kind of protection against vulnerability?

No, and I do not think it's a good idea looking at rank when you are reporting anything. If anything violate the forum rule then just report.

The only factor rank has when I'm reporting is whether I check their history or not to see if they are making the same type of replies I'm reporting them for which I'll then leave a comment like "Please check this users post history".

As newbies don't generally have too many posts. Anything Jr member, and above are more like to have a post history. Although, I take a look at their post count, and that usually is more of a factor for lower ranked members than rank itself.

Some people might be interested in screenshots of the full Report History. (I can't actually see it myself without generating dummy data, since I don't report posts...)


Absolutely not.

We are always missing detailed report for report to moderator.

OMG! How could I missed this: https://i.imgur.com/3regaj7.png, just noticed it. Thank you theymos.

---

Glad I am 100% right  :D

Okay, when I eventually get round to doing the "Your report history" I'll take a look at doing it at the same time. Although, I invite anyone else to do this for me as my cropping, and editing skills are shocking.

I'm not sure whether to include the brief explanation/description which is on this page or if I should just crop the reports only. I know you suggested the full report history ,but I would think having a smaller image would be better? Does everyone have access to how many good, bad, unhandled reports they have on the "report to moderator" page or are they too locked behind a certain amount of reports? Maybe I should just crop one good report, bad and unhandled report for an example which would also be a smaller images.

EDIT:
Just whipped up something quick, and looking for feedback:
https://i.imgur.com/OI9n9R9.png

That's obviously an example of a good report, and I would need to include ones for unhandled, and bad reports. I've blurred the users name for obvious reasons, and I should probably blur the title if that is the case. However, I would prefer to keep the title of the topic so it's a little bit easier to explain.

This is the screenshot of my report page history: ~snipped~ https://i.imgur.com/9MzKk6f.png
Is that something you are looking for?

- It does not show all the reports though. I am sure after certain numbers the oldest ones were cut off from the page.

I know theymos specifically said the full report page, but I'm not sure if that's needed, and if it would just result in a bigger image to load. I was thinking of separating the good, bad, unhandled, and deleted (strikethrough) reports into different images which would allow me to edit out sensitive data, and only include threads which are deleted to avoid any privacy issues. These are the examples I've whipped up: (rough edits)

https://i.imgur.com/l9PCThJ.png

or this: https://i.imgur.com/ZkweAgk.png

I was thinking with this one to include different coloured borders for each box; Report time, Topic, User reported, and whether it's been marked as good, bad or is still unhandled. Probably colouring the explanation relative to the borders on the image. Example: This is the time the report was made.

Maybe, the full report page is necessary. I would probably make a image which blurs out the usernames of users. Someone could still find out their username from the topic title, but I could include examples which have been deleted so this would be harder, however if I'm going to include the full report page then this is going to be impossible. Thoughts?  




Yeah that is the case, and it's around 30 days AFAIK.

Would also appreciate your thoughts on this if possible as well as the possibility of adding this to the "report to moderator" page as a drop down menu. Of course, ironing out some of the issues, and possibly editing a few things to your suiting? Or perhaps the  Help  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=help) page would be more suitable. Although, I don't know how much exposure it would have there. 

Is this what you were looking for?
https://i.imgur.com/4u1LzJ6.png

---

The header:
https://i.imgur.com/a3B4E2m.png
Example of good report
https://i.imgur.com/ZRB9CMX.png
Example of unhandled report
https://i.imgur.com/Sw9rNat.png

Sorry I do not see a bad report row for me  :-\

Let me know which one I got right?

---

I changed the report page history image a bit, removed the user column for privacy. May be you want to change the quoted link of mine too.

I would like if you add a note or something that highlights how reporting stuff is always better than creating a new thread. For instance, a lot of new comers recently have started creating threads for stuff like "x User is shit-posting" or "x user is Trolling". An example thread for the same could be : Can this guy (cryptoaeronet) be ban? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4509326.0). This unnecessarily opens up a thread which instead can be effectively handled by the 'Report To Moderator' function by explaining the case properly.

I do report such cases very often and moderators do take the respective action..

Edit : To check your previous reports simply use this URL once you're logged in : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=reportlist;mine (doesn't work for all the accounts, I guess only works for accounts with good amount of reports)

That "Your report history" is exactly what I was looking for. Do you mind if I steal borrow that for the purpose of this thread? Your other images are somewhat similar to what I was thinking. However, I'm looking for opinions on which ones the best to do; Full report history, separate report examples, and separate colour coded examples.

Also, opinions on whether blurring the name is beneficial, and only using a report that the topic has been deleted to prevent someone finding out the identity of the user that was reported by visiting that thread. For example, my image right now which has blurred the user out is fairly easy to find. I think I would prefer to protect the identity of the user as much as possible, but if theymos/others think a full report page is probably better so that people who haven't reported enough yet can get a sneak peak to data they can get access to once they have reported enough then I'll likely not be able to blur out the details without hindering the explanations/examples.

I think I've got a bad report lying around somewhere.

Feel free mate, no need to ask  :)

---

I understand now. I hope the community will give some feedback in here.

- You can send me one on my way if you want me to colorize it or however you want it.

I'll hang fire until hopefully I've received some feedback on the the way to go about doing the images. (blur, full, partial, coloured etc)

That sounds good. I will log off for today. Gotta do some other stuffs.

---

By the way, just in-case you missed to read it on my other reply...

Nice work Welsh.
(I do not have any specific comment and I like the example parts).
+1

Okay, so I've now done a edit of the full "Your report history" page, and blurred out the usernames. I was considering blurring out the topic titles, however I would like to keep as much information openly visible as possible. Plus, the topic title doesn't necessarily mean it was the topic starter. Someone could scan the modlog for the post that was deleted, and see by what user made the post, but I don't know why anyone would go into this much effort. If anyone thinks I should blur the topic title for privacy issues please let me know your thoughts.

So, I'm looking for opinions on the follow:

Include a image of the full "Your report history" page like so: https://i.imgur.com/stirfNQ.png


Instead of including separate images for each report; Bad, Good, Unhandled, and deleted (Strikedthrough) reports like so: (rough edit)
https://i.imgur.com/l9PCThJ.png

I've also considered doing a colour coded image which outlines each area of the page; Report time, Post, User, Status, and including a explanation which would correspond to the colour. For example: (rough edit)

or this: https://i.imgur.com/ZkweAgk.png

Explanation: Time the report was made

I could include this colour code system for the full report history page if the community thinks that's the better option over the separate images.

I'll be sure to add something along the lines of this. Thanks for the suggestion.

This is a very compressive guide on how to report, I have left you 5+ merit, this is useful for me since my mother language is Spanish now I have that kind of cheat sheet to make reports.

I don't have the exact list of my reports but I'll bring you a screenshot of my stats.

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

If you need any assistance with the guide or editing, let me know.
I tried to find a screenshot of my bad reports I remember I took some time ago but couldn't find any.
If I find something I'll post it here so you can use it as an example ;)

This isn't something I even thought about when making the thread. I'm glad it's helping you, and good job on the reports.

On a slightly unrelated note this hasn't been entirely proof read yet. Well, it has but, it's not to my standards quite yet. But, I invite anyone who wants to translate this to do so once it's been cleaned a little, and the final images have been added.

I've luckily got one bad report that I could use. (never thought I would be saying that) However, this will likely have to be included with a separate image if I'm going to use the full report history image.

Anyone know how many reports are needed to see the full report history? I have 273 reports (254 good, 3 bad, 16 unhandled) and don't have access. Given mdayonliner's report page (https://i.imgur.com/9MzKk6f.png), my guess is that it unlocks after 300 reports or 300 good reports.

We have to ask theymos about it.
I have the full report history from day 1, but I have over 1000 good reports.

The unhandled ones are for using homographs.

I think I remember a user stating it opened up after 300 reports. I wasn't sure if this was 200 though, but I guess it must be 300 after all. Found the quote:


I would assume that this is total reports, and not just good reports. Once it appears though make sure to let us know so we can somewhat confirm it's around this figure.

No, it's most likely 300 good reports.
I don't have the link, and my repot "baseline" is:
:P

Right okay. That's interesting. Let us know once you get those 7 good reports ;)

If we can get multiple sources to confirm this then I'll edit it into the OP.

Seems like you have a good opportunity to follow up. Would you mind if I inbox you some of the possible reportable posts (in addition to yours and of-course if I come across) so that we know the outcome ASAP. I am just curious to know the actual number.  :D

---

i.e: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4546264.msg40924257#msg40924257 "ref link spamming please refer to the user's post history: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1266001;sa=showPosts"

PS: I did not report it yet hoping you will take the chance.

I've opted to go for the full report history as that's going to be more beneficial to those that don't have access to it, and will be able to see an example of what it looks like when they achieve the desired amount of reports.

The image that I edited is pretty shocking. I'm terrible at this image editing, and I probably should of used a different colour for the status of the report. If anyone wants to improve on that image feel free to send me a message of the edited image.

Let me have a try. May I?
Is this your best version? : https://i.imgur.com/stirfNQ.png

My final version of the image was this one:https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FcZair3R.png&t=590&c=sYW_EaN8GCB8jQ

Which I've included in the original thread for now. I've added colour coded explanations too, but I'm not sure if I'm 100% happy with it.

Let me know any better? Or any other instruction you would like to add?

PS: Sorry about the last color of the colored cells image. I hope if you are satisfy with that image then you can change your text that matches with that color. I don't know why I picked pink LOL

I think the pics are a bit too wide.
While taking a screenshot, make the browser window smaller, no need to have it on full screen.
By adjusting the size of the window you can fit everything on a smaller picture.

Too much free space behind the "posts" and "users".


It's just an opinion.

Sorry for the horrible and clumsy English, it's getting worse each day and I can't stop it.

This is good advice, and demonstrates exactly why I'm no graphic designer. I'll get around to doing something like this later on today, although I imagine I'll have to do multiple edits to get it right. I'm not sure whether zooming out will be a good idea so I'll try that too.

Try using width and height attribute. You will need to know the ratio though. If you have microsoft paint then follow below instructions...

1. Download the image.

2. Open it using microsoft paint.

3. Click resize
https://i.imgur.com/n3qUQVH.png

4. Check Pixels
https://i.imgur.com/cjTsxy6.png

5. Play with the value of Horizontal only
https://i.imgur.com/OjipCbh.png

6. Try putting them here

7. You should be finding desired width and height.

I made a short test video of the report history overview,for the purpose of this guide,
but I have to see where to upload it ;)
A link coming soon...

Edit: here is the link
https://vimeo.com/277244738

Note, that I have never done something like this before and took me around half an hour to make it so it's not perfect.
If you like the idea, I can add some texts explanations or voice too :)

Update.

---

This was just for test, so if Welsh likes the idea, i can try put some more time and make it a bit more detailed.
If he prefer the text format of the guide, it's OK. I just used half an hour so it's not so waste of time, and I leanred new things :P

It takes me days recording, editing a video (those kinds are different than this one thought  ;D)
By the way, I am not sure what you were trying to explain on the video.

If you can then you can record a video which is showing how to get the height and width value from the resize feature of microsoft paint. I think this will resolve the size issue (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4519248.msg40997114#msg40997114) if Welsh is looking for it of-course.

PS: @Welsh - Just spotted: http://prntscr.com/jzvipo

I very much do like the idea of including some sort of video guide which could be better for those that don't want to read my wall of text, and simply want to find out certain things. How to report, how to access report history, and other things could be very beneficial to those that are visual learners rather than those who can follow instructions in text. At the very least I don't see it hurting. If you want I would be more than willing to include the videos in the post below the guide.

Nice one! I've still got a few things to iron out in the thread. Thinking of wording a few things differently for clarity, but being clear, and concise has never really been my strong point. I prefer to go into detail.

I'm doing my best to report at least a few posts whenever I'm browsing through the forum.
I have to admit that I usually focus on clear-cut cases of spam and low quality posts.

Success rate is pretty good though, but I haven't reported that much in total.

I'm sure the staff appreciate the efforts no matter how many posts you are/have reported. I'll thank you on behalf of the community.
This is all we really need from people there's no requirement for reporting things, but if everyone reported that post that they would normally just ignore because it's spam would contribute a huge amount to the overall state of the forum. There's an issue right now with the signal to noise ratio. I'm hoping this thread, and with a few other things we can somewhat combat this even if it's only slightly.

I'm hoping that the examples/placeholders, and the explanations will give people the confidence to start reporting the more complex issues too.

I now have the link. Unfortunately, I didn't quite make the 300 mark, but overshot to 301 :P

Seems like it is 300 (the best possibility since you missed it).

Awesome! Thanks for letting us know. I'll probably fit this somewhere in the original thread. I think that's pretty much confirmation that it's 300 good reports. At least It's good enough for me until proven otherwise.

I'll get my hands on it next week. Just moved in the house I bought some days ago and still no Internet. I was off work today and will be off tomorrow as well and when I get my hand back on the PC I'll do some videos, but I'm using a trial version of the program so there will be a watermark if it's not a problem. As I said earlier I'm not a pro in this field.

No problem, it's not a requirement. But, I'm always willing to encourage those that want to provide more data to benefit the forum. Especially, when it's visual as certain people tend to be more visual learners. I'll also get around to doing the edited image, and resizing it sometime this weekend most likely. As well as tweak some of the explanations slightly, and fix some issues that I'm not quite happy with.

Hopefully, we can come up with a final product that theymos may be able to sticky the thread, add to the report page as a drop down menu or add to the help page.

The reporting page is only a few lines long.
If you can summarize the essence of this guide into a few paragraphs, it can fit to the end of the reporting page too (and that's the perfect place for a good summary, because if someone is too lazy to search for reporting guidelines, he still can find it when opening the report page).
Or, first there could be a link to this guide topic (like: check the reporting guide here, and link it to this topic).
After the link, there could be the summary of this topic, if needed. Maybe the link would be enough, and in that case there will be no need to update the reporting page, the link always points to the updated guide.

I'm not very good at explaining things clearly, and concisely as you might of gathered from this thread, although I invite others to offer improvements over the existing explanations. Including a link would probably be beneficial, although it would be nice to have a drop down menu. A lot of things would need to be shortened, and edited to theymos' standard. It being a sticky page would likely be beneficial. Regardless, in the mean time I'll be bumping it after 24 hours as passed.

I have a question. What's with all these posts quoting the OP and nothing more? Is that a way of bumping? Or is it just spamming?

When I come across a post like that if it's more than a few minutes old I report it like a "Low Quality" no content post. I think it is just spamming. Welsh's above post is how you literally bump a thread.

@Welsh like the thread, I have something to look forward to at 300 good reports. I want to see where I messed up the 5 I got wrong.

Edit: Just came across a situation where I want to report a post in Meta, User literally posted like they are signing up for a bounty in a random thread. Who handles these?

In these type of cases, I hit the report to moderator link and in the comment section I write: "User have no idea what they are doing". All of these kind of reports were handled as "good report" for me.

Here are some custom reporting text I use for the comment section (Thanks to the browsers cache) often  :)


PS: You can use the one which says. "user is confuse. Thinking the topic is a bounty page"

Since we're discussing reporting, I would like to hear some opinions on this case:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2942080.msg41328087#msg41328087
Archive here (http://archive.is/QuHLG)

In the rules quoting pyramids are discouraged but I don't know if its still enforced.
Should this be reported?

Ps.
I'm pretty sure something fishy is happening there but I'm on the phone and I can't really do a throughout check on those accounts

I'm pretty sure that it only shows the last 30 days. No unfortunately you won't be able to find out without contacting a moderator. Unless, you have reported them within the last 30 days of course.
Yeah you can report excessive quote pyramids. I guess it's pretty subjective, though. Depends on what the moderator dealing with the report says. I'm not sure what constitutes "excessive" in this case, however I would normally only report these cases if the content isn't that great or if it's a pain to navigate the thread because of it.

I have a question sir. I just recently detected multiple accounts in a single bounty campaign, more specifically 5 accounts, all Jr. Member, 2 of those were both registered January 05, 2018 with a 5 min interval, and the another 2 accounts were registered April 17 with a 6 min interval. Should i post it on a thread or should I just let those 5 accounts join a single Bounty - Signature Campaign?

Don't report it as this sort of stuff is not moderated on the forum. However, you can open a thread in the Reputation section. I'm sure a few users will appreciate that you've found a few users cheating campaigns.

One can only assume that this is them just bumping with alternate accounts to avoid the 24 hour bumping rule. I report them, and they always get removed.

I believe it would be useful to include topics that are used to investigate or accuse dishonest practices such as the use of Bot Farm and merit exchanges.

Examples:
 From: LoyceV
[Mods: NUKE 120 act] Commercial Spambots post and delete 1000s of posts per day  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3955810.msg37709315#msg37709315)

From: killyou72
 Suspected users that are abusing merit 3.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2896910.0)

I don't think I'll include those threads as I would like to focus more on reporting, and how it should be done rather than including resources to report in. A lot of these threads in Meta could just be reported instead of posting on the topic. I understand in particularly complex reports, but other than that the report field is good enough.

I might include them in the post below the original post, but I'll decide on that later.

Here is an image of a bad report. Got one while reporting homographs.
https://imgur.com/a/Hs9gX5W

I'm looking for a free a bit more advanced screen recorder /without an watermark/ and when I get a free time on a PC I'll help you out with the guide. Maybe I can cut off the video to a small pieces and make a step-by-step gifs which you can use embed here :)

You could use OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) Studio. It’s open source and that’s what most streamers use when they are online and streaming. I’m not fully familiar but I’m sure it’s one of the best video recording softwares in the internet. And of course, it’s free.

Hey, does anyone want to make a "We need you" image for reporting on Bitcointalk? I think that could be pretty damn cool, although I'm not very well versed in editing images.

I was going to change the Uncle Sam image to the logo of the Bitcointalk logo, but don't think it would look right. Have I ever mentioned that we need a mascot for the forum? Kind of like how Uncle Sam represents the American government.

Are there any guides for reporting someone of continuosly shit posting (you can clearly see it since almost all of the recent post of the user is a one liner). Not that i'm saying a one liner is a shit post but there's little to no sense at all.

I'm wondering if i should publicly post it but i'm thinking, do i really need to? Or does clicking the "report to moderator" button and stating "moderate to heavy shitposter" be enough to address my concern?

Coming from 4chan, I've been disappointed that there's very little fanart for bitcointalk.org. (Though it's not surprising, since 4chan is an imageboard and this is a text-focused BBS-type forum.)

Using the "report to moderator" should be enough. If you think they are a shitposter then you can report them for such, and ask the moderator dealing with the report to take a look at their post history.

Something like "User is spamming/Shitposting. Please check their post history". The moderator dealing with the report can then decide if more severe action is necessary or they may just delete all the posts that they deem not to their standard.  90% of the time opening a new thread isn't necessary.

If they're copy and paste ones please link to the original they've copied. Some mods might not be aware of the homographs spam so mark it bad.


I'm sure somebody would create one. Maybe throw a bounty up. I always liked the Mr Bitty logo someone designed a while back:

https://i.imgur.com/73snBNd.png

The BTC symbol as his mask is a nice touch.

If I'm not mistaken, there was a bounty looking for suggestions to promote Bitcoin. Both in bitcointalk and in /r/bitcoin. It could have a contest to select a mascot and then print stickers. 100,000 stickers cost less than 1Btc on this site. (https://www.carstickers.com/products/stickers/custom-stickers/setup/euro-oval-sticker/) Probably must have other sites that offer an even lower cost, the difficulty could be the distribution, though... And I imagine that similar suggestions have been made before.
The Bitcoin symbol (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bitcoin+accept+here+sticker+&t=h_&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images) already attracts a lot of attention when we come across it in some unexpected places.

I'll throw in another confirmation that it's 300 good reports:

Also overshot  :P

I've probably got ideas for artwork, but not the skills. Even though, the forum is text focused I would of thought some of the creative individuals here would of come up with quite a few pieces of artwork.

That's actually a pretty good one that I wasn't aware of.

Right, I'll probably add this into the original topic when it comes to editing it again. I still need to work on making the report history image smaller.

Alpacas are already the unofficial mascot of Bitcoin (https://www.coindesk.com/alpacas-the-unofficial-mascot-of-bitcoin/).  Would seem only right for the forum to be represented by one wearing socks, which is oddly appropriate.

OTOH, Bitcoin is often called "the honey badger of money", so that'd be appropriate as well. 8)

Another overshoot here, now I have an access to the "Your reports" history.

You have me from today. Minimum cap 10/day  ;D
Announcements (Altcoins) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0) and Marketplace (Altcoins) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=161.0) sections?

@Welsh

I give my best at   Announcements (Altcoins) ,  Mining (Altcoins) and the german Forums !

Currently sitting at 0 in the queue. I honestly thought there would be a lot more reports considering how popular the sections are.



I've noticed. Keep it up!

There should be 1 by now  :P

---

Update: Oh yah! you made it  ;D

Not many are reporting, I do if a few times a day on small portions but.. I wish I had more free time.

Just looked 10 Min and found guess 10 ! 

That's fine. I'm not really expecting users to dedicate their time to reporting. However, I can without a doubt say that there isn't enough reporters at least my jurisdiction to deal with the spam.

If you want i can bring you work for delete threads or move things to other Forums  ;)

Just investigate daily a hour for that and when i search other things i also look for  !    ;D

I don't know whether to give you my congratulations or condolences for your ascension to mod-hood, but I do know that altcoins needs all the mod help it can get!  :P

Yep, and anyone that's willing to help me by reporting anything that they think needs to be reported would be much appreciated. Settling in has been a little bit iffy, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of things.

I was just wondering if mods will delete a topic that I started, and if they will also delete a locked topic started by someone if I reported it. Both of these topics are on archival section. There are also locked thread, and only the word "delete" or "please delete" is posted, why mods are not deleting those threads?

Personally, I move things to the archive section if they have been edited or received a few replies. Often users tend to try to cover up their threads by editing it to nothing. If they have edited it within 10 minutes, and it doesn't show its been edited, and hasn't received many replies I'll just remove it instead.

To my knowledge there's no real guideline on this, but this what I like to do personally. This way I'm not removing threads from existence so that anyone that saw the thread before it was edited can reference if they wanted too. I guess it also depends on the topic. If it's a sensitive topic I might opt to sending it to archival instead of deleting it even if it doesn't fill the criteria above.

So I just gained access to my report log. This is going to be helpful when reporting those clumps of garbage I stumble open from time to time.

I must say it's been nice having some feedback/conversations with some of the Mods along the way. I appreciate that some have the time to reach out and explain a particular action they may be taking, despite them being in no way obligated to do so.

Thanks again Welsh for bringing the log to my attention as it became the tool I could look forward to receiving and putting to use.

I try to message users whenever If I think they need an explanation or some reminder. However, it can pretty difficult to contact everyone, and my inbox gets bombarded with messages. I'm thinking of dedicating a time at the end of each week to reply to the more important messages.

The report history feature is a nice one though I admit. Gives you some feedback on your reporting habits, and does promote improvement.

This is really a big help for me since I just started actively reporting posts. As of the moment I have only 9 reports with 100% accuracy. Even if I am actively looking for posts to be reported. I still wanted to make sure that this is really out of the topic tho sometimes there were really obvious sh*t posts that has patterns

Thanks btw and I am still learning more about it to atleast help some of the mods in moderating

It's nice when you have the time. For the most part there isn't a lot of information people need, but on the off chance it is good to get a little feedback.

So far looking at the report history feature I can us the "unhandled" to gauge whether or not the board moderator wants to deal with those posts. For me a lot of the time my reports are for wrong section, and certain boards aren't as finicky as others in regards to where they want certain topics.

The only feature I think it is missing is the report itself that was submitted e.g. "low quality", "wrong section", " plagiarism" and the many others. It could help hone in on why a report was bad, or unhandled in case you forget exactly why you reported it.

@Welsh

Can I report this post also?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4779822.0

These kind of post have nothing to add in discussion and I do not understand , what is the purpose of OP of copying some image here from another site.

I am not sure for others but it falls under the "spam category" for me,

Reported

Yup, it is deleted, I was little uncertain whether it should be reported or not.

There was a topic about a bounty thread bumping issue (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4816344.0), but the real issue is this:

Do you think this campaign could lead to spam? Could you give me an example on how will I report it if they are breaking any law?

BTW,your topic is really helpful, can we have it pinned? It's hard looking it.

Yeah, report it. As far as I'm concerned that's offering an incentive for opening threads which would indeed lead to spam. Include a comment similar to the #15 example. Maybe, include that they are making it a requirement to create new threads, rather than post in an existing topic.

Regarding, the pinning of the topic. That's up to theymos, but I haven't sorted out some of the formatting issues at the moment that are annoying me. It's on my to do list though. I'll continue bumping it, but I forget sometimes.

Thanks, Welsh. This is very important information for most of forum members.

I translated your thread in Japanese as below.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4818470.0

Thanks to your knowledge and effort, My community members will recognize the importance of report.

Hello May I ask If I can share this to My Local board and translate it to Our own language? This will also help spread awareness among the user from other local board? Therefore I'm asking for the consent of the author of this thread.

Sure. Anyone that can translate this to local boards to a good standard are encouraged to do so. The more exposure of this the better I think. There's a few little formatting issues that you might want to address which I haven't got around to fixing yet.

Hello, after i messaged you in the last week, and seek for your approval, i made a guide like this thread for my local board. Well, its basically your thread but not all of my local boards members understand English well, so i made it and add some opinion of mine (just a very tiny of it). If you want to see it, you can find it here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4937332.msg44500456#msg44500456

Thanks again for a great guide and letting me to make one for my local board.

Nice one! Anyone else is welcome to translate the thread for their local board as long as it makes sense of course! Hopefully, we can start getting more users reporting site wide rather than the majority from the English sections.

German Board already have it and i am on the way to get some more there to keep watching for spam and report them!

I'll translate it into Spanish for my Local Board. I'll let you know when it's done and see if I can find the adequate place to place it there, since there is no equivalent to “Meta” and I fear it should go in a place called “Esquina Libre” (Free Corner), mixed amongst other threads that are of the most diverse nature. A sticky could save it there, so I’ll ask the mods there to consider it when it is done.

Also, I find that my local is not too active lately, so impact will probably be small, but it's woth a try.

I’ll try to get it done before Monday today or tomorrow. I've already drafted it all, and just need to review and try it out on preview.

Done.

I've just published the post on my local board: [Guía] Cómo reportar de manera efectiva (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4945755.msg44575477#msg44575477).

I've stuck to the original OP as much as possible, with only very minor changes (i.e. wrong language example adapted to my local).

I have added an introduction to explain the reasons for the post, and an additional section at the end indicating the references and an important note on rule discrepancy between the official rules in the post written by @mprep in English, and the translated thread by @dserrano5 in Spanish. It turns out that the Spanish thread is not up-to-date (and the OP has not been active for a year now), so the latest additions are not incorporated to the Spanish rule thread. I’ve gone on to pointing out that the more official thread in English has preference over the local translation in case of discrepancy or ommition.

The rest is a rather decent translation I’d say and I’m happy with the result. I’ve included in my introduction that any change suggestions should be made on your thread and from there on derived to the translations if they take shape. Regardless, If any decent suggestions are made on my local, I’ll place them on your thread (translated of course).

I've decided to place the post in the default local Spanish section, where the post on rules is also present (although as a sticky there).

I would like to translate it also to my local board (Philippines) since we have many participants and members so this thread might be very helpful to us. I know this kind of post might change the perspective of each and everyone in the forum. I will have a collaboration with your content and the idea about merit badge so there's a chance of changing a lot.

Spreading the reporting guide might help also everyone to clean up each sections (mods will have a great time checking all those reports  ;D).
I'll just inform you here if the content is published.

Yeah, any minor adaptions that you need to make is absolutely fine. It's nice to see users using my templates now, and then because I know its at least being seen, and put to use. Any exposure should be for the benefit of the forum even if its only a minor impact.

Thanks to everyone who's gone into the effort of translating it into your local language, and helping the forum further!

This bounty topic that I reported is still unhandled, I guess it needs more evidence. The good news is, I already caught one (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4958056.msg44681668#msg44681668), the only problem is, how should I connect it to my previous report, so they will be handled both at the same time.

---

Since you posted this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4933112.msg44528286#msg44528286), I will continue reporting posts from Alt Ann. Hoping that theymos will incentivize users with 1m good reports an "x" amount of BTC(I hope, no one has ever reached that amount of good reports). :D

I don't see reports from the bounty section, and I can't tell you why its still unhandled as I'm not sure what evidence you provided. So, you could message those with jurisdiction over it with the new evidence if you wanted too.

Haha, I wouldn't count on that. Would be a highly impressive thing to achieve though.

Thanks again for this guide, Welsh.

I have a few questions maybe you can help to answer. Up until now I've mostly reported posts that are obvious rule breakers: wrong section, wrong language, referral links, phishing, that kind of thing. However, after the various discussions from the last few days, I've decided to start reporting low value posts from spammers as well. Now, posts like "nice project" and "great team" obviously fall in to that category, but my question is regarding one line generic posts.

Taking a random megathread from Bitcoin Discussion (Is now the right time to buy bitcoin? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4980201.600)), here are a sample of recent posts from it:





Now, all these posts technically answer the question OP has posted, but they certainly don't add anything new or original to an already 30 page discussion. In my opinion, all these deserve to be trashed, but I can only assume posts like these aren't being trashed, otherwise they wouldn't be literally everywhere.

What's the stance on this?

I'm still hoping for some clarification on my last post from any of the mods, or even members with thousands of reports. Are posts like this in the thousands because they aren't classed as "low-value", or is it simply because they aren't being reported?

Have you tried reporting them? Just go ahead and do it and see how that works out.

I've been reporting two types of shitposts that I'm labeling as "incomprehensible garbage" - the post didn't make sense, bad Google translation, horribly mangled English, etc - or "zero value shitpost" - the post might be grammatically ok-ish and I could get the gist of it but it doesn't add anything to the thread and likely is just sig-spam or spam-bump. The latter covers most one-liners and mods have been deleting them but that's mostly in altcoin boards where even shitposts are exceptionally shitty compared to the rest of the forum. Not sure about Bitcoin Discussion, which has no dedicated mod.

tl;dr: if in doubt - report.

Yeah, but I have 100% accuracy and don't want to mess it up :P

Maybe you could add more the benefits of reporting, this may motivate us more even were jr.members, because mostly of jr.members dont care about reporting

If your front lawn is covered with dog shit do you need to be told what are the benefits of cleaning it up? It's not a Jr. Member or Legendary thing. You either want to clean it up or not, there is no other benefit than that.


You're invalidating the point I'm trying to make to the Jr. Member up there ;D

My opinion - worth price paid - is that it is better to report the original post in a spam megathread and recommend deletion or locking rather report individual posts for deletion. The exception would be plagiarism or referral link spam - in both cases the user making the post should be banned.

A good point, actually. It's much more time efficient to just get a spam thread locked than it is to report pretty much every individual post for endlessly repeating the same nonsense, especially when 50 new posts pop up within the hour.

You've probably got your answer since I haen't checked this thread in a while, my bad. However, if a thread is a breeding ground for spammers it will either be removed or locked. Depending entirely on the content, and how bad it is, and who is dealing with it. There's not real way of putting guidelines to it. Its really down to the discretion of the mod. The thread that you linked though as been trashed.

Yeah, I since messed up and lost my 100% record by reporting a bunch of "nice project" posts twice, so since then have been much more liberal with my reporting. I've been happy to see that every post I've reported along the lines of these generic one liners has been trashed, and I have also had quite a few topics locked or trashed that were breeding grounds, as you say.

It's just nice to know that we're on the same page.

I wouldn't worry too much about your report percentage. Especially, now that you've lost some ;) I've probably got the most bad reports on the forum still. 200 odd.

This should be put to sticky threads because people nowadays are trying to help getting rid of the members here that do like to spam but somehow does not know how to report in accordance with forum rules and regulations. This is why I recommend this thread to label it as a sticky thread. I do hope that reporting will do so well and will not be abuse by other members here forum.

Awwww... that's ok though. I was in low 90-s not long ago. Now 98% but I'm still messing up occasionally. Once I reported a post that I intended to merit so the mod was probably like "WTF does '4' mean in the comment?"

Lmao. I know I've messed up a couple of times selecting reasons from the drop down box that shows up after you type one or two characters, and hit enter before I realized my mistake. So I've reported a couple posts for "L" or "P". Still got deleted though.  :P

I've made my peace with 99%.

I try to ask here, since someone suggested on my topic.

What if I report one users using bots for social media and spamming the report here on forum?

What is the policy against those people who perform activities with bots?

If I find of them, what should I do? Are those account will be permabanned?

What exactly do you mean by "spamming the report here on forum"? If they're breaking forum rules you can report them. But if they're just using bots outside of the forum and reporting to bounty threads here then the most you can do is PM the bounty manager and hopefully (but unlikely) get them removed from the bounty. You might also get cheaters red-tagged by DT if you can prove it. But moderators will not police bounty cheaters.

I mean, they use bots on social media (yes it can be proven) once they the bot complete the weekly activity, they spam here on forum hundred of reports done by the bot.

It doesn't sound like they're breaking forum rules. "Spam" doesn't merely mean a lot of posts. It means undesirable posts - ads, gibberish, multiple post in a row, etc. If they're posting their bounty reports as prescribed in designated bounty threads then it doesn't look like the mods would have any reason to ban them. But if you can prove the use of bots then I would suggest to post that in Reputation and have bounty managers and perhaps DT members look into it.

Does anybody know the behind the scene on how reporting is managed on a Local board? 

Specifically:
a) Can local Mods Ban or Nuke users themselves? (or do they pass the cases along to Admins/Global Mods).

b) Are reports made on a local board read/managed only by local moderators? (I guess global/admin may have visibility, but the operational part is down to the local mod).

c) Do Local mods upscale local only issues?

d) Do Local mods upscale issues that, being reported at a local level, have implication at a global level (i.e. user spams on local and on bitcoin board)?

I gave my best shot at answering these questions on my local board, but wanted to make sure I got them right in order to amend if necessary.

Okay, I'm going to try my best to be accurate as possible. But, don't anything I say for fact as I'm only certain on a few things.

A) AFAIK they'll only be able to nuke if they are a patroller, and the reported user is a Newbie or below 28 activity. If not, then they'll likely have to contact a Global Moderator with information on why the user should be banned. Again, I'm not too familiar with how this works.

B) No. Global moderators will see the reports, and any reported newbies will also be able to be seen by patrollers. I have several local board reports each day. If they are obvious like ref spam etc I'll remove them. If not, I'll just ignore it until someone who has knowledge of that language deals with it.

C) I'm not entirely sure what you mean. But, if a local moderator is only assigned to its local board thats the sections which they can take action in. They may well be made a patroller on top of that, and can deal with Newbie reports site wide.

D) Again, I'm not sure what you mean. However, if they are a patroller they'll see Newbie reports site wide, and can act on them. Nuke etc. If not, and they are only a moderator in their local board, they can only take action in their local board.

Ok, Thanks.

From what you say, local mods do not ban non-nukable accounts, but need to upscale the case to a global mod.
I was discussing this issue this morning, and the person I discussed it with was not sure why accounts he/she had reported where still roaming around after days, when there was a clear infringement of the rules. More to the point, he/she was trying to understand who was to take action on the account eventually if it were to be banned, and if language could be a problem if the report was written only in the local language.

From my understanding that is likely the case. However, local board moderators may well have specific privileges to ban. I do doubt this though, and would say that they would need to contact a Global Moderator if a particular user is a problem. How they go about that, and prove it if the Global mod doesn't know how to speak that language I don't know honestly.

@Welsh, I would like to request one more report option on OP.

I have experienced last day. Report a thread that OP already got appropriate answer. Sometimes peoples make question, than lot of people's answered there. In that case OP already got answers but people's still spam on same thread. This thread should be report for locked. And yesterday I was tried it, report marked good and locked thread : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5039762.0

So you could add this option on your OP. This is very effective to avoid spam. It should be highlighted. Perhaps lot of reporter don't know about it.

Yeah, especially when those questions are easily found elsewhere as they have been asked a hundred times before. I'm going to be looking at editing the thread soon, and working on the formatting. I've just been a little busy with moderation, and the fact that I've got an expedition coming up, and have been training for that :P

I'll get around to it eventually. :D

I'm about to pad my good reports coming from bounty section soon, I can sense the BTC coming, and there are many bot-like posters there, but I have a question about the ban:
Is it temporary ban or permanent?

Why not sticked ?

I've reported quite a few of these type of posts over the last 2 days - where a user writes the exact same two/three sentence reply in multiple threads - but so far none of the users (or posts) have been nuked.

And on that note, since this is Welsh's thread and he's a moderator in altcoin/announcements, I have a backlog of 43 unhandled reports mostly for plagiarism and duplicate posting as described above. Also, several of the users I reported appear to be engaging in paid bumping as they are having nonsensical conversations among themselves: amani, BTCFaucets, btokman, Klacik, CoinNextE, Tiny_Prism, etc.

Really, the threads themselves should be locked as happened in the Roomdao case I relentlessly pursued a couple months ago.

EDIT - originally posted in the wrong thread so I moved it here.

Probably entirely depends on the situation. Whether they are a serial "joined" spammer, and who is doing the banning. At the end of the day its at the global moderators/admins discretion whether its permanent or temporary.

Probably, because its not official, and also horribly formatted, and a little incomplete at the moment. I'm going away for a few weeks so will likely revisit it then. I tried to make some time before I go, but moderation is a little more important. I'll have a tonne more time when I return though.


More than likely spam.

Bare in mind that the users might have already been banned. We've been getting a tonne of reports for plagiarism where the user has already been banned prior to the report.

For some reason I seem to think this came up in a ban appeals thread. I think they were treating it like any other copy/paste... now if there weren't a thousand of those threads I might be able to find it.


I was wondering do any Mods deal with Meta at all. I say this because the odd time I report a multiposter, usually giving them the chance to correct it themselves. If they don't these sometimes just get added to the unhandled section. I don't really care about the stats; just wondering if I should bother reporting these in Meta

If its a newbie post then patrollers will get it. Otherwise, global moderators are the ones to deal with Meta reports as there's no dedicated moderator. Its the same for all other sections without a dedicated moderator.

Hmm... a lot of my backlog was processed (and I finally made it over 300 good reports - woohoo!) and marked good, but some of those involved have been posting since then:

peetah (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=80337) - - last post was ~1 hour ago
slovenia1 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=402614) - last post was ~3 hours ago
CoinNextE (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=531064) - last post was ~2 hours ago
boomertoo (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=248590) - last post was ~4 hours ago
kk777 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=366760)- last post was ~5 hours ago
amanai (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=358066) - last post was ~5 hours ago
Klacik (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=259998) - last post was ~4 hours ago
bitokman (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=483199) - newbie, last post was a few minutes ago

Who is it that can ban jr. members and up? Staff and global moderators, or can a section-specific moderator ban people found reported for violations in his/her section?

UPDATE - it looks like all of the above have stopped posting sometime yesterday (Oct 6). Bam!

With the new Jr member merit requirement a lot of newbies have more than 28 activity. Any of them with more than 28 activity cannot be nuked currently. Therefore, only Global moderators, and higher can ban them.

Would be maybe good if Mod's get the permissions to handle ( ban etc.) for Users without Merit , to possibly attach to the new merit rank system !

Is just such a suggestion !   ;)

Crap, I figured something like that was in play. Theymos really needs to work out those trust issues and give mods more power (and hire a few more of them, too...).

I don't see why we are relying on the tiny number of global mods to do so much work here - patrollers should be able to ban all newbies regardless of activity, and all the major boards (BD, AD, Meta, etc) should have a dedicated mod or two. Would go a long way to reclaiming the spammier boards and making them usable again.

I have a weird situation here. I have already done what I felt was right but thought I'd bring it here anyways.

http://archive.is/NUtKs    Scroll to post # 377

I was going through a thread that as say has run it's course. When I do this I generally request it be locked, then I go through the last posts and report the Sig Spam, from at least the current payment period, usually about a week back.

When I all of a sudden had to stop and think.. do I really report Staff for "Redundant repetitive post- Sig Spam". This is one of the tags I use, not sure if it was that one today. In the end I reported it because it met my criteria.

From that I can't imagine there are many Staff that find themselves in that situation. I did try and look around to see where this member is "Staff" to get a gauge of their authority... what can I say not a fan of pissing people off with more power than myself. Especially when there is the opportunity for them to potentially abuse that power; not that I'm saying that would be the case here. I didn't come across them but though tI'd bring it here for general discussion to see if anyone else has had a similar experience.

Why not? If you think rules have been broken you shouldn't let the "Staff" label stop you.

BTW "Staff" means a moderator of another board (Chinese in this case) so they probably won't see your report if you're worried about that. Not that it matters now after you posted this publicly :)

You're right and it didn't. It was more of a how to proceed, the same as anyone else, or through a PM or something. On a small an extremely small scale it's similar to a "whistleblower" wondering how to report wrongdoing.
In this case there was a moment where I perceived an imbalance of power, so took sometime to think on it made an archive, reported the rest of what I wanted to then went back.

I also archived it in case there was something fishy with the account. I've come accustomed to seeing redundant posts all ranks at the tail end of these threads I report to be locked, this was the first "Staff" member.


It was honestly right after posting here I saw them offering assistance with translating the Chinese board to find account sellers. So this put to ease any other thoughts I was having about the account. I  did feel better at ease putting it in public, not to drag their name through the mud or anything, but just in case. Not that it matters, as a local board mod only has power there if I'm not mistaken.

Overall my thinking was,  I've seen some otherwise seemingly levelheaded individuals loose their shit over trivial matters.

Edit: Just of note all other reports from there, have been handled, except this one. Including a batch of other reports put in afterwards. So it may be that others also think twice regarding moderating a moderator. Not that I care it just sits as unhandled.

Just saying I've reported a staff member before, and I believe it got moved all the same. Don't let rank get in the way of reporting. Report what you think is infringing the rules. If it is it will get dealt with regardless of the rank of the member posting it. Sometimes even staff members might post in the wrong board without realizing etc.

Should we report who had post only quote without his own comment ? Especially I noticed from bounty thread and ANN thread. I believe they are spammers. Their intention is bumping thread only. Otherwise there is no reason just quote full thread without own comment. Mostly newbie account has been doing that job. I expect we should report this kind of thread. I want to know from moderators what should we write on comment during reporting time ?

Yes, it's clearly a "zero value" post as per rule #1. I report them with "quote only, no content" and they get deleted.

Yo Welsh! I'm starting to go a little crazy from the bump-bots I've been chasing after as outlined in this thread: How to deal with bumping via fake conversation? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5044326.msg46869553#msg46869553).

The first batch of bots I got banned were all found to have committed multiple instances of plagiarism, but it took multiple reports to get them banned. The current group are mainly engaging in mindless conversation with far less plagiarism, but even after identifying two instances of plagiarism for several users I still find them posting and the reports are marked unhandled 2+ days later. Needless to say, this is highly demotivating, but if it is an issue with how I am reporting them I'll gladly change tactics. Here's  typical example of a report I sent in:

plagiarism - copied from another bump-bot: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4555585.msg44863033#msg44863033

So, is this a case of the global mod(s) still considering me somewhat untrustworthy for not having enough reports (394 at 99% accuracy) or incorrect report format or overworked mods (ok, that one is a given) or does it really now take multiple instances of plagiarism to get banned?!?

It's called "weekend". Pour yourself a piquant beverage and relax.

Also you're probably behind my 500 reports in the queue, sorry about that :)

Point taken! That said, the bots never sleep, and they never get drunk! Though I'm not entirely sure of that last one...

How many requests do there are during the day?

AFAIK global moderators don't see how many reports you've made. They might do, but I doubt they would use that as a gauge whether your correct or not. Each report should be looked at individually. Also, are you sure the users aren't already banned? How are you checking whether they are banned or not?

We have a lot of reports where the user has been banned long ago, but their messages still remain. I tend to delete the message in these cases.

Sorry, missed this reply in my ever-burgeoning watchlist.

Over the last month I've reported at least 250 posts in the 3 threads that appear to be using the same bumping service so I have got quite the data set to work with here, and I can assure you that accounts in these threads are requiring more than one report of plagiarism to get banned based on them continuing to post even after the first report was marked good. For example, I submitted 2 plagiarism reports each for the users Forward (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=29870) and 30stomachs (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=217939) - both "newbies" dating from 2011 and 2014, respectively - at around 5:00AM my time on Nov. 3rd and the reports were marked good by the following morning (likely the mod is in a very different time zone from me). Those users were still posting, however, so I reported 2 more instances of plagiarism for both of them and the next morning those reports were also marked good. Both accounts were still posting, though, so I found yet another example of plagiarism - a total of 5!? - and finally they were banned (30stomachs was nuked, actually). This was one of the more extreme examples, but *all* of the accounts I have reported for plagiarism in these 3 threads (Neluns, Neogame.io and SafeInsure) have required more than 1 example of plagiarism before they were banned, whereas when I report plagiarism in, say, the HoweyCoins thread that user is generally banned as soon as the report is marked good.

The way I see it, providing just one example of plagiarism with a link to the/a* original post should be sufficient to get the user banned, and that does appear to be the case everywhere EXCEPT these threads that have been using a thread bumping service for far longer than the ~1.5 months I've been hounding them. Unfortunately, my reporting dozens of their bumping bots appears to have taught them to program them to come up with unique gibberish rather than plagiarize. Consequently, I've also reported the OP's for "incentivizing posting" and recommend they be banned and their threads locked, but those reports have remained unhandled for a few days to weeks now.



* -  "the/a" because there are often many instances of the same post being used and I just pick a link to one that is dated earlier than the current post to provide with my report.

EDIT - corrections made

Did both these noobs have more than 28 activity (Forward still does)? AFAIK regular mods can nuke only below 28, others have to be delegated to globals... hence the delay perhaps.

I haven't been handling any reports in the last month, but usually if the plagiarism is clear, and they are newbies I'll deal with them, and nuke them. I'm slowly getting back into things, because things are a little hectic when you come back from a long trip, but I should be dealing with much more reports soon.

I can't really speak for other moderators, but when I see obvious plagiarism then I'll deal with it accordingly. If they aren't newbies, then sometimes they will take a while, because they need to either be reported to a global moderator or left for a global moderator. Sometimes a moderator might delete the reply, and then a global moderator doesn't see the report, because of that reason.

I'm not entirely sure, and I'm just speculating really. It depends on the moderator dealing with it. Maybe, they are using their own discretion, and think that a one time offense doesn't warrant a ban, and they might message that user. I don't know honestly.

Yeah, this could be another reason. I can assure you that plagiarism is dealt with harshly, and there's many many reports from moderators going to the global moderators every day.

Nope, just Forward; 30stomachs had <28 activity but both of them were banned at approximately the same time which strongly implies the same criteria were being used to evaluate them for banning, despite the difference in activity levels. I realize the mods have a difficult job, but they make it more difficult by requiring 5 examples of plagiarism over the course of 3 days before banning an account that was clearly stolen (a newbie that registered before the 2015 hack and which has only just recently started posting...).

Furthermore, after successfully getting dozens of accounts banned for plagiarizing each other over the course of a month in the aforementioned threads, the bumping service appears to have learned to not plagiarize anymore so now there's no wrongdoing to report. The bots have instead shifted to spewing out nonsensical conversations that repeatedly tread the same topics over and over again but which avoid plagiarizing or text-spinning. For example, here's a recent exchange from the Neluns thread:





Etc. and so on...

Unfortunately, the current set of rules don't really prohibit bots having a fake conversation with each other, hence I switched tactics and tried reporting the OP for incentivizing posting and requesting they be banned and the threads locked (or trashed, but preferably locked so the evidence of their misdeeds would persist). Sadly, those reports have been shunted off into what appears to be permanent "unhandled" status, which is the passive-aggressive version of marking them "bad"...  :D

why is the "your report history" link only available over 300 good reports? :-\
i use "report do moderator" button regularly. currently i haven't reached the 300 good yet and therefore i don't see "your report history" yet.

but why is there this restriction at all?
currently i have a very high number of "unhandled" messages although our responsible moderator doesn't see any outstanding reports from me. i'm looking forward to the overview because there should be visible what is still "unhandled".

Only theymos can answer you. Imo this will incite people to report to see their report history and will limit whiners whining about why each report wasn't handled.

Moderators are responsible enough but the way you describe the problem in your report has a huge impact in addition to the user you are reporting.
For example : if you write in your report : "This user is doing copy paste from an old post, proof bitcointalk.org/xxxxxx" then it will likely be handled in few hours.
Now if you write the same thing without the link then it will be unhandled for a long period until your accusation is proved.
Now from my experience, if you report correctly a newbie then it will be handled faster than a report against an older member since the consequences aren't the same for both.

Probably to prevent users from complaining when their report is handled not the way they wanted it to be. If anyone user had access then they would scrutinize the moderators, and keep complaining in Meta. At least that's my prediction, and I imagine theymos implemented for something along the lines of this.

the default "how do I report correctly" which you can find here in the forum will of course be considered as good as possible.
many thanks for your answers. sounds logical and comprehensible for me.
will hopefully have reached the 300 good soon and then it is obsolete anyway (for me)  :)

I don't thin this feature exists but it would be nice to have the opportunity to delete a report - Obviously before it's been handled.

Have to just laugh at myself, I got caught up reporting in a thread and forgot that I started off somewhere in the middle of a batch and made a duplicate report. It just annoys me I can't go in and remove the most recent one as I can see it staring at me waiting to be turned Bad. I know it doesn't really matter, it just adds to the workload a little, and that's not my intent.

Having also just received my 1st Bad since having access to my log, I can say I'd like to know where I went wrong, not to bitch and moan about it. I just don't want to create bad reports and it would be nice to learn from it. Judging the way the reports were handled that night (sporadically in my list) I don't think it was someone who generally handles those reports.

Thats why im starting report from the last post , the next thing if you start reporting in the middle or from the first post is when Moderator start deleting the post ,the posts slip automatically !
This was the reason for a few of my Bad reports and i started reporting from the last post .
Sometimes i have to look in the report history where i was to be sure dont report the same post lol  :D :D :D ;) .

What if the most of the user's messages are low value posts?

For example, Sr. Member jezus (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1002610) has a ton of pointless comments https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1002610;sa=showPosts

Not sure where the issue lies.

I would say unfortunately you still need to report each post independently. You also should still look at each thread and ensure that it is a low value low quality reply for that thread.

I can't say I've ever targeted users post history. I tend to find a thread and go through that. I'm sure in doing so I've reported the same user multiple times as spambies tend to be creatures of habit


Yeah I keep mine open as I go along, that's how I caught my faux pas lol.
The spam tends to bleed together and blur the lines between posts.

You can report a few of their posts, and include a message in the report field that they have multiple bad posts. If it isn't obvious then you could just report all of the messages you consider low value posts. However, if you are asking what will happen to user with low value posts being that of the majority of their posts then that depends on the moderator dealing with the user. If they deem it bad then they may request a global moderator/admin to ban the user. Really depends case by case.

I have seen a lot of users having that type of issue and it's mostly because on the topic they are posting it too. Maybe it has been answered already or they just keep repeating it over and over again. I'm not saying it's bad but once you post on the same topic and repeat your opinion again, I think it can be thought of something bad in my opinion. Not knowing that you have posted in it already and just because you want to add more posts to your account or something.

I guess it cannot be totally avoided but seeing stuff consistenly like that should be reported, especially if it's a low valued post.

In those instances just report one of their posts, and make a reference to the others in the comment field. Whoever is handling the report can them make a decision based on what is presented. Sometimes when users leave a comment "already said multiple times in thread" or "repeated reply" or something like that the moderator dealing with it would have to look through the whole thread. Make our job easier by linking to it yourself!

I see. I appreciate your reply too.. I think it all boils down to the moderators which has the power to judge someones post and see if they needed to delete that reply or not, something like that. It cannot be considered as a plagiarism and it’s harder to catch or see. I guess people should just sometimes be aware or suspicious always in reading posts, a tickle in your instinct. Like spider sense is tingling. Lol.

I encourage merit sources or anyone rewarding merit, really to make sure that they check whether the post is plagiarism or not. I see a lot of replies that are merited, and they have just been copied, and pasted. Luckily this isn't sustainable for the user, and they usually get found out sooner rather than later. But, a few of them seem to be doing it to get to jr member, and then just spam.

Seems no one bumping this thread. I think it should be sticked instead bumping. This is really a motivational post and especially for me. I believe few others will be motivate by reading this thread. We can cure lot of spam by using report to moderators button. To be honest lot of user don't know how to report, so this thread might help them.

@Welsh can you please move this thread on B&H board for few days and keep it up ? Perhaps new members will motivate to report spammers.

I'd like to edit it a little further, and add a little more detail without it becoming too long. However, I'm not sure if this has had the impact that I wanted it too. I was hoping by giving users an idea what to report, and what to include it would reduce the attitude of "I might get it wrong and ruin my report percentage" as well as of course being a useful reference for in general.

Honestly, this thread has been pretty low on my priorities, and I haven't finished it even though I wrote this a year ago. Therefore, taking these points into consideration I'm not sure how much an impact it would have if it were stickied.





They might do, but honestly I believe its better suited here, and I'll only forget about moving it back to here, and it'll be lost in beginners, and help. I'm hoping this thread gets some visitors from users searching "report" or something like that via the search tool on Meta, as I've not been consistent in bumping this thread.

Would be nice to get some more Users that will click the " Report to Moderator button " when they just looking around on the Forum .
But the last weeks there are a few Users that started reporting .

The most problem i guess is , to get them continue reporting and keep it !

Curious on the opinions of others. I've been reporting a little in auctions whenever I browse the section, generally the reports are fine but I received a "bad" and figured I'd bring it here to discuss and give the thread a bump.


I believe the Tag would have been "This as a sales thread not an auction and asked it to be moved to the Marketplace -> Goods - > Digital goods - > Invites and accounts"
Anyone have any ideas as to what was wrong with the report? I've had others in the past moved and marked "good" so I'm not sure if it is just a one off or if this now counts as an auction.

I guess it's because it says "open for serious bids", which kinda sorta makes it an auction.

I guess it depends on the moderator dealing with it, but personally I believe that doesn't belong in the auctions section, and would have marked that good, and likely would have report it myself. As suchmoon suggests it may be because of the "bids" although I read that as open to offers more than bids. I think the auction section should be a place for threads which have a structured auction system such as bids, end time, and all that jazz.

It's barely an auction, but it's still technically an auction, as no (global) mod or admin has decided to designate and enforce any section-specific rules:

"Price: 0.015 BTC
Open for serious bids"

If the OP wanted to sell the account for 0.015 BTC, he wouldn't have added the part about 'serious bids'. Since he did, 0.015 BTC should be treated as a starting price of the auction.

tl;dr the report has been handled correctly.

See I can understand that and am only really looking to clarify. Does using the word "bids" alone give it enough of the characteristics one would expect from even the most basic auction?

There is no end date. Bids is essentially saying OBO ( or best offer). He states he us "selling" not auctioning. The thread is locked forcing off site communication; how can people know other bids?

I honestly read it as ".015 buy it now price, but telegram me and I'll consider offers." I would argue the locking of the topic makes it not open to bids, despite the wording.

Thanks for the insight and opinions on this. I guess it'll be a coin flip from now on reporting there as I've had some similar reports handled as I thought they would be.

It's probably best to take the advice of those that handle reports there, and is a good example of why I don't handle reports in the auction section. In my opinion though, many users here are posting in the auction section, and digital goods or whatever just to gain more exposure. (Just like that user is doing here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5145791.msg51156573#msg51156573)  I think we shouldn't quite get hung up on the technicality of using "bids", as opposed to "offers". It would be nice to have a more defined set of guidelines for this niche issue, but I guess it isn't justified.

The way the thread is worded it does sound like this is my price "x", but I'm willing to listen to best offers which to me is more suited to invites and accounts, and doesn't sound quite like an auction to me. Obviously, due to the way the report has been handled, and the difference in opinions here this is a "at mods discretion", and could vary depending on who's handling it.

That's why I said it's barely an auction. We could do with some basic rules in that section to rule out ambiguities. 

Was that topic locked from the start, or was it locked later on?

I didn't handle that report, just explained why it was handled the way it was.

I definitely agree that having even a base set of guidelines for a lot of areas would be useful. The topic itself was locked from the start, usually what grabs my attention for some of these.

I appreciate the insight and discussion on this. I actually didn't assume you had handled the report. Just felt it was a good explanation to build on.


That is good advice, and will definitely keep it in mind.

Any updates regarding this issue ? I just happened to hit enter twice ! ended up reporting the same post 3 times in a row, because I am way too old to learn from the first mistake, the reason I wanted a new line was to make the mod's "life easier" because I didn't want to put 2 links and some explanation in the same line so that whoever is reviewing the report can easily understand the report, and the reward I get for being nice is 2 bad reports  ;D.

Not that big of a deal since my reporting accuracy is not that great anyway, but this thing is annoying to say the least.

Thanks for the reminder I did forget about adding this to the thread. Considering there's now an infographic of this I think its about time I fix some of the issues that are present. I have been updating it from time to time, but its not been anywhere near the top of my priority list.

Added a small section about it under general advice. If anyone can link me the scripts that are available that expand the comment field that would be very much appreciated. I know they exist, but can't search them up at the moment.

There's a small Violentmonkey/Tampermonkey/Greasemonkey script created by Minifrij which creates textarea, adjust the rows and columns to your liking:

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/35345-replace-input-with-textarea-bitcointalk-report/code

It is not a new feature, but has not yet presented in the guide, so I think @Welsh should consider to add more details for the Patrol page section.
With steps to customize Patrol page.

That would be a nice little addition. I'll get around to it at some point. Hopefully, this weekend I'll have some time to add to the guide. Although, this thread has definitely been the lower priority out of all my projects. I'll probably include ways of filtering sections to help with moderating too.

details is the most important in reporting enumerating from start to finish

@Welsh, a quick(ish) question here:

It seems logical that a specific token that announces in the token (or Altcoin) section, should work on a single thread to include relevant information on updates and so forth. Nevertheless, I have not been able to identify a rule that specifically stated this.

The case is that, on the Spanish Local Board, there is a specific token that has multiple threads running (some already reported for duplicate or other reasons):
tokens (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=254.0):
AXEL lanzó oficialmente el intercambio IDAX, abriendo los mercados comerciales A (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5197457.0)
Cómo logran los creadores de contenido veces más ingresos a través de AXEL (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5192994.0)
 El Token AXEL ahora está disponible en ProBit (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5187680.0)
 AXEL Anuncia Asociación Estratégica con Trittium  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5187414.0)
AXEL.Network (AXEL) Competencia Comercial, ¡ven a lograr tus 30,000 tokens! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5187112.0)
AXEL.Network (AXEL) Competencia Comercial, ¡ven a lograr tus 30,000 tokens! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5187104.0)
 ¡Gana los 30,000 tokens! AXEL Anuncia Listing Oficial de Tokens en ProBit (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5186855.0)
ANUNCIO: 16 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2019 IEO Tokens (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5185583.0)
(there are probably more that are not on the first page I've gone through).

Q1) Which would be the proper reasoning to report the above (other than depicting multiple threads for the token, being leniant to spam), with reference to a valid rule?

Q2) If they were to be deleted, which one should survive (i.e. not be reported)? -> probably the oldest.

The profile also posts in our main section, but I don’t consider those specifically spam, since the content is general purpose, and the only reference to it’s own token is through a link to the Telegram channel in each of these post (within the post).

Sorry, for the delayed reply.

It all depends on the content really. Although, most of the threads linked could be reported for duplicate content, and low quality content. If they're posting updates independently from their announcement thread then this probably falls under duplicate content/spam. If they're saying a few words, and then link to their service its usually low quality. Project updates are probably more suited to the announcement thread, and don't warrant their own thread. There should really only be one thread per project in the tokens/altcoin announcement threads. I've removed the topics linked because they fall under duplicate content, and low quality content.

I normally leave the oldest, unless the old thread has no activity, and another one does.

Thanks for the clarification and course of action on the spam.

Perhaps what I miss is the above to be verbalized explicitly in the rules to some extent. Although it seems reasonably logical, the profile case at hand tends to create a new post on Tokens every time he wants to communicate an update, which, being the Spanish childboards not very active per se, gives them more visibility for a longer period of time than an update to the single Ann thread.

Cheers for looking over the Spanish Local board whilst our moderator is awol for the time being. It’s pretty surprising the language capabilities of many on this forum.
 

Yeah, its not directly in the rules that there should only be one project announcement etc. Although, my interpretation is that it falls under duplicate content, and some of them were definitely low quality. At the moment it seems franckuestein isn't active within the last month or two, and until then I'll be handling them like the way I've stated above. There are other existing moderators which understand Spanish, and probably handle a fair few reports also. So any Spanish which I can't understand will be left to them. I've been handling a fair few from the Spanish section recently, but once your local moderator is back I would potentially ask them what their interpretation would be as it is for the local section.

So, feel free to report these types of threads, and they'll likely be handled the same as the above. I'll give the user a message as it seems the perfect opportunity to try out my Spanish in private ;)

Today i got fucked by myself LOL.

There was 2 Threads in the Altcoins section exactly the same written in German !

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5201974.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5201978.0

So i toked one and have written in there to move it to the german section.


And i reported the other one as an double thread , after he moved the one i have written he edited the other one to English (before it was German too) !

Thats what fucked me up and the report was marked as bad lol , because there was no double thread anymore and in english now !

Cheeers

Yeah, I marked that bad. I was wondering what you were referring too as you're normally pretty accurate. Things like this can happen though, and that's why I always suggest linking to the thread if possible. I see this mistake a few times when users simply state "wrong section", and it gets moved, but the previous moderator didn't mark it as handled or the user themselves moved it. Then it usually gets marked bad as we are none the wiser. Before I was made a moderator I used to report them with "Doesn't belong in x" like in the original topic.

That's just unfortunate that it got marked bad though. Don't let that stop you in similar cases in the future.

Dont worry all good .

The problem i got with myself was i was thinking about 5 min how to do it !

First i thought to report it and it gets moved from a mod but i choosed the the second thought i got and has written in one thread there to move it.
Never was thinking that this will happens straight after i have written there and in the mean time i reported the other one.
And exactly in this time he changed it to english  :D

So i shooted me self in the feet.   :D

If anyone wants to translate this, and put it in their local section that is fine by me. I know that a few users have contacted via personal messages in the past, and I planned on finding these while I reduced my personal messages by deleting non important ones, but it got tedious real quick so my inbox & outbox is just going to remain like it is. Therefore, if you have translated this in the past send me another message, and I'll list all the translations in the OP as long as they're of good quality, and I'll likely message other local users to verify that for me.

I might work on a Spanish translation if that hasn't already been done. I've totally forgotten those of you who approached me.

Ah, but it has … on a warm summer 2018 day, a (probably) Full Member translated it on the Spanish local board … now if you wish to go ahead with a Spanish translation, I’m pretty sure that the OP (translator) of  [Guía] Cómo reportar de manera efectiva (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4945755.msg44575477#msg44575477) would gladly demote his translation in favour of the original OP (somehow) …

Note: the translation seems not to have been reviewed since it was made. If you think it requires to be revised, I’m sure the translator can try to budge some time in for it.

Note2:diolch ... off-topic: You seem to be building-up to the moment when you will emerge in the Spanish local forum. 2020 is as good as any ...

I think I vaguely recall this full member asking me too. What can I say 2018 was a long time ago :D Its a better Spanish translation that I could have provided, and I would have likely contacted you, and other users of the Spanish section to review it anyway. Saves me some work!


Edit: I definitely recall it  now (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4519248.msg44551124#msg44551124)


Anyone want it in Welsh....no? :P

This guide should be pinned in B&H if you ask me, but until that happens I'm bumping it to the top.
Some newbies are interested to report now during the quarantine, so this guide need more exposure.

Yes i agree on that and it also would be helpful for other Users too,
Maybe its possible it will animate some Users to hit the report to moderator button.

Guess a few new Users just dont know or maybe afraid to click it .

I've been wanting to rewrite the guide ever since I became a moderator with some more information that I've learned from experience. This was written when I wasn't a moderator, and only had one side of the view point. Unfortunately, this year has been kicking my butt, and haven't had as much time as expected. You'll see my activity be somewhat sporadic over the last few months due to various worldwide events as well as personal.

I'm hoping by the end of the year (I know) to have rewritten this guide, and figure out how to make it very useful, but still condensed enough that users don't just ignore it. I'm not happy with the content currently, but I know that I have a tendency to not be concise enough. So that's going to be a challenge for myself. Though, I think the final product will be more worthy to sticky than its current version. Although, I'm not sure how beneficial it would be to most users on Bitcointalk so not sure it even justifies a sticky. 

Nice thread @Welsh!
This thread is really need by the forum right now because there are many unnecessary or so called shitpost. So for others to help the community, we should start reporting every spamming activity that we see. However, in order not to abuse the system we should have guidelines in reporting. And this is really helpful to have standards in reporting.

I want to translate this in Filipino local board, may I?

Yeah, I haven't kept track of translations, so I'm unsure if there's already a Filipino translation of this thread, but if there isn't then I have no problem with anyone translating the thread. If you do translate the thread, just send me a link, and I might put together a list of all translations when I come to update the original post, and make sure I message the translation creators for any future updates I make. I've said a few times, but I've got a revision of the thread on the back burner at the moment.

I've had quite a few users since I created this thread either thanking or saying how useful it is, so the more users that are aware of it the better I think,

Actually, this one is already translated in our Local Section.

(Gabay)Para sa Epektibong pag rereport (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4857368.msg43789565#msg43789565)

I’m gonna give this a little bump , as I’ve just come across it !
I’ve been reporting quite a few post’s recently and this guide is VERY useful - I now know the best format to report posts and to make life easier for the mods ! Apologies if my reporting hasn’t been descriptive enough .

I'll be looking to add a section to this to explain why ignored reports happen, and give specific examples as to why they happen. I think ignored reports brings up controversies, and can be quite difficult to understand, but sometimes leaving a report ignored, is the best way of handling it. I'm sure some users might find that helpful. Any other ideas to flesh out this guide that you'd like to see?

I've also changed the title to "Unofficial Guide", because I don't want this to appear as the officially accepted way of reporting. As all staff might not agree with my advice. This is very much my take on reporting effectively.

No worries, glad you're finding use of it. Its not too big of a deal to have no description in some cases, but for more complex cases it is definitely appreciated. It is definitely good practice to include as much information as possible, since what might be immediately obvious to you, might not be to the moderator reviewing the report.