Bitcoin Forum

The topic creator is banned.
Topic in question: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5338426.0

The final contents of the topic (read quoted part since that was the final agreement) :  https://paste.ee/p/dEwKE

Obviously it does not fit in games and rounds, but it fits in either in service section or in bounty (altcoin) section. How does it differ from a Twitter bounty, the regular ones we see in both sections?

I was suggesting mods to move the topic to service section after agreeing a response from LoyceV here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5331196.msg57042158#msg57042158

There must be a misunderstanding. There are no low effort tasks for altcoins or this kind. The campaign has been designed to pay in BTC but anything equal and under 0.0002 BTC seemed dust payment to me and I was suggesting OP to pay them in LTC to avoid dust issue. The payments of 0.0007 to 0.005 BTC should have no problems at all with BTC, so agreement was to pay anything between 0.0007 to 0.005 BTC will be in BTC. Quote this: 0.005 BTC to pay for a tweet was around $200 at the time the topic was created.

Now my problem here is that I am providing escrow services (0.025 BTC initially to secure the participants get paid) and managing the campaign. Here is the spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12ahQ4o6Az5GjZs4rxcAjpmGfv972tZtJ7RGg5InTars/edit?usp=sharing) which is incomplete and a lot of them has done using https://ninjastic.space/topic/5338426 (https://ninjastic.space/topic/5338426) earlier.

For sure, I know there are users who updated their post after reserving their spot but since ninjastic.space does not record any update after more than 5 minutes (I assume) I have marked a lot of entries with yellow colour. There are so far total 0.00280000 BTC will be paid in BTC and 0.00305000 BTC will be paid in equivalent LTC (please check BTC and LTC tab).

It was supposed to be in service or altcoin (bounty) and those who Tweeted then update their post later should get paid.

I would like mod to review the action they have taken and consider restoring the topic and possibly move it to service or altcoin (bounty) section. The OP should also deserve to unban if this is a misunderstanding.

Or please help me to understand how the campaign was different from the regular social bounties we see in service and altcoin (bounty) section.

Cheers.

It's a bit complicated but if I have to guess, I think it might be due to the following things combined ^{[I could be wrong]}:

• LTC dust payment for that section
• Tweet in question
• Not being a weekly/monthly campaign

I believe the one that LoyceV created, might be a temporary solution to that problem: highlight deleted and edited posts (forum wide) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5256854.0)
^{- Test [view it after a few seconds/minutes]: https://loyce.club/archive/details/topic_5338426.html}

If this ban is according to the rules, I disagree with the rules! This is someone willing to spend $1000 or more of his own money to troll a billionaire troll on Twitter. If that kind of community initiative isn't allowed, I believe the rules should be changed.

I never really understood why the bounty-spam-board is allowed to exist.

That doesn't really work if the topic is deleted: I can only show unedited backups.

I would say poor enforcement of rules. I don't know if it was like this before or lately the mods are not spending much time in details before deleting a topic/post or even banning a user. In several occasions I have seen most of the time newbies and low rank members are victim of the poor moderation. The last one I remember happened with a newbie who was genuinely asking question on mining board, but his post/s was/were deleted. Ultimately, by giving the excuse of keeping the forum clean, we are demoralizing genuine crypto lovers, or what message you think are being sent to them?

It's very strange that our understanding of rules and mods understanding of rules has conflict despite some of us are even way older and active in the community than them. The moderation standard should be improved in my opinion. With the current setup/quality we are not helping the community much. I hope by saying this I am not making anyone angry against me. I always say that this community is my priority and I ensure it all the time.

Anyway, I have not talked to onemd yet. I am thinking to give him a proposal if he still wants to run this camping.

I will have two bounty threads. One in Service section and another one in altcoin (bounty) section for his campaign. The service section is for only BTC payment which is 0.0007 to 0.005 BTC and the altcoin (bounty) section will have the lower payment spreads, 0.000005 to 0.0002 BTC which will be paid in LTC. Rest of the things will be same, same terms and stuffs, and even I will be using same spreadsheet for two separate topics.

This does look annoying, but it seems the mods want this approach. At lest it was clear from the issue I had last time (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5331196.0) with a campaign paying 20% in BTC and 80% in native token.

PS: I really hope that they unban onemd. He does not deserve it.

Since original post is deleted I can only the content of the from paste.ee link. So the tweet in question was ..


If the user is banned because of this tweet related bounty I strongly believe there must be some misunderstanding... even the tweet itself is very polite and to the point. It's not bullying or targeted defaming. It's a simple fact and related to bitcoin marketing. Not much different from any other bounty requesting to promote a service or a twitter account of exchange etc.

I guess the user in question deserves proper explantion for his ban... after all this will help the other too, if there is any hidden rule which we are missing.

---

Regarding the other rule for BTC/LTC payment in Game & Rounds clearly make sense and this should not be in altcoin section. Dust payment is not an issue of bitcoin, bounty owner should know this by default and setting the appropriate payment amount considering the dust is part of bitcoin giveaways.

This is my concern too.

I think only theymos can help you here. Did you send him a PM after your previous topic?

I think the decision to ban onemd and delete the topic was totally unfair. If "Incentivising posting within specific threads via low effort tasks for altcoins" was the reason they used, then why are other altcoin bounties where people post bounty reports not deleted, and topic starters banned too?

The topic in question is similar to any other bounty.

What sub was it in? Maybe it was a mistake as it doesn't seem to be against the rules, unless someone counted it as a paid spam attack or something.

No I did not, I was not intending too as I moved on from that one. Besides, do you think theymos actually give response to the PMs. Once in a 100 times maybe he does which is not very good gesture (sorry no disrespect buddy, maybe you have priorities).

If  you check the unedited archives (https://ninjastic.space/topic/5338426) it does not seem to have any spam attack or such things. It was in the Games and rounds sub, but it should be better in either Service or Altcoin (Bounty) board.

PS: If you have the authority then please review the ban against the user too. And let us know.

Cheers buddy.

Well it could be seen as paying people to spam Elon. I can remove the ban but it's best to find out who banned him first.

This gets real interesting. Perhaps Elon deployed some countermeasures?  ;D

I issued the ban. Quote from the thread:


Quote from the stickied thread I've linked in the ban message (additional emphasis added by me):


The user in question posting the thread in the wrong board is on them and the only thing this changes is that the participants didn't get bannned (as per how theymos handled a similar case in the past). The effect of this giveaway is the same as many others that had their threads trashed and their accounts temp banned: a low barrier of entry and an incentive to post for altcoins. The ban issued was of the same duration as similar offenses in the past. While I personally wouldn't be against lowering the duration to 14 days, I didn't feel like it was my call to decide on exceptions based on favoritism or subjective assessments of what's "cool". That's something you're going to have to petition theymos for.

The thread was brought to my attention via a report. So if you notice any similar giveaways (in Bounties (Altcoins) or other boards), feel free to report them.

---

From what I've heard, the mining boards have much stricter moderation compared to most other sections. If you think they're going overboard, I'd suggest either starting a Meta thread about it or PMing theymos and / or Cyrus.

I don't often PM theymos, and when I do I don't always get a response. But I'm pretty sure he'll at least read your PM, especially if he recognizes your username. If you get ignored, you kinda have an answer too.
However, I've seen theymos put in a lot of effort in some cases where a user was banned or a posted deleted by mistake.

The guy loves attention :D
Even if it would be a problem, wouldn't it be Twitter's problem to deal with? Just like the 5,080,501 other posts (https://ninjastic.space/search?content=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com) dedicated to spamming Twitter?

I wonder why wasn't it moved to the right board? Either Service or Bounty (altcoin). Wouldn't that be a better solution than banning and removing a topic from a new member who is genuinely interested to do something for Bitcoin? The payment had two forms: LTC and BTC. Why only considered LTC (negative) side but not BTC (positive) side?

Let me mark bold from the same quote which makes it right if you would move that to Bounty (altcoin) considering you have missed that he is paying $200 worth of BTC in BTC for a tweet.


While I can not recall if there were same case but in his case he is not paying only with altcoin. In fact, the main goal was to pay bitcoin but since the lower amounts will consider dust bitcoin, the plan was changed (Read here the post I made (https://paste.ee/p/WdHy1) just after the main thread with concerns about dust payment and suggesting escrow). For 0.000005 to 0.0002 BTC changed plan was to pay using LTC and 0.0007 to 0.005 BTC will be paid using BTC, obviously. Besides, he even escrowed 0.025BTC to ensure that community knows they will get paid. I would love to see an example where user is paying in BTC and escrowed the BTC but got banned and their topics were removed from G&R boards since you are claiming this is same case as many others' giveaway.

What if change the word "giveaway" and create the same but use the word "twitter bounty"? Would that consider fine? I guess yes coz that become just another twitter bounty we regularly see in service board and altcoin (bounty) board. Just one word that makes all the difference.

If there were no more report against it then it was me who was suggesting to move it to service section as my take was since it's paying in BTC, it should be in service section. The report was not to remove the topic at all.

Honesty speaking I did not look in details. It was just a random read, and it looked like the user had genuine interest and was asking genuine question in the mining board.

I understand he is a busy bee and perhaps has his priorities so don't mind him much. It's obvious that he handles gigantic number of PMs and other form of inquiries every day.

The thread in question appears to have been originally posted in games and rounds. IMO, it would be best to post a sticky in this sub clarifying that altcoin giveaways are not allowed anywhere in the forum. Over the years, various altcoin giveaways have been posted in the games and rounds sub, and it probably would not be unreasonable for forum members to be unaware of this rule.

For those that disagree with the altcoin giveaway rule, one compromise may be that the forum could charge for the ability to host an on-forum altcoin giveaway. Giveaway threads are resource-intensive because they cause many page-views and many posts that do not substantially contribute to the bitcoin ecosystem. I am not necessarily in favor of altcoin giveaways being allowed, however if someone was covering the forum's cost of hosting said giveaways, I would have no issue with them.

It was moved to the appropriate board - the Trashcan. Had this giveaway been started in Bounties (Altcoins), the participants who applied for the LTC part of the giveaway would've been suspended as well (albeit for a much shorter period of time). What I was trying to highlight with the "wrong board" comment was that the onus of seeking out the (seemingly) appropriate board is on him and not doing so doesn't exempt him from the rules of a board where similar content (bounty campaigns that pay out altcoins) is located in. By not doing so, he violated 3 rules:


Had he selected the (seemingly) correct board to start his thread in, he probably would've read through the stickies and refrained from giving away altcoins.

---

The amount he's paying is irrelevant - it's what he's paying for (one-off low effort tasks that involve posting in the thread in exchange for altcoins). That's already prohibited and would've had your Bounties (Altcoins) thread trashed with you and your bounty's participants being temp banned.

Were we to make an exception for giveaways that payout "large" (which, again, is really subjective) amounts of BTC in addition to altcoins, you could pretend to give away huge quantities of BTC while also slotting in a promotion for whatever altcoin you see fit. You pay out the altcoins immediately and promise to pay out the BTC at the end of the campaign. You run the campaign for as long as you want and then disappear once you no longer need promotion for your selected altcoin. At which point you've not only dodged the spirit of the rule (technically, only breaking the rule once you disappear because you didn't actually give away BTC) but also scammed a bunch of people. Do note that I'm not implying this is the case, I'm merely highlighting a hypothetical situation.

Now, you could argue that there should be an exception for established altcoins as there's very little incentive to run such giveaways (as opposed to a new token running an ICO / IEO / I-whatever-O), but in the eyes of the forum (or I guess theymos specifically) there isn't. When it comes to giveaways - there's BTC and then there's altcoins (no matter how big or small). A different issue pops up with making exceptions if the BTC is escrowed - who do you consider as trustworthy escrows in the eyes of the rules / moderation. At that point, albeit not directly, we have to start moderating escrow scams (which doesn't seem like something theymos would want, considering that scammer tags have been deprecated for a rather long time) with the potential side effect of carving out a forum-approved escrow cartel that can make your bitcoin-part-altcoin be able to exist on the forum (as opposed to it just being trashed and you temp-banned).

---

Same rules would apply. As I've mentioned, I trashed numerous bounties paying altcoins in exchange for doing low effort tasks + posting in the thread (be it as a direct requirement or as proof of authentication). This restriction doesn't apply to all social media bounty tasks though and that's mentioned in the thread linked in the ban message:

---

Games and Rounds is under the direct jurisdiction of Cyrus and hilariousandco, which is why I'd rather avoid stickying anything there myself (IIRC I've only ever stickied threads in the altcoin sections; even the unnoficial rules thread was stickied by a different mod). So while I (as a global mod) technically could, I feel like that'd be pretty rude. It is a pretty good idea though - I'll have to get in contact with Cyrus and hilariousandco to see what they think.

Very interesting topic and I wonder what saved this thread from being deleted? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5337562.0

(it's kind of a giveaway to me, users were asked to find a song/tune posted and whoever finds it, gets 20 dogecoins and a merit)

I love the openness from the moderators to explain why they delete a post and thread, doesn't happen everywhere, really appreciate it.

I guess nobody reported it. I saw the thread, but since it's an established altcoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5235685.0), I decided not to report it anymore. Banning OP and participants for this seems excessive to me.

Even though I disagree, I commend mprep for being very consequent in applying the rules. I bet he'd ban theymos too if he would have opened the thread.

You have every right to disagree but actually they just DON'T want any kind of altcoins giveaway in that section even if the intention is to pay BTC but because of the transaction fees, they have to pay altcoins.

My opinion doesn't matter but I think it would have been better handled had the OP been given a warning and asked to either remove the altcoins from the giveaway or just separate it into 2 different sections. One for BTC and the other in altcoin bounties for ALTS.

I didn't report it either because I thought it was a sweet attempt and was paid too. But when I see this happened, I had to bring it :)

Honestly speaking, your understanding and interpretation of rules are going over my head (maybe my level of intellectuality is way lower than you). Maybe we can draw a line in disagreement because clearly we are looking this case from completely two different angles. Your focus in on the ALT coin part and my focus (and perhaps others too) is on the Bitcoin part. You are more into finding a little fault (not sure indeed it was there) and ban hammer a user by not caring about anything and without even looking at details and I (perhaps other too) are more into being open and give enough thought before taking any negative action.

But eventually your one will stand because you are playing an official rule. Just make sure that you don't make this space hard for genuine crypto lovers, bitcoin enthusiasts. Bitcoin still has a long way to go, and we need to ensure that we are helping to make this community bigger.

---

The piece of rule we have (let's not highlight any part of it, just be it the way it is)

The topic in question: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5338426.0
Since deleted, the final contents of the topic (read quoted part since that was the final agreement) :  https://paste.ee/p/dEwKE

The reaction/opinion from the members who have given in this thread -

---

Let's forget what others are thinking or interpreting the rule/situation let's just point what mprep and hilariousandco (both global moderator after all) considering unofficial rule number 23.

Eventually this is where we stand

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/16/blob639a306412f5c416.jpeg

Fully agree with Royse777 here. I do agree that even if the thread was moved to BIN, the user should never have been banned considering he already had an escrow hired and was serious about his doing. I know the rule doesn't allow you to give LTC or any coin for that matter, but as a human not as a robot, you need to understand why he is giving away LTC and that was solely to avoid BTC transaction fees being 10x than the BTC transacted.

If you start banning users like that, I am afraid people will stop doing giveaways and a good section of our forum will become haunted.

It simply wasn't reported. It's now been trashed and the creator temp banned.

---

As per how other altcoin-part-bitcoin giveaways in Games and Rounds have been handled by theymos in the past, only the OP gets banned. Participants do get banned if the thread was originally posted in the altcoin sections (due to the warnings plastered all over there's no good excuse as to why the participant "didn't know").

---

There's plenty of exceptions to be made in other rules where enforcing it to the letter would violate the spirit of the rule (and I've marked numerous reports as bad that have tried to use the letter of the rules to attack users they didn't like). However, from both what's written and from what I've observed (in how theymos has dealt with altcoin giveaways both in and outside the altcoin sections), there are no exceptions to this rule (for the organizers). If you incentivize posting in a thread for altcoins in a way that is more reminiscent of a giveaway rather than a bounty that requires substantial effort to complete, you will be banned and your thread - trashed. This isn't the first altcoin-part-bitcoin giveaway posted in Games and Rounds I've issued a ban for and AFAIK not a single creator of such a giveaway had their ban removed by theymos.

Now, theymos is free to change his mind at any point and decide that cases like these don't deserve as harsh of a punishment as similar offenses but he has given me no reason or indication to think so. If he does change his mind and / or informs me that these exact situations are an exception to the rule, I'll gladly adjust my moderation.

personally the problem is very simple btc can not be used for small payments .

so does the forum finally allow some alts to pay.

since it already does .  i am sure theymos takes alts for forum payments so mods  need to adjust and adapt



ie allow ltc .

edit:
 I cant find the post that says forum takes alt coins so if it was removed
and forum does not take any coin I stand corrected

Just cause the forum accepts altcoins for services (AFAIK it's only GRIN for Copper Membership and paying the evil-fee; not aware of any other case where altcoins are accepted by the forum) doesn't mean altcoin giveaways are allowed. That's not how forum policy works. You could try to make that argument to theymos but we, as mods, can't just go up and say "well if you accept altcoins, everyone should be able to incentivize posting for altcoins".

Having read all the comments carefully, I have to admit that I do not entirely agree with the moderator's decision here.
As the member initially intended to pay the bounty with bitcoin, it is evident that he had no intention of violating the forum rules. Upon other members' recommendation, he agreed to pay smaller portions in altcoin.
Okay, maybe that wasn't the best decision, but does it really deserve such a harsh punishment? In the spirit of this forum, wouldn't it be better to alert the member that his actions are inconsistent with the rules and that he should go back to the original terms of the bounty campaign?

I agree that rules should be followed, but even theymos don't support a strict adherence to them.


What do you think the mission of this forum is? I would really like to hear what other members think.

This:

This has become very much subjective and confusing at the same time.

To summarize what I understood...

1. Bitcoin giveaways are allowed
2. Alt coins giveaways not allowed - OP will get a ban and participants will be banned if posted in ALT section.
3. Low effort tasks/giveaways not allowed any where on the forum - OP and participants will be banned

Now as far as the topic in question is concerned it was a BTC giveaway since major portion of the payment was already in BTC which is >83% in BTC and rest <17% in LTC

Now what "Incentivizing posting" rule says, this is what I understand from a quote from theymos


Now the OP in discussion clearly didn't had any such intention of posting, where a post in a thread makes you eligible of any incentive. It was same like any other signups on the forum where you need one post with participants info. Yes you can impose the rule here if you want but that will be unfair to “Bitcoin community”.

Sometimes we need to evaluate the situation differently... mprep as mod yes you did the right thing from your end since you evaluated the op and the topic from "Alt coins giveaways + low effort task" perspective. But in reality the OP never had any of such intention. His topic was purely for the betterment of  “Bitcoin”... he just tried his own way of realizing Elon that what he is portraying against bitcoin is wrong. That's why you see so much sentimental support from bitcointalk members for him.

It's not an argument but you see we don't have 55 millions followers like Elon Musk...even if whole bitcointalk community try to support bitcoin against Elon he can outperform us with a single tweet our total Bitciontalk member are just 3m. So I will say as a bitcoin supporter op did not deserve a ban here.

Bitcoin... bitcoin... bitcoin.

Support and defend bitcoin against all the evil intentions.

The point 3 comes under point number 2, I believe. Low effort giveaways are allowed in BTC but not in altcoins (would be great if a mod can confirm)



You can't give altcoins or even BTC? I am asking because I have seen many instances where users were paid in BTC for posting their username.



I agree and rules are quite strange because there are so many giveaways in that section that discuss the prize in BTC and might be paying out in USDT (which is a altcoin, we know) but just because OP made a mistake of mentioning LTC, he got banned. It hurts even more when someone as sincere as Royse777 was working with him because if there was slight doubt, it would be Royse777 who would have made it clear.

Whatever professional courtesy is required, as long as the 'no altcoin giveaway' rule is going to remain as-is, I think there should be a warning in the games and rounds sub. Having forum members post a LTC address to receive payment for a low effort task is a violation of forum policy as currently implemented.

I also don't think it is entirely unreasonable for someone to read the forum rules, and in good-faith host a giveaway that gives away both an altcoin and bitcoin, and believe they are following the rules. Moderators are experts of forum rules and policy, but normal users are not. Assuming the person has not caused major problems in the past, I would argue for a reduced ban 'punishment' that is reduced by 1/2, or so.

---

It seems to me that the OP is trying to get his foot in the door in starting a business managing advertising campaigns, and is having trouble doing so due to high transaction fees when measured in USD. I would say that healthy competition in the marketplace benefits everyone and that when possible, barriers to entry into the marketplace should be low. As such, I would repeat my suggestion that the rules be changed to allow for on forum giveaways upon the host paying a fee that is intended to cover the cost of resources expanded by the forum associated with allowing the giveaway.

From what I've seen, funding in general isn't the problem.

Considering how many users disagree with those rules, that is quite likely.

Also: I know scams aren't moderated, but it just doesn't seem right to me that scamming 1 LTC is allowed, but giving it away gets you banned. I'm considering creating yet another (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5235685.0) topic to try to have some forum rules adjusted.

Be careful what you wish for. Unlike BTC, most altcoins are using this forum for promotion and AFAIK that's one of the reasons to not allow giveaways, to contain altcoins to their specific boards, etc - because otherwise it would turn into uncontrollable spamming shitshow. As discussed above, this might be somewhat mitigated by allowing only well-established ones but some of those like ETH have huge fees too and there's a bunch of scammy ones even in CMC top 10, so how exactly would you pick which ones to favor?

Or we could stick to Bitcoin and promote LN (or whatever the current scaling panacea is) instead. It seems counterproductive to cater to the specific use cases unless BTC is fit for those use cases. If it doesn't work for small giveaways - don't do small giveaways. Otherwise it'd be like allowing to discuss ETH on the Dev & Tech board because Bitcoin doesn't support ERC20 and we really want to talk about ERC20.

My understanding is that users would give away altcoins in a way that each account would receive fractions of a cent worth of the altcoin, but said altcoin would receive basically free advertising/promotion.

Allowing altcoin giveaways would also lead to many more people joining the forum solely for the purpose of claiming these giveaways. We would see more accounts with 5000 posts with no merit, and almost all of their posts would be in the bounty altcoin giveaway sections. The costs associated with these types of threads will quickly add up. With some decent marketing, we could see some giveaway threads with 10, or 100 thousand (or more) posts, and a multiple number of page views. The cost of storing 100k posts, plus 2x+ page views for thousands of threads will quickly add up.

If that's allowed, it would work :) It's just slightly more complicated to get a payment request shortly before making the payment.

I don't think anyone is arguing to allow those again (but weirdly enough it has been happening on the bounty board for years).

Exactly. I see no connection between altcoin giveaways and the topic in question. From what I can tell, this wasn't a giveaway but a bounty. Members had to do a specific task to be paid.

If this was the message onemd wanted to post on Elon's Twitter, how is that promoting altcoins?

It seems disproportionate to get banned from this forum because of a procedural error given the organizer's intentions.

This reminded me of that case when a bunch of members got temp bans for participating in a combined giveaway of bitcoin, tron, ethereum, XRP, and I think Litecoin. It might have been BitCasino that organized the whole event. The members got the chance to select which coin to get as a reward, those who selected altcoins got banned, those who wanted bitcoin weren't. 

@mprep
Would this have been allowed?
- The same type of thread is posted in the same sub with the payment method being Bitcoin.
- OP makes a note that any payment below a certain amount will be made in Litecoin (to avoid Bitcoin dust payments) with a link that leads to a different thread in the altcoin bounty section.
- The linked bounty thread has a google spreadsheet where the users sign up after they have completed their social media bounty.

The LTC is being awarded as part of a social media bounty task like any other social media task in the bounty section that entails posting, tweeting, liking, etc. No altcoin is given away in Games & Rounds or Services section. There is also no incentivized low-effort posting because the users have to apply through a google spreadsheet.

Would that be allowed?

While theymos is much more lenient with the interpretation or application of other rules ("constructive free speech" and all), I have not seen this leniency in suspending creators for altcoin giveaways. The spirit of the rule, at least in my eyes, is "no altcoin giveaways, neither in their traditional form nor disguised as something else" and I don't see a reason to not apply that to someone who "didn't mean it" since quite a few who get banned for violating the rules legitimately "didn't mean it" or "didn't know". I've already explained (in a previous post in this thread) how an exception to such a policy could open up holes. Which would require even more exceptions to patch up. And while yes, theymos has stated that he doesn't believe in rule of law, he does believe in forum policy being consistent:


While the big boss is free to make whatever judgments he wishes, the last thing I want my (a moderator's) judgment to be is arbitrary.

---

Yes, the "no incentivizing posting via low effort tasks in exchange for altcoins" is an extension of the "no on-forum altcoin" giveaways rule, since quite a few people moved on from just giving away altcoins to requiring users to retweet something or post a canned tweet (essentially complying with the letter of the rule but dodging the spirit of it).

You can give away BTC in Games and Rounds. It's even mentioned in the thread you've quoted.

I can only act on rule violations I see and can verify (and that applies for all rules). That's the nature of not being omniscient. If someone is secretly incentivizing posting in exchange for USDT, a user is free to report the PM asking for a USDT address, link to external evidence, etc.

---

I've already PMed both Cyrus and hilariousandco about creating a new sticky thread in Games and Rounds yesterday, but they haven't responded yet. Regarding the duration, as I've mentioned, I didn't feel like it was my call considering that the altcoin incentive was rather clear and IIRC I have not seen theymos reduce ban duration for organizing altcoin giveaways. As for rule changes, that's something you're going to have to petition theymos - I don't really have much say in the matter.

---

If I understood the premise correctly (you don't have to post in either of the threads to participate in the LTC part of the giveaway / low-effort bounty) then yes, that's completely fine.

That's good to know.

I understand the point you made at the start of this post, but considering how difficult it is to interpret the rules of Bitcointalk by regular users sometimes, and the fact that OP had clear intentions to give out bitcoin by escrowing the coins, could he be pardoned and have the permanent ban changed to a 2-week temp ban instead? His original thread would have to be re-written to be in line with the rules, either the way I explained in my previous post, or any other way that is better and/or more suitable.

Each ban is reviewed case-by-case and the decisions the staff make in this particular case don't need to have repercussions on other similar cases just like unbanning a user who copy/pasted wont make all copy/pasters unbanned.

For the record, I have not participated in the campaign by OP nor do I know him. Just in case someone asks. But I don't think that with him gone this community will either be safer, cleaner or a better place.

Although I am still hitting my head against the wall to understand mprep's interpretation, the topic could just move to altcoin (bounty) section since it's obvious that intention of OP was not promoting LTC but paying in LTC (low value amount to avoid dust payment) and BTC to perform a task which is to tweet Elon.

How would one determine if the task is not substantial. Those who will get paid in LTC was asked to make a certain tweet which was already given but those who will be paid in BTC was ask to make their own tweet, but it has to go with the original idea of OP.

This is where it gets even worse. Initially OP had plan to pay everyone using BTC. But when I suggested him that he should consider paying the small amount using an ALT (possibly I suggested LTC) to avoid dust output of BTC he agreed. Then I revised the terms and give him the revised terms to update his original post. With years of experience if my understanding of rule is not clear then how would we expect a user like OP (who is very new to this forum) will understand this special rule correctly. In fact, this rule is becoming confusing as we speak. If we focus on only the responses of this topic we will see except mprep and maybe PN7, rest of us are thinking the thread was just fine and actually protesting the action that mprep has taken.

How would you now apply the rule now when it's very clear that OP's intension was modified by me, and he reposted the topic after taking my suggestion. If it really is a bannable offence (let's say all of us are wrong but only mprep's interpretation is right) then does OP deserve ban, or it should be me?

The reason it wasn't moved to the altcoin board is because of the rule about incentivized and low-effort posts in exchange for altcoins if I understood it correctly. Post your address here to get Litecoin type of threads aren't allowed in the altcoin boards either. Posting a spreadsheet where the users could apply for Litecoin would be OK.

I am just wondering why low-effort and incentivized posting is allowed for bitcoin giveaways. Those are still spam posts even though bitcoin is the reward. 

I've also seen many casinos give away small amounts of Bitcoin credited to the user's account. Those amounts are often lower than the withdrawal fees, and those giveaways don't get banned.
One could argue this isn't Bitcoin, but a token on a website. I can't say this is better than paying LTC on-chain.

He didn't (https://bpip.org/Profile?p=onemd) get a permanent ban.

Thats fair enough. Most of the time, my participation in these types of threads is advocating for or against rule/policy changes, not that rules are being enforced incorrectly. The latter would generally be fairly cut and dry, and any mistake in implementation would be quickly pointed out, and the issue would be quickly solved. Also, FWIW, I have always seen you conduct yourself professionally as a moderator, even when those you are dealing with may not be.

The intention of the rule in question is to prevent people from promoting altcoins, and to keep the main subs related to bitcoin. In my eyes, a bitcoin IOU is the same as bitcoin, except it has counterparty risk. This is the same for any exchange, casino, or service that accepts bitcoin deposits.

The ban isn't permanent - it is (or was; see end of post) 30 days.

---

The intention is irrelevant - the task and payment method is what's at fault. I could say that I'm paying X amount of BTC in coin Y and that'd still count as incentivizing posting in exchange for altcoins since all you are doing is changing the way you measure the amount of coin Y. As for what task is considered substantial, that has to be assessed on a case-by case basis. I listed all the most common cases in the pinned thread in Bounties (Altcoins) of what's allowed and what's not but in situations where those examples don't apply, it's up to the mod to decide whether the bounty is something that's dodging (intentionally or otherwise) the spirit of the "no on-forum altcoin giveaways" rule or is it something that no longer resembles a giveaway in the amount of effort the participant has to undergo. As for who's at fault, the onus on complying with the rules falls on the person making the decision to give away altcoins. Obviously, if such an interpretation is being maliciously abused to run altcoin giveaways with impunity while burning random fall guys, the same punishment may be applied to the person "suggesting" the idea (though this far from what has happened here).

---

Cause only on-forum altcoin giveaways are prohibited as per forum policy. As to why, I can't look into theymos's head and tell definitively but if I had to guess it's a mix of (1) the forum being BitcoinTalk, (2) any amount of BTC given away being worth something as opposed to a coin that you could create out of thin air, (3) the policy being consistent (no exceptions for specific altcoins) and (4) altcoin giveaways in the past generating tons of spam both directly (large number of low value threads and posts) and indirectly (if a user who's just there for the giveaways needs to reach a certain rank, he's rather likely to just spam the forum till he reaches it).

---

You could argue that but crediting a gambling site's balance with BTC is still a promise to give BTC (essentially sending funds to a custodial wallet). Now, there's an entire discussion on custodial wallets and coin ownership to be had there ("not your keys, not your coins" etc, etc), but the common-sense perceived obligation on the part of the custodian is that the wallet owner has ownership over what's stated in said wallet (both in terms of the type of coin and amount). As can be seen from past events, that obligation isn't always honored but the forum doesn't moderate scams.

However, when it comes to LTC, you have to keep in mind that the forum considers it to be at the same level as No-Name-Coin that the dev could print billions of at no cost. So while most forum users would agree that LTC has a perceptible cost to acquire, there is no "established altcoin giveaways are good tho" rule for the sake of consistency and altcoins being second fiddle to the coin the forum was created for. This could change in the future (if theymos decides so) but I have no reason to believe anything of sort applies here.

---

Having read through all the arguments / points of view and (as I've mentioned) being on the fence myself about reducing the ban duration to 14 days, I've realized there's quite a bit of confusion and lack of information about this particular aspect of the "no on-forum altcoin giveaways" rule outside the altcoin sections. There's a reason I've started the unnoficial list of rules thread back in 2014 - information about how a regular user should behave was scarce and scattered all around the forum. So while I still believe that the banned user in question broke a number of rules by starting that thread, I no longer think the punishment fits the offense. Had the user ran a giveaway promoting a business, one could expect a much higher degree of professionalism and thus more thorough due diligence. However, since the user was just someone who felt like giving away BTC in the first place, considering the lack of a sticky in Games and Rounds I think this warrants a more lenient, albeit still rather strict treatment.

Reduced ban duration to 14 days minus time already being banned.

An update for everyone. Just came home from Hospital few hours ago. I was hospitalized on 23rd, and I did not have any facilities, did not have physical condition to come online to give an update. I am doing well now. Please keep me in your prayer.

Thanks buddy for doing this. I sent a text to onemd on telegram.