Bitcoin Forum

With Copper membership, Newbies can now pay a small fee to enable images (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2385104.msg24371150#msg24371150)

It is useful but can admins create another membership, that allows buyers to wear avatars?

Avatar is a part of a company brand-kit so if a company has a representative here, I think they have demand to buy Avatar membership to wear it. They don't need to be Full members to wear it. They probably don't need to be able to wear signature for Full member rank.

Only avatar is good to represent a company brand. They have bitcoins so why they are not allowed to use their bitcoins ?

There is a smaller niche to buy avatar.

freebitco.in PR (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2723381). 1120 activity, can not wear an avatar.
tower.bet (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2685005). 532 activity
futuur (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2820184). 202 activity.
BK8.Official (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3111991). 149 activity.
windice (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2499342). 365 activity.
absolutely-positioned (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2688418). 173 activity.
BC.GAME (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2503677). 212 activity.

This might not benefit me at all same with the copper membership, but for those who want to pay just to get such feature. And especially to a company who wants to promote its business here, yeah, why not? It will give the forum another source of income in someway, even though its not that huge fund. Right @theymos?

Maybe we can call it bronze membership, lol. Since it's bronze after copper age.

Maybe this is the time, just don't be after the "but".

You got me.

Silver membership.

Later add paying $8/month to get a blue tick also.

It's not Twitter.

Avatar is forever, not monthly and company avatars are unique.

Avatars could be worn by "Newbie" accounts back then, but they were disabled for security reasons in 2013^[1]. Following that, it was re-enabled in 2015, with "Full Members" as a pre-requisite^[2]. And I'm guessing there won't be any additional membership fees to wear an avatar because that's why the forum was hacked in the first place.

[1] Forum avatar? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=320459.0)
[2] Avatars re-enabled (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1008863)

This bug was solve already that's why we can still use or upload avatars because if not, there's no reason to bring it back if hackers can still use this a loophole to hack the website again.

Also this was mentioned by theymos when creating the copper membership, which i quoted above too.
So there's a chance...

Newbies are a lot but limited members will buy the Avatar membership.

When it was re-enabled, security problems were fixed. Admin did not re-enable it if problems were not fixed.

It will be helpful for people who are trying to build a business here or introduce something with what they are trying to offer. If they are interested in advertising here, the best approach is to have a signature campaign and let the members here advertise for them. I think it can be done, but if you are just interested in presenting yourself, try and approach the forum productively and earn merits, then level up.

Call me an oddball, but I'd name it "Pewter Membership".  Somehow it seems fitting if implemented after all this time.

I don't know, man.  Pretty much everything in tech is moving toward a subscription model to keep you paying and paying and never really owning anything outright.  Hopefully Theymos is above all that nonsense, and I suspect he is.

No, I don't propose it to get income for forum.

I collected some representatives of casinos. They have been here long enough and bring traffics, jobs for members but they did not have chance to wear an avatar. Spending a few bucks to buy Avatar membership is not big deal with them.

This membership is for very small niche, smaller than for Copper membership niche.

Nah, the downside there's will be a spammer will spamming in order to give their brands visibility in this forum. Copper membership signature isn't eye catching and it will not attract users to click their signatures, but in avatar there's no restrictions and they will create an eye catching avatar.

I don't think it's needed, if they're serious and not a scammer, those project representative accounts will earn 100 merit sooner or later like Bestchange.

Also there's a signature campaign that you can join by avatar space, this would increase spammer to join a campaign.

Scammers won't spend it. If they don't buy Copper membership, they won't buy Avatar membership.

Do you mean representatives of Freebitco.in, BK8 are not deserved to wear an avatar?

When "Copper membership"^[1] was established, the purpose of its creation was not to increase revenues for the forum, but rather to provide an opportunity for beginners to post pictures without waiting, in addition to the ability to send messages and others. These features you can get for free if a member adds you to the whitelist of some members^[2], and therefore the purpose of the rank Profit is not as much as paying to bypass spam restrictions.

So far, the forum does not suffer from a financial problem, but if they want to, they can easily add the avatar feature for payment, but it will increase spam in general.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2385104.msg24371150#msg24371150
[2]

Thanks for this, I needed a good laugh!


I agree it can be useful, and it's not such a bad idea - I've seen worse and still discussed - but at the end it's up to theymos to decide.
The casino/businesses owners/representatives can (and do) pay for avatars/advertisement already, it could make sense they also display that too for a price or whatever, since getting 100 merit may not be an easy job for a newcomer.

I think it's good you've bring this up.

I don't think this should be a priority to Bitcointalk. Users have the freedom to do almost anything, but if they can't earn 100 Merits in hundreds of posts, they don't deserve an avatar.

The speciality of full member is to be able to wear an avatar. If that's what can be achieved with money, I can't imagine where this place will be after few years. Maybe at that time, a demand will arise, Legendary rank with BTC  :D
I don't think this is necessary. If this was necessary to the people you mentioned, they would surely achieve the privilege.

As you see this feature was disabled in past by @theymos for the security reasons and I don't think so he will be planning to add it because you see there are lot more important features pending to be implemented on forum and he has to take care of it.

Although it could benefit the business as it shows the brand in more representative way if you are buying copper membership but you see there are many businesses doing promotion on the forum in similar way and it's going fine for them as whole thing depends on your business model and marketing to the people.They have campaign on forum and there Avatar are visible to all through this way but I know what exactly you wish to have with this another feature requests.

There are certain things which needs to be maintained in same way and we can't monetize everything as we also need to take care of scams to some extent so you can request it but don't think so it will be added and you can find lot more ways to promote business with good and appealing ANN thread on forum.

Calm down please.

Having avatar for a company by signature campaign participants is different than having it for a company account.

Like when you have a company, a casino and create a service topic, it is beautiful to wear your brand avatar. Representative accounts of Roobet, Rollbit can not wear avatar.

They run long campaigns and paid a lot. Why BestChange can wear avatar but Roobet, Rollbit can not? Are they worse or have less contribution than BestChange to forum members?

My proposal is not to credit avatar for them free, but with a paid membership if they want.

Or they have to wait for generosity and kindness from their employees to award merit and wear avatar.

My idea is not to increase scam or spam but for benefit of companies that have contribution for forum, community and they even bring jobs to forum members.

Signature campaign: 2013 -2022 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5403191.msg60395332#msg60395332)

If no security concern, why not?

Yes, I think what he's trying to say is that for every good deed there's always a price to pay.

Maybe they don't want to spend their bitcoins like this when they can pay other members to wear avatars for them with much bigger reach.
For any long term company members it wouldn't be such a big deal to increase rank and get free avatar support in time, instead of paying for shortcuts like this.
Copper membership is increasing functionality of newbie accounts and that is not the case with your propositions for avatars.
Additionally, Theymos already said that forum doesn't need more funding resources for anything.

Yes, you are right, this is not the priority of this forum. Just like the cooper member that allows  to post pictures, but this rank exists and allows to bypass the moment with the accumulation of 10 merit (like a member rank).

If a cooper member is some kind of analogue of a member rank (allowing to post pictures), then it turns out that the price of a hypothetical purchased rank (silver or bronze, as some suggest) that allows to wear an avatar should be 10 times more expensive than a cooper member? :)

You are too hard on this. It seems to me that the ability to buy ranks with avatars will not harm anyone, because these will be purely cosmetic changes that don't affect anything else and will allow the forum to receive additional income.

Bitcointalk will be the twitter,, Sathoshi nakamoto is the Elon musk of Bitcoin.
Paid ads would be great for business brands just saying.

Lately, some people have been thinking of some rather strange ideas, and regardless of the fact that the OP does not have anything bad in mind when they propose this idea, I will still agree with you and I am of the opinion that some things should be earned, not bought. Each of the accounts mentioned by the OP would definitely look better with an avatar, but I think that the signature, personal text and website link are not something that should be ignored.

In addition, all of these, let's call them "business accounts", are mainly or exclusively focused on posts in ANN threads, so an avatar would not help them much in promoting their companies.

There are restrictions for avatar too like no gif images can be used as avatar anymore so only plain image is the possible solution and whereas no NSFW contents is allowed to be in the avatar.

The idea proposed by OP is good though but the amount of people will buy this for genuine reason may extent to only double digits so this won't be in the priority list.

Most of this forum account that you collected only post on there respective ANN thread. I wonder how will this avatar will make any difference since the only way to check there avatar that they wear is when you visit there ANN thread alone unless those representatives loves to chat on other thread in the forum.

Besides most of the casino has there own signature campaign that address this marketing issue. The idea of paying for an early access for avatar is good though for those newbie that want to display certain image on there profile. I knew a whale gambling player here in the forum that wants to wear avatar but the merit requirements to rank up restricted him. He is not a regular poster so this suggestion is really good on person like him.

It's not the matter of wether the forum needs money or not, people are asking for a paid feature, either the admin accepts this or not, no need for you guys to get nervous. It wouldn't hurt if newbies could pay a membership fee in order to wear avatar.

Ability to post images serves a purpose for a discussion - you know, the activity that this forum is supposed to be about. Avatar or signature - not so much, it's mostly for advertising, and if someone wants to spend money on advertising they can just pay someone else to wear an avatar or a signature. Doesn't require theymos to do anything.

I don't care much either way though. Seeing copper with low merit count is already a red flag, adding a paid avatar to it would only make it easier to see what the user is here for.

This was a funny comment, but had me wondering what I've "paid" for this website.  Given my donation and the current exchange rate for Bitcoin, it looks like it works out to about $1,220 per month that I paid (if you want to use current valuations which is a big disingenuous) from the goodness of my heart to participate here over the years.  That's quite a bit to be honest, but I can say for the first half of my time here it was money well spent.  I've never considered this metric before, but I imagine that monthly amount will go up quite a bit in the future.  It is a fun metric to see if Bitcoin's price rises enough to make up for the additional months being added.  My guess is that it will.

Maybe you didn't get what OP is asking, he doesn't want advertising by other members, he wants to be recognized as the sole representative of a brand by wearing a special avatar, while not thinking about getting merit and rank up but to focus more on their business.

Maybe you don't get that this is a discussion forum. Earning enough merits for an avatar is not a huge hurdle for someone presumably smart enough to run a business. A handful of good posts could do it. Or a few dozen average ones. If one is not interested in that, and only wants advertising - I don't see why the forum needs new features to allow that.

I like the idea. And why not? if the forum can sell copper memberships and people are willing to pay for it, why not offer a new one that allows users to wear an avatar?

A valid question would be how many people click the links in the signatures at all, but that's off-topic to this discussion. I don't think introducing such an avatar membership will increase spam by those who pay to wear it. They are not going to get any special treatment just like the copper membership doesn't protect them. The forum rules remain the same for everyone.

Maybe they will, maybe they won't. We will only know if we see it in action.

The copper membership also includes shortcuts. Sure, newbies can post images, but they also get the signature space almost identical to Member ranks. That's a shortcut. They didn't earn it. They didn't earn the merits or the needed activity points to be awarded the member signature space. They bought it!

Yes. Why not?

Especially for companies that can spend $k dollars each months for their campains and run their campains many months and years.

Why Safoshi Nakamoto, Hal Finney accounts received many merits but company representative accounts can not. Why manager accounts received lot of merits but company accounts can not.

Why they can not spend $10, $20, $50 to wear avatars?

That's apples and oranges. Satoshi and the late Hal have done a lot for Bitcoin and have contributed greatly to the forum. It doesn't matter if it is this community or one of its predecessors. Those casinos and company representatives you mentioned run a business, and they haven't done anything for the benefit of the forum. The payments they make on a weekly basis are for services rendered and it's got nothing to do with Bitcointalk. They work for themselves and their pockets. It's also not something that brings any improvement to Bitcoin as a whole. That's why it's incomparable.

That's easy: their posts are worth reading.

The same reason: it shows Bitcointalk users don't care about their posts.

Now you're hitting Elon below the belt 😆

---

To say the least OP, I don't really know of what benefit the avatar is apart from adding beauty to the profile of the user wearing it and enables one to easily find posts from certain hunters one is looking for. Except an avatar is programmed to have a clickable link, I don't see its useful beyond the aesthetics I've mentioned above.

What have those companies given to this forum? Your answer is "a lot of money," but now why are they giving this lot of money for? "for advertising/promotion."
Well they are getting what they want, right? so no point for me to give them extra merit.

Other users giving this community value are worth merit because no one is paying them for what they are offering to this forum, so it's simple logic that companies or representatives will get less merit, and the members who spent time and knowledge will get merit.

Having an avatar is better than does not have it. It is like as a company, you should have your company signboard. Here, an avatar is like a signboard.

You're promoting Sinbad mixer but did you send their representative account 1 merit just to thanks to their service and what they paid you?

I clearly implied that companies don't have to ask this from their employees and I proposed a new membership for companies to buy and wear avatars. They don't have to wait for employees' merit that usually don't come.

Thank you. Why not?

An avatar membership is similar to a Copper membership, with a shortcut for company representative accounts to wear avatars like Full members. But they can not wear Full member signature.

At the end, spammers can not buy an Avatar membership to join campaigns as a Full members. They must get merit and become Full members to wear signature for full member rank.

Or just increase the price of the Copper membership to like, 50 bucks to include the avatar, rather than having two separate ones?

Then they'll request a hero member signature space feature for newbies for a cooper membership, promote a scam (which most newbies do), for a few bucks? I dont think its a great idea. There will be not much difference between a newbie and other high ranked members then. Let things be as they are now!

I don't know. It relates to security.

If no security problems, have two separated memberships are better. When people go for shopping, they want to have options.

Can you be on topic and read my proposal before write your shit post?

I propose an avatar membership to wear avatar only, no other things. No rights to wear bbcode signature for full member rank. Nothing more than Avatar.

Why did you talk about signature for Hero member? It's off topic. Please create your topic to discuss about that.

Not everyone might be willing to pay that if they aren't interested in the avatar space. I like to have options without being forced to purchase things I don't want or have any use for. It makes more sense to me to separate the two, but if you want both memberships, you can pay for both. If I have a craving for some beer, I would like to have the option to buy just one can and not be forced to purchase the entire crate.

Hmm, very good point.
Indeed, this could open the doors of a new business: newbies promoting scams in their avatars and also spamming the forum. And since scams are not moderated, this can become an overly big issue.

Although I found it a good idea at start, I am no longer so sure.


Me too, that's why I thought at first that this could be good. But if it opens a new Pandora's box, then it's no longer advisable...