Bitcoin Forum

The rules of these forum have always been really obscure and I've generally seen it as don't be a dick and don't screw with the mods.
I've recently been wondering about the exact rules around banning.

I know that you can make other accounts , but can a banned user make an alt account ?
Can a scammer make an alt account ?

Other than these answers , I'd like to find the exact documentation or source of them.

Thanks,
Jambola2

Most of the forum rules are in stickies in the subforums. A list of general rules stickied in Meta would be a good idea I think.

Not sure on the alt accounts of banned users or scammers. Sometimes it seems to be considered ban evasion but other times they seem to let it slide.

Banned user, no alt accounts allowed.
Scammer, alt accounts allowed but trust rating will (probably) be flagged if it's found out

I'm not sure if there's a good collection of rules anywhere, I'll have to look into this more later when I've got time to dig.

Many rules are displayed as sticky posts

Yes , I've seen the sticky in Marketplace forums for the rules.

I was looking for more specific rules on everything.


Thank you :)

Banned users posting a thread in meta is okay, while technically ban evasion, it's not something we really ban for. There may be issues that need to be addressed and theymos may not have time to deal with it through appeals. Other than that it's ban evasion and will result in ban extension or permaban.

Most of the time that isn't the case and it's supremely annoying in those cases, especially since they tend to leave out important details, but whatever.

Would it not be beneficial to allow banned users to message mods only, rather than ban them from sending messages completely (if this isn't already the case)? I think it'd cut down significantly the number of people who create new accounts just to contact you about it or make their case here.

Mods don't make good appealers, not enough information available. Can't see deleted posts, mod logs, ips, etc.

Well how about just you or a select few mods then? Or do you include yourself in this (I'm not sure if global mods have admin-type privileges regular mods don't etc)? Is basically the only person you can appeal to is theymos after a ban? Can you remove/unban users or is that just an admin? Maybe adding a message to the bans warning that you're unlikely to have bans successfully appealed and whining about it in Meta or to mods won't help would then cut down on some of these threads or emails/messages to staff (if something like that isn't already there).

Yes I'm including myself and other global mods when I say mods. I can remove/modify bans but I still don't have the other information I would need so I rarely do, unless it was obviously a mistake, which has happened. Theymos, the moderator, and the user are the only ones who really know what happened.

I don't really want to handle appeals, most people seem to think it's a magic unban me button as long as they ask nice, or be annoying enough. I don't think anyone would volunteer to do that, unless they hate themselves.

That's too bad (that there is no central source). I was looking around here trying to figure out the policy on thread bumping -- no luck -- and was hoping there would be something like that.

There's a rule in a sticky somewhere for that. You can bump a thread once every 24 hours but must delete the previous bump.

Like this one?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3629.msg5541656#msg5541656

I argee most of the rules are all over the place, some are in stickies, some are in very old threads that arent stickied for some reason, some are common sense (I would hope so). Yet somehow this worked over the years. Im not sure if a fixed set of rules is a good idea. People tend to be more harsh to newbies when the rules are clear and more forgiving when they are not.

We really need to sticky this.

There are tonnes of rules that are really ambiguous. They are not well defined and even if they are , they are not instantly obvious to users.

Also , can we get the signature limitations to be put in the forum ranks thread ? Maybe on the first page.

Done, added to the OP (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178608.msg1861412#msg1861412), also added some formatting and spacing to the entire post to make it a bit more organized looking, it was just a wall of quotes before. 

In subforums, forums, and I think in the Meta section. I really never read the rules. I just kinda figured them out as I went on.