I would be against this and I doubt it's something theymos would do anyway. People who have negative feedback can still provide worthwhile content and also send appropriate merit. Of course there will be certain individuals that abuse the position but I think they should be taken on a case by case basis and handled by the community. Foserfox is already permabanned anyhow, and I don't think you can send merit once you're banned (I could be wrong, but I certainly don't think they should be allowed to once banned). People only have a limited amount of merit and they will run out of it very fast, especially when banned. If a banned or negative trusted user did send merit then more often than not it's easier to spot abuse/alt accounts they're sending merit to.

Theymos has recently changed the ban message to something along the lines of you have likely been banned for plagiarism/copy and pasting. The issue is is that forum accounts are like gold dust or their holy cash cow to the type of people who get banned for plagiarism so they're not just going to let them go without a fight and will do and say anything out of desperation if they can if they think they've got even the slightest chance of getting their accounts back. A criminal would do the same after being accused of theft but until they see the evidence they'll try anything they can to wriggle out of something and avoid punishment and that's why users request proof even when they know what they've done because they're hoping we just can't find it or have a made a mistake or whatever.


I wouldn't be against some sort of appeals sub board and maybe only staff can posts in there, but locking thread is a tricky issue. Who gets to say when the issue is closed? True, ban appeals are often an open and shut case but many times users still want to protest. Even if we locked the thread there's nothing stopping them from just opening another which they likely would if they feel the issue is unresolved.


I didn't. Temp bans state the reason and as I said above theymos has recently changed the permaban message to include that they were likely banned for plagiarism but it doesn't explicitly state what they were banned for.

You know him in real life or just off forum? Regardless of whether the excuses are true or not I don't really buy how they force someone to copy and paste. As I said before, I wouldn't be against change to forum policy as long as it's uniform. What I'm against it someone being unbanned just because of their rank, or their particular excuse is believed by one mod because that's unfair and just leads to complications and more people using certain excuses to get a pass. I know there's a difference between a newbie account who's posts are entirely copy and pastes and maybe a higher ranked account who just made the mistake once, but any punishment needs to be fair and applied evenly across the board. People who copy and paste usually do it to earn so I would be okay with them still being allowed to use their account but just not earn from it via signatures, so I think signature bans are something we should look at but only theymos can implement them. You could maybe choose to reinstate the signature after x amount of time if they're proved they're here to contribute something constructive during that time.

And a lot of people are too lazy to even write original spam. Many people copy posts from the same page because they often think they can get away with it and their posts will get lost in the spam and buried quickly by ages of the same. I can't say whether this is an isolated incident but feel free to go through his posts to see if there's more or not. There usually is but staff have better things to do than go through an entire posting history to see how many posts they've copied and that's why it's a one strike and you're out. If people don't want their accounts banned then they should make sure they're posting original content and not lazy spam.


Unless the rules change then in 99.9% of cases a permaban is a permanent ban.


Ban evasion is neither checked for nor enforced so make of that what you will.

Sometimes they do get removed and sometimes they don't. Depends on the mod. I used to remove them mostly but personally I like to leave them now because more often than not they ask for evidence and in the past I haven't been able to find it again. People have even disputed their ban once the posts have been deleted claiming they never even made them in the first place (which is always a lie). Leaving the one that was reported behind isn't much of an issue anyway because plagiarisers usually don't just plagiarise the once but many times so more often than not it's a different post that is reported.


He has changed the message recently. It now states something along the lines of you were probably banned for copy and pasting.


As above, it's both. Deleting the one post isn't going to make much of a difference, but other mods probably do delete the post, but it will be rare that that's the only one they've copied.

Well I've already found two:





I'm sure there's more but I'm not going to waste time trying to find them all.


You can't even be honest about how many posts you've copied. You people really should take better care of your accounts if they're so valuable to you. I don't get why you would take the chance for so little when the risk is so great.

We already see trash like this, especially when people try force something out to look constructive. That's why we have the classic two liner junk posts that people make en mass. I've even seen people telling others to make sure they write two sentences so it's not spam like that's some magic number). It's just enough to look like they've made an effort but when you read it they're not actually saying anything of substance and have just stretched what is essentially a few word post out to two sentences. We even saw in the past people cheating character requirements on signature campaigns by adding invisible junk to the end of their posts in order to dupe the bot that was checking they were making 100 character posts or whatever.

Well it would probably work like bticoin or bit torrent and there isn't once central authority, but as theymos said, everyone would have to download the client and everyone would share hosting. I like the intention behind a decentralised forum, but it almost certainly wouldn't work very well. It would basically be what this forum would be like if there were no mods at all. Whilst less moderation is generally good, we can also see the problem that arises when mods take a back seat. Spammers and plagiarisers would run rife and the burden is left up to each individual user to moderate which would quickly become tedious. At least mods get paid something for their troubles here but users under a decentralised forum would have to do it for free and I'm sure they'd quickly grow tired of it. Imagine if every user had to nuke every spam bot they saw. You'd probably spend more time 'moderating' what you saw than you would in actual posting.

Maybe make it so only the OP can do it then so he could choose the time it is bumped. At least they have to log in and post once a day for it to be effective (or use a bump button if that's ever implemented (which would be a good feature for the Marketplace as well and save people and staff having to remove the bumps which is always very tedious)). I think this would be a minor issue though as the middle of the night is going to be different all over the world. I think making it so only the op can bump the thread once a day would actually make the system work because they can't pass it off to someone else and they have to be active if they want the thread active.

OP, are you sure you only did it the once? Be honest.


So many excuses we even have a bingo card for it now:



We need to add the I was a drunk one though. That's popped up quite a few times.

Yes, we do. Please actually read my post directly above you, or do you think there's a purpose in people pointlessly reporting already banned users time after time and staff having to waste countless hours on handling them? Also, please explain how it takes up space in the database. Staff can already see who is banned so making that available to the public changes nothing other than saving both staff and reporters time.

It says the reason in the ban now. You were probably banned for spam or plagiarism, and in this case that's true:




You can't. This is like getting fired from a workplace and asking "but how will I do my work".

The rank should probably just be changed to banned or something for permabanned users, like it is on many other forums, or at least marked on their profile somewhere as it already is for staff, but I think theymos is against this for some reason. He should probably state so though and clarify because this is something many people have requested in the past. It actually has a purpose as users and staff often have to waste time on handling reports for users that are already banned.

I think it's a sad state of affairs that if these people weren't plagiarising then they'd just be shitposting instead, but it's true. The people who plagiarise are only here to earn and not contribute and if it wasn't for copy and pasting then they'd just be forcing out their generic responses about something they know little about, and that's why the forum is in such a poor state. We really should be cracking down on the unsubstantial posts or more importantly those that are paying people to make them. If users are spotted making incredibly terrible posts then the person's signature they're wearing should face repressions because they're not doing their job properly. As long as we continue to do nothing about this then it will just continue to happen. Running a signature campaign is at least a part time job. Running a larger one would probably be a full time one, but these people are not going to willingly do work that they don't need to especially when there's no repercussions for doing a shoddy job or even none at all. Once it becomes unacceptable to run campaigns in such a way they will change or start hiring people who are willing to do the work and there's plenty of people who would do so.

Why don't you make it so the thread can only be bumped to the top once per day max? That seems like fair compromise and would certainly defeat the purpose of the paid bumping whilst still allowing active threads to be bumped.


This wouldn't work either. The bumpers would then just start writing posts that contain 300 characters. They'd probably be more of an eyesore than the generic good project ones etc.

I don't think he's a spambot. I think he just struggles with English, has dozens of accounts and is rushing to squeeze out posts as fast as he can, hence all the mistakes. I often type like that when I go fast. The problem is here is he doesn't proofread his posts nor care about it. He just spouts out some generic nonsense and mostly back to back to bump his post count up and then on to the next account which he often posts back to back there too. I think he's Russian and most of the accounts have received at least one merit and they happen to be Russian a lot of the time too so I think that should be looked into. I'm sure this goes much deeper.

Not everything needs to be decentralised just because bitcoin is, but feel free to create your own forum. I think a decentralised forum would be a good experiment but you would quickly see how inefficient it would be. The only way I'd see it working is basically you become your own moderator with banning or ignoring users rather than mods doing the work, but those actions don't effect any one else unless maybe they trust your actions and they add you to some sort of trust list, but do you really want to spend half your time ignoring or banning trolls, spammers and bots all for the sake of decentralisation?


This doesn't sound decentralised to me. Bitcointalk also uses miners and blockchain. Should the forum be hosted on a blockchain and all posts have to be confirmed by miners? Maybe you have to pay a fee every time you post?


This certainly isn't decentralised. This sounds overly authoritarian and repressive. People shouldn't be banned for saying fuck, nazi or gay. What if you're having a discussion about fucking gay rights in Nazi Germany? Thrice damned?  

They can't be nuked. I've banned some of them already but there's probably dozens more.

Profile links of the ones above:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1154780 Onestepinhell September 15, 2017
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1978819 Inastran March 27, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1226553 Fredrosam October 18, 2017
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1761796 Hoenya January 27, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1229808 aldencio October 19, 2017
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1230615 expekto October 19, 2017
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1171241     beBearKing September 26, 2017

Found some more doing the same thing here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1873444 Sicithdeve February 24, 2018 [all sent merit by nerttor]
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1873417 Hadarula February 24, 2018 [all sent merit by nerttor]
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1873434 Iarnnoshre February 24, 2018 [all sent merit by nerttor]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1213483 Sondale October 13, 2017
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1079303 Hoxysado July 24, 2017
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1976695 ElnurBash March 26, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1082997 pochinkin_77 July 27, 2017
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1171165     crypthomonkey September 26, 2017
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1081860     kabzon_btw July 26, 2017
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1158941     Tonstar September 18, 2017

If you search some of their commonly used typos you get a lot of hits and they all follow the same pattern.


crypricurrency:  

Someone has been reporting a few users for posting back to back and I started to notice a pattern. In addition to the constant double posting they also make the same sort of badly-spelled posts with letters jumbled up and all in lower case. For example:













A clusterfuck of them all posting back to back:


They even use the same typos multiple times: peopel & taht for instnace.

There's probably a lot more of these. Hopefully someone can find more of them via bounty addresses.

He was banned for copy and pasting and that's only one of the very few 'crimes' that will lead to a permaban here (the others being things like spreading malware or ban evasion). Anything else he might have done is irrelevant, but they usually won't lead to a permban but a temporary one (like incentivising people to post. That would likely only get you a permaban if you're a serial offender).