As with any merit giving people should just take it on a case by case basis, but I don't think we should stop giving them out in certain sections, but you can certainly stop giving them for certain types of posts. People either complaining or just 'agreeing' that the merit system is good probably shouldn't get them. If people stopped meriting posts in here then I'd probably have 98% less merits, but things like boycotts only ever work if everyone (or a significant) percentage of people are involved. There'll always be one or two users (or scabs) that make it ineffective and it's impossible to get everyone on board.


This is why I think the merit requirement should be higher and put up to ten. People would probably actually be more liberal with their merit giving then and giving one out for an entertaining post should be ok, but when one merit is all somebody needs to be able to post it's dicey. One merit is far too easy to get and is too prone to abuse so I personally think we should keep the one merit to become a Junior but remove their signatures and you can only get one when you achieve ten merit and become a Member.

Not enough. Just think of all the ones we've probably missed. Just goes to show you how desperate and valuable accounts are to shitposters that they have the audacity to try get them back. 


For those that don't:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3igggNc8yU


If you read the rules you'd know what you were banned for. In fact, if you read the rules you wouldn't have been banned in the first place, but you should know copy and pasting isn't acceptable.


Somebody should create a thread of all or the best "family & friend" banned excuses. Doubt any will top this one though: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2544574.msg46576373#msg46576373

It could be just some way of saying you're an idiot and are doing a bad job. I was going to say that things probably just get lost in translation. There might be local language insults that have no meaning in English and when you're using translating software it just garbles it up even more. You've got to remember a good portion of posters here might even be illiterate in their own language so that will just make the translator job even worse especially when you're trying to make sense of something that never made any in the first place.

Another good one for you. This poster was mocking me for my bad English but ironically I was mocking shitposters for theirs:

You can leave negative feedback for any reason you wish if you think it's appropriate, but I would either just report the post and/or tell him to stop it as it's likely to get him negative eventually if he keeps doing it. That users posts are trash but I can't see any other place he's begged for it so maybe a warning will suffice.

Olaiasal36 is red tagged for ban evasion which he admits via the reference in the feedback:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1853995 Olaiasal36

The banned account he's probably talking about is Olaiasal18:


Found more that are not banned:





Which lead to this one:


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1311641 tvplus006

Which is a Full Member and seems to be the odd one out. Are they related or has he just used that users details?

Is this another "friend":


Seems you have a lot of "friends" here:

People shouldn't stop giving merits in here but they should stop meriting merit beggars who come in here to either whine at merit or fake 'agree' that it's a great system in the hope that they get one (which a lot of time they have been even though you know they're probably crying with rage behind the keyboard but are just smart enough to know that complaining won't be as effective).


Disabling signatures in this sub board isn't going to stop them fishing for merits here. Most of them are Newbies who can't even have a signature until they get a merit and that's why they post here looking for them, but there are worse boards for sig spam. Why aren't you making the case that we remove signatures from Bitcoin Discussion since that's the sub board with the most spam and has been ruined the most? Removing signatures from there would surely resolve that?

He's bounty hunter that is even too lazy for that:



You know things are bad when people start copying spam because they can't be bothered coming with something original. Purchasing a Copper Membership doesn't mean you can get away with breaking the rules.


Also "friend":

Why would you have to be politically correct? All you need to be able to do is follow and enforce the rules here as impartially as you can (which there aren't that many rules anyway). If you've got a high report count with a decent accuracy and are not a complete arse or troll then there's probably not much else that qualifies someone to be a mod or not.


Only theymos has access to those stats. He posts them occasionally but hasn't in a while. He sent me the top reporters in Bitcoin Discussion a few months ago after I requested them, but no further action was taken.

No. It's a state of people being lazy, incompetent and entitled. Letting anyone and everyone earn from signature campaigns is like giving jobs to people who are not qualified to do them. Should everyone be allowed to be a brain surgeon? No. Should everyone be an electrician? No. If you're not qualified to do a job then you don't get that job. Simple. Should everyone be able to earn from signature campaigns here? No. If you can't speak English and know nothing about bitcoin then you shouldn't be allowed to earn here via such a way. Merit should be the qualification or aptitude test to show that you're qualified to earn via posting since campaign managers can't be trusted to hold some sort of minimum standards, and this 'qualification' should be much higher than one merit.

The clue is in the name of merit:


All you need to do is make posts that are notable, but obviously this is too hard for most of the idiot kids here. If you make great posts then you will get enough merit eventually. If you're a shitposter then you won't. That's it. Anything else is just whining and whinging because they now actually have to make some effort to actually get anywhere instead of just getting paid to churn out generic nonsense over however many accounts they have which is useless to everyone apart from the signature campaigns who pay for it and that's the issue and why we need something like the merit system, but it certainly doesn't go far enough.

Since when does a thread mean it's done after ten pages? Spammers won't care about that and they will just open another one either just with a slightly reworded title or 'shit thread part 2' etc. We need to tackle the issue at the source and that is campaigns that continually pay for drivel. Spam posts in spam threads shouldn't be getting paid but until that happens then nothing much will change and it's just pissing in the wind.

The murder for hire charges aren't relevant to the time he got because he wasn't charged for them at his trial, but I don't get why attempting to hire someone to have someone killed is less serious than actual attempted murder. The outcome would have still been the same with a life being lost and that person being responsible for that.


This isn't proof. Lots of times charges get dropped for a multitude of reasons even if they know the person is guilty of them (or highly likely to be). A lot of plea deals often involve more serious charges being dropped in exchange for a guilty plea on lesser charges. The state doesn't care as long as they get you locked up with as less fuss as possible.


Says who? They convicted him of money laundering and running a darknet market amongst other things. It's running the darknet market that got him life, as harsh as that may be.


I don't think it was dropped because of that. Attempting to have someone killed regardless of it happening is still a serious crime. It was probably dropped because they didn't need it to send him down and the murder for hires did include the corrupt agents (from what I remember) so it could have even been entrapment, but they probably wanted to leave the corruption of the agents out of the trial if they could for obvious reasons.

What? How so? Nothing much has changed other than shitposters now need one merit and once they get that it's business as usual (and it's really not hard to get at all whether you buy it or not). Bitcoin Discussion is still a spam fest and people are still shitting up it up 24/7 and that's not going to change anytime soon or until signature campaigns are punished for paying for spam. In the meantime we can add some mods to help clean the place up.


I thought you'd previously said you didn't want to be a mod? I think some of the long-time users who are reporting loads probably should be made mods as certain people have obviously put in the work and would be beneficial as staff members. More staff members have left than have been added over the years and the forum only continues to grow so we need to meet demand and workload is never ending.

People really should stop meriting shitposters whining about merit in Meta. It just has a knock on effect so more people create a thread trying their luck and fishing for some merit. This guy is worse because obviously he has alts that he doesn't want to bring attention to and probably because they're all making terrible posts and his argument would have been shot down straight away for that alone.


I wonder how long it is before Meta is taken over by shitposters repeating the same thing page after page.

He could have fought extradition. If I was going to run something like a darknet site I'd do it from a country that doesn't have an extradition process with the States at least.


Silk Road and darknet markets also had a huge part to play in the growth and usage of bitcoin. In fact, I first heard about Bitcoin due to the media coverage of Silk Road.


No, but I'd like to. I'm not sure if it's available online yet. The website he gave on a podcast he was on recently isn't online yet and the ebook link on Amazon is dead:

https://www.amazon.com/Silk-Road-Takedown-Curtis-Green-ebook/dp/B07GFJ23RN

And the physical copy is sold out or not available: https://www.amazon.com/Silk-Road-Takedown-Curtis-Green/dp/1726077470/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1538736407&sr=8-1&keywords=Silk+Road+Takedown

He did mention he's recording the audiobook version so I'll probably just grab that from Audible when it becomes available: https://twitter.com/ilovepoker/status/1043364624039440391

It was obviously a penalty, but I think he's asking why they let Mahrez take it. Regardless, it was a very silly penalty to give away as he was going nowhere and unlikely to get one on target from that angle. Should have just ran the ball out or blocked the shot if he even managed to get one away which I doubt. City deserved to win, but I though Liverpool deserved a point also, and glad I got at least another point from the draw. Boring international break now.

Do you have proof of this behaviour? I have heard similar accusations in the past against game-protect but have seen no hard evidence. This would be extortion so if you provide proof of this then this probably wouldn't be tolerated.


They can be banned for this if they violate your local rules (as long as they were set out at the start). Hopefully on the new forum software you should be able to just ban certain users from even posting there in the first place which would make this self-modding more efficient.

I don't think it's that much different at all. Conor smashing up the bus unprovoked is just as bad. Doesn't matter whether there are cameras or not, but people obviously have their biases. Khabib shouldn't have done what he did, but I'm not sure we can say he is 100% responsible for what his team do either on the night and probably had little to no control over what they did. I'm sure there's much more to this that we actually know right now as well.


Doesn't matter how one dimensional you are if it wins you fights. Khabib is undefeated, so it's obviously working. Conor should have worked his magic whilst he was standing. The better fighter won here. Ido Portal seems to be a gimmick to me and I'm not sure how he had anything to do with Conor's one-punch knock out of Aldo. Conor might be able to move like liquid before the fight but he's not jumping around the ring like spiderman during it. If he actually used those skills to avoid getting hit or taken down then I might give more credit to Portal.

Just because people do this doesn't make it alright. Leaving untrue feedbacks (both positive and negative) can hurt both the business and customers. People buy merit and accounts here, but that doesn't mean it isn't shady and people are rightly left negative feedback for this. How is this any different? If somebody offered payment to either positive or negative trust them or someone else here we all know what would happen. This is fraud and you're paying people to lie and those who accept money for this are complete sell outs and can't be trusted because they will clearly lie or do things immoral just for payment.

And what happens when people change their name here to try hide their 'crimes' or wrongdoing (either here or elsewhere)?


People should be careful with what information they put online and we can't be responsible for this. If someone is lazy with their personal info then that's something they are responsible for and need to protect themselves.


If your info is online then someone can find it and implementing name changes (that are even logged) isn't going to stop anything. People could just create an external site that logs all name changes and that shows up on google. This seems like a feature that will just be abused by the nefarious more than will actually save innocent people, and again, people should just learn to be much more careful with their personal info because once it's out there it's likely not going to go away regardless of whether we let people change their name here.