Somebody tag them all. I really don't have time to verify and tag all these merit abusers but they need to be marked. Warnings need to be sent that it's very risky business doing this crap.


I like that phrase. Better than just the "friend" in quotation marks.




It makes them easier to spot as merits are a precious resource so most users can't resist giving them to their alts - sorry, "friends" - but it's very, very risky as we can see and so it should be. I've joked in the past we should rename merit points to alt points or "friend" tokens  .

You can always change the scores just as long as you don't lock them in. I normally wait until the end of the week when all the pundits start making their predictions and compare them against mine. Sometimes I'll tweak them accordingly but I like to stick to my guns. I usually do better than the actual pundits overall. Beat Lawro last year I think.

He's acknowledged the need to do so and it's obviously something that needs to be done sooner rather than later. He did put my suggestions of more sub mods/admins in the 'OK in principle, would require thought/adjustment/implementation' category in the community suggestions thread but for some reason he just isn't committing to it. I don't know whether it's just down to trust or what, but it's not like there isn't anyone trustworthy on the planet to do some of this stuff. In his own words he doesn't have time for even the basic of things here and barely even posts here so this work should be delegated out to those that can do it. We could have one or two people restoring accounts, one running the ad slots, one or two replying to emails and then that leaves theymos to crack on with the most important stuff behind the scenes. At the moment nothing is getting done at all and people are having to wait a year+ to get their account back which isn't acceptable. The forum could run so much more efficiently and he doesn't even need to do anything other than initially sort that out by giving the ability to trusted people to do this stuff. All he has to do is then oversee things but you can do that from the backseat. Not doing anything at all just makes things worse and we're practically going backwards at the minute as more and more issues just keep getting pilled up.

I don't think he can either, but I'd like to see him there even if it's just to prove me wrong. People put too much emphasis on managers making that much of a difference or expect them to come in and revolutionise the squad and win trophies immediately and that just never happens unless you have a world class squad to begin with. Managers like Pep and Zidane already inherited world class squads from world class clubs. I mean, who couldn't win a title with Bayern and Barca? Let's see them manage a mediocre Championship team and see if they can win them the Championship and then the Premier League within a few years. Then I'd call them a world class manager. At least Fergie started from scratch with United and built his team up to be great. People should start blaming the players more instead of using managers as a scapegoat (unless they're just tactically going to pot) but they rarely do. Sometimes teams just don't gel or have a bad run of forum and sacking the manager for a new one usually does very little to remedy that. United getting Zidane probably won't make any difference, especially this season.

No, they can change them at anytime, but if you tried to change it to theymos or something with 'theymos' in it like theymoss it wouldn't allow you. I once changed my name on my main account then I couldn't even change it back to the original without an admin doing it so I assume all staff names are blacklisted in some capacity. You can't have satoshi in your name either.  Think I once tried to register hilariousandcrow and that wasn't allowed either haha.

I think I'll stay away from betting on this round (or at least today's games). Far too many uncertainties and players out. Apparently Real Madrid have a load of players injured. I never do that great in Champions League anyway. I'll see if SkyBet offer a price boost for tomorrow.


Yeah, I agree. Valencia are fourteenth in their league and they have to travel so I think Man United will be ok here. If they don't win though they Jose is probably in trouble.


Ronaldo is suspended though remember. I think they'll still beat them fairly easily but probably not a thrashing which I would have gone for if Christiano was playing.

Don't forget to put your scores in for today's and tomorrow's games. I think predicting the Champion's League is ten times harder than the Premier League. Some teams I'm just not familiar with at all. Then there's some injuries and suspensions you've got to take into consideration. Juventus are missing Ronaldo and apparently Real Madrid have a load of players out to injury. Man United are playing shit, but then Valencia aren't doing great either and are fourteenth in their league. Really not sure what to go with for a lot of these games and there's too much to research really so I guess I'll just have to go with gut instinct.

I don't disagree. I would rather each board have three mods as opposed to either one or zero (especially if you discount Globals). Mining isn't even that active and is certainly one of the less-spammed boards, but Bitcoin Discussion on the other hand is spam central and doesn't even have even one dedicated mod. I managed to get a list of the top reporters in there from theymos a few months ago but nothing since despite a handful of PMs about the matter. Not going to keep annoying him with it so the ball is in his court now. Things like this should be done ASAP though and only require a short amount of his time and then no further action would be required from him and the forum benefits in the process.

Noticed this shit post below was given five merit:

limmousine (5)


Then he got another five from a different user:

knuckey (5)


limtjoehua received five merit from both limmousine and knuckey (conveniently enough to become a Member), both who also merited Ghebung Masam for these posts below:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2039821 Ghebung Masam



I'd say something fishy is going on here.

Newcastle United, Everton and Bournemouth aren't difficult matches. Nobody will expect them to win again Juve, City and Chelsea either, especially away. If they lose or draw against the first three Premier League teams then maybe arguably he should go, but if he can get some points from the home games in the Champions League then I think that would be fair enough. I doubt they'll let him go unless they can 100% confirm Zidane as a replacement, especially considering they'll have to give Jose a huge pay-off to get rid of him and Zidane is probably going to command one of the biggest salaries for a manager.

It's probably the easiest and most rewarding job they'll ever have regardless of whether there's one person or a team of them behind the accounts, but it can be done just by one person if you think about it. Think of it as just like an admin job that you get to sit at home all day and get paid handsomely just for posting crap. If you look at their posts they're all just one/two liners with the minimal amount of effort being put into them. They find spam threads, write their one/two liners, then just re-write it over how ever many accounts they have. When you've got hundreds of accounts doing this the money starts to seriously rack up. Some users are making tens of thousands for this and I think some address have been traced that have had $100k+ worth of tokens sent to it so that just shows you how much money there is to be made for this abuse. It's why we need more than just one merit requirement and need to clamp down on the ICO campaigns who are paying them to make this rubbish because the worst abusers are just going to find ways to abuse the merit system to their advantage like this particular instance.

It's posts like this that make me think he's just trolling, but you never know. One thing I've learned over this years is to never underestimate human stupidity.


State-sponsored trolls usually have an agenda and are either pro or anti-something to promote whatever their agenda is. What is BadDecker's agenda? Promote God/Christianity? What good would this serve any government. He either genuinely believes this crap (and there are these sorts of people) or he's just trolling for kicks. Either way, if everyone ignored him then he'd probably get bored. I don't think there's one thing that trolls hate worse than the silent treatment because they then realise they're just wasting their time. When they keep getting a rise out of people then they keep doing it because it's fun for them.

Obviously Bitcoin Discussion needs a dedicated mod or two to trash the spam, but any decent article can and does get posted in Bitcoin Discussion so that's just another reason in my opinion why we don't need the Press board.


The name is tongue in cheek.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_tower


Ha. If we did that then nobody would post in there other than those that haven't figured out that posts don't count. Might as well just get rid of it if that was going to happen.


You probably couldn't make a list of all these publications as it would be too inclusive. We should just state that it' if it's from a Crypto/Bitcoin related site then it's not notable and therefor not allowed

The merit system was implemented to prevent people just signing up here with multiple accounts just to milk campaigns for all they're worth and that's what it curbs. Why are you people so concerned with others and something that doesn't effect you? You're acting like the kids who want to take their own ball home because if they can't play then nobody else can. This 'rich get richer' bullshit is tiring.  Concentrate on yourself rather than others and either deal with it or go away because whining isn't going to do you any good at all.

As for people who abuse the merit system, they are dealt with by the community with negative feedback and that's the best we can do, but I'd concern yourself with your own posts and merits rather than anyone else.

Well that all depends on how you run it exactly. Just make sure it's in line with the forum rules which can be found at the following and you should be fine: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2766177.0

And there's a Signature Campaign guidelines thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1684035.0

Basically just don't pay people to make spam and don't incentivise them to post in your thread.

Well he would have if they were all on the three o'clock kick-offs. It's much easier to get six results out of ten games as opposed to just the six.


I think they only give the prizes out to the top users over all the site, which is a bit shit. So there would only be one winner site-wide, so if somebody else got five scores but got more points or something then they get the jersey. I could be wrong but I think that's how it works and obviously makes your chances of winning anything very slim.

Well Copper Member is showing up now so you must have done something right.


You can send the money from anywhere. Using exchange addresses I think is only really an issue when either refunds/returning money are concerned.

You don't have to be happy about it, but you don't have to care about it either. Why would you be bothered by what some random person on the internet says about your parents? Why let it bother you? If somebody said something about my parents then it's just irrelevant, childish nonsense that isn't worth justifying with a reaction. Nine times out of ten people only say things to get a reaction and when they you do react they win. If you don't react then they'd probably just get bored and move on to something else but when you show someone a weakness they're just going to exploit it.

We don't and I'm not sure why you would think we are just picking on Newbies. You now merely need one merit to become a Junior Member. You need ONE HUNDRED to become a Full Member, and ONE THOUSAND to become a Legendary. Why are you not complaining about us attacking them? The problem is people are coming here in droves to farm thousands of accounts just by spamming and we need to stop that and the best way to do that is to make sure they're making quality posts and once rewarded for them via merit they get to move up ranks. If they spam or make low quality contributions then they will forever remain a low rank as they should.

One thing that has always annoyed me is people who claim to be freedom of speech, just right up until somebody says something they don't like then they want to silence them.


If your faith is so strong why do you even care about insults to them? Surely Mohammed and Allah will take care of the insults at a later date and you don't need to worry about anything. Just ignore it, especially if it's something that is only going to annoy or enrage you because people will see that and just attack you more, like the idiot above.