Press board should definitely be added to the list. It has assigned moderator, jgarzik who was inactive for a long time and came back just to participate in his own altcoin's thread. He's not even on staff any more like MiningBuddy, but neither of them have been removed by theymos from there. If I understand the purpose of that board correctly - posting press hits from mainstream media about Bitcoin - then most of the content is pure spam: non-bitcoin or even non-crypto related links, links to crypto-related news sites (what's the point?) or some niche blog posts, hardly anyone is sticking to the advised format + there's a spam even in sticky posts.
That board has served its purpose long ago and should be locked or archived, or at the very least a thread stickied there that only notable sources are allowed (and by notable I mean no bitcoin-related sources). It's just used as promotion tool for ICOs and people's crappy bitcoin websites and many others just use it as a legalised way to get away with copy and pasting. |
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Clearly linked accounts. It’d be cool if the new forum software (whenever/if it is introduced) would have an in-built feature that automatically detects multiple accounts based on the writing style and IP address. Although the merit system aims to discourage such posts, the current and more practical way to stop it is through tagging the alt accounts. Well spotted though.
This forum can already find alts based on IPs etc but only admins have access to that info, but I hope the new forum software does have more features like Browser Fingerprinting available to them. I've suggested this before but theymos seemed a little uncertain about it and said that he really didn't "want bitcointalk.org to be known as the #1 forum on the leading edge of de-anonymization technology". A lot of forums do actually already have these features anyway and if a new one is to be created then it should also at least be there and theymos can chose whether to use it or not and on a case by case basis. Designing a new forum software from scratch and not having this feature would be like creating a new phone that doesn't have GPS or something (sure, people could use it for bad, but it's also a very useful feature to have for obvious reasons). Whether theymos wants to actually use it or not or give access to other admins is another issue, but I think the feature should at least be there as opposed to not existing at all. It obviously shouldn't be abused but it would be a great tool in finding huge abuses such as farming and botting. Most people are smart enough to use different IPs for each account but they're likely not going to be using a different computer or browser for each one and that's where this is helpful. Relevant post: I've never heard of this either. Tor and VPNs are meant to protect you against this sort of stuff and I doubt even the CIA can find this info if you're smart enough (though I believe VPNs can accidentally leak your IP in some ways). What you might be thinking of is browser fingerprinting though which can be very useful to catch alts and just using a proxy won't help you (and I think this should be on the new forum). You might use a different IP for your accounts but you almost certainly won't be using a unique PC or browser for each of your alts and accounts could be collated and searched by them and cross referenced with other data etc.
A year or two ago I was researching fingerprinting techniques that'd work against pretty much anyone with JavaScript enabled, and I found several promising leads on that front. But then it occurred to me that I don't really want bitcointalk.org to be known as the #1 forum on the leading edge of de-anonymization technology, so I stopped pursuing it seriously...IMO The most interesting idea I had was that you could probably fingerprint based on latency even via Tor using long-term data collection. A Tor connection looks like: User --- ISP --- Guard --- Mid --- Exit --- Server
A B C D E
The latencies of connections A, B, and A+B are good fingerprint values; ISPs should have statistically-significant differences in latency to the server if the latency can be determined with enough accuracy. Latency will also uniquely vary over time; ie. latency will go up slightly when your ISP is busy, the schedule of which will be distinguishing. Additionally, Tor selects a handful of guards when it starts and then uses only those, so if you can figure out the complete list of guards, this fingerprints a long-term Tor session across sites and logins. Connection E can be directly measured, as can A+B+C+D+E if JS is enabled. That alone may be enough for fingerprinting A+B if you collect data over a long period of time. You'd roughly model the random latency distribution of C+D across the entire Tor network (which is not that large and is predictable in several non-obvious ways); then since you have a whole bunch of A+B+C+D+E and E measurements, you can get a good idea of A+B. You might be able to do even better by taking into account these facts: Tor changes to a new random Mid and Exit every 10 minutes, but it only affects new TCP connections. So you can usually control the timing exactly by opening TCP connections via JS. And it chooses a random Guard only from a small set, with that set being chosen only at the start of the long-term Tor session. So you might be able to get the guard identities (or a fingerprint of the guard identities) and info about the latencies by collecting latency data every 10 minutes via JS and looking at the clusters formed by the handful of different guards. On a MITM attack, you can do even better. If you control both Mid and the server, then you know C, D, E, and the Guard identity. A+B is then trivial to calculate. There are only about 6000 Tor nodes, so if you only run one Tor non-exit node, you have something like a 1/6000 chance every 10 minutes to fingerprint the user this way. (That's a really rough estimate; the odds are better because you can exploit Tor behaviors like its IP-space diversity requirements, but worse because selection is not random, and is also based on things like seniority and bandwidth.) Additionally, if a user happens to choose your node as a guard when he starts his Tor session (so a smallish chance ~ per day rather than per 10 minutes), then you can completely deanonymize him (ie. get his IP address) when he visits the site; this is a well-known attack which the NSA & friends are probably doing all the time on a very large scale. |
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Nothing too wrong? They're pure shit spread over dozens of accounts, but that's bitcointalk for you. Ball is in theymos' court now if he wants to do something about it. You missed these ones as well: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2313673 MarshMagpie July 29, 2018 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2313625 CrashGangster July 29, 2018 They belong to a farmer who was farming hundreds of accounts and I've probably banned 50+. All his usernames were just two random words put together. He's now joined a ICO campaign on those two and god knows how many others. This is why Juniors and Newbies need their signature removing completely. |
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Theymos, so when are you going to remove signatures from Juniors and/or make them achieve some sort of merit to become one? This would have probably stopped this guy from earning anything. Newbies and Junior Members should not be able to get paid for copy and pasting. If you can't earn some minimal amount of merit then you don't deserve be able to earn here.
Inasmuch as am tempted to agree with you on this, I feel you are being too hard on lower ranked members here. Am sure many of the big guys here wouldn't have gotten to where they are now if the merit system was in place when they were newbies. Secondly, your submission lacks the sense of motivation for newcomers. The average pay for Sr.member to Jr.member is 8/1, this is fine and a sort of commensurable for all except those who have huge appetite for greed. Finally, majority of the people here started from what you guys might call "shitposts" before they learnt and became acquainted with the requirements of this forum. So I suggest you steer a middle course in your disposition. No. We're not being hard enough. Any shitposter like you can get paid here as a junior with no effort and that's the problem. And I don't know what you mean by 'big guys' but if you can't get merit then you shouldn't be able to earn here. You've been here nearly a year and you've got a grand total of zero merit. Well done. I've received more merit today then you have in a year. You should't be getting paid for the lazy crap that you make and if you had to actually put some effort into earn here I'm sure you would actually try harder. But you don't need to. Neither do all the other Newbies and Junior Members here that sign up in their thousands and that's why this needs to change and signatures need to be removed. If you can't get ten merit to have a signature then you don't deserve to be able to earn here. |
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All you can do is keep reporting them. They're easy to spot with the naming formatting. I've nuked probably 50+ today, but this is just one of those issues were going to have to manually deal with by users reporting them until measures are put in place to prevent them. All new users being shadow-banned until white-listed by staff would at least stop them from showing up and being a nuisance and at least theymos put that suggestion into the "maybe" pile so maybe it will be implemented one day.
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I think this thread illustrates the crux of the issue. Everyone thinks there should be more moderators, but few actually want to be the moderators. It's a really tough one. This may just be a case of waiting for the right candidates to present themselves, so maybe don't give theymos too much of a hard time about it if you aren't volunteering your own time to improve the situation.
I think this illustrates more that the community isn't necessarily a good barometer of who to make a mod (except maybe in local boards where the most active users are probably amongst the best choices and are often put to votes there). I'm also sure there's plenty of people who want to me mods here, and those who have reported insane amounts would be a good place to start. Theymos should probably post the updated report table again and then maybe we can discuss who might be the best choice there. Hopefully he can post the one by board as well so we can see who would make ideal sub board mods. |
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I see theymos was here but didn't answer the request.
Hope we get a feedback soon.
...
How you can see that theymos was here? Is there any setting in the forum to check back later who has viewed the topic/post? I thought it's not possible, but I don't know all the features of this forum.... You can't be 100% sure he seen it, but if he's been online he's probably been in Meta and seen a thread that directly addresses him in the title. Theymos' comments are becoming about as rare as unicorn sightings though  . And Bounties? The board consists from posts alike "interesting project". Aren't we tired from this? The forum definitely needs more mods to control spammers and shitposters.
It needs more than just more mods. Without fundamental changes here nothing much will change despite how much manpower your throw at it. You could have an entire office consisting of mods trying to clean up spam and it still probably wouldn't be enough because there's thousands of spammers spamming and hundreds more probably sign up per day. I agree we do need more mods, but we also need to start punishing those who are paying for the spam in the first place. Tackle the problem at the source. |
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Putting these things to a vote is futile. Those who are most popular amongst the community may not be the best person for the job (nor want it) and as others have mentioned theymos probably pays little to no attention to them. If he was going to add new mods then he is the one who has the most relevant stats for that and they should be largely chosen by who is reporting the most and most frequently (somebody who has ten thousand reports but hasn't reported anything in months probably isn't going to be a better choice than someone who has reported a few thousand in the past few months etc). If you want a shot at becoming a mod then keep reporting and maybe one day you'll get chosen, but at least you'll help the board out in the process.
Nederlands (Dutch)
What happened to mitchell? |
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Good idea in theory and you and anyone else who wants to join you are free to try it, but when there's only a handful of people doing this and self-modding threads it doesn't really make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things when you're swimming in a sea of shit. You'll soon realise how much work it is to keep on top of the spam because you delete one post and there's another made just as fast to replace it. I would prefer we tackle the spam in other ways but I get there's not much anyone can do without theymos on board so community-led initiatives have to be proposed in the meantime.
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My time is valuable - especially my free time, which is when I am a able to browse Bitcointalk. I refuse to waste hours of that time searching through pages and pages of spam for the one or two comments that include an original or well-articulated though. As I mentioned before, finding threads early can sometimes lead to a good discussion over a couple of posts, but as soon as the spammers take over, I usually give up and remove the topic from my watchlist.
Unfortunately, its not going to get better without people reporting it. It doesn't mean that we are relying on you to report alone. More people in general need to be reporting. I'm a patroller, and I don't seem to get that many reports in the Bitcoin Discussion section. Maybe, there's not that many newbie spammers there, but I would think they are a big portion of it. The forum has got so bad that probably 90% of posts in Bitcoin Discussion threads are spam or unsubstantial so reporting is futile and it would be a full time job trying to report all the posts that actually need to be removed. Ain't nobody got time for that. Without changes to what is actually allowed to go on here then nothing will change. A handful of users will still keep reporting for whatever reason but it's like picking one turd out of a sea of shit. Signatures from lower ranks need to be removed and badly run ICO campaigns need to face repercussions for shitting up the forum. |
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I believe that if you allow signatures and a merit requirement the Ivory tower would become a great place.
Let's say about 30- 50 earned merit requirement. I believe that its not that hard to achieve and everyone who writes there now have this requirement
This would keep spammers off and bring good posters there.
What do you think?
No. You people are missing the entire point of Ivory Tower. In fact, I think the rank/merit requirement should be made higher, but I'd rather there be next to no posts in there rather than the place be full of the mediocre shit that gets posted by sig spammers. That board's express purpose is to keep people from making posts in there just to get paid. If you want to get paid then use any of the other boards. That one should be left alone for those who are only willing to post in there and if that means very few people post in it then so be it. At least we've still got a safe heaven from sig spam but if we're to allow it then it's completely redundant and we might as well just remove it completely. |
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For those of you who think it would be full of spam: how is it that hilariousandco’s ideas of removing signatures completely for lower ranks seems a good idea and to allow them on the Ivory Tower for one month where only members and above can post, seem such a bad one? I think it is pretty much the same. They're completely different. My suggestion stops those lower ranks from getting paid to post completely because they've turned the forum into a shitheap. Your suggestion is we allow them to get paid to post in a board that was created for the exact opposite of that and turn that into a shitheap as well. I had the idea that there would obviously be much less spam than on other sections, and I thought it could show that the problem is not paid signatures but mostly lower rank signatures. The higher the rank, the less spammers. The spam issue is from both lower ranks and having a signature. Put them together and you have disaster. Allowing them another board to spam in isn't the solution to anything but more paid signature spam, and in a board that was created for the express purpose to be free of that. How is it not working? Clearly it is working if it's not full of sig spam.
I don’t think theymos wanted such low traffic on that board when he opened it. Theymos and others wanted some boards that were free of signature spam in there, you know, what you're now suggesting we do to liven the place up a bit. That board having low traffic isn't an issue at all. The purpose of it is to have a place for sig-free unmonetised discussion and it mostly works in that respect. That board doesn't need traffic. It's a sig-free discussion board. The lack of posting in there only proves that the majority of people only post here for signature campaigns, but that was already a given. The bad thing is even Jr. Members below or even Members (I just guessing 'cause I really don't know) that has knowledge and might be interested on a topic can't reply to it. Hope even allowed it to example in my rank to post out there I don't mind my signature not to be seen.
The Ivory Tower is meant to keep people like you out. You can post in every other board or your local language one if there's something you want to discuss. |
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Are you really expecting new accounts to contribute something here immediately? Just imagine when you gain admission into a new school, you are expected to be on the learning part and such should be expected here. But the problem here is people are going to an English-speaking 'school' for a subject they don't have any interest or knowledge in and many can't speak English very well in the first place, but are only going because there's some payment in it for them for 'attending'. When I was in college if you parents earned under a certain amount you got a thing called Educational Maintenance Allowance. There were some people in my class who were quite open that they wouldn't be there if it wasn't for that, and they didn't really want to be there and would do the minimal amount of work possible and just slack off. They really shouldn't have been there and were sometimes quite disruptive to the rest of the class. The same thing is happening here. Most of the new users don't care about Bitcoin and are just here to earn and it's ruined the experience for everyone else in the process. That's the same problem we have here. |
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Mods have to be paid, that might be the issue here. You could find volunteers yes, but volunteers might get overzealous if they don't have the right motivations.
How about making new mods rank up instead of paying them ? And if they do a shitty job, you just fire them and move them back to their former rank.
Staff members are volunteers but do get paid also. The issue isn't money as theymos has said numerous times that the forum has more than enough money in reserves, so much so that he's even contemplated getting rid of the forum ad slot which is pretty much the forum's only source of income (which I don't think he should do). There are probably several long-standing and fairly trusted members of the community that could step up and would make great mods and those amongst the highest reporters with several thousands of accurate reports would be on a worthy shortlist. You could also promote some of the existing staff members to dedicated sub board mods but doing both would be more effective. |
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I guess I need to step it up... Only 95% accuracy.
Still it's good to show the users some stats about their work, let them know that what they are doing is actually contributing some value to the forum.
Would be nice to also see a breakdown of who had the most accurate reports, could be like a competition (perhaps to decide the next mod?)
This is the most recent update(8 months ago): All time: +--------------------+-------+-----+-----------+----------+
| realName | good | bad | unhandled | accuracy |
+--------------------+-------+-----+-----------+----------+
| Lutpin | 11008 | 167 | 334 | 0.9851 |
| shorena | 10423 | 359 | 524 | 0.9667 |
| Cyrus | 4641 | 170 | 90 | 0.9647 |
| botany | 4568 | 159 | 220 | 0.9664 |
| xandry | 4271 | 89 | 91 | 0.9796 |
| xhomerx10 | 4098 | 65 | 184 | 0.9844 |
| mexxer-2 | 3936 | 80 | 71 | 0.9801 |
| Foxpup | 3719 | 21 | 99 | 0.9944 |
| EFS | 3597 | 74 | 171 | 0.9798 |
| rickbig41 | 3321 | 46 | 367 | 0.9863 |
| Quickseller | 2982 | 130 | 173 | 0.9582 |
| mprep | 2794 | 120 | 159 | 0.9588 |
| hilariousandco | 2723 | 82 | 30 | 0.9708 |
| TheButterZone | 2430 | 230 | 97 | 0.9135 |
| DannyHamilton | 2425 | 31 | 111 | 0.9874 |
| Welsh | 2213 | 42 | 20 | 0.9814 |
| achow101 | 1847 | 29 | 47 | 0.9845 |
| redsn0w | 1786 | 276 | 118 | 0.8661 |
| -ck | 1756 | 26 | 14 | 0.9854 |
| subSTRATA | 1633 | 58 | 121 | 0.9657 |
| mitzie | 1526 | 65 | 32 | 0.9591 |
| dbshck | 1523 | 14 | 9 | 0.9909 |
| deadley | 1495 | 79 | 16 | 0.9498 |
| SFR10 | 1417 | 5 | 14 | 0.9965 |
| EcuaMobi | 1370 | 13 | 17 | 0.9906 |
| malevolent | 1317 | 37 | 18 | 0.9727 |
| --Encrypted-- | 1268 | 23 | 28 | 0.9822 |
| tmfp | 1230 | 39 | 22 | 0.9693 |
| Lauda | 1197 | 22 | 66 | 0.9820 |
| suchmoon | 1111 | 119 | 172 | 0.9033 |
| Vod | 1110 | 17 | 23 | 0.9849 |
| okae | 1063 | 0 | 0 | 1.0000 |
| OmegaStarScream | 1060 | 17 | 14 | 0.9842 |
| railzand | 965 | 61 | 3 | 0.9405 |
| mocacinno | 955 | 0 | 0 | 1.0000 |
| austin | 896 | 46 | 0 | 0.9512 |
| Mitchell | 895 | 36 | 118 | 0.9613 |
| Muhammed Zakir | 877 | 71 | 89 | 0.9251 |
| unamis76 | 852 | 2 | 7 | 0.9977 |
| NLNico | 779 | 20 | 8 | 0.9750 |
| MissCrypto | 773 | 18 | 14 | 0.9772 |
| xetsr | 750 | 47 | 44 | 0.9410 |
| dogie | 725 | 215 | 109 | 0.7713 |
| KWH | 705 | 72 | 51 | 0.9073 |
| Chris! | 696 | 37 | 31 | 0.9495 |
| grv | 677 | 16 | 946 | 0.9769 |
| dihydrogenmonoxide | 647 | 159 | 87 | 0.8027 |
| pedrog | 643 | 5 | 5 | 0.9923 |
| ocminer | 617 | 33 | 6 | 0.9492 |
| cr1776 | 606 | 12 | 10 | 0.9806 |
+--------------------+-------+-----+-----------+----------+
Last 120 days: +---------------------+------+-----+-----------+----------+
| realName | good | bad | unhandled | accuracy |
+---------------------+------+-----+-----------+----------+
| rickbig41 | 1535 | 24 | 248 | 0.9846 |
| xandry | 1208 | 25 | 2 | 0.9797 |
| xhomerx10 | 542 | 9 | 31 | 0.9837 |
| Foxpup | 401 | 2 | 30 | 0.9950 |
| DannyHamilton | 363 | 7 | 32 | 0.9811 |
| Lutpin | 341 | 7 | 32 | 0.9799 |
| grv | 306 | 6 | 540 | 0.9808 |
| subSTRATA | 269 | 3 | 18 | 0.9890 |
| mprep | 248 | 1 | 27 | 0.9960 |
| frodocooper | 191 | 4 | 5 | 0.9795 |
| The Pharmacist | 176 | 2 | 20 | 0.9888 |
| -ck | 155 | 0 | 4 | 1.0000 |
| EFS | 154 | 0 | 14 | 1.0000 |
| vizito | 145 | 4 | 4 | 0.9732 |
| MissCrypto | 137 | 0 | 13 | 1.0000 |
| HI-TEC99 | 136 | 1 | 3 | 0.9927 |
| dbshck | 134 | 0 | 1 | 1.0000 |
| OmegaStarScream | 131 | 1 | 5 | 0.9924 |
| fxpc | 130 | 42 | 36 | 0.7558 |
| bL4nkcode | 123 | 9 | 12 | 0.9318 |
| PauloLauro | 122 | 106 | 3 | 0.5351 |
| Flying Hellfish | 109 | 10 | 1 | 0.9160 |
| shorena | 106 | 5 | 12 | 0.9550 |
| Vadi2323 | 105 | 19 | 3 | 0.8468 |
| Meuh6879 | 99 | 4 | 5 | 0.9612 |
| achow101 | 97 | 0 | 4 | 1.0000 |
| Pearls Before Swine | 97 | 11 | 7 | 0.8981 |
| mocacinno | 86 | 0 | 0 | 1.0000 |
| Kubra Dam | 85 | 13 | 0 | 0.8673 |
| NotFuzzyWarm | 85 | 2 | 7 | 0.9770 |
| Quickseller | 83 | 1 | 12 | 0.9881 |
| Mitchell | 81 | 3 | 17 | 0.9643 |
| Here4Trades | 78 | 1 | 7 | 0.9873 |
| Joel_Jantsen | 77 | 3 | 10 | 0.9625 |
| Vod | 72 | 0 | 6 | 1.0000 |
| P E K K A | 71 | 24 | 2 | 0.7474 |
| Blackshadow007 | 68 | 5 | 0 | 0.9315 |
| Byte16 | 66 | 7 | 0 | 0.9041 |
| instacalm | 66 | 5 | 2 | 0.9296 |
| AT101ET | 64 | 1 | 0 | 0.9846 |
| odolvlobo | 62 | 0 | 1 | 1.0000 |
| sweetdesirez | 61 | 3 | 4 | 0.9531 |
| sbogovac | 61 | 1 | 21 | 0.9839 |
| pooya87 | 59 | 0 | 9 | 1.0000 |
| Lauda | 59 | 0 | 1 | 1.0000 |
| nydiacaskey01 | 58 | 2 | 1 | 0.9667 |
| 110110101 | 57 | 0 | 0 | 1.0000 |
| richardivan | 55 | 7 | 2 | 0.8871 |
| suchmoon | 54 | 3 | 4 | 0.9474 |
| LeGaulois | 53 | 2 | 1 | 0.9636 |
+---------------------+------+-----+-----------+----------+
Thanks a lot to all active reporters! These stats have likely changed dramatically since then though. Are these still the most recent updates on the reporters? Theymos, could you give us the updated ones for both all time and the past 90/120 days or whatever when you get chance? For those interested these are the one for Bitcoin Discussion: Good reports, last 90 days: +-----------------------+--------+
| realName | rcount |
+-----------------------+--------+
| krishnapramod | 1255 |
| bitart | 609 |
| stompix | 349 |
| pooya87 | 299 |
| OmegaStarScream | 238 |
| Welsh | 205 |
| xhomerx10 | 189 |
| bitcoin revo | 186 |
| TheQuin | 148 |
| bitperson | 135 |
| Lutpin | 127 |
| LeGaulois | 117 |
| ralle14 | 116 |
| qwk | 103 |
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Was it ever really alive in the first place? Most of the 'serious' discussion just goes on in Serious Discussion anyway.
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The economics board is terrible too. The entire board is terrible and the longer we leave things the worse it gets and exponentially so. Signature spam has always been an issue here even back when I signed up, but it was never like it is now. The spam was tolerable and few and far between with only a handful of users that over-stepped the mark and when they did they were usually temp banned by BadBear. Now the signature spam is completely embarrassing with it being endemic and spam being the norm consisting mostly of barely comprehensible generic one or two liners made by people who don't even care about bitcoin and can't speak English very well and are only doing so for payment and likely over many multiple accounts. It's become unmanageable, but the people who need to be punished are the ICOs that are paying them to do this. If you go in Bitcoin Discussion probably eight out of every ten posts are mostly generic nonsense churned out by someone who's on an ICO campaign and doesn't really know what they're talking about. As theymos himself says, this forum shouldn't be a welfare system for people, but that's what it mostly is now. There are ways we can stop this, or at least drastically curb it, but doing nothing is only going to make it worse. I get that theymos is busy and appreciate coding things takes time and he is probably under incredible stress with all the issues he has to deal with being the defacto executive here and there's a lot of things that go on behind the scenes that most people probably don't even consider (accounting, dealing with lawyers, the taxman, and all the other issues this forum has which he is probably doing most of by himself), but that's why he should delegate as many things as he can here to others. I get that it's not always easy handing off things that require a lot of trust but there are plenty of things theymos can do in the meantime that will help clean the board up and all it probably takes is a few clicks and minutes of his time and then others can do the work without bothering him and the forum benefits in the process. Theymos must get annoyed at all the PMs he gets about various issues so why not do things that will solve some of the many issues here and cut down the need for users pestering him which will then free up his time to do the more important things behind the scenes that only he can do? I don't even like messaging him about things these days because he rarely replies and I don't want him to get annoyed at me, but should I just give up? If that happens then the worse things get. I messaged him about adding a mod for Bitcoin Discussion on August 7th and got a response the same day with a list of the top reporters there but he never replied to me after that despite sending about 4 or 5 messages about it every week or so. krishnapramod was the top reporter there and he also busts a lot of copy and pasters so he would probably be good choice for a patroller at least (unless theymos knows something about him I don't). He's also apparently Indian so if that Local board needs another mod then that's another good reason. If theymos or cyrus don't have the time and/or energy to restore accounts, add more mods, add merit sources or even run the forum ad auctions then that should be stuff that gets delegated to others. Adding more mods or assigning sub board mods should have been done years ago and it doesn't take much of theymos' time do so so and that's one less thing he has to worry about and the forum improves at least a little bit in the process. Also, even if theymos does implement the automatic account recovery process eventually there's still going to be people who won't be able to use it or need further investigation so another admin is probably going to be needed anyway, and at least they can help restore accounts in the meantime until that system goes live. There's also all the account and bot farming issues that need to be looked into like this. Theymos himself said more mods and admins (or demi-admins) are probably a good idea, so why not do these things now instead of putting them off? Maybe it is a trust matters because handing a new man an authority to be near admin level means there is risk for some things, maybe like account security, etc, but i dont know for sure about that. Maybe, just maybe, hiring accountants and professionals means that
There may or may not be trust issues with adding more admins, but there's ways you can limit the power you give people to minimise the risk of potential abuse, but putting off doing things just because of potential abuse doesn't help and in fact makes things worse. If there's no one trustable here to do certain things then look at alternative ways. Hire someone externally like he has mentioned or try get BadBear back since we know at least he can be trusted to be an admin. If theymos can't or don't want to recruit new moderator, then theymos should do something else such as disabling signature on boards with lots of spammer to punish spammer.
Such drastic measure like this shouldn't be a first option, but doing this would just push those spammers to other boards where signatures are shown. It doesn't solve the problem but just sweeps the rubbish into a different part of the house. I'd like to help moderating the Economics section but I think theymos wants for moderators people who massively report, and I don’t. I’ve only reported 85 times in one year.
Well I would say keep reporting, but there are users with thousands upon thousands of reports that are not yet mods. I don't think anyone who does just report a shitload of posts should be automatically made a mod, but I definitely think there are some good candidates amongst those that do (unless theymos knows something about them that I don't). |
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