Yikes--I'm pretty sure he'll be pretty upset about that if he isn't already. 

He'd been a member since before the merit system, so I don't think he started with zero merits.  Nevertheless, he was a pretty familiar face on the forum (at least to me), and it sucks that it turned out this way.  I don't know if more plagiarism was found or if the mods just didn't accept his reason, but we'll see if he appeals it.

My guess is that he forgot about it once the thread was locked or thought it wouldn't be necessary because it got locked.  And yes, that's exactly what he should have done once his mistake was realized--and here I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt in saying that it was a mistake.  I'm not a mind reader, so who knows.

Ah, I understand the situation now--when I read the OP this morning I was barely awake and didn't look into the particulars, but I just did (at least as far as Mpamaegbu is concerned). 

Forgetting to cite a source is something anyone could do, and in Mpamaegbu's case I think it might be the truth.  I just posted my opinion about it in the Report Plagiarism thread where it was uncovered.  If that turns out to be the only instance of Mpamaegbu not citing a source, then I'd probably give him the benefit of the doubt if I were the manager of the BestChange campaign.  As I said in my post, I'm fairly certain Mpamaegbu knows the consequences of plagiarizing and that a good number of members are hard at work sniffing out examples of it. 

In my previous post I said that "mistakes" usually don't happen, and that they're just an excuse members make up when they're busted.  I'm still sticking to that, but this might be one of those times where forgetting to put in the citation actually did happen.  Mpamaegbu's post history is probably being combed through for other instances of plagiarism as we speak, so we'll see what turns up (if anything).

I'm much less familiar with Pokapoka124 as a member, so I have no opinion on his/her posting habits, nor has that member said anything about the accusation that I'm aware of.  I'd say if any other examples of plagiarism show up from either account, then we know what we're dealing with--not mistakes but intentional plagiarism, and the usual consequences will ensue. 

Mpamaegbu will have to answer that question, though I'm not sure it really matters at this point.  Whether he says he forgot to reference the steemit article or one of those bitcointalk posts, the result (whatever it may be) is going to be the same.

I tend to believe Mpamaegbu's story about forgetting to cite the source, simply because I'm familiar with him as a member and I know damn well that he knows how seriously plagiarism is taken on the forum, and I seriously doubt he'd take a chance that someone wouldn't discover the source of that post.  I've chatted with him via PMs, and he's always been trying to do the right thing as far as I can tell. 

This is one of those situations that gets kinda sticky for me.  I can voice my personal opinion about what happened, but I definitely don't want to get egg splattered all over my face if I vouch for him and later it turns out that there have been multiple cases of plagiarism.  I don't think that's going to be true, and I hope someone can verify that.

Not sure when the last time I posted in this thread was (and I'm too damn lazy to check), but I thought quadruple fours is as good enough of a merit landmark as any:



Next stop: 5000.  I probably won't get there this year, but I'll be back here as soon as I do.

It should be that way--at least for merit sources, who are the ones who ought to have more objectivity when it comes to meriting posts--but the reality is different.  And yes, even as a merit source I have a hard time meriting posts from members I consider to be, well, idiots.  And I'm sure as hell not going to merit a post with factually inaccurate information, no matter how much time and effort went into it.

Am I wrong for this approach?  Maybe.  But unless or until Theymos gives instructions as to how merits should be handed out, that's how I'm going to operate.  It's not like I'm being paid to be a merit source, and usually the members whose viewpoints I nearly always oppose are Legendaries, and I try to limit the number of merits I give to that rank.

For members who aren't merit sources, who cares?  If you've got sMerits to give out, it's your choice who to give them to, and you have no obligation to merit someone you don't like, regardless of the reason you don't like the person or what the disagreement is about. 

In short, I don't believe there's any ethics involved when it comes to the merit system (except for perhaps abuse by merit sources, e.g., selling merits).  The whole things is basically a "like" system akin to what Reddit and other sites have, except that merits mean a lot more on this forum.  Nobody has to follow any guidelines other than to not sell or trade merits.  Anything else is fair game IMO.

That example by mk4 is plausible, because there are generic types of statements we've read that we might rewrite from memory without realizing it, but those IMO would tend to be very short statements and could be "mistakes".  That's the only scenario in which I can see someone making a good argument that they didn't plagiarize something.

But in general, I think that 99.99% of plagiarism is not done mistakenly.  But what have we learned from all the ban appeal threads when someone gets busted for plagiarism?  They claim it was a "mistake".  So it doesn't surprise me that Mpamaegbu is making that argument (though I don't know the details behind it).  If it only happened once and it was one of those sentences that anybody could write, then maybe it was unintentional--we'll see once all the facts are in.  Most of the time, though, there's no mistake at all.  The member caught copy/pasting really did do that.

I'm not sure who you're referring to by the rule-breaker hunters, but I don't think scam busters or those who sniff out plagiarism are bad apples at all.  If we didn't have members looking out for stuff like that, it would be rampant.  It already is rampant, and as far as plagiarism goes (since that's one of the biggest problems and one that will get a member permanently banned), it should be something every member ought to know not to do.

I tend to agree with you about the newer generation and how they use social media and how it might relate to the way they use this site, except that many new members of the forum come here just to get involved in sig campaigns and bounties, and not only are they not interested in technical discussions, they're not even interested in expressing much of anything.  The result is a lot of generic posts that repeat thoughts/ideas, are poorly written, and don't contribute anything to whatever the topic of a thread is.  I'm not sure how much you can educate those kind of members.

You've been a member of bitcointalk since 2017; don't you realize that Theymos doesn't give a shit whether bounty hunters get scammed or not?  Have you not seen all of the scam accusation threads dealing with situations exactly like the one you described?  It's not like this is the first (or even 10th) time this has happened. 

As to the second part of your statement above, all I have to say is "duh".  That's exactly what a lot of projects do, and it's the biggest problem with bounties that promise to pay their participants in worthless tokens once all the spamming is done.  They have no obligation to do so, even if you think they do.  They can't be forced to pay and they'll easily just skip right past that part once the project fails or if the project owners get greedy. 

My advice to you is to smarten up and stop spamming for these lousy projects that only want to make money for themselves.  They don't care one whit about you or any bounty hunters.  Bounty hunters are just a desperate pool of suckers they use as a marketing tool.

That was definitely tin foil hat stuff, OP.  That's why the post and thread were deleted--the mods thought it was such a crappy thread that they didn't even bother to move it to Off-Topic, so that should tell you something about what to expect when posting here.

And if you've actually been around since 2012, you'd know this.  I checked your post history to see if yours might be a bought account, but you've had the same posting style and similar posts ever since you registered 9 years ago.  Why are you complaining that a bizarre post got deleted?  I can see a newbie asking that, but not someone who's been on the forum for as long as you have.

There have been plenty of threads about Elon Musk that haven't been deleted.  The only reason OP's was is because it came off like a nutjob conspiracy theorist rant, and there's no way a discussion is going to flow from a post like that.

Nope, it probably isn't going to end--the problem is likely to keep getting worse from these accounts and probably many others as bitcoin (and altcoins) keeps rising in price, thereby drawing in new members, account farmers, bounty farms, and the rest of it.  The same thing happened in 2017, and remember when Yobit had its last campaign?  Tons of accounts started waking up and signing up--it was ridiculous.

The only thing to do is to keep exposing these idiots who abuse campaigns and bounties, as well as alt accounts who shitpost in the same thread.  Once they're called out for it, they usually go away (though I'm pretty sure they don't leave bitcointalk for good). 

Good job spotting these ones.

I don't doubt any of what you wrote, but I still question whether it's advantageous for Visa to be advertising to the public.  It isn't like an advertisement for Coca-Cola or Twinkies, where the ad is designed to create a craving in the viewer for the product.  Nobody is going to crave a Visa card after watching a Visa advert, know what I mean?  I'm just not sure that creating brand awareness through a TV-type ad really helps a service like theirs.  I could be wrong, of course.

That's good to hear, though I don't know any of the details of what banks are doing.  What I do know is that there are a lot of people who don't have permanent addresses--whether they're living on the street or in a shelter--and who need banking services.  Fortunately in those cases if they receive assistance from the government (at least in the US), they can deal with social service offices in their local county and can usually get a food stamp card which also functions as an ATM card if they get cash benefits.

Nice!  It's early in the month, but so far I feel like I've been slacking on merit sending.  I'm going to have to step it up if I want to exhaust my sMerit supply by the beginning of October (and that's my goal).  Good to see there's increased merit distribution, though, because that probably means other merit sources are kicking ass.

Congrats to all of those members, especially the Legendaries because I know how sweet that feels to attain the final rank.  That still seems like a very low number of users making it to those two ranks, even if it is only a weekly report.  I think before the merit system it used to be much higher (though I don't have any data to back up my gut feeling).

There really shouldn't be any confusion, because as has been explained NFTs are tokens on a blockchain that isn't bitcoin's, so any altcoin section--whether the English one or on any of the local boards--is the appropriate place.

I also disagree that the forum needs a separate section for them, nor do I think Theymos would even consider it.  My personal thought based on what I know about NFTs is that they're just a fad, no matter how popular they are at the moment.  I have a really hard time thinking of digital artwork as something that's going to be desirable in the long-term, no matter how unique each piece is.  The problem is that there can be an infinite number of unique pieces....and they're digital.  There's a world of difference between a physical piece of art painted on canvas vs. something created with a computer--and I don't think that's just me being old school.

Man, I really wanted to spread a lot more merits to the members on the latest list, but most of them only posted memes and others just didn't write posts that were all that good.  I think I may have helped at least one member to rank up, though, so I'm happy for that.

Guess I'll check previous weeks' lists that I missed.

I'm not up to speed on most aspects of pop culture (and we're probably from different generations, too), but that theory might hold some water.  Kudrow is not a common name--at least not where I'm from, nor is Briggs really, but I've seen the name Boyle a few times.  Who knows whether that's how the usernames were derived?  Either way, Ratimov and members who posted in his thread have provided enough evidence to clear up any doubts people had as to whether those accounts are connected.

Speaking of which, I haven't seen that thread or the other ones by Jazmin Whoever being bumped in the last day or so.  Have they all given up any pretense that they're not an account farm or what?

Most of the forum is intended for bitcoin discussion, but there are sections dedicated to other things (like Meta).  There are plenty of newbies posting in Bitcoin Discussion, but their posts are generally written for the sake of whatever campaign or bounty they're in--and that's been discussed to death, so I'll end my statement there.  I do agree that the ambitious newcomers who want to climb the ranks tend to post about merits and other non-bitcoin related stuff a lot, but usually I know the difference between an attempt to get merits and a genuinely good post.

I don't blame you, and I kind of have the same mindset--though lately I've been meriting a lot of Hero/Legendary members, since their posts are the ones that have stuck out from the rest of the dreck I've been reading.  I do try to follow that "ranking up pipeline" thread, because I like helping out members who are close to their next rank--and it's a great way for me to hand out a lot of merits in a short period of time, since I'm basically doing post history reviews.

Wow.  I'm not sure if I'd want to pay the government with crypto for anything, but in general this guy seems very pro-crypto--and that's a good thing.  Maybe then Binance can take NY off its restricted list, as well as all the other services that sell crypto for fiat that aren't allowed to operate in the state.  I'm still not sure why that is, but I know it's been a long-standing problem.

If only other politicians made statements like this as part of their platform.  Unfortunately, I think these types of statements are going to be limited to republicans.  Democrats are for bigger government, more taxes, more regulation, and are less likely to take a pro-crypto stance.

Interesting.  I do remember Yang but didn't remember his party (and I'm surprised to learn that he's a democrat).  You're probably right about a republican having no chance of getting elected as governor of NY.  We can only hope.

At this point I'm ready to believe anything when it comes to alt accounts and the associated BS that happens with them all around the forum.  That scam accusation thread against nutildah is obviously an example of that brand of nonsense.  There's no proof of any wrongdoing in it, and it was locked right after it was created.  I'm not accusing you of anything, colires.

Oh man, I haven't even thought of those members in a long time.  It's so nice that CH and his army of alt accounts and supporters (I think he had at least one that wasn't his alt) are gone....for now.  Knock on wood, because who knows when they could show up again. 

Laudanum I'm only somewhat familiar with.  Wasn't that an account created to criticize Lauda?

That's funny--I was in the same position back in 2014 when I was lurking and just starting to get interested in bitcoin.  I was reading all of these really crappy posts by members who obviously couldn't write English very well, and they were basically just writing garbage posts anyway.  I had no idea what a signature campaign was or what would motivate someone to write those kinds of posts.  Only after I registered and started to get a feel for the forum did I become familiar with the reasons behind the plague of shitposting.

Also, it's great that you lurked before becoming a member.  Not many people do that anymore; they just come here to participate in campaigns or bounties and their contributions are usually net negative to the forum overall.

I don't know about that, because I've started a few threads in which I was asking for help or information, and while there were inevitably crap posts made, I did usually get my answers.  One thing members can do is create self-moderated threads to eliminate nonsense replies (though some members don't like them and will choose not to post in self-modded threads).

He's got one neg with a valid reference and doesn't have many positives--but I don't know what to think about him being involved in scammy projects in general.  If he's knowingly managing and participating in bounties of projects he knows to be scams, then that's a problem and he'd deserve some DT tags.

In general, though, I don't think there's any problem with a bounty manager participating in his own bounty.  There have been bitcoin-paying signature campaigns that have had that happen with their managers.  I'd think of the manager's slot as an "extra" one, meaning I don't think the manager is taking an open slot in the bounty away from another applicant, but I'm not sure about that.  But in any case, what can you or anyone else do?  As long as the project owners are cool with it, there's nothing the community can do to stop it.  Theymos and the mods certainly aren't going to step in and prevent it.