I initially had it down as 1-1 but changed it to 1-2. I thought it would be close but City would be too strong for them. Sometimes you should just stick to your guns but I've also won points by changing scores at the last minute (something I rarely do).


2-1 is quite a popular score and is somewhat of a lucky score for me. I would only go with 1-1 on the closely matched teams but I never like betting draws as do most people. I had Watford to draw 1-1 with Chelsea last night but didn't expect them to demolish them, though I suppose Chelsea having a player sent off early would have helped a lot. Looking at the fixtures for this weeks games I think I'll probably go with a lot of 2-1s of 1-1s as there's a lot of closely matched or hard to predict games. One thing that makes the games a bit more interesting is half the table is potentially in a relegation battle as there's only 9 points between a regulation place and 9th place currently.  

Your posts are all pretty much just two liners. Not the worst I've seen but they don't really contribute anything constructive and this is the problem we had previously. Anyone can just create as many accounts as they want, write a few words or at most a hollow sentence or two to make it look like they're putting in the effort then hey presto over time you've got yourself a handful of Full Senior/Hero Member accounts. Try offering something with actual thought and not just in two sentences. I think if all your posts here follow some sort of pattern - which yours do - then you're doing something wrong. Your posts will now need to stand out to get noticed and when you're just writing generic two liners they're just going to get lost and buried in all the other spam.

People are already trying to buy or trade merit. I'm not sure what your point is though.


Why not? Where's the logic in this? Higher ranked accounts don't even need the merit so it's largely useless other than a show of appreciation of their post, which is how merit should be used, but people who give a shit about the forum would rather see good quality lower-ranked posters be able to move up the ranks by making constructive posts so most will be more than happy to dish out merit freely providing people area actually contributing something worthwhile.


Of course they will rank up, it will just take time as it already does to achieve ranks anyway. The ranking system was already slow as you could only achieve it over time, but people were just abusing it by just making crappy posts over time because that's all they needed to do. Now crappy posts will get you no where. I really find it hard to believe people are complaining that they're now going to have to make some effort but it just goes to show you the level of entitled laziness that has become the norm here.

I'm not entirely sure what the point of this thread is. You're just stating the obvious for the most part.


I think some sort of welcome post should be shown to all new users who sign up here with a brief explanation of the rules and links to check out various stickies about ranks and activity etc. Far too many people sign up here and either break the most basic of rules or just ask the same questions that can easily be found if they spent 30 seconds looking for it.

Probably farmed accounts and almost certainly belong to the same user as RichDaniel. If you look at the accounts every single one of them has the exact same activity/post count which is usually indicative of farming. I think the trouble with this merit system is people are going to probably spend more time searching and investigating people abusing the system than actually giving merit.

In your first sentence which I have bolded you say "most of the answers were standard". Well, if something is standard then it's not good and it's those sort of posts that shouldn't and wont receive merit. The biggest issue of this forum is that it's plagued with people just putting the minimum amount of effort in and what I call 'hit and run' posters. They rush out a sentence or two in a generic spam megathread of something that has probably been said dozens of times without actually offering anything original. You can quote them asking them something or expanding on a point or error they made but you'll never get a reply because that's too much effort and they've moved on to the next thread to repeat the process and never return. The merit system is meant to curb that sort of behaviour whereas those posts will get them nowhere and only posts that actually contribute something will get noticed. 

Nobody really knows what they're talking about when it comes to the speculation on the price and it's always wishful thinking and people are incredibly biased. Sure, bitcoin has always bounced back previously but there can and likely always will be that one time when it doesn't. Bitcoin probably has many years of ups and downs and the value will probably be worth much more and much less than what it is today at some point, but nobody can guarantee you it will ever get back to anywhere near the all time high or even surpass it. If you believe in bitcoin and can see the potential then just keep holding but if you're worried or sceptical about its future then don't put all your eggs in one basket and only risk what you can afford to lose, but always remember that nothing at all is ever guaranteed.

But the reasoning is if you cheat merit then you're likely not a very trustable person as it's deceptive/questionable behaviour. Merit isn't really a system to replace activity but an add on to it because anyone can cheat activity just by logging on once a fortnight to make any old sort of spam post but this stops that.


It will slow them down for sure and mass account farming just probably isn't worth the time or effort now unless people find ways to easily trade merit under the noses of the community, but not punishing those that are caught doing so is a slippery slope. If it becomes nonpunishable to trade or sell merit then the practice will become rife and defeat the entire purpose of the system in the first place and that's what I worry about not handing out punishments for people.

Why aren't all these low level accounts complaining of the loophole of just being able to buy an account to skip ranks (which you can still do - or is that too pricey for you)? Whatever system we put in place people will always be able to cheat or just buy their way around it. I think people are just so annoyed that they can't just easily spam their way through ranks anymore now and that's a good thing. People should be making merit-worthy posts anyway but of course that's too much effort when you got used to making any old crap to rank up and get paid. Instead of complaining I would either just A) Leave, or B) Get on with it and concentrate on actually contributing something of substance here and you will get that merit eventually and then there will be nothing to whine about.

Merit will only stop people mass farming as many accounts as they like. It also doesn't stop older members who already have achieved enough merit either and believe me there's a lot of senior and hero member shitposters. I think the main issue now is clamping down on poorly run campaigns and their managers as it's their fault we're in such a mess in the first place. If campaign managers did their job properly and only paid for quality posters and posts then the forum would clean itself up pretty fast. It's only because we have crapcoin campaigns with little to no management that we're in such a predicament. Punish those campaigns and their managers and you'd soon notice the difference.

But this merit system is supposed to stop or at least make posting in those sorts of threads worthless. People only used to post in the 'spam megathreads' because they could easily rank up by doing so. Now posting in them is pretty much futile because it will get them nowhere without merit and nobody is going to give merit out to the half-assed one liners that get posted in them.


Some do get locked or trashed but you would need several full time members of staff just to police the shit threads alone. Hopefully they will gradually decrease once people learn about the merit system which will force them to only make worthwhile contributions.

Why just for holders of x amount though and who gets to decide the amount and based on what? What makes you think there's demand for it as well? As I've suggested in the past I think there should be one or two new donation ranks though - just go with Gold and Silver seeing as we already have copper (maybe even a higher value one such as Diamond or whatever). Among the benefits of one of the pricier ranks could give you access to a 'hidden' board I suppose but not sure how eager people would be just for access to it.


Can't this just be applied to merit or feedback etc? Everyone will try buy their way around any rules or requirements if they can. 

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1217524 God Fist October 15, 2017
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1104727 Hazaki August 12, 2017

Those two are probably the same person. Noticed they'd give points to each other and they both have the exact same way of typing with the spaces before punctuation:

I've seen at least one person already (unknowingly) give merit to a post that was copy and pasted from the internet, but checking every post before you give it merit is just going to be too time consuming and not worth the hassle. It's natural that copy and pasted posts will occasionally get merit but if they keep doing it the likelihood of them getting found out and perma banned just increases along with it so is it really worth the risk? All we can do is keep an eye out for it and copy and pasters usually get caught eventually but people trying to cheat the merit system in this or other ways are just something we're going to have to look out for.

People can first find a clearnet connection to sign up with first then use tor. I wouldn't be against users signing up via tor paying a (bigger) fee, and have in the past suggested that all connections are blacklisted once used to sign up via, but a user could then bypass that by paying a fee or buying a member rank etc to whitelist it for themselves. The point is to make it so creating multiple to hundreds of accounts just isn't financially worth it but people should be able to have one or two or as many as they can afford or pay for. I guess with the merit system the number of accounts you can have now for signature campaigns requires more work and will slow farmers down greatly but I think people will still find ways around it by trading or buying merits etc.

Most don't care about the forum. They are here for only one thing and that is to get paid in the easiest and laziest way possible with one/two liner shitposts and that's why they're annoyed cos they can't really do that anymore. Most of the people complaining would like the forum to get worse so they can continue on in getting paid for even worse posts as that becomes the norm.

If only few people get recognised then that isn't a bad thing. It's only a bad thing to those who have come here to exclusively earn and now that's got a little harder which again isn't a bad thing. However, if after a while it becomes apparent that the system isn't working effectively or many deserving users aren't getting recognised then the system can be tweaked or more merit sources added. It will probably take a few months to see how well the system works though.

You won't get a backlash. It's anonymous to the userbase and people won't know you're reported their posts, but bitcointalk staff will. Staff won't pass on your info though. Reporting posts is the quickest and most efficient way of cleaning the forum up and if a thread is in the wrong place then there's nothing for people to complain about.

In his mind it was probably a serious idea, hence why he deleted it. I doubt he thought it through though. Spammers will just farm or trade merit between alts. If it becomes easier to become a merit source then nefarious individuals will just work at that until they get a few accounts on there. Theymos will need to add more sources to make the system scale and if all it takes is ten posts you think should be rewarded then it could lead to problems. Users trading or selling merit will likely soon get found out though so not sure how worth it it will be to them.


It will change things as it already has. Some individuals will try cheat the system but they'll be dealt with once caught. For everyone else they will just need to improve their contributions which is what the system was intended to do.

Have you reported them? If they get reported then they'll be moved at some point but most mods aren't going to go patrolling the alt coin section looking for things to do. I don't usually even go in there at all unless it's to handle a report so if you want to make the forum a better place then do your bit to help out.