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.

The only people it 'kills' are those that are unable to contribute anything worthwhile here which is the exact purpose it was designed for.


People were signing up with numerous accounts each just so they could join a sig campaign and bleed them dry by lazily spamming. One user had 200+ alt accounts all just rewording and regurgitating the same one line shitposts over and over one after the other, that's how bad it was. Sylon, the worst campaign manager on this forum, was paying them all to do so and that's why punishments need to be giving to shitmanagers otherwise nothing will change.

Maybe they should stop complaining. People will get the merit eventually but it's not going to happen with every post. Keep making quality contributions and you will increase your odds.


I wouldn't be against certain restrictions like one account can only be created per ip, but banning alt accounts isn't as easy as just saying the practice is now banned. How do we police this? It's going to be something only admins can enforce and they pretty much never look into the things that need looking into as it is, nevermind giving them the mammoth task of now policing the no alts rule.


How can any panel of experts be free of 'discrimination'? People will still disagree or complain about points they do or don't give out.

Ironically the merit system was introduced to try prevent people from leaving negative feedback on poor posters. It's a tricky situation to police but people shouldn't be allowed to trade merit or leave it for their alts as it's deceptive and defeats the purpose of the system in the first place. I can't really see any other way than negative really but users shouldn't be allowed to get away with it otherwise everyone will just do it. At least if there's the threat of negative for users caught engaging in it then most people will think twice about it. If there's nothing to lose by attempting to trade merit then the practice will become rife.

I think it'll need to be a strong coffee for a lot of people  .



Nothing is guaranteed. There's always going to be chances to make money from crypto in the short term with day trading etc as, but for long-term hodlers there's no guarantees we'll ever see anywhere near the all time high again (or could take a very long time to recover). I think it was mostly driven by FOMO from newbies getting involved thinking they couldn't lose and this crash will have scared a lot of the general public away from investing again. There will be a hell of a lot of newcomers that got burned by buying in at the top and now they're probably just taking out their loses right now which obviously has a knock on effect and long lasting smear on cypto which could linger for quite some time.

As above, if you can't meet their terms in a sufficient and acceptable manner then don't join that campaign. This is like taking on a job that you aren't qualified or don't have the time and energy to do. My campaign is 50 posts per week but that's maximum. Sometimes I easily do it sometimes I don't even make the 50 but I don't force myself to shitpost just to hit the quota. Fifty a week isn't unreasonable either and some people could probably make 50 great posts in a day so limiting it will do no good and will likely just encourage multi accounters to use more of their alts to take advantage of the restrictions. I agree that more weight should be placed on campaigns who either don't do their job properly or make unreasonable demands but nobody is forcing you to join any campaign in the first place.

People really scrape the barrel of what they can try set up a shitcoin ICO for. Monetising merit points in this way would defeat the purpose of them in the first place, but this sort of laziness you admit to is exactly why the system will work because the worst sorts of posters will get nowhere without either A) Just putting in the effort to achieve the merit, or B) bending/breaking the rules to get there. You would be better off just buying an account on the sly rather than dreaming up such ludicrous ideas to bypass the system, but this is yet another reason why there needs to be clampdowns on lazy campaign managers as well because many people will just try get around the restrictions by buying accounts or merit points in some way and they'll still make shitposts once they've achieve this and are on a lazy campaign which will pay them reagrdless.

This isn't a Meta issue. Probably Reputation or even Service Discussion. Campaign managers can do what they want regarding "disloyal" users coming and going on their campaigns, but people shouldn't be expected to stay with a campaign forever. Jumping from a campaign you've been on for a while just for a few cents more seems pretty flaky, but on the flip side there isn't a contract so if a better campaign arises then they are free to leave. It's not like you wouldn't turn down a higher paying job in the' real world' and this is not much different. I've stayed with campaigns in the past even though higher paying ones of popped up, but at the same time I wouldn't have an issue in leaving one for better pay but it would depend on numerous factors. With that being said, I think there are bigger things to worry about on this forum right now and this is a non-issue.


Yeah, people don't realise how much work it is and this is what frustrates me about shitmanagers like sylon who do absolutely nothing other than pay anyone who signs up as long as they bothered to make the posts. It took me hours yesterday to go through all the applicants on a new campaign I started managing and most of the users were depressingly shit not to mention the numerous likely alts from multi accounters trying their luck. Shit managers wouldn't even notice this and as such that's why their campaigns are easily abused yet they get paid the same for doing very little work and the forum suffers in the meantime.

Begging for merit should be treated the same as begging for bitcoin and either threads trashed or posts removed, though I suppose in these circumstances the offending begging part could just be edited out by staff. It's only going to get more widespread as people start getting desperate for merit but it's unnecessary as if a post is good then it will naturally receive it. To be honest, I wouldn't even give a post merit regardless of it's 'greatness' if somebody was specifically asking for it.

Better complain to them then, but poor campaign managers can't solely be responsible. It's the user's fault for being greedy and lazy and just making terrible posts. Now they are going to be forced to put some effort in before they can even get on a campaign but as I've said before punishments still need to be given to ICOs who don't look after their userbase because all thew merit system does is slow people down until they can get the required merit.


I'm not sure what the difference is between a like and merit, but if he means everyone should be able to give out unlimited 'likes' as merit points then that defeats the purpose and will quickly be abused making it pointless.

No, it was to stop one/two liner shitposts which it is going to do a good job seeing as now people have to put effort into their posts to move forward. Older members don't need to send merit to themselves as it's pointless, and would rather see quality discussion rewarded instead

Copy and pasting will go ahead regardless of the merit system but I think more and more people will start copying well written posts in order to try get merit. Counter productive if you get spotted and banned for it but when you've got not much hope of acquiring merit naturally many will feel like they have nothing to lose.


Lol. The phrase is Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, not plagiarism.

It seems most of the top five did very well except Steph who dropped a few points on the rest of us. Glad I went with the draws as mentioned above. I can see a lot more draws on the weekends games and maybe another couple of giant killings with the Burnley and Watford home games. I don't think I'll do as well as this round though.

This isn't allowed and those users would have their posts deleted, be warned and then banned if they continued.