How would this work though? Wouldn't that just be gamed? People could still just copy and paste 'quality' posts in order to get merit points, right? I think it would just cause more headaches than problems it solves to be honest.


It can easily be done with bots if all they do is copy a post from earlier on in a megathread. There are numerous individuals that have been caught with hundreds of accounts and many more that I suspect are doing it that have been reported but not looked into by an admin going on all year (some use bots and others just post of copy and paste manually). One Russian guy had a little over 200 accounts and all they did was rehash their previous posts reworded slightly post after post account after account. The entire Vietnamese sub board thread had to be locked because 99% of the accounts posting in there were just copy and pasting random text from online and of course to anyone not speaking Vietnamese nobody was any wiser....until I noticed it of course. The worst thing is Sylon (the worst campaign manager on these forums despite what his avatar claims) was paying them all to do it and continues to pay spambot accounts because he never checks anyone's post quality at all.


It will have been made by a bot. That's why it doesn't make much sense as he's just used a program to swap a few words for synonyms and that doesn't always work out right. I spot them often, but you're right, it's easier to spot when they've copied your own posts and many people only report their own that have been copied when they notice it. The sad thing is the copy and pasters often stand out like a sore thumb because they tend to copy a well thought out or 'long' post and these stand out a mile over all the one/two line shitposters that have become pretty standard.


This is something I've considered and I think it could be worthwhile trying - as annoying as it will be to new users - but I think captchas can also easily be bypassed, but I think it should be considered for maybe all newbie accounts to enter before each post up until they hit maybe 14 activity or Junior status etc.


If you read my other posts in this thread you will see that is exactly what I've suggested. I don't think making people pay $100 or so to get a signature will affect traffic very much if at all. People would just pay it because they know they can make it back in a week or so so it's a worthwhile investment. Even impoverished people could probably beg, borrow or steal that money to invest in an account here and it would be worth it.


I think you're wrong and are probably just basing it off the fact that you don't want to have to pay anything to be able to earn here. Do you think a spammer is going to pay $100 to have a signature on each of his 100 accounts? Of course not, but if you can create 100 accounts for free then it will continue to be abused en mass and by people with hundreds of accounts. Charge to have a signature and this abuse will stop almost instantly or be drastically curbed by about 99%. We really can't continue to just let people have dozens to hundreds of accounts because it gets worse day by day and there's not enough manpower or hours in the day to deal with it now, nevermind months down the line as the problem grows exponentially.

If you're not here to contribute seriously then why are you here? And why do you care about a better rank so much? I'm guessing to move up in ranks for a bigger payout for your signature campaign, right? And this is exactly what's wrong with this forum and most of the users here. People sign up to this forum with only one intention in mind and that's to earn money even though they either don't know anything about bitcoin or care about it at all other than they heard you can get paid to post here, so people force themselves to post in threads they either know nothing about or make low quality contributions in the only threads they do know something about (which are usually spam threads created just for that entire purpose).



Staff do and the users that report them. Much like police who decide on who breaks the laws, we have our own laws aka rules here that staff try to enforce as best they can. Your posts are shitposts because they contribute very little and have very little thought or effort put into them and it's clear that you are just making them as fast as possible to try rank up your account.


It's not we don't like those boards but the shitposters who take advantage of them because they don't have anything else they can contribute to. You can have some very decent and intelligent discussions in Politics & Society, but then it also gets abused and threads taken over by shitposters who don't know anything about bitcoin but can talk all day about how they believe in god without actually having to make any decent arguments. You can make a very well thought out post on why you do or don't believe in god, but then you also just get hundreds of Filipino schoolkids just saying "yes I believe in god" or "I believe in god because the bible says so" and those contribute absolutely nothing and are made just to try farm their accounts so they can join a signature campaign asap.



People sometimes do get warnings but people should also read the rules and stickies. Staff do not have time to give multiple warnings to every single person but it's up to users to educate themselves on what is and isn't acceptable here. The police don't come round to my house to tell me not to steal or murder and if I did any of those things I can't stand up in court and say "Well I didn't know". Same thing happens here when people copy content or other people's posts. You should know that this isn't acceptable but if you would have read the rules they would have already known this, but it's not Staff's job to warn every single user that get's caught doing it and if you're caught as per the rules you will be banned.

No. I haven't started that yet. And again, it's not a weekly thing and at just a hundred points I doubt I'd be the top spot for long. I will probably do two or three place payouts for that as well though just in case someone gets a ridiculous score one week and looks like nobody else will come close. At least if there's consolation prizes for second and third place it still keeps it interesting. These bonus payouts wont be very big though, it's more of something just to keep everyone playing even though there's very little chance of them winning one of the top spots.

People will just open multiple accounts like many already do just to bleed signature campaigns dry. Whatever limitations like this you put in place people will just find a way around it, and you punish the otherwise decent posters who make great posts but are limited to x amount because of the spammers abusing it. How would we even enforce this? People can only make 20 posts a week and no more? Well I make more than 20 posts a week and I shouldn't be limited by this. A better solution would be to just force campaign managers to do what they're supposed to and not pay for spam and shitposts.

Some sort of like system has been proposed numerous times before but why would you trust a voting system that in your own words can be gamed over the opinion of staff? Staff don't go around banning people for the fun of it. It's incredibly time consuming to do and I wish people would just not shitpost or campaign managers would actually do their job in the first place and not pay shitposters, but they do, so we have to do their job for them. If people don't like how this forum is run or managed they can click the 'logout' button at the top and all their problems and concerns are solved.

Oh do shut up. People are banned for breaking the rules. It's not staff's fault if people don't read them. I would suggest you read the rules because the majority of your posts are shitposts in Off Topic and Politics which is a quick way to get yourself banned. I hope this is a clear enough warning for you.

Yours sincerely,

Kim Jong Un.

Yeah, classic one-line Indonesian shitposter on yet another shitcoin ICO ran by someone I've never even heard of and quite possibly a hacked/purchased account to boot: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2205425.0.

If campaign managers actually did their job properly you sorts of posters would never be allowed on a campaign in the first place and the forum wouldn't be such a wall-to-wall shitshow and hence why punishments need to be handed out to badly run campaigns. I'm really not sure why we let them get away with this. Shitposters get banned but campaigns don't? It's waste of time banning the thousands of shitposters without tackling the problem at its source. 

Seems like StepCurry didn't even get the 10 points from lasts night's game so I closed the gap by another ten points. Glad to finally be bastard of the week with 100 points haha.

Updated table:



Still so close at the top but I'm looking to finally take the coveted number 1 spot this week or at least over the many rounds played over the Christmas/new year period .

It's been brought up multiple times and I bump the suggestion every so often in the staff board. Theymos even created a thread about what boards to discount a year or two ago in Meta but no further action was taken. Boards like Games and Rounds and Bounties/Tokens need to be removed from counting towards posts/activity because posts in there contribute absolutely nothing and they're being massively abused by farmers farming accounts and shitposters trying to rank up. I've even seen people use bots in Games and Rounds to copy someone else's posts from earlier in the thread so they obviously don't even care about claiming the bounty but they care about easily getting that precious activity and post count by doing nothing.


Yes, this is something I've been thinking about also. I was going to propose that all new users are forced to read the rules upon sign-up and everyone else are mass PMed about the rules or we create a handful of 'golden rules' that must be obeyed or permabans are issued on sight (no ref links, do not copy and paste content, do not ask about activity etc). There will be no excuses theat "I didn't know it was against the rules to copy and paste or post ref links" etc. Translations of the Golden Rules will also be included.


There will be several two factor options on the new forum so I get why he hasn't bothered coding them for this one, but if the new forum is still 1+ years away I think it would be worthwhile implementing asap. Requiring email verification would be another step in limiting or slowing down account farming as it's just another hoop to jump through.


I don't think we should continue with the logic of 'people will sell them elsewhere so we might as well just allow them'. People will continue to sell child porn and malware elsewhere but we don't and shouldn't allow them to be sold here using the same logic. Disallowing account sales is easily enforceable and I think this is something the majority of people would support other than those financially benefiting from their sale. 


This is something I've also been thinking about. Maybe we should only allow one account to be created per IP. Too many people are abusing the 'you can have as many accounts as you want' rule to literally farm dozens-hundreds of accounts. There's only so many proxies in the world and the most popular ones would soon get used up. We could maybe include as one of the perks in the donator ranks to 'whitelist' your IP so you can create an additional account or multiple ones. We're also getting hit by hundreds of bot accounts mass spam PMing people and offering bumping services to bot peoples threads disguised as fake questions and interest in their ICO etc. If there's only one account per IP this would seriously limit this sort of shady business as I suspect they're using only a few IPs or proxies.


Off topic, yeah, as it's just abused by farmers en masse but I fear these shitposters would just move elsewhere like they have into Politics and Economics/Speculation. Politics can have some decent discussions in there but throwing some extra man power at that board by giving it a couple of dedicated mods would help clean up the mess. I'm going to put a sticky in Politics soon warning that users will be banned if they continue to treat it like Off Topic v2.0 with unsubstantial threads because some of the topics created in there are ludicrous (do you prefer beaches or mountains, do you love your parents etc. It's just kids who have absolutely no knowledge about bitcoin or probably anything else for that matter just trying to earn money and/or rank up their accounts).


I think payment from sig campaigns is probably a sufficient enough reward, but maybe some prizes for the best posters or contributors could be a good thing. Maybe a select group of trusted users or staff that could vote for the best posters deserving of rewards or maybe only rewards are given to users who don't even have a signature but post worthwhile contributions anyway (people like DannyHamilton etc (who I'm surprised is even still here to be honest)).


I don't think this is something you have to worry about as theymos has said this is something he's unlikely to do multiple times now including this thread. I agree that it would be a shame to lose them completely but I also think signature campaigns cannot continue on as they are as the only people who are going to be posting are third world shitposters abusing lazy campaigns and this has pretty much happened already as more and more shitposters sign up daily and good/great contributors are leaving on a weekly basis.


Not if the only way to get a signature is to buy it from the forum. This would kill account sales 99%.


They could still do that. Just not in the spam free board. If they don't want their political statements to be 'silenced' then they can choose just to not post in that board.


I've suggested that if a campaign has x amount of users banned in a month that their signatures are removed/blacklisted and/or their threads trashed and accounts banned. It really shouldn't be acceptable for people to come here and do absolutely nothing other than pay people to make spam in the hundreds. If we let people get away with this then why would they ever change their habits when they get a shitload of advertising for free which damages the forum quality in the process? If ICO campaigns quickly have their accounts banned and threads trashed they'll soon get the message that they need to get on top of the spam if they want the privilege of advertising here for free.


I don't see any issue in at least offering these ranks alongside being able to rank up naturally. If I was a new user to this forum I would gladly donate $100 or more to get a Full Member or Hero rank-sized signature and I'm sure hundreds will too (the money would be made back within a week or two anyhow). It will put a stop to people just lazily spamming over 6 months just to hit Full Member rank or whatever or even just buying an account which many people still do so it benefits the forum in multiple ways.


Making people pay the forum per post isn't a good idea and would be too messy to even implement not to mention most people just wouldn't bother with it. It would be better and easier just to police low paying or badly run signature campaigns instead, and/or make people pay for their signature so they at least have to financially invest in something here.


It's not fair to everyone else who has to put up with the spam from badly run campaigns and the staff who are left to de facto run them and clean up their mess for free. The point here is that these campaigns then wouldn't pay for posts in those boards with no signature.


Yeah, there's a massive black market that we've created by linking signature size to account level and hence why there is such a market for hacked accounts. I'm not really sure why theymos is so dead set against this. Accounts would become next to worthless if signatures are removed from them and the only way to get one is to donate so next to nobody will be selling them either on this site or any others. 99% of their value is in their signature sizes and if we take that away then they become next to worthless and instead of money going to shitty account farmers and scummy account hackers that money then goes to the forum instead. Win win.


It doesn't stop the issue of spam on the rest of the forum (but that can be tackled by giving more powers to other mods and getting tough on crap campaigns and spammers), but at least it provides a safe heaven for those that are only interested in quality discussion  and not just financially motivated by pay to post campaigns. I and I'm sure many others would still gladly contribute to discussions in there even though I know I wouldn't be paid for them and it would really show just what sort of poster you are if you never even bothered making posts in there at all.

Number of hours logged in has absolutely nothing to do with activity. Activity is the number of two week periods you have posted in. Simply put, you can only get 14 activity points every two week period you have posted in.

I'm glad you're finally at least open to discussion about what can be done as the forum has become unmanageable and is only going to get worse as more and more people realise you can earn decent money just by posting (or copy and pasting), but why have you ruled these out? Removing signatures from ranks and making them a paid privilege is one of the only ways to stop account farming pretty much 100%. It's never going to stop as long as signatures are tied to ranks/activity. All it does is encourage mass shitposting to 'rank up'. You don't even have to remove signatures fully either. Maybe everybody can only have some sort of very basic signature like yours or the current Junior or Member level signature and for a bigger one with colour etc you have to donate. I think this would essentially price most shitposters out of having unlimited accounts and limit them to only what they can afford. You could also even offer them alongside being able to rank up naturally over time. It wont stop account farming fully but it will cut it down considerably and I'm sure many users would much rather pay $100 or so to bypass the restrictions to get a bigger signature rather than have to wait 6-16 months or whatever it is to just shitpost to achieve Full Member or Hero status etc.

Also, prohibiting account sales would also help and improve the image of the forum. It's not exactly difficult to do or enforce either. Most people selling accounts here now are either just hackers, shitposting farmers, or straight up scammers trying to sell non-existent accounts they don't even have. Allowing people to purchase the signatures from us would put a stop to this shady business completely.


I certainly wouldn't be against trying something like this but I think it will just cause more confusion and more threads asking why they're not a Member yet or begging to be voted for or whatever.


This is actually something I was going to suggest. How about we trial a sub board of bitcoin discussion where posts in there don't count towards activity or post count and signatures aren't displayed at all? Sig spammers and farmers would leave it well enough alone then and only people who were interested in decent discussion would contribute. The forum is currently plagued with what I call 'hit and runners' (and others have noticed this too). Basically users will just make a quick half-assed post consisting of a sentence or two then move onto the next thread and repeat the process. You can quote and respond to them either calling out their incorrect bullshit they've just posted or offering an intelligent contribution to further something they've said but you'll never get a response as they'll never return as they don't care to actually have an intelligent discussion about anything as that's too much effort for them; they just want to hash out their one or two liners as quickly as possible for payment and move on to the next thread because time is money and they get paid no more or less whether their post is 1 line or 10.


This is also something I've suggested in the past. It would be good for campaigns and giveaway threads who want to limit participation to only certain membergroups and above, so being able to set certain restrictions on who can post in there would be beneficial. Maybe being able to block specific usernames as well for those people who feel like they're being constantly harassed or trolled by certain individuals.


Punishing lazy campaigns and their managers would go a long way or just blacklisting their signatures would help (which is what was meant to happen with the Signature Guidelines thread). It can't be acceptable for campaigns to do nothing about spam at all and if they started having their accounts banned and/or threads trashed they'd soon get the idea. I also don't think it would be a bad idea charging ICOs a fee to make their Announcements here or to run a signature campaign as it's these lazy crapcoin campaigns that are causing the most headaches and 99% of spam and staff workload and they should have to compensate for that. The forum loses revenue every time someone chooses to run a signature campaign over bidding on forum ad slots and the worst thing is staff have to clean up their mess for free whilst they rake in millions.

They would very likely be responsible for policing it as it would be their mess to handle and clean up. I certainly wouldn't moderate it for free but wouldn't be against them having their own sub forum if they paid for it.

Yeah, was gonna say most people seemed to be on 40 points, myself included. However, I just got 80 after getting the correct score on the Man U game. Hopefully Steph didn't get that one so we'll be tied on points if he just got the win right. I need the Liverpool game to end 0-1 which it is right now for another 40. Can't see it staying like that though but I'll take the 10 if they go on to win.

You seem to have a very poor memory. In the post above you were quite sure that you hadn't broken the rules and certainly hadn't copy and pasted. Do you really think we're stupid and your ban was some freak accident? You're still breaking the rules now and multiposting.

You are the third vietnamese shitposter today to have claimed you have been banned for no reason and wasn't copy and pasting and guess what? Copy and pasting:


Oh, and guess what. You're doing it on this account as well:


Are you Vietnamese even capable of either telling the truth or making your own posts?

I only got 30 points as well, but if the City game ends up 2-1 I'll get a perfect score so just need Spurs to score now as it's 2-0 haha. I'm, watching the game and they've only had one shot on target so far so I'm not hopeful but you should never doubt Harry Kane.

Because that's not how activity works. By the very definition activity is based upon how active you have been on the forum and you haven't been very active at all. On the contrary, I would argue it wouldn't be fair to everyone else who has built up their account and rank over time by putting in the work and effort for others just to be able to create an account, abandon it for x amount of years then come back and magically be a Hero or Legendary member etc. This would just encourage even more lazy account farming if it was possible to achieve such ranks merely over time.

Also, have you actually been here since 2012 or did you just buy a hacked account to try appear like you have some history here? There's a huge gap in your post history from May 29, 2014 to May 2016 and then May 24, 2016 to April 2017 which is usually indicative of a very likely hacked account. This is why activity is actually a good system because you may or may not actually be an old member but you certainly haven't been an active one or earned the ranks you would have achieved naturally had you been actively posting.

I doubt it. I don't think it will be easy for City but I think Tottenham will struggle to score. I went with 2-1 on my premier league predictior though.

If anyone wants to join in the version 2 of the bitcointalk premier league pool starting on the 1st of Jan please sign up here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2484329.msg25433726#msg25433726

It's £20 to join and we have nearly 20 players signed up so far and there will be between 3-5 place payouts depending on the number of users who sign up.

No. You had your own thread and it had to be locked due to constant abuse. 99% of the accounts in there were just copy and pasting content that was just complete rubbish not even related to bitcoin and not a single one of you reported any of the abuse. In fact, many of you were happy to partake in it once you realised you could get away with account farming and sig spamming in there and as such you cannot be trusted to have your own section right now and you've only got yourselves to blame.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0

You create a thread in the sub forum Altcoin Announcements linked above. If you want to create your own sub board for it; you can't. However, this is something I've suggested users could pay a fee for if they felt having their own dedicated sub would be beneficial.