Yeah, I deleted a few of your replies because I agreed that they were unsubstantial. Not sure if I handled all of them or only some of them. However, some of your replies were deleted because they quoted replies which were unsubstantial too. Its not too big of an issue, and sometimes we do get reports on old reports. Unless, its a serious offense you're normally alright. I do often wonder how users report messages from a few years ago when the topic hasn't been active since then. However, it the grand scheme of things its not likely to go against you.

Assuming that the Binance "hack" was a rogue employee the public probably wouldn't be informed that there was an investigation going on. Plus, internally it might not be known that there's an investigation going on. If it was a rogue employee you want them to get complacent, and leave a fingerprint somewhere whether that's digitally or physically If they know there's a investigation going on they could potentially be a little more smarter on how they go about things.

You'll be surprised in even the biggest heists how people get complacent.

Only if you've got physical access to their wallet file or if they're using a online wallet which  if the latter is the case you would be likely getting the account locked from trying to bruteforce it. I'll admit, it seems oddly specific to generate a vanity address, and check for a balance at the same time. What would be the reason for this?

I can't tell you if you're correct in your assumption that posting in that thread was the reason you got banned as I don't have the specifics, however theymos would have likely already seen this thread as well as the global moderators. Probably the one that issued the ban themselves. If the ban hasn't been lifted then its probably best to just wait out the ban, and ask for clarification through personal message when you've been unbanned. You're obviously allowed to appeal your ban though.

I understand the temptation of earning while you post so you end up posting low quality content than you normally would because you simply aren't interested in the topic. However, think about joining a campaign which has no minimum posts. I've done that for a while, and have hit 0 posts within a period multiple times. I only get paid for discussion which I'm interested in contributing too rather than out of necessity of getting paid.

I'm convinced that he uses these sorts of conspiracy theories to keep himself relevant these days. Shame cause he could have been an inspirational authority within the Bitcoin space if he played his cards right. Instead, he makes bold accusations to keep himself relevant.


Yeah, its ridiculous sometimes the length people will go to tarnish someone's name. Without knowing the ins, and outs of the listing if it was as innocent as listing firecrackers seems it would be a moderation issue with Ebay for breaking TOS rather than being labelled as selling explosives.

Generally, if a user is that much of a troll, and gaining reports fairly regular it would be assumed that the user would eventually get banned for it. Whether that would be temporary or not depends on the circumstances, and severity of it I guess. Users have been banned for trolling in the past although its definitely one of the harder things to determine.

There's been a number of accounts which haven't been hacked, and just decided to go on a scam attempt. You should always be cautious when trading with anyone on the forum, and you should definitely not take any users opinion of a project with any sort of serious weight. After all, we aren't perfect, and we are all bias to certain things. Sometimes unintentionally.

Hopefully, we see a reduction of these fake conversations because at the moment I would estimate 1/5 actually uses this method. Normally very low ranked members who are generating fake buzz for the project. Again, with the new bump changes I think we'll see a reduction of this, but not completely stop it. There will be users who are unaware, and don't take note of forum changes, and there will be users who are simply doing it to appear an active, and worth while investment rather than the intention to bump the thread.

You certainly could. Very much like the way common SEO checkers check for headings you can add keywords which are usually not suited for titles, and give them a score out of 100 with common factors that make titles more attractive. Integrating it as an extension or within the website software itself would likely benefit some people. For smaller websites might even be worth including SEO while keeping the titles attractive to further rank the website.

Seems there's a lot of users who are opting to report back as far as 3/4 years ago. I'm not sure how they're finding the threads as they are usually not active recently, and within my section they are just random alt coins with no real significance. Perhaps the automatic reporting that a lot of users seem to now be doing.

I can imagine a few peoples heart skipped a beat upon discovering the message I'm not entirely sure why SMF has opted for that kind of message whenever there's something quite not right. Causes panic among the community rather than being informative.

But, less exposure for them to the majority of the forum which is even better. You know the saying "prevention is the best cure"? I think that applies here, even if I don't tend to agree with it in theory its correct. Not many users will see those that are posting the fake announcements, and malware which should reduce their effectiveness against those that are unaware. Those that are aware report it, and it gets dealt with.

Thanks for this! I'll include a link to this resource within my guide. It's about time there's a more concise, and clear breakdown of things. I've been wanting to do it for a while, but those definitely aren't my strong points.

This might be a pain, but I've decided to update the guide now that I've been reminded too. I've made some small additions, and adjustments to the thread overall, and included suchmoons's tool under additional tools. I will likely be adding the script which extends the "report to moderator" comment field also. I might even dedicate a section within the guide to useful scripts for reporting if I think there's enough to justify doing so.

Another suggestion would be to add the disclaimer that I've got on the thread to avoid users thinking its forum policy.

Thanks for the reminder I did forget about adding this to the thread. Considering there's now an infographic of this I think its about time I fix some of the issues that are present. I have been updating it from time to time, but its not been anywhere near the top of my priority list.

Added a small section about it under general advice. If anyone can link me the scripts that are available that expand the comment field that would be very much appreciated. I know they exist, but can't search them up at the moment.

Adding something new to the discussion or even if you're reinforcing someone else's opinion as long as you're backing that up with either a different viewpoint or with sources to back up your claims. It's rather hard to say this type of post gets merit, and this one doesn't. There's no blanket statement when rewarding merit, and I certainly don't have a checklist to check off to see how much merit I send to someones post. Rewarding merit is a personal thing to do, and not something that should be standardized. We want difference of opinions, and different ways users go about meriting because we need that diversity for a number of users to rank up. Otherwise, it will be the same old users getting all the merit.

Effort != Length

To concisely answer a question without using too much jargon, and making it complicated is effort. You're making an effort to make that post concise, and straight to the point. Effort just means that they've made an attempt to answer the question or contribute to the discussion. This is incredibly difficult to avoid when discussing the technical aspects of cryptocurrencies.

If its completely factually wrong, and just gibberish yeah I would agree. However, if it has some aspects which are factually incorrect, but overall has good content then I personally wouldn't write that post off. I've merited several posts which have been factually incorrect. This is especially true when it comes to discussing the technical aspects of Bitcoin it is very easy to use a different word which completely changes the meaning of the sentence, but overall the post is correct or providing a different insight.

It's worth mentioning that there's been several users with basic understanding of Bitcoin, and the Blockchain and are putting in the effort to learn about Bitcoin, but not quite understanding it. However, they're putting in effort to learn, and in return are providing high quality content even if its not quite factually correct.

We all have different merit awarding criteria, and that's the good thing about the system.

I've personally merited posts which I outright disagree with, and have even merited posts which are wrong. However, if there's a good argument or at least some effort was applied then it doesn't matter whether they get their facts a little skewed. Whoever you are you are not going to have all the answers, and especially when discussing technical aspects of Bitcoin. My merit rewarding system is all about effort, and quality rather than being factually correct.

Of course, if they're spewing total nonsense which makes little sense then that's not likely to get a merit, because its likely not constructive, and a quality post to begin with. An example would be discussion of the conspiracy theory that certain people on this earth are lizards. Even though I think that's batshit crazy if they bring some quality discussion, and reason to believe that then I'll likely reward them for that even though I'm totally against the suggestion as long as effort has been applied, and its of high quality regardless of the subject.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5.msg28#msg28

The post that Satoshi the founder of Bitcointalk, and Bitcoin made on the SMF forum. I don't have the exact date that the sourceforge was created though as that existed before the SMF version, but could find that for you if you're interested in that, and not just the SMF date. What are your doubts?

This might sound boring to a newbie who's excited to experience, and discuss the world of Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies. However, I would absolutely recommend getting familiar with the rules, because it'll save a lot of frustration for you later down the line if your posts were to get deleted etc. We aren't expecting you to be masters of the rules though as we all break them from time to time unintentionally. 

No issue, a lot of users don't realize this at first, and as long as you take the advice, and stop doing it you'll be fine! I understand the need to want to keep your followers up to date with everything. So you could have been doing it for perfectly legitimate reasons, but the guidelines have been put in place because this sort of behaviour was being abused.