More or less.  If you read the written rules of bitcointalk, I think profanity is technically not allowed but isn't ever moderated.  And I would not go so far as to claim this forum has "no censorship" because there are certain things which aren't allowed in posts, like pornography or anything illegal, plus people are allowed to self-moderate their threads and censor whatever they wish.  Note:  I'm not complaining about any of this.  Bitcointalk is one of only a handful of forums I've come across where you can basically say what you want without fear of getting banned or having your posts deleted.  I've seen posts made here that would get deleted in a heartbeat on other forums.

OP wants a mission statement for the forum, basically, but I've never seen one.  It's just a place to hang out and discuss a wide range of things.  I'd agree that promoting bitcoin was likely one of the goals early on, though it's become much more than that since bitcointalk was founded.  I hate to use the overused word "decentralized", but that's sort of how the forum is--the members provide the topics and administration stays out of it for the most part, and most sections not only aren't overly-moderated but the exact opposite is true in a lot of cases.  The lunatics run the asylum, while the hospital staff are locked in the break room drinking whiskey and smoking reefer.

I wish I was this much of a math-head, but when it comes to giving merits it never seems to need that much analysis.  A post either reaches the threshold of being worthy of merit or it doesn't (in my mind at least), though I could exactly describe how a post meets that threshold.  Anyway, good for you for spreading the love around.  If you've got that many sMerits and are a source, it's definitely best if you get rid of them.  Seems like there's not too many members ranking up lately, and I'm pretty sure at least some of them deserve to but are being held up by the merit requirement.

Exactly.  I even agree about the bar being lowered for the lower ranks, although I haven't lowered it too much.  When it comes to deciding whether to merit a Newbie or Jr. Member who hasn't earned any merits previously, I'm always reluctant and have to make sure they're not plagiarizing or putting all their effort into a single 'merit-bait' post, after which they'll resume a life of shitposting.  Above Jr. Member rank, I tend to do less checking and there's less hesitation on my part.  I just wish there were more good posts being made by those lower-ranked members.  Every time I go looking for the buried nuggets, I end up finding other crap instead and I get extremely sidetracked.

Plus I'm assuming OP is referring to getting red trust from a DT member, which doesn't "ruin" any account.  You can still post and read and probably do as many trades as you like here.  

It's also not a case of DT members not liking members.  Bitcointalk has written rules and a bunch of unwritten rules as well.  Most noobs don't care enough about the forum to get to know what the unwritten rules are before jumping in and doing stupid shit--like buying an account, for instance.  All they care about is using bitcointalk as a money-making machine, and they don't care if they make it difficult for anyone to find genuinely useful posts by writing a mountain of garbage.  

If it wasn't for that small, active group of DT members who've taken a stand against shenanigans, this place would be all but useless.  It's bad enough that scams aren't moderated--DT members have to do the tagging, and those members also feel responsible for keeping the forum as clean as it can be as far as everything else that isn't moderated.  

It's not anything personal.  Does anyone think I wanted to give Lutpin and lightlord negs for their shitty campaign management?  Nope.  Someone had to, and notice you didn't see cryptohunter or his posse or anyone else helping out.  I happen to like Lutpin, yet I tagged him anyway because of his behavior.  Lightlord I don't know, and he appears to have had less responsibility than Lutpin and I've since removed his tag.  Anyway, it's stuff like that that tends to get missed when making broad generalizations about what's perceived as a small group with a lot of power.

Edit:  I'd also like to add that this "small group" doesn't even always agree with one another, as in the case of me tagging Rambotnic and DarkStar_ leaving a counter-positive.  There have been quite a few instances of that as well.  It's not always a simple matter trying to make the right call, and mistakes do get made.  Fortunately if one DT member messes up, 1) he won't stay on DT if it's consistent, and 2) other DT members will speak their minds and won't just blindly go along with it.  I expect DT members (and others) to tell me if they think I made a bad call.

Unfortunately, this is one thread I neglected to make self-moderated, and cryptohunter has infested it with his idiocy.  Therefore I'm going to lock it.  If efxtrader has any defense, he can PM me and I'll open up a new thread or I'll unlock this one.

Once again while venturing out of my comfort zone sections, I went looking for posts in Bitcoin Discusion to merit and found another old account that was either bought or hacked.  In this case, it's ShadowBits, registered on August 21, 2014.  Notice how excellent his English was back in 2014.  This is one of his earliest posts:


Then there was a gap between June 7, 2017 and July 20, 2017.  The post that ended that gap was this one:

After that, his post went from excellent English ones to typical bounty shitposting nonsense like the following:
*Note: this is not something a self-admitted Canadian and American citizen would write.*

...and that post quality continues to the present.  It seems obvious to me that the account changed hands in 2017.  I did check bpip to see if there was any password/e-mail change, but I'm not sure if that info shows up on a member's profile page or not.  In any case, there's no doubt in my mind this account was hacked or sold, so I'm tagging it.  Any input from the community that's constructive would be appreciated.

Self-moderated thread to keep the trolls out. 

If my memory serves me correctly (and it may not), I recall reading a book about Jesse Livermore who was a legendary stock trader from almost 100 years ago, and he found a way to do almost exactly that.  He saw a huge recession coming and shorted a wide variety of stocks.  I don't know if you can short index funds, but you could probably make a ton of money doing so.  I've never played around with the options market, but I think that's another way you could do it--all those derivatives you can trade are basically ways to gamble on the future of pretty much anything and everything.

That's true, no doubt.  But I don't think Italy or any other country in financial trouble is looking for crypto as a solution--but for us as individuals living under the rule of financially irresponsible governments, it may provide some sort of means of protecting what wealth we have.

I've also noticed gold & silver have increased quite a bit in the last week.  That's usually not a great sign that things are going well, and I definitely get the feeling that we're starting to see cracks in the system.  I'm just hoping that whatever comes isn't another Great Depression or worse...but that could happen, easily.

I don't see why he ought to be excluded, as he's received pretty much all positive trust (and a lot of it), and only some of his left feedbacks are like the ones you quoted above.  We want a diverse DT list, right?  I don't know who willi9974 is, but I don't see why he shouldn't be given a shot if he got made a DT member.

Edit:  What level of DT did he get added to?  I don't see him on the default trust breakdown list.  Am I looking in the right place?

Edit2: Appreciate the help--I know it was written somewhere how to display all of that, but I don't usually feel the need to look at other members' trust lists and thus never paid attention to how to show everything. 

You read all the rules after the fact, and apparently you haven't read any of the other ban appeal threads in Meta that say almost exactly what you said in this one.  If you had, you'd know that pleading for forgiveness/begging/pleading doesn't work and that your account won't be unbanned. 

If you acknowledge your rule-breaking and that you "deserve all punishment", then you're going to have to accept what I just stated above.  People don't get second chances for plagiarism here.  If mods started doing that, they'd be doing it for everyone and the problem would only get worse.  Please don't keep asking for a second chance or forgiveness, because we've heard it all before and it's a waste of your time.

Ah, thank you--I've obviously never seen the movie (can't stand that song, though).  Might I suggest that people give this video a thumbs-up on Youtube? 

Also, is there a chance that it'll get taken down because of the film clip or the music copyrights?  I don't know how strict the movie/music industry is being these days with their properties being used on Youtube.

That's in your head, because the thread that questioned whether the JusticeForYou account had been hacked/sold predated all of this if I'm not mistaken, and he hadn't responded to it until someone bumped it.  Besides, he was making pretty level-headed arguments and in my mind wasn't even taking a strong stance on the DT issue like he is now.  It's not likely anyone would tag him for that. 

The fact is that there are some legitimate concerns that the account changed hands, and all the evidence seems to point to that being the case; everything JFY has said after the tagging just seems like the excuses you'd expect to read after someone got caught buying or hacking and account.  I really don't want the accusations against JFY to be true, as he doesn't seem to be a shitposter or a scammer--but the latter could happen eventually if he eventually decided to use his reputation and rank to scam someone. 

Are you talking about JusticeForYou?  How is he going to have any of those consequences if he signs a message?  Plus I don't think anyone knows enough about his real identity to even assume any of could happen.  Hell, if I was in that much danger from just owning a bunch of bitcoin, the last thing I'd do is post on bitcointalk. 

Yeah, that's the part that you can't make an excuse for.  I've tagged members for buying accounts based on mostly this kind of evidence, and when they try to explain why their English suddenly changed when they "woke up", it's never anything that makes sense.

OK, ya got me--that was amusing and I chuckled at it.  Thanks for the humor first thing in the morning and the effort you put into the vid.  I've no idea how a thing like that gets made, but I'll take you at your word that you spent a good deal of time on it.

Edit:
I'm totally fine with my walk-on, cameo role and appreciate OP even thinking of including my avatar in the first place.  He had to work within the constraints of that particular video clip he had, so I don't think either myself of LoyceV could have appeared anywhere else that would make sense. 

That seals it for me, and I'm going to tag him.  I'm reluctant to create new threads about cases like these, but it's much better than writing everything in the OP on someone's trust page--plus it's good to get community feedback and lets people know how extensive this problem is.

By the way, yet again I found this guy with his bought/hacked account while searching for posts to merit in the Economics section.  When I tell you that it's easier to find plagiarism or an account buyer or hacker than it is to find meritable posts by newbies, I'm not exaggerating.

This member cr7 registered his account on August 3, 2014.  In the first couple of years, he was pretty much a shitposter with a penchant for Games & Rounds, Off-Topic, and gambling posts.  His posts were usually one line garbage, but when he did put some effort into writing a relatively long post, the quality of English was pretty good:


He posted kind of sporadically up until April 18th, 2018, when he wrote this post:
This post came after a huge gap, with the previous post being on August 10th, 2017.

Since his return, he suddenly started posting with unnecessary exclamation points all over the place, and his posts became the typical generic bounty hunter shitposts:

And it goes on from there to this year, with posts continuing to be like this:

I'd like to hear people's thoughts on this before tagging him, and if anyone can find additional evidence I would be appreciative. 
Self-moderated thread to keep the trolls out.

And you're doubtless correct about this.  I came to this thread looking for posts to give merits to, but all I see from the lower-ranked members are a bunch of shitposts which indicate that they have no idea what they're talking about.  I wouldn't pay attention to 80% of what's in this thread--and even the OP is a poorly-written mess of a post.

I agree with your other post, that most coins are just useless copies of others and offer no advantage over anything else that's on the market.  The only reason they keep getting churned out is to line the pockets of the developers at the expense of the suckers who buy the shitcoin.  After a year or so, any given shitcoin ends up in the Yobit 1-satoshi graveyard of coins that have no buy orders and never will.  In fact Yobit used to give free coins at one point, which you could claim every day or so--but they were the worst of the worst and it wasn't even worth the time to click the buttons in order to get them.

Can people seriously stop writing shit like this:

These have no value whatsoever.  I'm really trying to give out merits here, but stuff like the above are what discourages me.

Bro, this is exactly what OP should be doing if he got scammed and I'm not sure why you're giving him this advice.  Regardless of whether Luno had been tagged before, this is a new accusation that seems to suggest that he's continuing to scam people.  Yes, it would have been great had OP checked Luno's trust page before dealing with him (or used escrow), but he didn't and has every right to open up a scam accusation here.

OP, did you not see the red trust this guy had?  I'm not rubbing salt in your wounds; I'm genuinely curious if you'd seen it beforehand. 

I looked at his post history (not all of his posts, of which there are many), and I'm not so sure about this one.  His English wasn't excellent in 2014 and is about the same right now, except that his posts seem to be very much like all the other bounty shitposters in content--just vapid statements with generalizations that could be made by anyone.  There is a post gap in 2015-16, but it's only a few months and the quality didn't seem to change much after that.

Not enough evidence in this case for me to tag him, but thanks for looking out for these bought/hacked accounts.

Looks like Gunthar tagged them all, which I appreciate since I'm not in the mood for any detective work right now and might not be back scouting out the bought accounts for a couple of weeks.

I'm pretty sure fiat is supposed to have inflation built into it in order to keep people spending rather than hoarding cash--and yeah, those two examples you gave are when it all goes wrong. 

I don't think bitcoin needs any more inflation added to it, else we might see it become like dogecoin, which can't seem to ever keep any gains in price that it makes. 

In addition, I've always harbored doubts as to whether any crypto is going to be useful for anything other than speculation, and I certainly doubt that a "stock split" maneuver would help that much.  The issue has always been adoption--by merchants and consumers.  Until goods & services start to be priced in terms of BTC (and not the USD, for example), and until people start getting paid in bitcoin, there's no motivation for the average person to use it to buy anything.  Right now fiat works just fine.  That certainly could change if, for example, the USD crashed but in an event like that I suspect people would try to get their hands on a stable currency, which would probably be the fiat currency from another country.  I don't think they'd start turning to a volatile currency that could cause them to lose even more money.

OP, glad you're thinking about stuff like this.  I just happen to not agree with your ideas here.

Yeah, good luck with that.  Pose a problem to 12 Legendary members, and you'll get 13 different opinions.

We've already got Ivory Tower and Serious Discussion, and I don't think having exclusive areas or 'elite' moderators is going to help much of anything.  I hate to be that pessimistic, but that's how I think it is.  All of this drama is basically about the most recent changes to the trust system, and who's on DT1.  I'm not sure how that's going to be resolved.  TECSHARE and OgNasty aren't going to be happy unless they're back on DT1/DT2, and the troll faction (cryptohunter and the like) never did anything that would even warrant consideration of them being on even DT2. 

As I said in another thread, these days I'd much rather try to be a good merit source and find merit-worthy posts by lower-ranked members than to engage in the trust system battle.  Seems to me like that's a better way to spend my time, but even then it's very frustrating to read through threads in sections like Economics, where most of the good posts are written by Hero/Lengendary members.  Finding a solution to meriting the under-merited members (if they even exist; I have my doubts at this point) would be a priority over starting up an exclusive section. 

Creating a club could lead to more conspiracy theories and more fighting, too.  I don't think the forum needs less inclusivity (I know that sounds very SJW, sorry) right now.

Though I hate to see a VIP account get tagged for something like this, my instinct--based on what I'm reading from JusticeForYou--tells me that the current owner of the account isn't the original one.  Every piece of evidence points to the current owner not being a member from 2011, from the inability to sign a message to not owning a significant amount of bitcoin.  Nothing really points toward the opposite that I can see.

It's a good thing that there was no scam attempt, and JusticeForYou seems like a decent person--but you never know what anyone's intentions are, not on the internet and especially not on this forum.  I'm still trying to figure out how many alt accounts VINSIN has and who these troll accounts actually belong to, and they're not anywhere near VIP members.  Ultimately it's better to be safe than sorry, because all the senior members here have seen high-ranked accounts turn out to be scammers (Master-P, for example).

I'm still hoping there's a way of JFY proving he's the original owner of the account, but it looks like he's going to go with being the victim of injustice option instead.  No offense, JFY.

Don't feel bad for people like that.  They didn't read the rules before they plagiarized content, and you shouldn't even have to know there's a rule in place on a forum to know better.  The rule is there, and so is the consequence for breaking the rule.  In case you haven't noticed, plagiarism here is like an epidemic, and the punishment for doing it doesn't need to be softened--plus this topic has come up before and the general consensus was that lifetime bans were appropriate.  Theymos didn't change a thing.

That particular ban appeal that you linked to was so full of heartfelt emotion and a cry for mercy....and you fell for it.  Members who pull this shit aren't being honest right from the start and don't expect them to learn their lesson.  They'll just keep trying to figure out ways to not get caught, because there's a reason why they resort to copy/pasting:  they don't know how to write, or have nothing to say, and they have to write something in order to get paid from the bounty they're in.  It's just laziness mixed with dishonesty, and that kind of behavior does not need to be tempered with mercy.

This is not the justice system, and any comparisons between the rules of an internet forum and any given legal system are just plain wrong.