You've got to be joking, posting something like the above when your history on bitcointalk consists of garbage shitposts like these:


....and many, many more.  By the way, where have you been since Oct. 16, 2018, which is when your last post was and why is this your first post in Meta?  Are you fishing for merits by writing things you think merit sources want to hear.

On a related note, can anyone translate this post for me:

Yup, I did notice that when checking his trust.  And as far as being compromised, it's not exactly an old account but it's ranked up enough such that it would be worth buying and right now saulzaents is trying to get into a sig campaign, so there's that.  

Wouldn't mind hearing from saulzaents him/herself on this matter.  I don't know if a signed message would help, since someone can obviously buy the private key to a staked address along with the account.  Didn't check to see if he'd staked an address or not, and my brain is about to shut off for the evening.

Heh heh.  That would be a 'gotcha' if not for the fact that you can write whatever location you want in that field.  The thing is, he now writes English like a typical American or Canadian, i.e., fluently.  His previous posts were clipped and looked just like standard sig spam crap.

This is a weird one for me.  Usually when I figure out that an account has been bought or hacked, there are two main factors:  

1)  A large gap in posting.
2)  A change in posting quality, usually from decent/excellent English to piss-poor bounty hunter shitposting fare.  

I was taking a look at saulzaents' account, and there's a gap but not huge.  It's from July 30th 2018 to Jan 7th, 2019, with a single post in one of the local boards breaking that gap on Oct. 23rd 2018:

What is strange is that saulzaents went from posting like a typical bounty hunter:


...to making posts in excellent English, appropriate punctuation and everything, like this post:

I would also mention that saulzaents has recently changed his password and e-mail.  This might be my inherent bitcointalk paranoia kicking in, but I've got a weird feeling that this account has been hacked or sold.  I'm looking for opinions on this, and maybe for a little volunteer help to get some more evidence (if any exists).  If I was certain this was a bought/hacked account, I'd tag it right away, but I'm not certain at all.  

Input would be appreciated, and don't be afraid to tell me this is all in my head.

This is a self-moderated thread in order to weed out the garbage posters and trolls, but I won't delete posts simply for disagreeing with me.  I just want advice and to stay on-topic.  Thanks.

I'm aware of that, which is why I mentioned that there should be restrictions, e.g., the option to block or ignore a member's reports, limits on how many posts can be reported by a single member in a given time frame, etc.  I'm sure Theymos could think of something reasonable if he wanted to implement such a thing.  It could work, and I do see where it could be abused or misused. 

This is a forum full of greedy little shits, shitposters, and scammers, so we know that anything that can be exploited will be.  If a "report to merit source" button were to be created, I have some faith that it could be done in such a manner that abuse could be minimized. 

For every idea someone has around here, there are many reasons why that idea won't work right.  But what happened last year?  We got the merit system, which has an enormous potential for abuse--but Theymos structured it in such a way that it still makes it very hard for shitposters to rank up.  He certainly is bright enough to make a button to report good posts with in such a way that the spammers don't hijack it.  That's my take.

The site loaded for me, but I don't even remember my login details so I didn't try to sign in.  Is the page not loading for you, or is there some other error that's happening?

Don't know why anyone is still using them.  Guaranteed it'll only be a matter of time before they're shut down or pull an exit scam.

Edit:
Don't know what that means.  Maybe some technogeekazoid will come along and help you.  All I can say is the site looked just like it used to when I loaded it a few minutes ago.

Yeah, I tagged him along with some other DT members just a few minutes ago.  I had him on ignore because he's a total shitposter, and I'm wondering if he was trying to build up the account in order to pull a scam or if he bought it....who knows.

These morons think fake photos of their team members is acceptable practice because of their need for anonymity, but IMO that's complete crap.  If the team members don't even know each other and actually steal someone's identity by claiming their picture is of someone they're not--that's scamming.  Period.  Why should anyone else trust someone who does this?

If another team member claims not to have known the photo was a fake, they're too fucking stupid to trust with your money in the first place.  I cannot wait until the end of these ICO scams.  It's coming, believe me.

Somehow I just noticed these posts--how the hell did I get my name involved with this?  Is this like a Russian April fool's day joke or something?  Jesus, if you're going to link two accounts by registration date, you ought to make sure they're not registered almost 2.5 years apart and at least a few other solid connections.

I guess I'm not getting the funny part of the joke here.  And yeah, people do get permabanned if their username is obviously an attempt to impersonate someone else's, especially if that someone else has a reputation on bitcointalk.  That's the reason for that big red warning you get when a newbie sends you a PM.  Some time ago there were people impersonating reputable members and trying to scam them that way--I forget the details, but scammers are everywhere here and look for anything they can take advantage of.

It's interesting to see how this forum responds and reacts in response to things, almost like the evolution of a turtle's shell.

This whole statement is just some ridiculous excuse made by a scammer who got caught.  If you don't know who you're dealing with as a team member, you're just stupid.  But I'm not saying you're stupid; I'm saying you're a scammer (though you could be stupid as well).

Well done, OP.

Edit:
Nah, you don't understand a thing.  Guaranteed you'll try this shit again with a new project and try harder not to get caught.  Your days are numbered, because people are getting wise to all of these ICO scams.

I wonder about this myself, and I've been expecting a crypto meltdown for a while now--not just bitcoin, but all the altcoins and tokens too.  If there's absolutely no barrier to entry to create a currency, and if there isn't any real-world utility in those currencies, how does anyone in their right mind expect them to hold any value?

I don't have any figures as to how many new coins are being produced every year, but I've seen exchanges like Yobit where there are hundreds of them, mostly dead ones that you wouldn't be able to sell at any price.  That's the fate that I'm expecting for most altcoins--forget about inflation; they're going to be worth ZERO. 

Big investors who put money into crypto aren't buying shitcoins like TRUMP or even dogecoin.  I'm pretty sure what they buy is bitcoin & ETH if they invest in crypto at all.  They're also probably trying to make a quick buck, too, as opposed to making a long-term investment. 

I mentioned dogecoin.  That's a coin that's going to have a theoretically unlimited supply if it survives long enough, because there's no cap on how many coins are going to be mined.  If it had a cap, it might be useful in commerce, but it's pretty much always traded pretty cheap.  And that's just one of hundreds of altcoins in existence.  All of these coins are causing "inflation" if only for the fact that there's only so much fiat money being invested into crypto.  There are too many cryptocurrencies in existence and demand doesn't keep up with it.

I've noticed this, too, and I've been thinking about it a little.  I've read threads where I see some good posts and have found myself out of sMerits that I would have liked to have given out, posts that hadn't yet been merited.  If you asked me point blank to tell me exactly what those posts were, I would not be able to tell you.  I just see them and move on if I don't have the sMerits to give out--so my point is that when people complain that they see really good posts that are going unmerited, they might not be lying.  They're just not keeping track of them.

Sometimes when I see a post or a user who should be getting merit but isn't, I'll bookmark the post or the member's profile for when I have sMerits to distribute (shouldn't be a problem now that Theymos upped my allotment), but I'm pretty sure most of the lower-ranked members who are complaining about this stuff aren't doing that.

And yeah, this thread so far is a disappointment.  Maybe Jr. Members are now starting to accept that they might not ever make it past that rank, that merits are very hard to earn if you can't write English very well in the main section, and they've given up hope.  I don't know the reason, but I would still very much support a "report post to merit source" button if there were some restrictions put in place to reduce the amount of spam that would inevitably get reported.  This is one of those things I'm hoping Theymos might consider.

Huh.  I never had that problem with Mycelium.  I haven't kept up with this thread, but I'd love to start using it again--I just could not deal with not being able to set the network fee as low as you want.  Last year when there was some sort of congestion or miners' strike or something (can't remember, lol), it would have cost me a minimum of something like $40 to send $160 worth of bitcoin with Mycelium.  True, if I'd used Electrum and included an extremely low fee, I'm sure the Tx would never have gone through anyway, but I'd like to have the choice.

Funny.  When I was a total noob to bitcoin, I thought I lost all my bitcoin on Coinbase because they gave me a new receiving address and I just did not understand the concept of addresses and wallets and I thought all my bitcoin was linked to the initial address.  I've learned at least that much in just about 4 years. 

I had to look to see how many times I've merited TryNinja, and in the past 120 days it's been twice as far as I can tell, but who is this bob of whom you speak?  Boblawblaw?  Bipolar Bob?  BobOnMyKnob?

In any case, it looks like TryNinja has enough activity to make Legendary status but is short quite a few merits.  I'll take a look at some of his posts and see what I can do, because he makes good posts and I respect his opinions on things.  He's just one who's flown under my radar a bit, but he's also a Hero member already.  I've been trying to merit lower-ranked members (failing sometimes) a little more, just so that the good ones don't get left behind and think it's impossible to rank up.  Rank on a discussion forum shouldn't be a big deal, but we all know it is on bitcointalk, so...

Is this Jet Cash imitating a shitpost?  It approximates one, but the grammar and spelling are not bad enough.  The run-on sentence is a good start, though.

No apologies necessary.  Also, I thought some of the senior members had agreed to start making self-moderated threads whenever it is that they create threads, so as to cut down on shitposters.  It was a while ago that this was being discussed, but I thought it was a great idea.  I've started a few threads since then, and a couple of them I forgot to check the "self-moderated thread" box but that was just my early-onset Alzheimer's acting up.  I'm not looking to censor post that disagree with anything I'm saying.  I'm focused on eliminating posts that say nothing and are obviously written in order to get paid.  

In this particular thread, cryptohunter is not welcome, and he knows that--just like I know I wouldn't be welcome in his thread.  That's all dandy, but I'm telling you all:  there is NO point in engaging him in any discussion.  This is a fat troll that needs at least a few months of fasting.

Edit:
Yes, that would be his best course of action if he actually believed his own bullshit, but he doesn't.  He's not trying to right a wrong; he's seeking attention and only that.  C-scunter is like a child whose mother weaned him off breast milk with lemon juice.

Yeah, "winning" in the sense of:

1) Charlie Sheen circa 2011.
2) Denzel Washington's character at the very end of Training Day.

I think you-know-who is back in full troll mode, and I do believe people have been feeding him scraps from the table.

Therefore:  BUMP.

Edit:  Also, in my mind I knew c-scunter would create a self-moderated thread after I'd done so.  And though I didn't read any of his posts in that thread, I did give mikeywith some merits for a post he made that must have took some time to compose--which scunter promptly deleted.  I should have had the foresight to quote the post and respond to it in this thread before the deletion, which I was 75% certain would happen.  Oh well.

That's OK, because hopefully you'll know now that when you see a new account like that making an excellent post, always check for copy/pasting, text-spinning, or translation plagiarism.  You wasted some merits but a greater good came from it--hopefully he'll get banned and you'll be as chary as I am when meriting noobs.  It's sad that we have to be this way, but we do.  

Everyone makes mistakes, doc.

Did you pat that motherfucker down for explosives?  That post was written on a different website, albeit by a person with the same user name.  I don't even know if that's considered plagiarism, but the post I linked to was obviously written before the one you merited and no source was given.

That is fantastic data, and I'm glad you summarized and posted it here, because apparently I missed it.  I'm actually surprised that many merits are given out in Bitcoin Discussion, and I'm wondering how many of them are people genuinely liking other members' posts as opposed to merit-swapping.

Good, glad to know you've got it covered.  Very glad you got made a merit source, too.

That's pretty solid logic if you ask me.

And while I think it's certainly abuse, I don't believe Theymos wants DT members tagging members who merit their alts.  DT members have done it in the past, but in the past few months I don't think a lot of merit-swapping deals have gotten negged.  It all depends on how blatant and extensive the abuse is and IF a DT member feels like giving them a neg. 

As for myself, I've pretty much bowed out of tagging merit abusers.  There is too much subjectivity in these cases and too many chances to erroneously neg a bunch of people all at once.  I'd much rather stick to the relatively black-and-white offenses of account selling and such.

I don't doubt you at all.  The problem is that I can almost guarantee that most answers would be over my head, technically.  I might be able to tell whether a post is a shitpost or not, but I don't trust my technical knowledge enough to know a good answer from a bad one.  Still, I'll keep that in mind.  

This has been mentioned before, but remind me:  Is the Bitcoin Development & Technical Board a section that tends to be under-merited?  That's a section I have on ignore, but not because of the quality of posts.  It's because of my own ignorance.  All of my education has been in fields having little to do with computer science, and when I see people incorporating a lot of tech jargon in their posts, my eyes glaze over pretty quickly.  

I'll keep an open mind on this one and un-ignore that section for the time being.

Edit:
Alright, that's reassuring.  I'm still going to un-ignore the tech sections for now and see if I can do a little reading and hunting. 

You would think that Bitcoin Discussion would be the place where most merit-worthy posts get made, since this is Bitcointalk, but it's the exact opposite.  Yet it makes sense that the technical sections would be places where the shitposters don't go, because they can't get away with having their shitposts hidden in an ocean of similar vacuous nonsense, nor can they simply tap out a generic statement about how bitcoin has a bright future and is increasing day by day and expect it to fit in with the members who really know what they're talking about.

That's an interesting take.  But damn, if money isn't worth anything on its own, why do I have to pay so much in taxes?

I get the impression OP is a little bit off the deep end as far as his hatred of the Fed, but there's a place for people like him in the world.  If we didn't have people speaking out against the government, we'd be in trouble.  But I've challenged him in one of his other threads and invited others to the discussion, but it's gone nowhere. 

So OP, I'll just say that I respect your middle finger being thrust out at the Fed, but I'll remain skeptical about some of the facts you use to support your argument.