Some rules should definitely be changed, but until they are I don't think staff members ought to be encouraging people to break them--even if they think the rules are futile or unfair or unenforceable.  The rules are still the rules, and when I tag an account that's an alt of one that got banned for plagiarism, I don't want to hear them tell me a staff member said it was OK to have other accounts.  Until the rules change, it's not OK. 

Please, I respectfully beseech you to stop recommending plagiarists create alt accounts.  Even if you know it happens, you are a staff member here and people (especially low-ranked accounts) look to you as a role model and listen to what you say.  Theymos should come up with more rules, different ones, or better ways to enforce the existing ones, but we're stuck with what we've got.  Trusted staff members, DT members, and everyone else shouldn't be encouraging other members to break rules.

Exactly.  That's why some of the older members (including me, although I've only been here 3.5 years) seem to be somewhat prickly, and sometimes even outrageously abusive--especially toward new members.  But it's the truth that most new members only came here to earn money, and many of them leave a trail of shitposts in their wake, and quite a few of them end up with a ban for plagiarism.

Your English isn't great, and it's hard for me to understand most of what you're getting at, but the two words I bolded above represent something anyone who joins bitcointalk should NOT do.  You need to be skeptical around here, because very few things and even fewer members are what they seem to be.  "Keep a clear head" is good advice, but only if by that you mean keeping your eyes open for bullshit--and there's is a ton of that on bitcointalk.

I don't know if that's the real reason or not.  Newbies get a lot of harsh feedback from the older members, and most of it is deserved.  It helps to have a thick skin around here, especially when you're just starting out.

I started a thread about this exact issue last month when I, too, was surprised to get a PM from a Newbie with a copper membership.  It annoys me that that loophole exists, but apparently Theymos won't do anything about it unless it becomes problematic.  Oh, well.

Theymos's reply was:

I don't know exactly who told him this, but hilariousandco has a tendency to say things exactly like that in some ban appeal threads--which I disagree strenuously with and wish he would stop doing.  And I've seen other assorted noobs offering the same advice in other ban appeal threads, too.

It is absolutely against the rules to create a new account once you've been permabanned, and if mods (or anyone else) disagree with that they should convince Theymos to change the rule.  

Most of us have our eyes open and know what the rules are and what the consequences are for breaking them.  Even if someone gave you the advice to use another account after you'd been permabanned, it's still not allowed to do so.

For one thing, I haven't gone back to that original thread where you and Vod were discussing this after he'd left his feedback.  I recall getting the impression when I first read it that there was something fishy afoot but don't remember what it was. 

For another thing, not every drama that happens on bitcointalk immediately becomes my issue.  I don't get paid to be on DT, and most of the tags I leave on users are for account selling/buying.  I'm not required to right every wrong here, and it wouldn't be possible to do so anyway. 

I have great respect for Vod, as he's done outstanding work in warning people about scammers through the feedback he's left and if you think he's left feedback (or part of a feedback) unfairly, ultimately that's between you and him.  I'm not going to neg Vod if he made a mistake in one of his feeedbacks, nor would I leave you a counter-positive as actmyname did, because I think what you did in your auction was wrong.

We could argue till the end of time whether bidding on your own auctions is ethical, but I'm not going to change your mind on that and I'm not changing my opinion of it either. 

The Auction section really should devise a set of rules--instead of "suggestions"--that members need to abide by so as to avoid situations like this in the future.  We've got people from all over the world, and a practice that's acceptable in Finland might be baffling (or considered untrustworthy) to other members from other countries.  There are no written community standards or rules in place (as far as I can see), and that should be rectified.

So in my case, you're going to inform a bunch of people about whatever it is you know about me (which probably isn't much), and those people likely won't give a shit anyway since I'm a complete nobody outside of bitcointalk.  I'm not even that big a deal on bitcointalk to begin with, outside of being on DT.

These threats seem to sound vaguely familiar to me.  The whole "I've got so much dirt on ____ and will release it in X days, so watch out" rings a bell, but I can't seem to remember who it was who last said crap like this.  For some reason, QS comes to mind but I could be mistaken.

I'm sure there are certain circles on the internet where that might not be true, but if he's going to include such epithets in his "expose" on the members he's listed, it's probably not going to reflect well on him.

Anyway, can't wait for the outcome of this.  My curiosity is piqued.

For what it's worth, I understand your position on this and respect it--and I know why you left that neg for mdayonliner.

In real life, I generally tend to look for the best side of people, though I'm not stupid enough to take everything people say and do at face value.  And yes, I've been fooled many times before and expect I'll be fooled again.  I try to take a much more skeptical approach on bitcointalk, where it seems like the proportion of scammers here is orders of magnitude greater than it is IRL. 


I suspect it's true for most people, unfortunately.  We've all seen seemingly good members go bad on bitcointalk when the potential to run away with someone's funds presents itself, and I'm pretty sure we've also seen this happen in business, politics, and a lot of other situations that have nothing to do with this forum. 

As for me, I'm going to try to be more vigilant, diligent, and fair when evaluating whether someone deserves a neg--and I'll do my best to not be so naive about members and the image they try to present to the forum.  I'm not comfortable when mistakes come back to bite me in the ass because I relied on someone else's blockchain detective work and handed out undeserved negs because of that.

I'm only commenting on Vod's feedback on you that addresses you bidding on your own auction.  That's the extent of it.  I'm not the one who tagged you, it was Vod, and I don't know all the details of this whole debacle you keep alluding to--and it's not my fight.  Vod may have some wrongs to right, but that's his call and it's between you and him.  Obviously actmyname didn't agree with Vod's feedback and countered it with a positive, so that's good for you.

The only thing I'm writing about is the bidding-on-your-own-auction thing, which I think is unethical, and it's why places like eBay don't allow it and why they offer reserves and minimum starting bids and a lot of other things.  Even if this forum isn't eBay, the fact that you bid on your own auction is ludicrous behavior to me.  There's obviously some politics behind Vod's feedback about that, but that's your issue to deal with.

I have never, never heard about auctions who allow a person auctioning an item to bid on it in order to set a concealed reserve price.    Again, do you have examples of auction houses that allow that?  Do they allow the person to withdraw their bid if someone doesn't bid above it?  

Reserve prices are usually concealed, and that's understandable.  What's inconceivable to me is that anyone would do it like you did when there are no rules set about such things by bitcointalk, and you did not include such a rule in your auction.  Bidding on your own items is NOT standard in the auction industry.

And you know what?  People made all the valid arguments I could possibly make about this already in this thread.  You messed up and were dishonest, you got tagged for it, and now you think it's somehow the fault of DT members who wield their power as a weapon.  Ain't so.

Which of course is not the claim that I made. 

You better believe I would, because you've demonstrated that you don't know how auctions work and once you've learned the hard way that bidding on your own auction with your own name isn't tolerated, the next thing to do would be to have a member with a different username do it. 

Please give some examples of auction sites/auction houses where a person can place a bid on his own auction if he thinks the price isn't high enough (or for whatever reason).

Are we both on bitcointalk here or what?  This forum is rife with abuse, potential abuse, you name it--and there are many who couldn't care less about the trust system here because as I mentioned, there are many people here who don't even check people's trust feedbacks or just ignore them.

You might have called me intellecually dishonest, but I think you're intellectually challenged based on everything you've written here.

OP registered less than two months ago and has already figured out how bitcointalk works and has categorized members based on...something...and had to share his grand wisdom with the rest of us.  How quaint.

Agree.

And that's how I view OP's post as well.  It's hard to understand exactly what his point is, because his English is just borderline acceptable/crappy enough to be misunderstood--or in my case, not understood at all.

I'm assuming you say this because you've spent some time reading posts from the "old days" and not because your account is an alt of one that's been a member here back when there weren't so many shitposters.  I don't expect you to clarify this, but it would be nice if you would.

That grammar is atrocious, but I understand what you're trying to say.  Let me point out that most people on the internet tend to act  much differently than they do in real life, and that isn't going to change.  Not on bitcointalk, not anywhere on the worldwide web. 

I've said it before, I think mdayonliner was just being too ambitious both in his efforts to make money and build a reputation for himself on bitcointalk--the latter is always why I thought he offered to escrow that huge amount.  But I also agree that once an amount like $100k is in someone's hands, there's got to be some temptation to just take it and run.  I never thought his escrow offer was a scam attempt, but it was ill-advised at best.

As far as the ponzi stuff goes, I have very mixed feelings on it, but only as far as when it happens on bitcointalk.  For one thing, ponzis have their own section here, so you know they're rampant and Theymos doesn't give a shit about them, and another reason is that I think most people who participate in these "investor-based games" basically know what they're getting into and that just like other forms of gambling, there's only a small chance of winning.  I've always thought that whole section should be nuked, but it must benefit the forum or the bitcoin community....or someone.

This is also why I tended to ignore mdayonliner's ponzi history and in general why I don't tag ponzi promoters--but I respect those members who do take a stand against them.

DT members definitely get a lot of shit for things they do or don't do, and as you know I've made some mistakes in tagging members based on bad evidence or bad judgement, and that doesn't give me a good feeling.

As hilariousandco correctly pointed out, bitcointalk isn't a court of law; it's an internet discussion forum.

Plagiarists aren't welcomed here.  And I would add that members who get banned do in fact get a message with an e-mail to which they can send their ban appeal to.  What they don't get when the ban is issued for copy/pasting is a message stating that fact--even though I'm pretty sure most of them know what they did.  

I absolutely agree with TMAN.  Discussing your ban in Meta is pretty much useless unless there's been a mistake made.  That happens rarely, though.  Most of these threads are just excuses, begging, and time-wasting.  At least if the ban message included something like "You've been banned for plagiarism", it might help cut down on the amount of appeal threads being made.  In any case, it won't hurt anything to include one.

I'd support that, too, except I'm sure that most of these moronic copy/pasters think they're innocent and wrongly-banned.  That's why I suggested in another thread that an example of the plagiarism be included in the ban message.

I wish you wouldn't have done that (given OP a merit, which I just noticed you did), because it encourages shitposters to keep posting these unnecessary (and frankly idiotic) threads in Meta.  Op did not deserve a merit for the post he wrote IMO, and I'm sure many members here would agree with that.  It was essentially just whining and thinly-veiled merit begging.  That's what you encourage when you reward members like him with merits.

I'm sure CongHoan IS reading--but only about how to earn merit, and since all the answers about how to do that are written by garbage shitposters with no merits, and who use the same phrases like "we must make quality post and be helpful to earn merit", that's why he wrote what he wrote. 

And as to his being perplexed as to what "high quality posts" are, there's no formula or set of criteria that anyone can come up with that's going to help someone who lacks the ability to write well, especially in English which is the language most of the shitposters have extreme difficulties with but nevertheless keep trying to write in. 

TMAN's posts are biting, sarcastic, and often are profane, and he can combine those attributes into posts that end up being amusing--and that make complete sense to the reader.  Imagine the average Indonesian or Filipino with no understanding of the English language trying to do an Andrew Dice Clay comedy routine from a script written in English that he has to pronounce phonetically.  That would bomb, people would be running for the exits, and he'd probably get tomatoes hurled at him. 

That's basically what it's like when non-English speakers try to make "high quality posts" and why they're confused when their efforts aren't being rewarded.

That's not true, though.  I've seen cases where people with negs from DT have no trouble whatsoever doing deals here, depending on what the feedback was for, of course.  A lot of members apparently don't even check a person's trust page before deciding whether to transact with that person--and that's how many of them get scammed, too.

In your case, I would check carefully to see that you hadn't employed a shill on an auction of yours before I bid on it, but otherwise I'd have no issues dealing with you because of all the other positives you've received.  Negative trust from DT members isn't the kiss of death a lot of people think it is.

It's not such a huge mess, though there are problems.  I've had to remove some negatives that I've left when evidence showed that I left them wrongly, and I suspect there will be more.  Vod's not part of that sort of issue, IMO.  His feedbacks are generally very accurate, and he has a reputation of being quite fair. 

However, I agree with his feedback on you and that what you did was extremely scammy.  There's no auction house in the world that I know of that would allow someone to place a bid on his own auction--even employing shill bidders is almost universally either frowned upon or illegal.  If you realize what you did was wrong (and I haven't been following all of your posts on this) and haven't repeated it, Vod might be kind enough to remove his neg, though I wouldn't count on it.  His rating was honest.  But you left not one, but two retaliatory negs on him and I don't expect that's going to sway his opinion in your favor.

It's not a spam post simply because it's in the wrong section, which I'm not even sure that it is.  Even so, you can just use the "report to moderator" button and suggest that it get moved.  If it really is in the wrong section, a mod will move it to the correct one.

Yes, but people should still be reporting spam posts regardless of what section they're in.  Someone will handle the reports, whether it's one moderator or several.

There used to be spammers posting advertisements for male-enhancement products and the like, and they were always from new accounts and always toward midnight in my time zone.  I reported every single one I came across, and they all got deleted quickly.  Spamming may not be a war where the enemy can be obliterated entirely, but moderators--with the help of regular members like us--can make a difference in reducing spam.  Just because things look hopeless doesn't mean we should give up and not act.

I tagged the MalReynolds account on 9/21 and all that merit-giving started on 9/30.  According to the sales thread, he hadn't sold it as of 9/25 so my guess is that it changed hands shortly after MalReynold's last post there on that date and the new owner started selling merits or distributing them to his alt accounts and/or friends.

I'm not tagging merit abusers, but MalReynolds has already been negged for account selling.  As to the members he gave merit to, it's a really tough call deciding whether they're alts or not and whether to give feedback.  A person can't control who he receives merit from, and if all those accounts were to get tagged it might not be the right thing to do--unless they can be linked.  So my guess is that everything that could be done has already been done. 

Unfortunately, this is one of the negative effects of account sales, especially high-ranked ones with sMerits to give out.

That sounds more like trolling than spam.  I understand spam to be posting basically the same post in multiple threads, which usually happens when someone is trying to spam something they're advertising or when someone is pissed off at another member and keeps posting whatever their beef is in many threads (but with little difference in the content).

As you guys have already mentioned, what OP found is a case of pure plagiarism, and good catch on his part for finding it and all of you who reported it.  It amazes me that idiots will do this just to boost their post count; think it's OK; and think nobody will catch them.  I've never seen this happen on any other forum I've been a part of.

Yeah, you can have multiple accounts on bitcointalk.  The problem people who have them run into is when they start cheating campaigns by enrolling their alts into the same ones to collect a fatter paycheck--but having them isn't against the rules and won't result in a red tag unless there's been some evidence of abuse or some other wrongdoing by them. 

Timelord2067 or other members might give the accounts a neutral trust simply stating the connection between the alts, but that shouldn't affect you adversely. 

Don't know if that answers your question or not.

I didn't understand that distinction between getting a positive trust and being included in a DT member's trust list until about a year ago, and for a while I'd assumed I was in DT3 since Vod had left me a positive trust.  Lutpin set me straight on that one, IIRC.

That's exactly how I felt at the time as well.  lol

Whew.  I didn't realize (or had forgotten) that there are that many members in DT1/DT2.  I don't see many of them active anymore, unless they hang around sections I tend to avoid, like mining and securities.