Hi everyone.

I wanted to create this thread to appreciate Satoshi, first of all, and then every other admin that we had or still have, including @theymos, for making this forum so free and easy for each one of us, the freedom we have here is truly unmatchable, and I will tell you why this thought came to my mind all of a sudden.

So, a few months ago, I started using the other forum, Altcoinstalks, and I've been active there as well. Since I was fairly new, I still am, in that forum, I didn't know much about how things work there, so one day, for some reason, I wanted to delete a post that I made earlier, and I was surprised to see that I could modify the post, but there was no option to delete it. At that time, I thought maybe the post was in a section where we can't remove our own posts, so I let it go. But today, I stumbled upon something that made me create this thread here.

What I discovered was that they have a Shop there, a place where you can buy features and abilities, badges, special ranks, and whatnot. It's good in general if you are allowed to pay some money to get special features or abilities, but what surprised me was that you also have to make donations or buy special ranks for simple things, such as deleting your own posts or threads:



So, apparently, you have to donate or buy the Patrons rank for 0.05 ETH or more to be able to lock your own topics, donate 0.1 ETH or purchase Royalty rank to be able to move your own topics or remove your own replies/posts, and donate 1.1 ETH or more or have Donor rank to be able to delete your own topics/threads. 

There is a bunch of other stuff that you can see from the screenshot above, or you can check them all for yourself in the Shop. I only mentioned the ones that made me create this thread to appreciate the freedom we have in this forum, because other than some extra features that are added for lower ranks to be able to perform certain things their ranks don't allow, such as the Copper Membership, we don't have to pay anything to do simple things here.

That being said, this thread is less about discussing the shortcomings of the other forum but more about appreciating the freedom and general abilities we get in this forum for being simple, non-donor users.

As the title says, has anyone else noticed this? I'm confused because the user, Bitcoinsummoner, has posted applications in almost every single available campaign thread in the Services section, even when they clearly say they are CFNP; and, he didn't even spare the ones that are paused or suspended.



Is it desperation or what? Even a newbie would be able to notice that the campaigns are closed or paused, and they aren't supposed to apply, but he, being a Hero member, is behaving strangely.

Hi everyone.

So, I was casually surfing around in the other forum (Altcoinstalks) today, and I stumbled upon their forum rules, and one of the rules caught my attention:



I have previously suggested that we should have a rule against obvious AI-generated content posters, but most people thought that the rule for plagiarism covers this, even though I disagree, but anyways.

The activity in the AI Spam Report Reference Thread shows that the use of AI in the forum is gradually increasing. I know that most of these users who are found posting AI content are neutral tagged, but there should be something more to it, something that should be visible for everyone in every section of the forum wherever such users post because trust isn't visible everywhere.

So, would it be a bad idea to introduce a badge or title called "AI Spammer" given to users who are found posting apparent AI-generated content, like this guy?

Moderators should be allowed to give this badge/title to detected and tagged users only if the mods think the evidence is enough and it's an obvious case. It can be removed if the user improves over time and requests to get the badge/title removed.

Let me know what you guys think.

So, I visited the Bitcoin Discussion section today and saw the following self-moderated thread created by this user named RetiredCoder:

Mini-puzzle for puzzle #130

The thread is about a puzzle where the person who cracks it gets to keep the $700 worth of BCH. I read through the thread, and everything seemed normal until I noticed something strange/unusual.

Most of the users posted in that thread were newbies or brand-new who had all (or most) of their posts just in that thread. Some of those accounts were even created recently, while others were created earlier this year. These are a few of them:

llenn1227
Asmodeus_Zero
K0rvexX
ActiveC
love19

Now, I'm not blaming OP for anything, but this keeps me wondering why and how all these users decided to start their posting journey in the forum with that exact thread and why those accounts, which were created about 11 months ago or so, didn't post all this time but suddenly decided to start posting and from that thread alone and have made all their posts so far in that one thread.

This is what made me ask the question and ask your opinion about whether it is a new way of farming accounts or a way to do shilling so that the thread stays afloat and makes it look like it has a lot of activity so that other members can engage.

What do you guys think? Does this seem coincidental to you or make you doubtful like me?

[Can I be demerited or lose merit?]

The quote below has been taken from FAQ: Everything you need to know about forum 'activity, account ranks and merit:

Can I be demerited or lose merit?

No, not currently. Even if your post is removed the merit will still stay.

I want to ask, why?

I know some will say, "Sometimes a deserving post with merits gets removed because of a removal of a thread/topc." or "What if a post is deleted from a self-moderated thread?", that's why, I have added it in the title as well, there should be some exceptions and I will talk about them as well, but first of all, let me explain why I think merits from deleted posts, specifically the posts that are deleted by moderators for violating the rules, should be deducted from a users total merit count.

So, I was surfing the forum as usual, and I saw this user posting AI-generated content. Upon checking his post history, I found a few more such posts, so I reported him to the AI Spam Report Reference Thread and his posts to the moderators. Among the reported posts, one post (that he had generated using an AI) had received 4 merits. Now, I have reported the post to the moderators, and it will probably get deleted, at least it should because I have also submitted proof for it, but the user will still have the merits received for that post, and I think he doesn't deserve that.

Below is a snap that I took of the post I'm talking about for reference in case the post gets removed by moderators:



This is just one example, there are hundreds of such cases. Users are posting crap, AI shitposts, and content that no one understands, and still ranking up because they are getting merited by their buddies who managed to get some merits probably doing something similar in the past.

So, I think merit deduction on deleted posts by moderators should be implemented.

Now, talking about exceptions. I know that when a thread or topic gets removed, users who might have posted in that thread and received merits will also have their posts removed as a result of the thread getting removed, in such a case, the merits should stay. But if OP had received merits and it gets deleted from a moderator for breaking a rule, he should lose the merits.

Another exception is when a post gets removed from a self-moderated thread/topic, the user shouldn't lose merits because the creator of the self-moderated thread can also remove posts and it doesn't always have to be a rule-breaking thing in that instance.

However, I strongly believe that merits received on posts that are deleted by moderators for breaking a forum rule should be deducted from a user's profile.

Looking forward to your thoughts on this.

[34. Using AI-generated content and passing it on as your own is not allowed.]

I know that if we report AI-generated texts or content to moderators, they get deleted, and I also know that there is a thread for reporting AI-generated posts (I'm unable to find that thread at the moment, sorry), but, shouldn't there be an official rule in the unofficial list of forum rules against obvious AI-generated content and posts?

I use the word "obvious" because some people might argue that it's not always possible to find out whether a post has been written by a human or an AI model, but if you have used AI models yourself or you have some experience with them, you would know that the texts they usually generate will have some sort of a pattern that makes them easy to spot. Look at the snap below as an example:



There are three posts shown in the picture. Now, there are two things that you need to note. First, all the posts are starting with an almost similar tone, "You've raised some...", "You've hit the nail...", etc. The second thing is that you will not be able to find a single grammatical or punctuation mistake in all the posts. Why? Because AI is too perfect, it won't make mistakes that humans do such as forgetting a dot, maybe a comma, or maybe making a grammatical mistake in one of the sentences, etc.

So, the point is, that I believe we should have an official rule against obvious AI-generated content being posted on the forum. It should say something like:

34. Using AI-generated content and passing it on as your own is not allowed.

Anyone reported to moderators for breaking the rule should get a temporary ban initially, and if they don't stop, the second report should get them permanently banned. Alternatively, maybe there can be some other restriction that can be imposed for breaking this rule.

Looking forward to your opinions on this.

This might not be something that directly harms the forum or its well-being, but it's painful to watch.

If there was an award for burst-posting, this guy would surely be the winner in it. The guy is literally making a post every 2 to 3 minutes in any section he stumbles upon, look at the picture for reference:



That isn't the only board or place where he did or does this, he did the same in Gambling Discussion just an hour or half an hour ago but because that section is more crowded, it went unnoticed but it can be seen from his post history. The guy has 1690 posts with only 182 activity points, and most of his posts are of the same nature, generic 3-line posts without much contribution to the topics in question.

I'm not against this guy or anyone in general, but I feel this isn't normal behavior and there should be a way to prevent this from happening.

P.S.: I'll lock the thread if the community thinks otherwise. Open for discussion for now.

We often see users creating accounts, more than one in most cases, and using them to advertise a certain platform, project, or app by starting new topics in different sections of the forum. What they do is make it sound like they are asking a genuine question or they are concerned about something or maybe doing some research about it, but it can be seen that they have no other intention but to promote what they are mentioning.

The most recent example that I've come across is this:

I think betting on the exact score in football can be exciting, but it's also quite challenging. The odds are usually higher, but predicting the precise outcome is tough. If you're looking for a way to improve your chances and explore more options, I recommend checking out https://winwinbet.in/app/ because it offers a wide range of sports betting options and is particularly popular among players in India. If you’ve chosen the Winwin app, you’ve made a great decision. It provides access to top casino games and sports betting across Asia. Downloading the Winwin app opens up numerous opportunities that other platforms might not offer. Whether you’re using Android or iOS, the installation is straightforward. For Android, download the apk from the official website, install it, and log in or register to join the community. iOS users follow a similar process to enjoy seamless access to games and sports betting.

Although this one is quite straightforward, you can often find users trying to twist it and make it a question and try to be genuinely concerned and ask for help from the community which we know isn't the case.
The users who do this are usually not found after, meaning they create an account, make the post with the link, disappear, and then do it with a new account later.

So, since this is mostly, almost 99% of the time, done using new accounts, I'm proposing that we do something that might prevent this from happening.

What we can do is to have a requirement after creating a new account for users to be able to post links, which means that if someone creates a new account, they shouldn't be able to post links unless they spend a specific amount of time in the forum like 24 hours or something. So if someone joins the forum being interested in the forum itself and plans to stay, they should be okay because they will have the requirement completed within a few days, and those who are doing these things won't be able to post links to promote specific services.

The only exception should be for users buying Copper membership, which means that if someone buys Copper membership, they should be exempted from this requirement and be able to post links immediately.

Let me know what you guys think about this and whether this can be useful or not.

P.S: I got the idea from a post that I read and I want to give credit to the poster for the idea:

Seems like we need to add some rule that you can send the link only after e.g. 10 messages or specific amount of time spent on the forum!

I was getting the following error when trying to access the Gambling section a minute or so ago. Is it something that needs to be fixed or what?



Edit: I'm able to access it now. I will lock the thread after a while, leaving it open just in case someone wants to explain the reason for the error.

Edit 2: Locking the thread as theymos has already explained the reason behind the error in this post.

By the time of writing this, there are about 9 topics created by brand new or newbie accounts in Altcoin Discussion promoting a project called "Magic Square".
I'm pretty sure there will be more coming in shortly because they are on a mission to promote this project at any cost, it's serial shilling as we all know it.

The point is, how many topics/threads is one going to report by opening them one by one? Can't there be a way to report keywords to mods or admins that would serve as a suggestion for them to ban a certain keyword to avoid temporary spam such as the one I have mentioned above?


Update: Most of the topics and posts are deleted and users are banned thanks to users who have reported them, especially LoyceV for adding the keyword under the spam category in his website that had helped me find and report a bunch of them.
However, it could still be easier to do this if mods could implement a keyword ban on titles or something similar that could reduce the spam and the need for manually reporting every single thread/topic.

After the merit system, it seemed like the things are getting normal, spam and spammers getting less than before and everything is falling in place. But, what I see in Digital goods section is not really pleasing. Account farmers are still openly selling merits and accounts, and for some reason, their threads are not locked/closed.
Why? What's the essence of the merit system if we still allow such things in the forum?

Attaching one thread for reference:



Thread link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5407070.0
OP: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3492180

A so called teamless project called SexyCam has recently started a signature campaign in the forum in order to promote their project and earn some money through a public presale that they are planning to launch in January, 2019. The project is so clearly a scam and a person would know it by simply opening their website which clearly shows that the project is totally fake and is just an structure made to scam people out of their money. They didn't even bother to represent a fake team for their project to make their project look at least a bit less suspicious.

The signature campaign they are running has a self-moderated thread, offers very low rates per week, and their signatures are obviously made by themselves because they are totally not good looking. When I posted in their signature thread after seeing their signatures, they deleted my post. Below is what I wrote which they deleted:



And, to fool the members even more, the manager has added a wallet address along with a signed message and a signature claiming that the funds to be paid are held in that address.  
How does it make any sense if the manager himself, who is not trusted by the community, posts a signed message from an address that he himself holds and says, "Don't worry, the funds are available in this address that I hold. So I won't scam you guys."  

[1]

Greetings!

So I had two things to say, but since I didn't want to spam the board, I decided to put them both in the same thread.
Here they are.

1 - Copper Membership Requires some tweaking (Suggested here as well by Vod)
After the recent changes/restrictions in lower ranks, people have started to buy Copper Membership in order to be able to wear signature and take part in Bounty/Signature campaigns. Since the user with Copper Membership can wear the signature assigned to him/her, he is not subjected to acquire the rank required to join some Bounties/Signature Campaigns. Therefore, they simply buy the membership in a few bucks to spam the shit out of the forum and earn way more than what they spent on it.

The basic reason for introducing the Copper Membership was to allow lower ranks to post images and reduce some other restrictions, like the time interval between PMs or such, but the usage of it today is totally abusive. Look at this user, who doesn't even know how to reply to a quote properly, but he has bought a Copper Membership and is now a participate of a Bounty Campaign named Apollox (whose manager is also a Newbie with Copper Membership and zero Merits). I, and everyone else as well, I'm sure, would definitely not like to see this happening. That is why I wanted to suggest a little tweaking with it.

Since a Newbie cannot wear a signature after the recent changes, I suggest that a Newbie should not be able to wear it even after buying Copper Membership. A Newbie who buys Copper Membership should only be able to post images and it should remove the other restrictions associated with it, but their signature space should still be restricted for as long as they don't earn a Merit and rank up to Jr. member. This way, they won't be able to buy a Copper Membership and use that as a way of participating in those Bounties/Signature Campaigns again which is what the changes have been implemented to stop.

2 - Posting restriction for Newbies in "Meta"
Every time when there is a change, we see the amount of spam increasing for a few days in almost every section, but mostly in "Meta". There are numerous reasons behind that, and we know them all. But, the recent changes have given everyone a new reasoning to post in "Meta", that is: they think posting in "Meta" would undoubtedly earn them Merits, which is a misconception, but they believe so. This thinking has almost turned "Meta" into a new "Bitcoin Discussion" because of the amount of spam every threads posted here is receiving, and the useless threads that are being made every hour. I know these things mostly calm down after some time, but this wouldn't, because the new changes have demoted all the Jr. members to Newbie, and now they all, plus every other Newbie, require at least one Merit to rank up, and they would keep trying to get it, even in this section.

I think restricting Newbies from posting in "Meta" would reduce this from happening to a large extent. A Newbie should only be able to read everything in "Meta" but should not be allowed to post in here. Once they earn 1 Merit, they would have no such restrictions put on them. If someone says, "This would be injustice to genuine users" then I would simply answer it with: A genuine user should have no problems earning at least one Merit outside "Meta", which would lift the restriction.
In addition, Copper Membership should also lift this restriction, since "Meta" is also used for hacked accounts and stuff. So if a user's account gets hacked, they should simply buy Copper Membership with the account (Since the accounts used for recovery requests are mostly Newbies, and they would not wait to earn a Merit to post their request) they want to request a recovery with, and then post that in "Meta".
I don't think that anyone would not be able to afford buying a $10 (or even $20, or more, if the price of Bitcoin increases) membership in order to recover their precious accounts. And such cases anyways are a rarity, so that should not be a problem.


I would love to know the viewpoints of people on these two issues.
Questions and arguments are welcome too.

So, before a few days, I saw this reply in my thread about the excessive spam in Bitcoin Discussion board which caught my attention, and I replied to him asking, "Doesn't a thread gets hidden when you ignore the person who has started it?" And he said, "No". So, I started to wonder how helpful it would be for each one of us if there was a feature like that. I tried to search if there is something about it, and I found this:

Ignore threads - user script by NLNico

The work he did is actually commendable. He has created this script so that people could use it to "ignore" the spam threads in Gambling section at that time (it was created in 2016) when there wasn't a Gambling Discussion sub-board available. What the script does is it provides a Minus (-) button at the end of the title of each thread of the board you open. If you click that button, the thread turns into a different state, just like how a thread looks when it is "Moved" to a different section. After clicking the button, it changes to a Plus (+) which would bring the thread back to its original state once clicked.

The script actually does the work of ignoring a thread you don't want to open in future, but what it doesn't do is that the thread would still show up in the same place where it should be. Means, it would still be on the top of the list if it gets a reply from another user, which would fill up the complete first page with the "ignored threads" of yours if they are all actively getting replies, and that is where I want to suggest what I have in my mind.

Now when we ignore a user, it only hides the posts he made, which would only work if he is only doing replies. But if he has also started some threads himself, ignoring him doesn't hide the entire threads automatically. I want it to work like that, like if we ignore a user, all the topics he has started should get hidden for us along with his replies in other topics. That would make it very much easy for us to ignore a lot of spam megathreads in some sections which would only require ignoring a single person, the one who started it, and we would not have to see that thread again.

I don't really see any flaws in applying this function/feature. Let me know if there can be any.

Suggestions are appreciated.

It really breaks my heart when I visit 'Bitcoin Discussion' board and see the amount of spam there. And believe me, I'm not saying this only to show that I care for the forum, though I do, but I really mean what I'm saying right now and it is really saddening to see this, honestly.

The amount of spam and spammers are increasing all over the forum, but it seems like that board has become their ultimate destination to spit their shit and increase their activities or meet their post thresholds for their campaigns or whatever their reason is behind this. The situation hasn't been this bad before maybe, but now, you cannot find a single thread/topic that hasn't turned into a SMT (Spam Mega Thread), and it takes only a few hours for that to happen. That is how much spam they generate in that board.

I know that almost every single person knows all the things that I just said, but what compelled me to start this discussion is that I wanted to ask everyone that why have we left that board just for them? I know they are way more in quantity than us, but that doesn't justify leaving them all alone, so that they do whatever they want and we won't even touch that board at all.

The forum is named "Bitcointalk" which technically means "Talking about Bitcoin" or something like that. And the place to do that (Bitcoin Discussion board) is covered totally with useless discussions that we don't even want to see. I know that we can't just get them out of there, but at least we can discuss our own things, separately, in that board. That is what Moderated Threads are all about.

I just wonder how nice it would be to have some nice and qualitative Bitcoin discussions with the people that I see and read in Meta or other sections of the forum. What if all of them come together, discussing something regarding Bitcoin? A topic, totally free of spammers, with only quality posters. We can achieve that by creating Moderated Threads in Bitcoin Discussion board where we have the power to delete unsubstantial posts and only leave the ones that contribute something to the discussion.

We should not leave that board only to them. It deserves way more attention from the ones who care for the forum than what it is getting right now.

Hello!

Recently, I have seen a lot of newbies posting in threads that are very old and aren't active anymore. The first page of a section is supposed to have active and ongoing discussions while such actions don't let them be.

If you are a newbie, please take some time and read the OP (opening post) from the first page of any thread before you post anything to make sure it is not old. Because when you reply to an old thread, it pops up to the top again and people start posting in it once again which is something shouldn't be done.
You don't need to share your opinion about a topic that was started in early 2017 or even before that. There are hundreds of new topics which you can use to express your feelings. I'm not saying that you should post in almost every single one of them, but if you think you have something to say about a topic then you should first see the starting date of that and then go on. Posting replies without reading the starting date of a thread only makes the dead alive.

I hope people take this seriously.

Let me know if this has already been suggested or discussed and I will lock the thread immediately.

We all know that a very large number of spam in every section of the forum comes from users below Member rank, and the reason for that is mainly because they are participating in Signature Campaigns and they need to reach the threshold offered by the campaign to get their payment.
To reduce that, I suggest that any user, below Member rank, should be restricted from posting outsite the Bounties (Altcoins) sections if they are wearing a signature. They can still post freely in any section they want if they are not wearing a signature on them.
This would not bother any user with a low rank but constructive thoughts as they can still share their opinions with the community without any problem, and if they want to join a signature campaign, they will have to earn at least 10 Merits to reach Member rank and then they can wear a signature and post constructively to get paid for it.

Let me know your thoughts on this.

Hi everyone.

I know it might not sound a really good idea, or may no one agree with me, but I think it can (at least to some extent) reduce the spam threads popping up every day in every section/board of the forum.

We all know, of course because we see it all the time, that every new and useless thread carrying a thought/question that makes no sense at all is created by someone within the ranks of Brand New and Jr. member. Such threads give other people around them a chance to start spamming it with their useless replies. Thus, a thread started with a baseless argument ends up receiving over 100 pages of shit. And we are not talking about just one, but they are in hundreds, increasing everyday with a quite good pace. The users get tired of reporting, and the mods get tired of deleting them. So why not stop this all at once?

So, the basic idea that I propose to stop all this, is to restrict accounts below "Member" rank from creating new threads in most of the sections/boards, excluding a few like "Beginners & Help" or some other where they can freely post anything they wish as these boards are made specially for noobs and to help them. Doing so will absolutely reduce a very large number of useless threads started in almost every single thread of this forum.
It can obviously be implemented with changes, but I just wanted to propose the basic idea.

Suggestions/arguments are welcome.

The thread is excessively over-flooded with useless posts. There are no proper discussions going on in that thread, nor there is any need of a discussion in there I guess. The first post of the thread carries the information that a user needs to know about the system, other than that, there is nothing useful in there. The thread has become a place for people to post utterly useless posts like "I need merits", "Merit is good", "Explain merit to me" etcetra.
Thus, I think, it would be better to just lock the thread and pin it there. So that anyone willing to know about the system can open it and read the OP and just leave without leaving his not-needed feedback in there too.

Hello There!

Recently, I have noticed that the majority of newbies right after joining the forum, or making some posts somewhere else, come here and open a thread for just saying "Hi, I'm new here" or "Hello, I'm new to this forum" etc. Which is totally not needed. I mean, I can understand how you feel (as I have been where you are right now), but the forum is for you to read, understand and learn about Bitcoin, or any other cryptocurrency that exists. The purpose of this forum is not to introduce people to one another, but to share information with each other, which is what our aim should be, right from the start. We should not think of ourselves that "I'm just a newbie, what can I provide for others?", "I don't even understand how the things work yet.", but we should think why not? We have all the resources to learn the things that experts have. They don't/didn't travel to other worlds to learn the things, but they did it from where we are. So why can't we do that? Why don't we do that too? Instead of showing others that we know nothing, why don't we show them that we can also know what they know? Of course anyone can do that! with just a little efforts put in on something. All you got to do is to read, and read, and read, and understand. If you are here (in the forum) to learn something, then please, do that with honesty.

Okay, so what my point is, that if you are new, whether in Bitcoin or in this forum, don't just come here and post "Hi, welcome me! I'm new here", but instead, invest some of your time in reading some useful threads around the forum that you won't find difficult to get if you really look for them, and believe me, you will be interacting with others in the same way how the users with higher ranks do. But only if you be honest in doing so.

It is never about being new or old, it is all about understanding level of someone. If you can understand the things, you won't need to be an old user to know the things.

Try it! You won't regret.
Regards.