No, because mistakes are occasionally made. chimk was framed that one time, for example.

I won't do pay-to-bump or similar because it removes any sense of fairness or community participation, and basically just makes a page of most-money-wins paid advertisements. (Paying a fixed fee to create a topic there is possible, though not high on my list, since that'd at least be fair.)

---

I'm currently still leaning toward some per-topic metric based on merit, though probably not exactly what I originally stated. Limiting who can bump would be easier to implement, but the roughness/immediacy of it makes it more easy-to-manipulate IMO.

I only changed the message on autobans. ("Autoban" = lingo indicating a type of ban. They're usually not actually automatic.)

In most cases, the person's last PMs will be one or more "deleted post" PMs containing the messages that got them banned. If not, then the reason for their ban is more complicated, and certainly couldn't be automatically determined. Having moderators put a reason for every autoban is a waste of mods' time. Autobans are for obvious cases when appeals should only very rarely be accepted, which is why the appeal topics in Meta can be immediately rejected 99% of the time.

I have no respect for anyone who would even think of plagiarizing in the way that these people do. They don't belong here. Additional warnings will probably have nearly zero effect, and if it has any effect at all, it'll just turn fairly-easy-to-identify plagiarists into more ambiguous shitposters.

Do you mean total merit across all posts in the topic, or just for the OP?

There's a strong incentive to spam replies to topics in altcoin announcements and a few other sections because there's a lot of activity and competition for eyeballs there. This spam should just be deleted, but I'd also like to remove the incentive by changing the default ordering of topics in those sections from "last post" to something new. (You'll still be able to click/bookmark something to get the old ordering.)

What are your ideas for new ordering methods? My current idea is:
 1. For each topic, get a list of the distinct users who posted there in the last 24 hours.
 2. Give the topic a score equal to the sum of each such user's total earned merit.
 3. Sort by topic score descending, and secondarily by the usual last post time.

With that, you still have topics with recent conversation listed first, but it requires more resources to manipulate, at least, and newbies have no influence. Maybe it'd give certain users overwhelming influence, though.

I want to think about it quite a bit more, so I probably won't do it soon.

The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem.

Ads are allowed to contain any non-annoying HTML/CSS style. No images, JavaScript, or animation. Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser (Firefox, 900px wide). Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs^[1], banks, funds, or anything else that a person can be said to "invest" in; I may very rarely make exceptions if you convince me that you are ultra legit, but don't count on it. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post, and only for people using the default theme.

Duration

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 8 or 9 days.
- Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 12 days. Even if past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Ad blocking

Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads. I don't expect many people to use this option. These people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

I try to bypass Adblock Plus filters as much as possible, though this is not guaranteed. It is difficult or impossible for ABP filters to block the ad space itself without blocking posts. However, filters can match against the URLs in your links, your CSS classes and style attributes, and the HTML structure of your ads.

To prevent matches against URLs: I have some JavaScript which fixes links blocked by ABP. You must tell me if you want this for your ads. When someone with ABP and JavaScript enabled views your ads, your links are changed to a special randomized bitcointalk.org URL which redirects to your site when visited. People without ABP are unaffected, even if they don't have JavaScript enabled. The downsides are:
- ABP users will see the redirection link when they hover over the link, even if they disable ABP for the forum.
- Getting referral stats might become even more difficult.
- Some users might get a warning when redirecting from https to http.

To prevent matching on CSS classes/styles: Don't use inline CSS. I can give your ad a CSS class that is randomized on each pageload, but you must request this.

To prevent matching against your HTML structure: Use only one <a> and no other tags if possible. If your ads get blocked because of matching done on something inside of your ad, you are responsible for noticing this and giving me new ad HTML.

Designing ads

Make sure that your ads look good when you download and edit this test page:
https://bitcointalk.org/ad_test.html
Also read the comments in that file.

Images are not allowed no matter how they are created (CSS, SVG, or data URI). Occasionally I will make an exception for small logos and such, but you must get pre-approval from me first.

The maximum size of any one ad is 51200 bytes.

I will send you more detailed styling rules if you win slots in this auction (or upon request).

Auction rules

You must be at least a Jr Member to bid. If you are not a Jr Member and you really want to bid, you should PM me first. Tell me in the PM what you're going to advertise. You might be required to pay some amount in advance. Everyone else: Please quickly PM newbies who try to bid here to warn them against impersonation scammers.

If you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM.

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in BTC per slot. You must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all nine slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 5" means 2 slots for 5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 5 BTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however.
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.02.
- The bidding starts at 0.02.
- I will end the auction at an arbitrary time. Unless I say otherwise, I typically try to end auctions within a few days of 10 days from the time of this post, but unexpected circumstances may sometimes force me to end the auction anytime between 4 and 22 days from the start. I have a small bias toward ending auctions on Fridays, Sundays, and Mondays.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.
- Bids are considered invalid and will be ignored if they do not specify both a price and a max quantity, or if they could not possibly win any slots

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done.

I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.

---

[1]: For the purposes of forum ads, an ICO is any token, altcoin, or other altcoin-like thing which meets any of the following criteria: it is primarily run/backed by a company; it is substantially, fundamentally centralized in either operation or coin distribution; or it is not yet possible for two unprivileged users of the system to send coins directly to each other in a P2P way. The intention here is to allow community efforts to advertise things like Litecoin, but not to allow ICO funding, even when the ICO is disguised in various ways.

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 0.22 SwC_Poker
5 0.20 lightlord
1 0.20 FirstGlobalCredit
2 0.18 cryptasm

If genetic bioweapons are illegal, only criminals will have genetic bioweapons. We need widespread genetic engineering so that we can improve our own defenses against such things, including attacks by governments against their citizens: a more literal form of anti-virus.

Oryx and Crake is a good piece of fiction featuring a world with highly-accessible genetic engineering where it's as easy to make a custom bioweapon as it is to make a computer virus nowadays. The author clearly wants to ban all genetic research or something like that, but I still highly recommend the book for anyone interested in this topic, since it's very thought-provoking. (It's the first in a series of books, but I've only read the first one.)

I've rethought this, and I won't be releasing the PMs in 2021. I'm convinced that nobody will ever identify Satoshi no matter what info comes out, so I'm not worried about that, but I am concerned about the privacy of those who communicated with him. For example, kiba once said that he tried to send a gift to Satoshi, but Satoshi declined (reportedly saying something like "I already have plenty of BTC"). If the PMs for this exchange exist in the database and hypothetically look like this:

Then it would put a big target on kiba's back. (This is only a hypothetical example: in reality, kiba never published the amount he offered Satoshi, if any amount was even specified.) Even if I screened the PMs in advance for obvious stuff like this, it's impossible to find everything. Eg. maybe someone who talked to Satoshi was trying to be anonymous, but people are able to find him just based on his writing style or knowledge.

I do think that there could be historically-relevant info in there, so maybe if Bitcoin has taken over the world in like 50 years and historians are clamoring to know more about its history, I or my successors could be convinced to revisit the issue. Or maybe not; don't get your hopes up. (I still haven't read the PMs, BTW; maybe they're all really boring.)

There are probably thousands of compatible image hosts. Not everyone needs to use imgur. There's a whole subreddit for it: https://www.reddit.com/r/imguralternatives/

The main issue is that your image was too large, and without resizing/compression it will not work on any host.

I don't have any interest in a stupid little trollbox thing, though maybe it'd be cool to run and slightly integrate an end-to-end-encrypted real-time-chat server. Has anyone looked into Matrix?

I totally support this guy. Scientists have become cowards. Everything here was voluntary, and the possible benefits are enormous. While the entire rest of the world is doing unending long-term studies on incremental bits & pieces which even in the best case might show marginal benefits after many years, this guy took one giant leap for mankind. We need more mad scientists in the world...

The poll doesn't have a no-regulation option. I'm all for it without regulation. I hope that eventually at-home genetic modification becomes as common as 3D printing today, and the fact that this apparently "rogue" scientist was able to pull it off gives me a lot of hope in that area. If only governments end up able to do this sort of thing, then I'm nearly certain that eg. China will pursue genetic modification aimed at making people more docile; we need bottom-up countermeasures.

I sometimes wish that I had gotten into genetic engineering as a field rather than computers. It'll probably be the next massive technological revolution.


Agreed. People often have an irrational conservative bias when it comes to this stuff. If a race of super-humans is created, then they should dominate most things (based on their increased merit, not automatically). And it's not like there's eugenics against stupid/sub-optimal people today, so I'm not worried about some non-modified-genocide situation.

I think that many of these modifications will eventually be possible on adults, too, though, delivered via injectable viruses.

---

I don't like how the current system is working at all. It was never intended to be a top-down "decision-making body". Everyone is supposed to set a custom list, and DefaultTrust is supposed to just be a stepping stone for newbies.

But what do you propose to fix it? Keep in mind that:
 - The #1 thing to be avoided is someone keeping illegitimate positive trust for long, since that facilitates scamming.
 - It's kind of OK for someone to get illegitimate negative trust, but if it's wrong then it should be removed eventually.
 - Other than that, it's best to have as many ratings trusted as possible.

Some possibilities which have come to my mind:

Force custom lists

Display an annoying message instead of a trust score next to every post until the person sets a custom list with the assistance of the set initial trust page.

Pros:
 - No remnant of top-down decision-making remains.
Cons:
 - Newbies will often choose poorly, especially since the suggested list is possibly manipulable.
 - I've been thinking that I might want to enable trust for non-users, and that'd be impossible with this.

Athenian democracy

Every month, pick ~30 random users from the set of users who meet certain fairly strict criteria. Those users are DT1 for the month. As a special exception to the normal trust network construction algorithm, distrusts in DT1 will also affect DT1; ie. if a user on DT1 has -1 or less net trusters on DT1, then they will not be considered to be on DT1 anymore.

Pros:
 - I think that it'd end up being fairly accurate on average.
 - It strongly encourages people to maintain good trust lists at all times.
 - Since it'd be erratic, it'd encourage people to not use DefaultTrust, which I don't want people to be doing.
 - It's not very top-down, though in some cases major failures might require manual adjustment.
 - It can be used by non-users.
Cons:
 - The stability everyone has gotten used to with DT will be gone.
 - Some degree of abuse is inevitable. There will be constant battles to get things working reasonably.

Voting

I'm not a fan of voting, especially in an environment like this where sockpuppets are impossible to prevent, but maybe it could be made to work with sufficient layers and oversight. For a while I was thinking about a complicated system in which users would self-assign themselves to "tribes", elect tribal leaders, and then the leaders would construct DT1 (plus some other stuff). I think I've decided that this particular method would be overly complicated and not sufficiently useful, though. Alternatives are possible.

Algorithmic

Maybe there's some algorithmic way of looking at the universal trust graph and pulling out a DT1 which would guarantee several important properties, even in the face of manipulation. I thought about it for a while, but I couldn't figure anything out.

---

If you have specific suggestions for alterations to the current DT1 list, then make a topic about it. I think that the system is structurally flawed as it is now, though.

Agreed, Canada = America's hat. The fact that they're following the US's orders here isn't unexpected at all.

The whole "rule of law" myth will go right out of the window here, I'm sure. This arrest will be used exclusively as a bargaining chip, and whatever the outcome is, it will have nothing to do with her guilt or innocence.

GMX is a total shitshow. In the aftermath of the satoshin@gmx.com hack, it was determined that GMX allowed/allows you to grab most accounts by merely brute-forcing the birthday -- this is the method that was probably used. Once that incident grabbed headlines, GMX disabled the account for a while, but someone was able to hack or register it again later. It's probably passed through several hands since then, nobody able to hold onto it for long because GMX is so full of holes. Never use GMX.

The P2Pfoundation account is already well-known to be hacked: it posted the "Your dox, passwords and IP addresses are being sold on the darknet" thing a while ago, though that post is now deleted. I kinda suspect that CSW doesn't actually control it, though, and is just trying to play along with "nour" like the idiot conman he is.

The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem.

Ads are allowed to contain any non-annoying HTML/CSS style. No images, JavaScript, or animation. Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser (Firefox, 900px wide). Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs^[1], banks, funds, or anything else that a person can be said to "invest" in; I may very rarely make exceptions if you convince me that you are ultra legit, but don't count on it. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post, and only for people using the default theme.

Duration

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 8 or 9 days.
- Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 12 days. Even if past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Ad blocking

Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads. I don't expect many people to use this option. These people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

I try to bypass Adblock Plus filters as much as possible, though this is not guaranteed. It is difficult or impossible for ABP filters to block the ad space itself without blocking posts. However, filters can match against the URLs in your links, your CSS classes and style attributes, and the HTML structure of your ads.

To prevent matches against URLs: I have some JavaScript which fixes links blocked by ABP. You must tell me if you want this for your ads. When someone with ABP and JavaScript enabled views your ads, your links are changed to a special randomized bitcointalk.org URL which redirects to your site when visited. People without ABP are unaffected, even if they don't have JavaScript enabled. The downsides are:
- ABP users will see the redirection link when they hover over the link, even if they disable ABP for the forum.
- Getting referral stats might become even more difficult.
- Some users might get a warning when redirecting from https to http.

To prevent matching on CSS classes/styles: Don't use inline CSS. I can give your ad a CSS class that is randomized on each pageload, but you must request this.

To prevent matching against your HTML structure: Use only one <a> and no other tags if possible. If your ads get blocked because of matching done on something inside of your ad, you are responsible for noticing this and giving me new ad HTML.

Designing ads

Make sure that your ads look good when you download and edit this test page:
https://bitcointalk.org/ad_test.html
Also read the comments in that file.

Images are not allowed no matter how they are created (CSS, SVG, or data URI). Occasionally I will make an exception for small logos and such, but you must get pre-approval from me first.

The maximum size of any one ad is 51200 bytes.

I will send you more detailed styling rules if you win slots in this auction (or upon request).

Auction rules

You must be at least a Jr Member to bid. If you are not a Jr Member and you really want to bid, you should PM me first. Tell me in the PM what you're going to advertise. You might be required to pay some amount in advance. Everyone else: Please quickly PM newbies who try to bid here to warn them against impersonation scammers.

If you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM.

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in BTC per slot. You must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all nine slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 5" means 2 slots for 5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 5 BTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however.
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.02.
- The bidding starts at 0.02.
- I will end the auction at an arbitrary time. Unless I say otherwise, I typically try to end auctions within a few days of 10 days from the time of this post, but unexpected circumstances may sometimes force me to end the auction anytime between 4 and 22 days from the start. I have a small bias toward ending auctions on Fridays, Sundays, and Mondays.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.
- Bids are considered invalid and will be ignored if they do not specify both a price and a max quantity, or if they could not possibly win any slots

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done.

I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.

---

[1]: For the purposes of forum ads, an ICO is any token, altcoin, or other altcoin-like thing which meets any of the following criteria: it is primarily run/backed by a company; it is substantially, fundamentally centralized in either operation or coin distribution; or it is not yet possible for two unprivileged users of the system to send coins directly to each other in a P2P way. The intention here is to allow community efforts to advertise things like Litecoin, but not to allow ICO funding, even when the ICO is disguised in various ways.

As per usual, if you bid an invalid amount (ie. not divisible by 0.02), then I round down to the nearest valid amount.


Sorry, it still looks too high-risk for now IMO.

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 0.22 SwC_Poker
1 0.20 FirstGlobalCredit
2 0.20 Bitcoin Kan
5 0.20 lightlord

Satoshi's Vision!

More income isn't needed right now, and any possible benefits of an additional membership tier seem to me like they would be too superfluous. Maybe I'll do it at some future point, when more income is needed and/or I have some decent ideas for things that really should be payment-gated.

Don't worry about supporting the forum financially. The most helpful thing anyone can do is to just be a good member of the community by eg. helping newbies, patrolling for spam, or writing good posts.

P.S. Why do so many people read copper member as cooper member?