This topic has been moved to Trashcan. DMCA takedown.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2667633.0

Note that due to the high Bitcoin price, I changed the starting bid and minimum increment to 0.01 BTC each.

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, custom fonts, 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], loggable mixers^[2], banks, funds, or anything 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 0.01.
- The bidding starts at 0.01.
- 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.

Price flattening

At the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example:


Payment, etc.

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.
[2]: A loggable mixer is a service marketed primarily for improving transaction privacy which accepts full custody of cryptocurrency for a time and has the technical ability to log where the cryptocurrency comes from and goes to (even if they promise not to log).

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
2 0.06 EthexBet
1 0.06 BoXXoB
1 0.04 SwC_Poker
2 0.04 BC.GAME
2 0.04 SlavaVendo
1 0.04 lightlord

It was locked by infofront, presumably accidentally. I unlocked it.

I've thought that it'd be interesting to publish an adblocker subscription for signatures. You can block individual users' signatures with eg. bitcointalk.org##.sig186520, and/or you can try to block signature ads generally with filters like bitcointalk.org##.signature table.

---

Userscripts are a good idea. Let me know if some small change on my end will help your userscript a lot.

If you're OK with that, then you can use the credit card that you already have and:
 - Get x% back
 - Use your ordinary fiat currency instead of a weird amalgamation
 - Have your payment accepted at pretty much every retailer on earth

There's a huge market for KYC payments, but it's already filled by credit cards etc. I see zero market for Facebook's KYC cryptocurrency: it's the worst of all worlds.

LOL. This shitcoin is DOA.

It seems like it's mainly trying to clone ETH. Maybe aiming for the assets-platform angle more than anything.


If they make a permissionless cryptocurrency similar to Bitcoin, good! Then freedom in the world will be increased. But I really doubt that this is going to happen. Right now their paper reads like a standard scamcoin vaporware paper, and I currently judge there to be approximately 0% chance of them actually allowing anyone to use the system anonymously and freely like you can with real cryptocurrencies.


Uh huh.

There's been no change.

As always, line breaks = 6 bytes, and non-ASCII characters = 8 bytes.

That's not me. I don't gamble.

The only sites where I use the name "theymos" actively are bitcointalk.org, Reddit, and github. Anywhere else and it's probably not me.

Thanks, guys! I am in fact 28, even if sometimes I feel like an old man complaining about kids on his lawn.

Local rules should typically not be enforced for these.

I think that I might make it so that new support cannot be added if the topic becomes locked or deleted, though currently this isn't the case.

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, custom fonts, 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], loggable mixers^[2], banks, funds, or anything 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.

Price flattening

At the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example:


Payment, etc.

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.
[2]: A loggable mixer is a service marketed primarily for improving transaction privacy which accepts full custody of cryptocurrency for a time and has the technical ability to log where the cryptocurrency comes from and goes to (even if they promise not to log).

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 0.12 iam_aayushiJ
1 0.12 SwC_Poker
2 0.12 lightlord
1 0.12 SlavaVendo
1 0.12 lastpixelgame
2 0.12 bit-endian
1 0.12 EthexBet

Type-1 flags are more subjective. If you believe:
 - Anyone dealing with the user is at a high risk of losing money, due to red flags which any knowledgeable & reasonable forum user should agree with, and not just due to the user's opinions.
 - Enough of the above-mentioned factors are listed in the linked topic.
 
Then you can support it. If you believe the first but not the second, then you should oppose it and create a separate flag. If you believe that the first is incorrect (ie. people dealing with the user are not at a particularly high risk of losing money), then you should oppose it.

The type-1 flags on Quickseller, BSV, etc. aren't misuse of the system by either supporters or opponents.

No, you are just not allowed to use the high-power scam flags -- intended mainly for punishing people, not really for preemptively warning about scams -- without first being scammed. You can still use the newbie-warning flags and negative ratings, which have plenty of warning power.

There are three very separate scopes for trust which need to be kept separate. Newbie-warning flags are only for warning newbies, not for warning experienced members who should know better, or for harming the target. The "#" symbol is supposed to be inconspicuous, since it's not supposed to be a warning or a "mark of shame".

(I won't rule out adding a per-post warning for newbies if people evade the per-topic warnings, though.)

Some changes:
 - If the number of pre-flags-system negative trust ratings is greater than the number of all positive trust ratings, a warning banner is shown for guests & low-login-time newbies.
 - I added "These warning banners will disappear when you have 7 days of login time. You should familiarize yourself with the trust system before then." to the newbie warning banner. Note BTW that it usually takes months for someone to get 7 days of login time: among all 4096 users with 6.5 to 7.5 days login time, the account age (lastLogin-dateRegistered) is: maximum 3216 days, minimum 7.5, median 677, average 936.
 - The pages you see after clicking "next" are now bigger.
 

---

Some people are acting as though these changes are "letting scammers off the hook", but I don't really think so. Let's assume for a moment that flag types 2 & 3 are too restrictive and will therefore never be used. Even then, you can still give scammers negative feedback, which will display next to their posts in orange, and the threshold for giving negative feedback has been loosened. You can also give newbie-warning flags very easily, and the warning which this creates is shown to more people than any previous warning.

The only thing that scammers got is that they don't have red trust scores or a "trade with extreme caution" warning. But when you consider the measures in the previous paragraph, who is actually going to be scammed due to the absence of this? I think few if any. IMO the main point of these things was to punish/deter scamming, which is what was causing a lot of drama. And by making the threshold for this specific thing higher, it became reasonable to lower the threshold and widen the effect for the other warnings.

I think that scamming will be net-reduced due to these changes.


If someone creates a newbie account and tries to scam with it, they have roughly the same ability as before. The only thing they might be missing is a tiny piece of screen real estate shown only to logged-in users with a trust score and "Trade with extreme caution!" The more effective warnings are the banners, which have been expanded.

If someone does a long con, they have more to lose, since the scam flags create a banner for all users, and it's more exclusive and therefore meaningful. This can give you a bit more confidence in veteran members.


Newbie-warning flag.


That's all misuse of the system.


If you have not been scammed by him, then you should not create a scam flag. A newbie-warning flag and/or trust rating would be OK.

---

On agreement types:

A written contract is a piece of text taking the rough form of "I will do this, and then you will do this in return," where both sides clearly agreed to it. It needn't be super formal, but there definitely shouldn't be any case of someone not realizing that they were agreeing to something. "I'll send you 1 BTC for the coin" -> "OK" is enough of a written contract.

Exactly what falls into an "implied agreement" may be somewhat grey-area, and certain very obvious torts may also count. Let's see how the culture around this develops.

It's a recommendation, not a demand. As I said:

---

As I mentioned in the flags topic, there are three very separate scopes for trust which need to be kept separate. For scammer flags, the point is to damage the person's forum existence in order to deter future scamming. This is a very serious action which should have a very high bar. Because it's so serious, I only want actual agreements considered here. In legal systems, there's additionally such a thing as tort law and statutory law, but the forum is very far from having the kind of cohesive legal system which could handle such things in a halfway-reasonable way. The only thing that approaches clear-cut scamming is violation of an agreement. If non-contractual offenses are allowed in the scammer-flag space, then we're going to get factions of forum users constantly fighting each other, which is exactly what I'm trying to stop. I'm sick and tired of big escalations and never-ending feuds over highly-subjective and/or relatively minor things.

For non-agreement issues, use a newbie-warning flag and give them a negative trust rating. These actions are in the different scopes of warning newbies or informing other users of your opinions, which have less severe consequences and therefore lower bars.

I hate having to "defend" BSV and BCH, which were created with deception in mind, are technologically bankrupt, and are run by huge assholes, but you can't say that their supporters broke a contract with you when they didn't. Give them a newbie-warning flag if you want, but not a contract-violation flag unless they actually broke a contract with you. (Note that you might have a case for breach of implied contract if you were actually tricked into buying one of these coins instead of BTC.)