This would be a great idea if the goal was to completely do the opposite of what the merit system is supposed to do; this way we can give incentive to create mega-threads, spam-comments and alts talking to one another in order to farm merit and rank up. Many other users have already mentioned that this would be extraordinarily abuse-able, and I honestly do my best to try to find reasonable parameters and compromises that might change a proposal/idea to make it a tad more feasible, less divisive and more implementable; this idea I cannot find how to make it work without completely giving this forum a new virus.

500-Replies and 1000 Views for 1-merit is a bit silly anyways, because you can just sit on your own thread refreshing the page for more views; should everybody be able to be their own merit source? Refreshing the page 1000 times should not generate 1-merit. 500-replies could easily just be a few alt accounts replying back and forth to generate merit as well; plus, why should the thread creator get all of the merit if replies are generating merit? It would seem reasonable that those partaking in the discussion should be equally entitled to the merit they helped generate.

My assumption is that what you are doing is illegal, and I would have to advise you to stop; I cannot control you and I doubt they would shut you down or investigate further based on anything to do with your IP address. However, if it ever became relevant to law-enforcement or taxation purposes and gets investigated further, your mother may have consented to you impersonating her and operating under her information, but this (as far as I know) does not make it legal, unless she were the one doing the trading, funding and exchanging. If you are under the legal age for using the exchanges, I would just use 3rd party exchangers from this website and operate with a wallet as I've already suggested; this would be perfectly legal (again, as far as I know). I'm not giving legal advice, and I would advise you do get legal advise if you plan to continue this way. My advise would be to wait until you are of age to legally use these services, or use an alternative that is legal and available to you. There is nothing fishy about transferring your coins, almost ever, but again I'm not condoning or helping you figure out how to operate illegally.


Yes, even when it was at the all time high in December. Time is on our side, and unless you believe that bitcoin will never increase in value from where it currently is (at the time of your buying) then it would make sense that it is always a good time to buy, until such a time comes when you believe Bitcoin has bottomed out and will no longer increase in value. Was it a good time to buy Bitcoin at the ATH prior to December? The answer is obviously yes, because ATHs are consistently broken by bitcoin. Not a year has gone by that there has not been tremendous strides made in terms of the price of bitcoin. If you bought Bitcoin at $20,000 then just hold onto it, don't sell it at $8,000; assume it is always a good time to buy bitcoin and you will never get caught in a bad sell of bitcoin. You can disagree with this logic, but it seemingly has tremendous benefits.

Do not procrastinate the security of your finances unless you will be able to take the loss with a smile on your face. Laziness is no excuse, but you are correct that it might not be worth it to store such a small amount of coins on a wallet if you are planning on liquidating them for fiat sometime soon. If you are planning on holding them, which I suggest, then you would be infinitely better off holding them on a wallet in which you and exclusively you have the private key and encryption password.

If you enjoy holding multiple alt-coins then you should probably have a separate wallet for each, unless they are ERC20 Ethereum based tokens that can be held on one address/wallet. Normally most of these alt-coins have very minimal transaction fees, so security is always worth the few cents you may lose to transaction fees. If you regularly are changing which coins you are holding and like to exchange things very regularly then feel free to keep it on the exchange, as long as you are aware and acknowledge the risks you are taking on.

For what it's worth I'd like to throw my endorsement of LoyceV for merit source into the public sphere. They've been around for years, they've been entrusted with tremendous responsibility multiple times without any disappointments, helped multiple members learn many technical aspects of bitcoin, and merits posts that should be merited above all.

I was thinking about applying to be a merit source, specifically because I try to search out posts to merit constantly and run very low on merit all the time; I was a little worried though, because many members are saying it is too early to apply as a source even though theymos himself gave application instructions on day 1. I'm torn about applying, but since you've already jumped the gun I'm interested to see how it turns out.

I appreciate the way you've went about selecting your posts as well, and if I ever do apply to be a merit source I will follow a similar method. This way you are not going the "obvious" route, and instead trying to find regular posts that go unmerited and should not. I can't think of a requirement that you fail to meet, unless they simply don't like your choice of posts or your post history is lacking in some manner. It also might be the case that they are intentionally being very conservative when selecting sources and reviewing source applications, because it will set a precedent.

You are very unlikely to ever become a merit source. I mean this without insult, because almost nobody will ever become a merit source. This is reserved for a very select few members that have proven themselves worthy of the responsibility to create our most valuable resource against spam out of thin air. These people have the fate of the forum in their hand and it will be determined by something much more significant than "being past member".

You will not be treated like a "criminal" for adding a comment "Merit this if it was helpful", but I will tell you that merit is on the forefront of everyone's mind, unless they are unaware that is has been implemented. Everyone is excited to use their merit, almost nobody has simply forgotten that it exists. I would be willing to bet that adding a comment like this to the bottom of a post would most likely have the opposite effect, though; you will receive less merit for saying this.

It is treated as a crime to buy/sell merit, but it is treated as strange to mention it at the end of your posts. My suggestion, Don't do it, you will be a cringe machine. It is a standalone system and doesn't need to be coaxed out of people.

It's just a small pet-peeve of mine, but the formatting of this post has been giving me chills, you should keep it simple, it doesn't need so many colors and strange happenings.

There are so many things that are troubling me about your original post. I don't know what the age of majority is in UK, but in certain places you would be considered a minor under law. This already poses a problem if you are trying to operate on exchanges; as they are not allowed to serve minors. This problem is made worse when you are using someone else's information in order to illegally access an exchange as a minor, and then made even worse if your mother is aware and acting as an accessory to this type of behavior. Unless your mother is actually the account holder making these purchases they very well could be illegal, but again I don't know your laws so you would have to figure that out for yourself.

That being a disclaimer, my biggest worst of advice would be to take control of your coins and stop allowing them to sit on an exchange. There are endless horror stories of exchanges and exchange accounts being hacked, leaked, deleted or disappearing entirely; if this happens you will have no recourse and be forced to bear the cost of whatever you left on the exchange. Having control over your coins means having the private key associated with whatever address(es) you are holding coins on. Download a wallet that allows you such control; Core is what I use, some use Electrum and there are many other solid alternatives. Exchanges are not a good hot-wallet, and if you ever get a substantial amount of bitcoin that you would be very upset losing then you should look into cold-storage wallets, which are hardware wallets much safer than any exchange, or regular hot-wallet.

There is a lot for your to learn, but you are approaching this somewhat decently; hold your coins, always assume it is a good time to buy BTC, build a stash of them and don't be tempted to get into day trading until you have practiced religiously for a long-time before using your real money. Bitcoin is a long-term investment, and a technology that is very sluggishly being adopted and garnering the value and attention it will undoubtedly attain.

This thread might be a better conversation for the Economics, or speculation section by the way; Beginners and Help is more for trouble your are experiencing or questions relating to other things.

That was all I was trying to do, and I'm happy we eventually arrived at that. I did not mean to offend or get into a foolish exchange.


As it stands right now, this is probably the only disagreement I would have and it's not necesarily a hard disagreement. There would be ways to make it work, but I think it would have to come with another change on Mega-Thread policy. I know newer members don't often lock their threads, but for the one's that create mega-threads and wish to lock them it might go a long way towards combating spam. I don't know if they ever do that to begin with, but I know it would be helpful if they did and so I'm wondering if anybody has any information on this?

The way an ICO or Public Pre-Sale, Pre-Mining and other methods are used are entirely dependent upon whatever project is being discussed and what their overall goals are. Satoshi decided that Mining blocks of bitcoin every 10-minutes, with dynamic difficulty to accomplish this, would be the best way to distribute 21,000,000 coins by the year X. I can't find any reasoning on what made him come to this conclusion, but my point is that it is dependent on the project entirely. These terms may be invented, re-invented, recycled, reused or something else entirely for a new project or ICO.

Every single project is going to be different and unique in it's own ways and the only way to understand each and everyone precisely is by reading their papers and everything else they release. If you still are not clear on how, why or what the company or group is trying to accomplish after reading all of their material, they most likely are just trying to desperately grab at money with a vague idea.

These words have loose definitions and are just used as placeholders to describe the more complex concepts that are actually taking place behind the scenes. I'm almost positive that there is no hard and fast definitions for these terms, so do your homework on each project you might be interested in.

I know we had a tough go of it the last time around, but you might be surprised to find that I have no problems whatsoever with the way this is worded, or with the idea in general. I am hard pressed to find any examples of lower ranking members using the self-moderation feature properly, and it is almost a guarantee when you see them using it that they are abusing it in some malicious manner.

This is a good way of at least remedying a small amount of the malicious behavior in these sections. Of course some will just buy Full Member accounts, but it certainly would deter at least a certain amount of them from doing so. The scam may not be worth ruining a Full Member account, or they simply don't have the funds for example.

I like how careful you were with the wording of it this time, because all of my previous disagreements have faded away and I am in full support at this point; unless someone can provide decent proof that these lower ranking members do for the most part use self-moderation admirable (which I doubt is the case).

I will remove my copper membership, for convenience sake. I only had it activated to see if I could apply the usergroup anyways. I'll not add to the couple of people that you need to do manual counts for; a few seconds here and there adds up. I'm pretty surprised I'm on the "Top Merited Users of All Time" list, at the bottom of it, but nonetheless I wasn't expecting that. I'll keep doing what I'm doing, hopefully it remains helpful.

There we go, should be better now. Took me awhile to find the page to remove it, if anyone else would like to turn theirs off it is here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=credit;promote

That is an absurdly high percentage of merit for how few participants there are in reference to how many people are squirming for merit. I'm actually baffled by these numbers and think it's really cool to just start keeping track of a few merit stats, even if you're not doing anything with them yet. The range is pretty absurd too, not that I would expect any different, but it gives us a very fair average. Would be interesting to see these numbers compared across the board with other campaigns. Might be a fun project if nothing else.

First week payment, received, thanks for having me aboard.

It would have been nice if you put a little more effort into this thread. I would have liked to have seen a reference to Elon saying this, because I've never heard it and it sounds like an interesting listen. Normally I find him quite boring even when he is saying something extraordinary, but in the context of trying to relate it to bitcoin I would have liked a clearer picture of what we are talking about. I don't know how feasible bitcoin would be as a conduit for universal income, when most people around the world do not have access to the internet; bitcoin cannot be more universal than the internet (can it?), so I don't see that being a very feasible option, unless you are speaking about a starting point.. In which, I suppose it is possible, although where would the initial capital come from? Who would be involved in universal and how would we be able to verify somebody isn't being paid multiple times?

Your questions is lacking so many parameters I am finding it hard to give you a fair response. I don't think these two things go together unless there was an extremely generous donor to supply this and a brilliant engineering and software development team to design it. How do you reconcile these issues or have you yet to consider them?

I'll do you one better. I'd like to suggest that since you are a Jr. Member that just joined only a month ago that you should read up more around the forum. Try learning more about bitcoin, read some of Satoshi's original email threads with the core developers and interested parties. Read a bunch in the technical discussions section of the forum, and when worst comes to worst use the Search function. If you would have even searched "Bounty" in the search you would have endless threads to click through and find the one that suits your needs best. Nobody knows what you are looking for so you are the best candidate to figure this one out.

I also want to point out that I think the type of bounty programs you are looking to participate in are going to be short-lived and disappear rather soon. You should try to actually make some meaningful, long-term connections that certainly will not be found in this manner. I don't even think Social Media bounties are allowed anymore and seems like you've been participating in those as well. My main suggestion, although you may not like it, would be to stop participating in bounties for a while.

You will definitely want to read all of the stickies, unofficial rules, guidelines and definitely use the search function a whole lot before you even begin posting. I have suggested this to everyone that has asked me where to begin posting.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1689727.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20333.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1649348.0

There are a bunch of other helpful links, but they aren't particularly relevant to what you're asking here, so if you're interested or have any other questions you can feel free to PM me. I'll hook you up with some good reading that'll set you on the right path. You will know what is expected and what is not tolerated in no time.

We are not moderators nor is the specific moderator that removed your topic likely to come forward and take the time to explain exactly what the problem was with your particular post. I would just take the shot, move on and read as much as you can so that you maybe can figure it out for yourself.

I was laughing about it when I wrote it, happy you enjoyed it, too.


It certainly could be, but my fear is that the same logic that would be used to implement such a rule in the first place would be the same logic to implement a sliding scale.


I knew I was the butt of a joke, I could just feel it. No offense taken, you have to be able to laugh at yourself. I should have known this already, and I could've easily just logged out and checked. This is a much more intriguing exchange than I had earlier; at least we are bouncing ideas back and forth, building off of something and probably both have something positive to take away.

I just remember being on other forums where there were developers, merchants and many users that never posted publicly and remained active within PMs; everyone approaches things their own way. Although, as you pointed out earlier it might be fair to just mark those that haven't been accessed at all since their registration. For example, we could potentially still implement what you're suggesting if we count PMs as activity for this one proposal. As you said, it's at their discretion, but I think it could be done with strict limits and fair rules.


As long as we're counting PMs in the equation, then I can't see much harm in this (unless we're both missing something); other than the total registered users, which as Jet said might affect marketing, but I would be willing to bet this would be minimal and most likely negligible. It might be something worth doing when we migrate over to the new forum software.

Nobody is going to be interested in buying your Jr. Member account with negative trust and frankly probably wouldn't have anyone interested even if it was positive trust. Lock this thread, and cut it out.
You've been tagged by a DT trust member, and this should be enough to tell you that you're not going to be happy with the outcome of this and neither is anybody else.

You never specified, which has been one of my more significant points our entire exchange; you must be precise with your language or nobody is going to know what you are trying to say. Most of your frustration with me seems to be about me trying to more precisely nail down what we're talking about and figuring out what you mean by your words.

You did not originally say "sometimes" and you did not originally say "potential victims", which changes the entire statement as I'm sure you can acknowledge. Obviously I can agree to this, but this isn't what you originally said. I'd also like to move past this semantically driven ad-hominem parade, but if you are truly sick of trying to figure this out I would encourage you to tap the ignore button.


It certainly means that if the cost is tyranny, unfair regulation and treatment as though we are all criminals of this crime you are trying to solve. You cannot put the price of negligence on the rest of us. It sounds like the answer to this problem would be optional education for uninformed users (already there), not privilege revocation from those abiding by fine principals. If someone signs a bad contract, because they skipped Section 4 Paragraph 6, this is not the fault of the judge for enforcing the contract, nor the townspeople for watching it happen; you are seemingly trying to blame the judge and the townspeople instead of the negligent participant.


This mentality is assuming that we are all malicious, rather than innocent until proven guilty. You are treating all of us as if we are guilty, punishing us by revoking the right that should only be taken away from the guilty. There is a better way to sort this out than removing self-moderation and punishing all for the crimes of a few. I disagree with this, and do not think you should hope for implementation on an idea that would be so divisive. By your logic, we could remove 98% of scams simply by removing the Goods and Currency Exchange section altogether and this should be worth it, too.


Right, but you are asking others to stop Self-moderation, because it conflicts with the personal choice you have made. You have made a personal choice to not use the trust system as intended and are trying to replace it with posting in their thread which is nullified by the ability to self-moderate. Your personal choice should not influence the way the form works, your personal choices on the forum should be influenced by how the forum works. In this manner, it certainly does matter in relation to the removal of self-moderation and I'm baffled that you do not see the connection. If you used the trust system as intended then there would be no need for this suggestion. You're free to make personal choices, so long as they don't interfere with the personal choices of others, which you are trying to do right now.


Then you are inconsistent with your logic at the very least; you continually talk about how we should use multiple ways of going after scammers and then choose to ignore the methods already in place that work perfectly well. This was not a smart decision, because now you gave no warning where most people look for red-flags before dealing with the user(s) and actively decided not to warn potential victims. You made this horrid decision in order to "save your reputation", based on your trust-settings that nobody else uses or sees and it was all at the expense of other users. This is selfish and cowardly, there just is no way around it and I already told you to stop bringing up the situation because it does not make you look good in any sense.


Words have definitions and it is important to choose the right words. Otherwise you will get frustrated when nobody understands you and you have said something you never intended to. I don't care how you set-up my trust as long as you don't use it as an excuse to take away my privilege of self-moderation. Everything I have said is either related to the topic, brought up by you or specifically for clarification on something related to the topic. It is not my fault you are an emotional wreck when somebody disagrees with you.


I got something, maybe it might be helpful if we add the option to make a thread already in progress a self-moderated thread. For example, clicking the edit, additional options and then toggling self-moderation on or off for a thread already created. Also, the idea of DT members being able to negatively rate a user and remove their self-moderation abilities, is this something that might work as a compromise as well?

Cut me some slack, I was trying to show my support without diving head first before knowing the facts.


That would depend on the restriction and who is defining "reasonable", but of course you are speaking of the restriction of a "mandatory minimum" and we are the ones defining reasonable. I would say that it probably is unreasonable in this context, because if we start by requiring just a single post (as that is what is required from Brand New > Newbie) to remove these bad-apples, then what is stopping incremental increases in this minimum requirement of participation? As these bad-apples get more savvy and start making their single post, wouldn't it be reasonable to increase this number in order to continue reasonable enforcement of this proposal? There would be no stopping this.


I am not entirely sure, this is what I meant by I need more information and research, because it might be the case that the forum is limited. If you are asking me sarcastically because you already know the answer is no, then I am sorry for missing that. The word "need" is something I have been disagreeing with people about all day, but if you mean it how it is defined then no, at face value I would say we do not need lurkers or almost anyone for that matter. I acknowledge that my anecdote wasn't in the scope of what is being proposed, so perhaps I should've kept it to myself, but there is the possibility that certain users only operate via PM instead of public posts. Since it is unlikely such a person would ever come forward, would it be fair to shun these people for trying to remain out of the public eye?


Fair enough, I can agree to that. You are right about the distinctions there. This still would inevitably put more of a workload on the moderators, whenever an aspiring user does have the ambitions to reactivate/renew. Although, I agree that this would help minimize the cost to our staff. That might be a fair rule if you signed up under that being the case, but then would it be fair to retroactively impose this on already created accounts that never agreed to such a thing?


I was building off an incorrect assumption, after I had failed to see the distinction between renewal and deletion, which was certainly my error. So, this would not be an agreement as you've pointed out. My mistake!
Assuming this is an end to it all, then yes the resources it would cost would be trivial; although, I can't say that I believe this to be the case.

I'm not your errand boy. I've already pointed out multiple people using it in the sections you've proposed to ban it in for beneficial purposes you still don't think exist. You are the one making the claim that self-moderation is only used for malicious purposes, that is a truth claim, therefore the burden of proof is on you. Find the high-ranking members abusing self-moderation to scam or your claim is invalid. I have already shown that members use this for good and reasonable purposes, but you have yet to even show me one example of the opposite.

If I need to explain why "need" is unfitting for our purposes of discussing privileges on an internet forum, then you have a poor grasp of language. "Need" is to require something essential, this is not required and it is not essential, so it does not fit the definition of "need". That didn't take 5-pages, did it? Do you disagree, is this an essential requirement that we have been unable to survive without?

I didn't say the majority of scammers don't operate within the marketplace, so again your poor grasp of language fails you.  In response to:

(The things you bold/emphasize make reading your posts hilarious)

Essentially your claim is that after removing Services from your 3 section self-moderation ban-proposal we would still tackle 98% of scammers, presumably in the other 2 sections remaining in your proposal (Goods and Currency Exchange), I said :


If you want to have a discussion you have to actually respond to the things I am saying, not the things you wish I was saying. You cannot straw-man an argument and expect anything meaningful to come out of it. You did not say the marketplace is where most scammers roam, you said in the 2-remaining sections of your proposal is where they roam. Language matters, words have definitions, claims must be precise or they're wrong and you are speaking nonsense.


Yes, exactly. Self-moderation is exactly for something like this. You have made a thread, and even though I am trying to have a reasonable discussion about the flaws of your proposal and how to improve it so it is feasible, you should have the option to exclude me from the conversation. It's nice to have you admit that there is utility to self-moderation, after all. You're free to think I'm a joke, I encourage it, because taking yourself too seriously leads to a horrible sense of humor. Thinking I'm a joke doesn't make your idea any better, though, and it certainly doesn't refute anything I have said.


Then stop saying things that are contradictory to what you have already conceded. You were wrong, take it like a man and move on. Instead of trying to have a flame-war and pretend like you were right all along by twisting my words and ignoring every credible argument.


This is not a counter-argument and it does not make your suggestion anymore valid. Criticisms, compromises and comments should not be seen as a waste of time unless you are omnipotent. I'm trying to elevate your suggestion, but at this point I doubt anybody will even want to discuss this with you. The same criticisms will exist when you have this conversation with anyone else, but feel free to continue acting as though there is no legitimate concerns about your proposal. Consider your idea, killed by your own emotions, childishness and refusal to think logically, not even the mountain of refutation against it.

This very well might be a good idea, but we would need more information and research on the demographics and account usage of scammers/spammers/impersonators before we could implement this as a solution against those people. It is an interesting idea, but it comes with its own problems. For example, in the past I have went 6-months or more without touching my account here, because of family issues, traveling, things that needed my attention. It would have been a shame to come back to a deleted account.

I know you are talking about brand new accounts, not Hero's like me, I am just giving my input on how I would feel losing my account. There are many old-time lurkers that wouldn't be too happy about this, but then again they could just remake their brand-new accounts. This would add extra strain on forum resources, technology and personnel; strain that may not be worth it.


If an account is Brand New, and has not visited the forum in X amount of months it may be entirely fair to delete their account. Again though, this might alienate our longtime quiet lurkers that want nothing except their peace and quiet while they read around. They may have an impressive Watch Board, built up over years, set-up that would be wiped clean if they get nuked


I found it very interesting to follow this train of thought. You start by asking the question, which is a fair question, then you clarify some parameters for your idea, but then you basically shoot down your own idea and I think you do it without even realizing it. If users are nuked after 6-months of inactivity, this would effectively be the same as a 'renewal' period, except instead of an admin renewing your account it would be one simple post that effectively renews it. So while I agree that this renewal period wouldn't address the situation, I think your suggestion of nuking inactive accounts after X time fails to accomplish the same thing.


This is a wash as they call it. Both sides come to the conclusion that there is no difference going to be made from the proposal, and therefore we probably should go with the path of least resistance and not waste forum resources until we determine that it would actually accomplish the goal.

I think OP probably already stumbled upon being able to click "Profile", but I may be mistaken. It would seem more likely that they are either trying to apply for a campaign, or show their profile to someone else that is interested. If they just click Profile on the tabs above, it simply brings you to : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile , which doesn't do you any good for sharing your profile. I've always wondered why it doesn't add the UID into that link, when it would be more universally helpful if that were the case (probably less secure, though)

Whenever I want to see my profile the way others would see it, I go to my most recent post and click on my name beside that post. This brings you to your public profile, as opposed to your personal link.

Pro-Tip : Once your question has been answered satisfactorily you may lock the thread, so you do not get unnecessary replies repeating the same information. This link looks weird to me, and when I delete the end of it, it brings me to an entirely new thread...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2845012.0;prev_next=next

Hopefully that directs you to the thread about locking, once you have your answer.