Cloudflare and many other websites are starting to use hCaptcha, I never had a single issue to solve their captcha, and I can't say the same thing for Gcaptchas. I don'l like helping google and train their AI all for free  You aren't doing it for free though. Instead of theymos (or any other website owner that uses reCAPTCHA) paying Google per request in cold hard cash, you are footing the bill in small increments of human labor. In exchange, you receive access to whatever resource that's protected behind that captcha. The same applies to hCaptcha with the differences being: 1. You're training artificial neural networks in classifying images for a different company so if you have a burning hatred for Google, I guess that's a plus. 2. According to hCaptcha's website, they're supposedly more privacy focused. Verifying that may prove difficult as with all centralized closed-source services. I'd personally take promises made by for-profit enterprises with a grain of salt unless you can check it yourself. According to OP, it's supposedly friendlier to TOR users so I guess there's at least one aspect that can be verified. 3. In the future, the owner of the website may get some nebulous Ethereum token for users solving captchas on their website. But most importantly (and the main reason why Cloudflare switched captcha providers) is: 4. To my knowledge, they don't demand cash from website owners who " wish to make more than 1k calls per second or 1m calls per month". This used to be the case with reCaptcha as well up until the second half of 2019 (somewhere between July 18th and September 11th). With this and starting to charge websites for using Google Maps, it seems like Google's undergone a slight shift in monetization strategy, double or even tripple dipping (if you count data harvesting for their ad personalization engine) in the case of reCAPTCHA. Oh, and 5. hCaptcha doesn't have a no-JS captcha though Google seems to be scrubbing info on theirs out of their documentation ( old vs new; it still works if you know how to set it up though they'll probably shut it down once enough websites stop using it). In the case of Bitcointalk, it seems that theymos hasn't enabled it though so not much of a selling point for him. So if Bitcointalk ever starts hitting reCAPTCHA's QPS limits, yeah, I guess hCaptcha might be something theymos should consider. Don't really know how hCaptcha's captchas hold up against fully automated attacks though. If a motivated and intelligent attacker can automate and scale the solving process without relying on (outsourced) manual labor, the captcha is literally useless.
I don'l like helping google and train their AI all for free You are not training AI for google when you solve a recaptcha. Google will present images that sometimes has patterns that are similar to another type of image. For example, they may display paint of a cross walk at a certain angle when asking you to select all instances of stairs. The images have already been labeled and are known to google. There are many freely available datasets that are labeled, such as Imagenet. Google can also create additional images using that dataset. I don’t know how good this service in the OP is at hiding the class of what each image is. Static datasets of images only work so far when you're working on problems at a global scale. Judging from the images that reCAPTCHA v2 seems to be serving to users, they're either refining their Maps solution (something related to "Street View" maybe) or working on something related to self-driving cars. AFAIK while a lot of the images Google presents have already been labelled (they do indeed need to know the right answer to the question if they want to determine who's a bot and who isn't), they insert one or two that aren't and after enough users reach a consensus, it accepts the most popular solution as truth. It's a methodology they've refined from the reCAPTCHA v1 days where it was much easier to tell which word was the test and which one was being used to digitize old books. Considering reCAPTCHA's popularity, if they only rotated and warped images from static datasets, sooner or later someone would have mapped enough of it out to develop an automated captcha breaking solution. It's a perpetual arms race where Google has to constantly stay ahead to win. |
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It's before all the links, under the same parent table row. Here's the HTML from mine: <tr>
<td class="windowbg" valign="middle"><img src="/useravatars/avatar_51173.png" alt="" class="avatar" border="0"></td>
<td colspan="2" class="windowbg2" id="variousheadlinks" width="100%" valign="top">...</td>
</tr>
Try adding the additional HTML via the developer console into your page and see how it looks. From what you've posted, the theme looks real nice BTW. Most of custom CSS tends to just swap out some colors, maybe round a few edges here and there but it seems that you're going all out with the modernized look (with CSS only no less). Hope this helped. |
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I think this a matter best left to signature campaign managers to agree upon (though I doubt everyone will fall in line) rather than for moderators to enforce ("constructive freedom of speech" and all that) and if that's the case, this thread doesn't really belong in Meta (Service discussion is probably the board best suited for such discussions). Also, relevant XKCD:  source: https://xkcd.com/927/ |
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I was going over the rules and spotted something that needs just a tiny detail updated. The Trust list is where you select the users whose feedback on other users you trust and how deep is this trust. You can either trust just their feedback (select the Trust depth as 0), theirs and their trusted users feedback (Trust depth 1), and so on (up until Trust depth 3). Trusted feedback will be counted when displayed as numbers to the left of a users post in trade boards such as Marketplace or Goods. If a you don't set up your own trust list, a default one is used (info on how it is generated can be found here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5095156.0). The max depth is 4, but I don't know if that was what you meant when you said " up until Trust depth 3." IIRC max depth used to be 3. I guess theymos changed it recently. Thanks for the heads up, updated (adjusted other parts of the answer as well). |
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-quote snip in reference to the earliest rule mention- To my knowledge, this is the first public mention of the rule in question, posted in April 2016. Again, I might be mistaken but IIRC the rules has been in effect for much longer before theymos chimed in publicly about them. The quote in question even mentions that the he warned the user in the past for this violation. There's a reason why I took up compiling all the written and unwritten rules into a single source after all. -quote snip in reference to merging the same user's posts in between now deleted posts-
I don't think this is in line with the above rule, and would also violate the forum stance against ex-post-facto rules, as someone has no way of knowing if someone else's post would be deleted when they make a post, so they have no way of knowing they would need to edit their post. In other words, someone has no way of knowing they need to follow a certain rule when they make a post. The logic behind the rule is that multi-posting unfairly bumps threads, and spams watch lists, neither of which apply in a situation in which someone else has replied to a thread.
Hence why AFAIK no one was punished (banned or warned) for having lots such posts merged. Either way, if I'm not mistaken, only admins can see deleted posts so it'd be difficult to consistently check whether there used to be a post or two in between. To my knowledge, I was not punished for having my posts removed, other than my receiving 60+ PMs about deleted posts. As far as I am aware, I was not banned for these posts. The majority of the posts were deleted May 2, in two batches, with seconds being in-between the time I had posts deleted in each batch, which implies automation was used in responding to the reports against me. I was not aware of my posts being deleted for over 3 days, so in theory, I could have been banned for 3 days without my knowledge, however if this was the case, it was not followed. I have serious doubts that I will be banned for this, or at all. Yeah, no ban was issued for the merged posts, at least by me. -quote snip in reference to appealing the posts deletions / merging-
This is the point of my creating this thread.
Not sure how often theymos checks Meta but you're probably better off at least pinging him via PM. |
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If this discord channel will stay longer and not only for the halving maybe add it to the Help button . If the above would be implemented, someone who causes enough trouble in the discord channel could face repercussions on bitcointalk, and access could be limited to those above certain ranks.
AFAIK the Discord server isn't official. It was just created by Cyrus, who also happens to be a Bitcointalk admin. For the time being, I'm helping out in moderating it though I can't guarantee I'll always be active. We'll see how this goes I guess. |
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The majority (if not all) the posts in question were from 2015, which is before the rule was implemented...
AFAIK the rule has been in effect for much longer than it was included in the "unofficial list of rules" thread. There's a reason why there's "unofficial" in its name (and why it was made created a few years after the forum was founded) - it's my own personal effort of compiling as many rules in as compact of a format as possible. ...and I believe the forum generally has a policy against ex-post-facto laws/rules/regulations. Theymos has also said that occasionally posting successive posts when the posts are substantial and the person is not participating in a paid sig campaign is allowed. I am not currently participating in a paid sig deal and don’t believe I was when most of the posts in question were posted. Fair point though in the wide majority of cases I've seen, consecutive posts were either merged or outright deleted. Some of the posts were made in threads such as this one, in which the person who I was responding to had deleted their posts and as such the posts the posts did not violate the rule in question, even if applied retroactively as the rule is posting multiple posts in a row are not allowed, and multiple posts were not posted in a row. This is clear because the posts were quoting other posts that were removed. If posts become consecutive due to deletion of another user's posts, in practice they're usually merged as well. It appears that someone was implementing a script that uses flawed logic. Even without access to all deleted posts, you could easily see the posts were not posted in violation of the rule.
It isn't in violation according to your interpretation of the rules. It was according to mine (see rule 23 in https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0), which I base on what I've observed other moderators do when encountering consecutive posts or old bumps over the years. Also, most of the threads in question are very old and are not active (they are 5 years old). I really don’t see a good reason to be going back this far to remove posts you believe violate this rule (using flawed logic).
Had no one reported your posts, I'd agree. I didn't dig those topics and posts up myself, someone reported them.
A few short weeks ago humble #RussiaCoin has also fallen foul of mprp's heavy hand with more than 10% of all of our post having been deleted. The Russiacoin thread was started June 7 2015 and 43 of our posts in our own thread having been deleted by mprp all the way back to 2015 in the one thread. Some but not all of our posts have been rolled into one post here and there, but others were deleted without clear reason. When I tried to ask mr.mprp to explain why he didn't even issue warning he said its not his job to warn, just delete posts for being multiple posts. There have been some other threads in the weeks that followed https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5241332.msg54323822#msg54323822 is one about many people's posts being deleted without warning. Most of what I've said about Quickseller's concerns applies to your case as well. The deleted posts were probably bumps (or "update"-like bump posts that were either low value or duplicating content) or part of a row of consecutive posts where the content was duplicated or low value. When it comes to warnings about consecutive posts or old bumps, those are just merged or deleted - warnings are for ongoing behavior, not past infractions. If every mod had to warn the user to clean up himself, moderation would screech to a standstill. I can not recall just now who said it, but someone in one of the other posts said something about us lower down the ranks are having their posts deleted to prevent them from gaining ranks. I had 359 posts, now I only have 316 - a few posts were weeks apart, so it now looks like there was no activity in the #RussiaCoin thread for many months which is a blow to the stomach since our coins were lost in both Cryptopia and Tradesatoshi (run by the same people FYI)
If your "rank" was gained through posts that break the forum's rules, you don't deserve that rank. The mods in the other threads will tell you they all have different opinions about what does and does not get deleted.
IIRC theymos doesn't believe in definitive rule lists so a lot of moderation decisions are left to moderators with different interpretations of forum policy.
<...>
Frankly, pretty much any report on posts that are 5 years old should be marked as bad. There is no reason why action should be taken on posts this old in nearly all cases. If you are going back this far to report posts, you are either trying to create trouble or are trying to pad your stats.
I don't mark reports as bad unless, according to my interpretation of the rules, the posts in question doesn't require any action since it doesn't break any forum rule that I can perceive with the information provided in the report.
@Quickseller and @RussiaCoinDotInfo, if you believe I was wrong in merging your old posts (and / or deleting old bumps), feel free to appeal my decision to theymos. I am far from infallible and maybe your interpretation is right and mine is wrong. If theymos decides to reverse my decision, I'll gladly adjust how I handle reports on old consecutive posts and old undeleted bumps. |
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I have no doubt that you can put any kind of spin on an argument and would even argue your own post is off topic if it suited your agenda. I have joined the conversation to enable you to articulate your interpretation on when I can bump my own thread and under what circumstances, so my comment has relevance. If you want to continue to delete posts without articulating yourself, then we will never know what your attitudes towards each case is. As you yourself stated, each moderator will interpret a post differently, so clearly your "guidelines" aren't being adhered to by your fellow moderators, hence the continued confusion as to what you desire. I've already stated why I think your posts were deleted - there's nothing left to "articulate". In addition, the "unnofficial list of rules" are just that - unnofficial. AFAIK theymos doesn't believe in hard rules, hence the potential confusion when the OP tried to establish what the bumping rules are. Either way, the explanation I got from theymos via PM doesn't affect your case, as stated in my previous post. |
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When it comes to evaluating what is "annoying", it's up to the moderator who's looking into a case to decide.
You must find humble RussiaCoin very annoying to delete 43 of my posts in the Russia Coin [ANN] thread made by myself then. Yes?-img snip- IIRC you violated rules 21 (" Old bumps should be deleted") and 32 (" Posting multiple posts in a row (excluding bumps and reserved posts by the thread starter) is not allowed"), not rule 13 (" Bumps, "updates" are limited to once per 24 hours per thread. Bumping multiple threads at the same time is allowed if it's not annoying") hence the "annoying" part doesn't apply to you. If you have issues with enforcement of those other rules, start a new thread in Meta. This thread is about discussing what are the exact rules for bumping multiple threads and complaining about vaguely related rules is veering into off-topic territory. |
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Added additional details to rule 13 (+ an explanation for the rule): 13. Bumps, "updates" are limited to once per 24 hours per thread. Bumping multiple threads at the same time is allowed if it's not annoying. [2][e]<...> Examples:<...> 13. According to a personal message from the head admin, theymos: The strong guideline is 1 bump per 24 hours per thread. Additionally, bumps should not be annoying, which needs to be determined subjectively. If a user bumps 10 threads every day, that's annoying. If a user bumps 3 threads at the same time for some good reason, then this may not be annoying.
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Sorry to revive an inactive thread but after PMing theymos, here's his response (with permission to publish it, obviously): The strong guideline is 1 bump per 24 hours per thread. Additionally, bumps should not be annoying, which needs to be determined subjectively. If a user bumps 10 threads every day, that's annoying. If a user bumps 3 threads at the same time for some good reason, then this may not be annoying.
When it comes to evaluating what is "annoying", it's up to the moderator who's looking into a case to decide. |
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-quote snip-
I see...
Then I may suggest to give a little change for rule number 4. ✌😁 to make it "No Referral Codes (Ref Links)" removing the word "spam" on it to avoid being confused of users in the future.
AFAIK there may be certain rare cases where posting a referral link is allowed. Changing the wording into a blanket ban wouldn't accurately reflect that. That and it'd also distance it from the source material. |
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<...>
I am not even sure if it works against all botters though. They probably found a way to bypass it too already.
Captcha isn't meant to prevent attacks, it's meant to make them much more expensive to scale. Blasting thousands of HTTP requests costs next to nothing. Having each of those requests tied to a reCAPTCHA solve makes it around $1.5-$2.5 per thousand requests. A rather small cost for spam-based promoters (though if you're doing it internet-scale, it does add up), a massive cost for login bruteforcers (the main culprits responsible for the addition of reCAPTCHA to the login screen).
Bitcointalk should use geetest captcha like binance, it's much less annoying.
Since their website doesn't mention a specific price, I'd assume it's aimed at "enterprise" customers. Meaning, it'd cost a crap ton + not be targeted towards privacy-centric websites (e.g. by blacklisting TOR exit node IPs).
Have you ever experience being blacklisted by reCAPTCHA?
It's a nightmare when the images just take forever to load and they immediately fail you even after submitting the correct results.
According to your description, the images will appear forever even though I have chosen them correctly. I experienced it a few years ago, almost five years ago when I was accessing the internet at a game center. It never stops, even if I choose right but it still reports wrong. Definitely I am on their blacklist  (that game center) AFAIK that's intentional. If reCAPTCHA has deemed you (with extremely high likelihood) to be a bot, it'll pretend that you still have a chance while auto-failing any of your attempts. The website you were the trying to solve the captcha in might've also selected the more strict security setting when setting up their reCAPTCHA integration. I also have encountered cases where if you go through several attempts at completing the captcha (which you know you've done perfectly, yet they "failed"), it'll let you through.
<...>
Back when reCAPTCHA dominated all gambling and faucet sites, I nearly flipped the table each time I attempted to claim. Maybe because I acted like a bot 🙈
That's probably reCAPTCHA V3. It will detect if you're a bot, else it won't show up.
The more reCAPTCHAs you fill out (even if you do so successfully), the more suspicious you are to Google, the harder the captcha gets (up until you get secretly marked as a bot). Also, chances are that wasn't v3. There's a way for the v2 to be implemented that it isn't even shown if no action is required from the user's end (the equivalent of clicking on it and the check mark immediately popping up). v3 silently collects behavioral data in the background, gives the website a score of how likely it is that you're a bot and then the website decides what it wants to do (deny an action, require manual review of said action, serve you up with a reCAPTCHA v2, etc.). I assume v2 also collects behavioral data though probably much less (since Google recommends you put the v3 on every page so that it could "get a feel" for how a regular visitor on your site behaves). |
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Most of your reports are still in the queue. The ones that were seemingly marked as bad were the conovairus ones. There's two reported as shilling on posts from 2015 that have been marked as bad in the Romanian section. No idea who handled them but contacting Cyrus would be your best bet first.
I've marked several GazetaBitcoin's reports as bad since they were duplicates (as in he reported the same post several) times. IIRC I didn't handle any other reports of his. Since when are duplicate reports being marked bad? Sounds like this could hurt the accuracy of those that mistakenly sometimes do it. No? Since as far as I can remember. Not all mods mark them as bad, since not all mods notice they're duplicates. And yes, if you mistakenly do it sometimes, it will hurt your accuracy. If you want a perfect (100%) or close to perfect reporting acccuracy (which has very little meaning beyond vanity; according to theymos, total good reports + a decent accuracy is where it's at), you must have a perfect or near perfect track record. Seems fair for for such a high (and ultimately pointless) bar to reach. If maintaining a near perfect accuracy isn't your goal, the few duplicate reports mixed in with dozens or hundreds of good reports does very little to affect your accuracy. |
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Most of your reports are still in the queue. The ones that were seemingly marked as bad were the conovairus ones. There's two reported as shilling on posts from 2015 that have been marked as bad in the Romanian section. No idea who handled them but contacting Cyrus would be your best bet first.
I've marked several GazetaBitcoin's reports as bad since they were duplicates (as in he reported the same post several) times. IIRC I didn't handle any other reports of his. |
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Here you go, pick which you prefer to handle first: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5213922.220. You get to choose from off-topic posting from several members to dozens of ICO bumping accounts. Using the report to moderator tools seems to have been backfiring lately, especially reporting off-topic trolling or diversion. If one or more reports went unhandled for a long time, it's either: a) A bunch of moderators looked into the case no one was sure whether the report warranted action b) The report requires in-depth understanding of the discussion, the situation at hand and /or access to data unavailable to regular moderators before an action is made. Glancing over the title and posts of that thread, this seems to be scenario b). While I'm not implying that this is such a situation, when it comes to assessing accusations, quite often said accusations are based off of circumstancial, speculative and / or flimsy evidence. While different moderators might place the bar of required sophistication of evidence at slightly different heights, in quite a few cases the only ones who can (with reasonable certainty) confirm or deny the allegations are the admins since they have access over tools no one else on staff has (e.g. checking IPs) and in the case of theymos, the head admin, have the authority of the final word on everything related to Bitcointalk moderation. You are indeed correct, this case is b). However, the evidence being adequate here is not the case and certainly not if you factor in OP's track record. Regarding the off-topic posts, the only thing that got deleted so far is my own on-topic post in which I criticize the lack of moderation too. Looks like lack of transparency has huge downsides, as only theymos and Cyrus can see who this was. Maybe it is time for some changes? You yourself could be oblivious to other moderators exercising extreme biases and misjudgements due to lack of this (as far as I know you can not see who handled the report either). If you're dissatisfied with how moderation functions, have suggestions on how to improve it and / or wish to appeal deletion of your posts, you're free to PM theymos, who's the policy maker on Bitcointalk. I can (like any other user on Bitcointalk) give suggestions and my opinion, but I don't make the policy, I enforce it and (in this thread's context) document it (though in an unofficial manner). I personally am not aware of any "moderators exercising extreme biases and misjudgements" though I am very far from omniscient and, as you've pointed out, might be oblivious to such bad actors. |
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-quote snip-
Yet pretty much every ICO bumping service is breaking all the ones that you have listed (fake conversations per definition break all 3 and they are paid in tokens or altcoins usually). What are you doing about them?
If someone reported a topic and / or its posts using the "Report to Moderator" link and the moderator reviewing the case (be it me or someone else) noticed a rule being broken, appropriate punishment is dished out. Whether that's a ban, deletion of posts and / or topic or something else depends on the specifics of each case. Here you go, pick which you prefer to handle first: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5213922.220. You get to choose from off-topic posting from several members to dozens of ICO bumping accounts. Using the report to moderator tools seems to have been backfiring lately, especially reporting off-topic trolling or diversion. If one or more reports went unhandled for a long time, it's either: a) A bunch of moderators looked into the case no one was sure whether the report warranted action b) The report requires in-depth understanding of the discussion, the situation at hand and /or access to data unavailable to regular moderators before an action is made. Glancing over the title and posts of that thread, this seems to be scenario b). While I'm not implying that this is such a situation, when it comes to assessing accusations, quite often said accusations are based off of circumstancial, speculative and / or flimsy evidence. While different moderators might place the bar of required sophistication of evidence at slightly different heights, in quite a few cases the only ones who can (with reasonable certainty) confirm or deny the allegations are the admins since they have access over tools no one else on staff has (e.g. checking IPs) and in the case of theymos, the head admin, have the authority of the final word on everything related to Bitcointalk moderation. |
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