You don't need to delete the browser data at all, and you shouldn't be using public wifi under any circumstances. The implement ion of public wifi is one of the biggest security risks you can expose yourself too. If you are getting hit by the evil IP payment then you can either find a IP which doesn't have that or you can pay the fee. Generally, only IPs which have previously had a high ban rate get evil points assigned.

That makes sense.

True, I'd like to get a dump of all of it if possible without the usernames. I didn't manage to get through all of it.

As for the badge idea I'm hoping badges will be limited to avoid a rainbow commando like badge display under each users avatar. I would like badges to be reserved for the reporting badges, and courses in the future. Of course, keeping the existing 10th anniversary art badges, and the Bitcoin expert badges.

You've not provided any evidence just posted a rather bold claim?

Probably trying to back up their accusation with the definition of the word "malevolent" which usually means causing malicious harm to other people.

Can we get a complete dump of the caption contest? It others aren't against including the username of the user who submitted the caption it could be beneficial. As with the others in this thread I've completely forgot which ones I submitted. I believe I must have submitted over 20 easy.

If I recall correctly there was a page which displayed who had submitted the captions when it was running.

Unfortunately, there's no other real competitors to Google's captcha. The Tor browser does work with Google's captcha, but it can be a pain from time to time. You basically have to keep requesting a new identity until you eventually get in. At the moment I'm not aware of any other captcha provider that would be sufficient against attacks. 

I thought it would be useful to put it at the top of a reply so that users don't keep asking the same question that is all . We do have like 3 different threads opened about this though.

You get 10 merits if your caption submission was in the top voted. 1 merit if you have voted at all, and 2 merits if its only in the 2nd table. I don't think you get multiples of 10 if you have multiple submissions within the top rated table.

Therefore, the highest amount you could have received is 11 merit from the caption voting contest thingy.


It's actually bewildering how many users don't actually read the discussion at all.

Got 11 merit. Honestly, forgot which captions I submitted because I submitted quite a few.

I did notice this at first, but it seems to have corrected itself in the last few minutes. Seems its now updated for you too as you're now at 3037 without receiving any merit from anyone after "Bitcoin Forum".

From my observations this isn't because of the decline of ICOs. There are hundreds of ICOs being launched every day. Although, something that has changed is the exposure of these projects within the altcoin section due to the bump changes made by theymos. Therefore, less users are being exposed to these scams, and therefore aren't as active in reporting them.

Only projects which are considered respectable or have a legitimate following seem to be bumped often now. Of course, there's always exceptions, and there will still be scams bumped. However, mostly it will be projects that at least have a good enough following from high ranked, and merited users. This doesn't mean they are worthwhile to invest in, but at least aren't the typical plagiarized content, and fake teams.   Its rare that anyone other than reporters that venture beyond the 10th page of the announcement section for altcoins, and tokens.

Last going off theymos stating it was still on his to do list, but wasn't on top of that list; We've seen the introduction of the bumping changes since then so its probably safe to assume that its a little closer now than when he posted this message:

"bumping" or what they should be called now "fake buzz services" will always exist. Before, they served the purpose of not only bumping up the thread, but generating a fake buzz around the project. These fake conversations are almost always of low quality, and causes spam to the thread. These should still be reported. I'm not that interested in altcoins myself, but if someone is passionately following a project then I can understand their frustration when the thread has been littered with spam posts. Some projects aren't familar with the forum, and have only come here because its another way to market their project. This is fine, but because of that they don't understand the rules. Many projects outside of the cryptocurrency industry create fake buzz to try, and lift their project off the ground. Paying news articles etc. So, in theory its not different to that, but certainly isn't in line with the rules here when it involves spamming these low quality conversations throughout the thread.

As for the matter of trust; there is a difference between paying to generate fake buzz, and paying for users to publish biased reviews. However, this should be taken case by case.

Read here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5183553.msg52420076#msg52420076

You are allowed to bump your own threads every 24 hours, but not by hiring a service to bump it for you like the examples in the OP where the users have fake conversations to either bump their thread or post low quality posts in order to generate a buzz around their project.

Depends. The Tor network uses relays which changes every so often so that you aren't going to the same end node. However, using a VPN would mean you would always be sending your data to the same end point which would be your VPN provider which likely has your payment details unless you have paid with Bitcoin. Paying with Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency which isn't associated with your personal information would be a good approach to privacy. However, many users don't do this, because Bitcoin isn't that well suited for small fee transactions.

With Tor, and VPN's it normally comes down to how you use them when concerning privacy. They can be used together, and its certainly a better solution to just using a normal IP address, but you have to be careful how you use it.

Some projects do this themselves, some of them pay for the service, and finally most projects offer an incentive for users to post on their thread. Whatever it is, if you can find any evidence behind this, and link it in the "report to moderator" function at the bottom right of the post that would help immensely. Otherwise, there isn't sufficient enough evidence to trash the thread, and we have to delete the replies instead. Often, those bumping threads, and its clear what they're trying to do are banned. I personally don't like removing threads without that evidence even though its quite obvious what is going on most of the time.

As for the users; Banned.

I'd just suggest making them of good quality, and printing them on similar material to that of poker cards or for truly unique users use holographic card. I've proposed a few ideas over here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5202418.msg53109435#msg53109435


Obviously, if you're planning on making these then it might be worth considering the copyrighted content that's been used on the designs. Depends, if you care about that or not.  Also, taking everything above into account you could probably charge for your services, and I'm sure users wouldn't mind. Especially, if they're of good quality.

Nah, I wasn't referring to you. I'm not even that familiar with your merit history honestly, but I have seen you starting to adventure out in other sections of the forum recently. I don't tend to spend a lot of time in the WO thread. Its a little bit too wild for me.  Let me try, and make it clearer. I think a lot of low quality replies get merited in the WO thread that otherwise wouldn't be merited in other sections. However, the bruteforcing I'm referring to is the users that are creating a load of threads, because they've identified that they get more merit from a individual thread rather than contributing to others. These posts are the ones which I consider decent enough in terms of quality, but its fairly obvious that these posts can be condensed into a singular thread. Its not a criticism per say, its more of a observation that has been made by myself. Although, I think there's a few users here that have made similar observations.  Everyone knows that posts in Meta also get a lot of exposure, and a lot of merit for example. So, my observations aren't criticisms its just identifying that what Mikey said earlier in the thread is definitely true to some extent. It does help to post in certain sections of the forum. Although, I also wanted to bring up that its a combination of things such as activity of the user, and various other things.

We can't have you embarrassing us now can we? Nah, honest mistake. Somehow missed you.

Yeah, I'll fix the "not" bit. I guess I must have been really tired when I wrote this! I think largely the merit system has been effective, but there are definitely users posting content which honestly isn't that useful, but still know that it will get merit.

Anyway, what's interesting to me on that graph is; as predicted many of its users are having very sharp gains in merit received, which also indicates that they are either posting very good quality or posting a lot. I might take a look at the amount of posts per week on the Chipmixer spreadsheet, and see if we can get interesting observations from that when used in conjunction with this data.

Unfortunately, the recent art contest merit dump is going to hit the merit received per post all out of whack for certain users. That could be something else to look into. How many users gained a lot of >20 merit in the art contest, but received 0 before that.

Thanks for the graph!

A few inconsistencies with my data, although where I was collecting from isn't as up to date as your source so there seems to have been more merit sent since. Unless, I've made a few mistakes somewhere.

Anyway, I was planning on doing this, but you've got the updated data. So, gathering the top 50 posts according to theymos' merit, and his only. We could get a better idea of who's in the running for badges before theymos posts in a few days time.

I'll take a look at the website a little later on when I can visit it with Tor, but from the replies here I'm not liking the nature of the website. However, this flag seemed to be related to the opinion of the user on the referenced thread. I imagine there would be a lot more support if it were directed at the users website.