That might actually be an alternative. Getting the people themselves to print it off so there's no issues with delivery, and personal data. However, those cards do unfortunately contain copyrighted content so making them into physical cards wouldn't be the best idea.

Features proposed:
- Custom artwork
- Custom packaging
- Coloured cards depending on rank (bronze, silver, gold etc)
- Rare cards (holographic)
- Possibility of a online trading game based on Bitcointalk which links up with the cards


I'm wondering what the interest would be in creating some unofficial  Bitcointalk trading cards. These would primarily be made for collectors, although a game system would likely be included. Very much like other trading cards where they have different health, attack etc, but instead we base it on merit, posts, and activity. Possibly, even working with Vod, and his BPIP's data.

I've looked around, and even started to do some mockups on some of the cards, but honestly if I were to do this I'd get an artist to do custom artwork as my artwork leaves much to be desired. Cards would be based on the avatar of the user, and include something noteworthy as their description. This could be from big involvements they have in the forum or quotes by them.

The issue with using users avatars is copyright. If these cards were to be sold we would have to custom design the avatars to represent that user rather than their actual avatar. I believe this can be done, and certain users like Vod would have to have a completely custom artwork. It would likely be of a character licking his boob still, while wielding a "scammer whacker" mallet or something, but certainly not anything that resembles content which is copyrighted.

I've priced up different options, and the cheapest by far would be normal poker sized cards or cards similar to "top trumps". This would be around 2.75 to 2.5 inch. However, for truly rare users I believe holographic cards should be used like these (which would bump up the price):


This gives a truly rare feel to the cards. These cards would only be used for the users that are on the top recognized over at BPIP (at the time of creation, all data would be taken from the same date)

There are two business model proposals:

1: Random cards
This business model means that you buy packs, and you receive a certain amount of cards in each pack some being rare, and some being 'normal', and they are completely random which means you could very well get duplicates. This is without the doubt the most fun, and rewarding experience. Although, I'm not sure if its the best way of going about this, and whether there would be enough interest in this approach.

My ideas on how this would work:
- 30 cards per pack
- 1-3 rare cards (holographics from users who are on the most recognized)
- Any new users who reach the top 100 (using BPIP's most recognized) will be added to future editions, same as those that dropped from rare to normal cards.
- Future editions released every 6-12 months


Unfortunately, because we aren't mass producing these ourselves, and would need to outsource them, get custom artwork done, and offer worldwide distribution these would likely be fairly expensive for trading cards. Compared to the likes of Pokemon cards for example. Especially, if there's only a handful of users interested in these. So, for things to realistically be worthwhile we would need to make these in a rather large quantity.

Top 100 approach
Alternatively, we make the top 100 most recognized of the year, and distribute them. All of those being holographic. Whenever, a new year comes around we'll update the list so others have a chance of getting their hands on new users that enter the top 100. This would likely appeal to less people, but ultimately keep the cost down as artwork only needs to be designed for 100 cards per year (less than that because you can reuse the artwork of many of the users), and although all of these would be holographic (rare) there would be much less demand on printing them. I imagine users will only be interested if they're included within the pack.

A few of us have had several discussions about this in the past, but nothing ever comes to fruition, and we haven't really got an idea of how popular these things would be. What do you guys think? Would you be interested? I understand its a concept which you wouldn't really expect for a forum to have, but I think it would be a cool gimmick more than anything else.

If a user is sending unsolicited personal messages then make sure to always report that to the admin. Otherwise, its likely to go unnoticed. I'd probably recommend only sending the report to admin to global moderators included on the list, and not directly to theymos/cyrus as they likely have more time than the admins.

One of the users was already banned, and the other one has been nuked. Reporting this via the "report to moderator" function should be sufficient enough though. In fact, almost everything can be reported via the report to moderator function. There's only a few things which would be more suited to a personal message to theymos (trademarks etc).

Yeah, I marked that bad. I was wondering what you were referring too as you're normally pretty accurate. Things like this can happen though, and that's why I always suggest linking to the thread if possible. I see this mistake a few times when users simply state "wrong section", and it gets moved, but the previous moderator didn't mark it as handled or the user themselves moved it. Then it usually gets marked bad as we are none the wiser. Before I was made a moderator I used to report them with "Doesn't belong in x" like in the original topic.

That's just unfortunate that it got marked bad though. Don't let that stop you in similar cases in the future.

Most of those merit sources were probably assigned the role at the start of the merit system. Not everyone had to apply to become a merit source. I'm not sure what the criteria was to become a merit source at the beginning, but it seems to me that theymos wants to keep around 20,000 merit each month in circulation, and will not add anymore merit sources until there are inactive users. That's just based on my observations the last few times merit sources have been added, and removed. 

Varies. Some days can be quieter than others. It was specially crazy in the summer when the report badge proposal was posted. As for the types of reports we receive we don't always have good reports. Its quite common for arguments on the forum to leak into the report function, and users trying to get posts deleted etc. Reports can be made about trademarks, but they are left to theymos, and usually theymos receives a message directly rather than a report.

The main reports we get are spam, trolling, and wrong section. Then there's reports for necro bumping, plagiarism, double posts, bumping before 24 hours, multiple old bumps, quote pyramids, broken BB code, ref links, malicious software, fake announcements, ban evasion, and user who have made mistakes when posting a thread, and want it removed. That's probably not even all of it. Depending on the section that the moderator is handling greatly effects how many reports they're handling too.

There's been a lot of political debate over the years of what a prison should accommodate for. Its been a much debated topic of only using a prison for serious offenders. I would tend to agree, and although the general consensus that a prison is used to rehabilitate the offender that rarely ever happens, and normally results in a life of crime after being released, and multiple remissions into the prison system. I would tend to agree that prisons should be used for only serious crimes committed, and for those that are a danger to society.  

This is an interesting suggestion. Although, how that would be enforced would also be very difficult. There's a plethora of privacy issues involved with this, and not just for the person its suppose to be monitoring, but also the members of the public. A partial solution to this would to only turn on the camera when they enter a shop. Using something similar to the stolen goods detectors at the doorways of shops could be used to turn on the camera when entering, and then off when leaving. However, this doesn't prevent 2 issues;

1. Covering up the camera.
How would you enforce this? You could state in the terms of surveillance with camera that they aren't allowed to cover it up for an extended period of time. However, for someone to steal something it only takes a matter of seconds, and covering the camera can be disguised as simple as putting on a coat or turning the body in the opposite direction. You would need to be able to ensure that the camera can't be tampered with, can't be covered, and has full vision of the hands, and legs are all times.

2. GDPR
Filming in the pubic domain, and using that for evidence can be a tricky matter. I'm not sure what the status of this is over in the USA. However, I volunteer for Mountain Rescue over here in the UK, and we've had talks about using body cams to protect us, but also for insurance. The police use them, and we thought being a charity we might be able to do the same. After all, we are often supporting the emergency services by either location criminals on the run or body retrieval. We've had team members attacked by casualties (often due to drunk people) that we are trying to help. Despite our best efforts, we came to the decision that the amount of work to get that approved could be an issue. Filming, and using that footage as evidence can be tricky even when we mostly operate on the mountains where there's less people roaming around.

I've known people who have worked in the prison system here over in the UK even some of the more notorious ones around London. As far as I can tell from them talking about it there's a lot of waste, maintenance, and travel costs. If you're cooking for hundreds of inmates then you're going to have waste no matter what. I know people in the UK like the dramatize the whole prison system, and that they don't get a lot to eat etc. However, they definitely do. The standards in the UK are much more than those in Thailand for example.  Heating every year would likely be a lot more than 10k. Take your house for example which costs a few hundred pounds per month, and compare that to a full sized prison which has separate rooms, and has to follow certain laws, and regulations.

Same goes for electric, heating and water. I've worked in the water industry, and I can tell you its not cheap. Universities, and prisons have to go through regular sampling procedures which costs them every time. Where as normally the water board would be sampling the local reservoirs, and do the occasional house call prisons, and school systems need more checks throughout the year. That's without including the amount of water that would be used in a prison system which I'm not even going to try, and guess. However, if we consider the more irregular unexpected costs such as if there are any issues relating to infrastructure being compromised then that would require repair. However, to carry out such a repair where you have hundreds of people requiring water they would need to put in a bypass system in order to get potable water to the inmates. When a water pipe has been compromised it will need to be re-chlorinated, and sampled again adding to the cost. Depending on the length of the water main is how much it will cost, and I'm talking a piece of 63mm pipe of hundred meters of so costing in the hundreds, and a prison system would require much much larger than a 63mm piece of pipe. These are separate contractors to the government so there's no real mate rates in this business. An alternative is isolating the damaged pipe, and going "on boil" which is simply boiling the water temporarily until the water pipe is fixed. However, this would add to electricity bills, and when the pipe has been fixed would still require to be re-chlorinated, and sampled. The water industry is a multi billion pound industry, and England actually pays multi millions of pounds per year to Wales, and Scotland to send water down to them. Water is cheap for a standard house with only a few people living in them. However, when you consider prisons are housing hundreds of people at a time the price starts to rack up considerably.  

Travel costs have to be considered also. When a prisoner gets ill they either call a doctor in or they have to escort the prisoner out. Remember, that all medical costs are covered by the tax payer, and therefore if a inmate requires surgery the justice system incorporates this isn't their costs. However, then there's minor things such as medication costs, and painkillers. Yes, prisoners have full rights to receiving medication when they are ill, and has been approved by a doctor. Medication isn't cheap. Then there's dental costs, and other health issues that need to be taken care of. There's simply too much to list, and probably is why the government don't give a full breakdown on what they've spent their money on.

Although, I'd like to see some accurate statistics of the running costs of a prison which depict what everything is spent on. Although, I don't think that sort of data has been released to the public. Instead, they distribute a more general outlook of the running costs of the whole prison system. Check out this report from the Ministry Of Justice: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/653972/costs-per-place-per-prisoner-2016-2017-summary.pdf

Although 79k USD sounds a little steep per inmate its not far off the reported statistics of the UK (per inmate). Being around double the amount compared to the UK. Which, honestly could come to down to cost of living comparison, and other things such as more food per inmate etc. It is America after all, and we all know they like to do things bigger

I would agree. Although, the forum statistics are informative, and I do believe they deserve some amount of merit. However, with the recent increase of source merit I'm hoping users will be rewarding more merits to other things, and not just the statistical threads. I'm certainly not going to stop meriting those statistical threads that are of high quality. Although, posts using generic data from tools made by other users on the forum will likely not be merited by myself or at least not receive as much merit. I think we've seen a rise of users who are using these tools as a way to get merit, when largely the statistical information provided doesn't really offer much insight that anyone else could get from the tools which have been made available to the public. 



Don't feel like you need to take a few days off if a post is deleted. Message either myself or another mod that you think handled it. I certainly don't handle a lot of your posts that are reported, but I might be able to offer my thoughts on why it was deleted even if I'm not the mod that actually handled the report. This offer is open to anyone as well. I'll try my best to get back to any messages which is seeking clarification for why a post was deleted. If you don't get a reply then just assume I've missed it as my inbox can be a little messy some days, and send another message.

I believe I was the one to deleted that message yesterday. It was reported as spam, and I agreed with the report that the message was of low quality. Also, the following sentence which you've posted again with more sentences I still consider low quality.


It doesn't add anything to the discussion, and almost always congratulation posts are unneeded. I'm not saying you can't congratulate other users, but bring something new to the discussion rather than just saying congratulations, and its one of your favorite coins. Can you imagine how much of a ball ache it would be to read the thread if everyone did that after an update?

Even with your revised comment I believe it should be removed. It doesn't really bring anything with substantial value to the thread, and is just added on to avoid getting deleted. If a reply has been deleted, its probably not the best of ideas to continue posting it. There's also other ways of congratulating users of something, that doesn't end up clogging up the thread. You are not the only user who gets these types of posts deleted, and there are several users who like to congratulate project owners when they reach a certain milestone etc. When they are reported they are usually deleted, unless they are otherwise not low quality.

I consider most congratulations posts to fall under rule number 1 for being low quality. Like I said, you can congratulate a project/user, and at the same time be a substantial post. However, I don't think yours was. As for your posts on the DAPP thread, I have no idea without context.

Its a good idea, and something that I would support. I already try, and message users if I believe its a complex reason why their posts have been deleted, and I also message users with an explanation on why I've marked their post bad if I believe it might be hard to establish.

As for the idea, its definitely something that would be beneficial. As others have stated it is part of newer versions of SMF. However, this forum runs on a highly modified SMF that doesn't have that feature. If it was a feature then I don't see any reason why moderators wouldn't take a couple of seconds more on each report to write a little something. Although, you could probably expect the obvious rule breaking posts that are deleted to not get an explanation.

Anyway, almost everyone on this forum has had a post deleted in their history including myself. It's usually not a big deal, and after a while you start to learn what sort of things you can, and can't post. Certain sections can be stricter than others, and certain moderators can be stricter than others.

19 signature campaigns that are paying in Bitcoin according to this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=615953.0
Although, I believe one of the signature campaigns has recently stopped so I would think it would be 18 signature campaigns. If you have the interest, and the time you could look back at that thread, and establish the highest amount of signature campaigns at one given time.

You'd think that, but I would argue different. This community is a little more friendly than people make out. My experience of a moderator has been nothing, but positive. I've had very friendly PM's off not only well established accounts, but also newbies who are asking about the rules or why one of their posts got deleted. I think users mistake being challenged publicly as a hatred for the moderators when simply they are asking for an explanation of some mod actions which in my opinion they have every right to do. This isn't meant to be a blanket statement obviously as I would assume some users have issues with the illusion of 'authority'.

For a forum which is at constant war with itself with trust battles going on every other day I was surprised by the friendly approach most users have made during my time as a mod.

Yeah, its not directly in the rules that there should only be one project announcement etc. Although, my interpretation is that it falls under duplicate content, and some of them were definitely low quality. At the moment it seems franckuestein isn't active within the last month or two, and until then I'll be handling them like the way I've stated above. There are other existing moderators which understand Spanish, and probably handle a fair few reports also. So any Spanish which I can't understand will be left to them. I've been handling a fair few from the Spanish section recently, but once your local moderator is back I would potentially ask them what their interpretation would be as it is for the local section.

So, feel free to report these types of threads, and they'll likely be handled the same as the above. I'll give the user a message as it seems the perfect opportunity to try out my Spanish in private

Sorry, for the delayed reply.

It all depends on the content really. Although, most of the threads linked could be reported for duplicate content, and low quality content. If they're posting updates independently from their announcement thread then this probably falls under duplicate content/spam. If they're saying a few words, and then link to their service its usually low quality. Project updates are probably more suited to the announcement thread, and don't warrant their own thread. There should really only be one thread per project in the tokens/altcoin announcement threads. I've removed the topics linked because they fall under duplicate content, and low quality content.

I normally leave the oldest, unless the old thread has no activity, and another one does.

How many times do you report the posts you come across to either the moderators if it's bad enough that it warrants removal from the forum or to the campaign managers running their signature campaign? Rather than restricting signature campaigns it would be better to just hold the signature campaign managers responsible, as well as those making those posts.

I'm not saying you have to report, but the tools are there to deal with the issues we have in the community, as a community by reporting, and bringing certain users to the attention of the signature campaign manager.

I completely understand the frustration on your end, and I do wish that this forum was a little more beginner friendly at times. I've actually been very vocal in the past about moderating scams, but honestly as time as passed I can understand why they aren't moderated. There are rules that are enforced definitely, but the reason these are guidelines is because the forum encourages moderators using their intuitive.  Contrary to belief moderators aren't given strict rules to enforce when they are appointed as a member of staff, and its very much a learning process as you make mistakes etc. Theymos usually messages us if there's an issue with the way staff have handled reports, but there's no concrete rules even as a moderator.

I would agree that having some very basic concrete rules would likely help as I believe the forum has outgrown the initial ones posted by sirius regarding the forum moderation policy. They would have to be constructed in such a way that there's no loop holes, and honestly I think that's one of the reasons concrete rules have been avoided, because users might try, and dance around the technicalities of the rules.

Yeah, I actually hate some of the default wording of SMF. I feel like a lot of it could be streamlined, and made a little more friendly.

Yeah, you can include an explanation to your work within the same post as your art submission. Although, you should only discuss your art further on this thread instead of the art submission one. Plenty of users have included explanations, and descriptions alongside their submissions.

Sure, I'd continue doing it. A lot of the staff were reporting thousands of reports before they were made a moderator so I doubt many of them would duck out if payment was pulled.

I have handled some of your reports recently as I'm ok with Spanish. Although, definitely not fluent, and my grammar when writing in Spanish leaves much to be desired (very much like my English ).

If there's a lot of unhandled reports then that's one of the indicators that a section requires a moderator. If you think theymos isn't aware of the amount of reports going unhandled then you can bring it up, and ask for theymos to check the reporting statistics of the local section.

Global moderators will be able to see it, and patrollers will be able to see reported newbie posts. Otherwise, no one else is able to see them, and they act just like any other section.

Yeah, moderators do receive a payment based on a custom algorithm which isn't disclosed to moderators or the public. Although, we are not employees of Bitcointalk.org. Theymos has to manage the current staff, and I'm sure he's got other things going on in his life also. Therefore, moderators will only be added if its shown that they're required, and the best way of judging that is by looking at the state of a section, and how many reports are being made.

Who knows existing moderators, and global moderators might be able to pick up certain local language reports. For example, I can read some languages okayish, but writing in them is a different story. I believe hilariousandco can speak languages or at least understand other languages aside from English, but don't quote me on that.

There's going to be multiple factors involved in appointing someone moderator, and I'm sure if the need for a moderator was clear then they would get appointed.

I'm not theymos, but I'd like to think that it at least requires a good understanding of the rules, and the amount of reports or even quality of reports would be better than activity. There's always a combination of things to consider, and reputation probably is a factor in the selection process.