I commonly see one good post from a user, and then go through their history to merit even more of their posts, because if they have made one constructive post then they've likely made more. You can go through my merit history, and you'll see that I've done this a lot for multiple users of all kinds of ranks. Even, some of the highest merited users on the forum.

Especially when it comes to newbies. I think users are a little more willing to give merits to newbies who have made an effort with their post even if lets say a hero member made the same post, and they wouldn't have got merited for it. I think its in the nature of a lot of users to encourage newbies as much as possible.

Have you tried restarting your computer logging in, and out again? I'm guessing if its happening on Chrome its likely not going to fix it, but maybe worth a try. If its annoying you perhaps try assigning the expected message causing the issue to a label or even deleting it. I can't say I've come across this issue with all my years using SMF software, but I've had limited experience with mobile browsers.  

You've already shown that you'll continue neglecting the forum rules by opening a new account, and continuing to post on it even though you've been banned. That account was likely banned for ban evasion. If there's an email within the banned message then email that with your ban appeal. However, if it was for plagiarism they are unlikely to be unbanned.

You can definitely report Doxxing information outside of the investigation section. It'll be removed. However, if you wish to both report, and leave a negative rating then that's at your discretion. I think you should probably take in the context when concerning doxxing. If someone has done it to destroy the reputation or threaten someone then it might well be worthy of a negative rating.

I definitely agree with some of your points, however like Hilarious states within his message these complaints could be the user at fault rather than Yobit. I'm not trying to defend Yobit whatsoever, but I am trying to consider all angles on the limited knowledge I have. We don't know if the error of these wallets was because of something the user did rather than Yobit actually seizing the coins. Users run to the forums, and claim they scammed them when it could possibly be them at fault. For example, breaking rules or whatever. That's just an example. Again, I'm not going to claim that I'm knowledgeable in this drama with Yobit as I've been to busy recently to actually look into it. However, from the posts that I have seen there's been mixed feedback, and those that are claiming Yobit to be at fault haven't provided any evidence to make me believe that.  Of course, if you'd like to enlighten me about any solid evidence that these claims are true then I'd definitely take a look.

Pretty much, and I've been reporting for years. However,  I really ramped up my daily reports in the last 12 months or so before getting asked if I'd like to be a moderator. I was probably hitting a 1000 on a good day (or bad depending how you see it). At one point I was literally waking up, and putting in a hour before work, and then a few hours before bed. I pretty much made it my unofficial job to clear up all the shit that was getting posted. This was during a time where spam was everywhere you looked because of the popularity of Bitcoin back then. Handling reports takes a lot more time than making reports though, because I didn't really care for accuracy back then, and now I've got to do proper research before handling a report to avoid as many issues as possible, and of course we still make mistakes.

I guess it was also the fact that I was reporting a lot of reports within a timezone needed, and a section that needed extra moderating. I still think there's a few sections which require a bit more moderation (Bitcoin Discussion etc). However, with the recent bumping changes, and a few things my end which have kept me busy the last few months I'm hoping that the Altcoin section will see a great improvement. The rest of the staff have been carrying that section recently

Newbie accounts nuked, and thread moved to the trashcan. Hopefully, we don't see this becoming a problem. In the process of sending a message to the OP regarding announcement threads, and the appropriate section.

@theymos What I'm wondering is if there's any effect on bumping score if its been posted in another section, and then is later moved to that section? Asking not for this specific occurrence, but in the future. Not sure if you would have considered this while coding the bump changes.

I'm not going to get into a debate over Yobit here as you rightly said I'm not that informed about the taking down of wallets. I know there's been a lot of complaints about support over the years, and that its pretty much non existent. However, this signature campaign is related to their forum, and as long as they're paying their campaign members then there can't be too many complaints. If they were advertising their exchange I can imagine there would be far more users knocking at the door with their pitchforks, and I would hope there wasn't too many users willing to advertise their exchange, because of the recent history. Maybe, once they've proven, and resolved some of the complaints against them in a few years they'll be looked at favorably, but at the moment they are very much branded as the "shady" exchange. This kind of makes one believe that they aren't outright a scam, but possibly have bad support when things do go wrong. Again, I'm not too familiar with the situation, but that's my outsider sort of view with reading information here, and there  since I haven't really been actively keeping up with the whole drama revolving around Yobit, and its exchange.

Despite the many complaints that exist on this forum there seems to be a lot of users claiming to have positive experiences including some reputable users. So, without actually using the exchange its hard to make a decision on whether their exchange is outright a scam, because they currently have a lot of users, and one hell of a trade volume. Surely, if they were outright a scam no one would want to use them.

I have a similar sort of viewpoint to Hilarious' post here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5134204.msg52624469#msg52624469


Just because I know forum policy, doesn't mean I am invested in Altcoins. There's a key difference in being able to delete spam, move topics, and being invested in altcoins. Am I interested in altcoins? A few pique my interest, but more to see where they go technologically rather than being invested in them.

This campaign is being watched by a lot of users including the admins. If it becomes a problem then you can bet your buck that another ban will be coming their way.

Signature campaigns definitely don't keep this forum alive, and some might argue are slowly killing the forum. I think there's a way to get them to work without damaging the forum, but that would require a lot of restrictions.

Like others said there's no active scam accusation against Yobit. They have made bad decisions in past advertising campaigns on this forum, and have paid the price. However, they have made the step in the right direction, and those that are claiming "Yobit does what it wants" obviously isn't true if they've resorted to using a campaign manager, and a reputable at that. It was obvious that they tried to save as much money as possible, and thought they could brute force their way into Bitcointalk. Which obviously didn't work out for them, and in return they had their signature banned from the forum.

Even if you were to judge Cryptotalk based on the existing reputation of Yobit. It hasn't been confirmed that they have scammed anyone, and the only real criticism you can say about them is regarding the whole Yobit spam, but they're at least making steps in the right direction. I haven't used Yobit, because I don't really have a need for an exchange, and I don't deal in altcoins. However, if I ever did I'd probably remember them just from the shenanigans that have happened. Would I like them to make a little more effort, and place more restrictions on who can enter into their campaign? Yes, probably. However, at the moment I haven't seen too many spammers on the Yobit signature campaign, and for those that are will hopefully be removed shortly by Yahoo. Despite their history on the forum, everyone knows about them, and with an effective strategy for the existing campaign every new comer into Bitcoin will likely hear about them. I wouldn't be surprised if they're the go to option in the future just because of the amount of exposure they seem to be able to get.

Seems its not the government, but the internet providers that are directly censoring the content. Which is weird, because some of the bigger, and more popular VPN services operate within Turkey. I do remember one of the VPN providers making a move from Turkey to Georgia a few years ago though which might be because of some ruling the government made. If someone wants to put their conspiracy boots on they could say the government isn't directly blocking the sites, but are putting rules to the internet providers that they have to block certain content.

Turkey doesn't just block Bitcointalk.org, but a number of Bitcoin related websites. Several block explorers, and news sources are also blocked from being accessed within Turkey. Seems that Turkey has a somewhat hostile look on Bitcoin related websites, and not just social networking sites. I'm pretty sure some of the more popular VPN services are actually hosted in Turkey which is a little bewildering.

Although, the list does make it easier for us to see who's been identified to be spamming by the community that doesn't mean everyone on that list deserves a signature ban like Yahoo states. Every campaign is going to have different criteria, and some campaigns could potentially have stricter guidelines than the actual forum.

Bold is a tool, and definitely has its uses on the forum. A well constructed thread should probably include bold somewhere. For example, putting emphasis on titles or outlining important information within the thread. Posts/replies I would expect to see it less, although I believe it can still be used, and  still has its place, but would expect it to be used less often than threads.

I suggest keeping a text file handy, and inputting urls of the post whenever you would like to merit something, but can't due to exhausting your merit pool. Of course, this requires manual work, but at least you get to review whether you think that post deserves merit or not. I've kept a text file full of posts which I haven't gone through completely yet despite now being a merit source.

I also wouldn't have represented them as a campaign manager especially because Yahoo isn't handling transactions/payments. However, Yahoo has accepted the job, and Yobit has definitely made some enemies of the forum by their antics. However, like I said they have at least made the step in the right direction by hiring a reputable campaign manager.

He has already asked for the communities help by reporting to him any users who are spamming the forum. Again, it will likely take a few weeks to get it all under control, and remove most of the trouble makers. Allowing Yahoo a grace period to sort out the campaign makes sense. However, Yahoo has tied his name to this campaign now, and if the spammers haven't been weeded out in a month or so then I imagine it will reflect badly on Yahoo. Having said that Yobit has made the first steps to cleaning up their name in hiring a reputable campaign manager, and user of the forum. I guess we will have to wait, and see how this unfolds.

It'll take time, and I imagine it'll be a bumpy first few weeks for Yahoo, but eventually he should narrow it down to the better quality users. That estimate of 3100 new posts a day will dramatically decrease given time, because if we assume that nearly every user will on average post 10 times a day you can bet your buck most of them aren't constructive, and will be kicked sooner or later.

Plagiarism is almost always done with intent. There are a few scenarios where users may be quoting a post, and have forgotten to add a source to the post. However,  I would argue that if you haven't added your own views on the quote then it should be treated as plagiarism anyway. If someone has quoted a article for instance, and forgotten to put a source, but still went on to make their own points. I would likely give them the benefit of the doubt. Mistakes happen, and forgetting to quote with the quote tags, and providing a source could happen. However, context is certainly taken when it comes to banning someone. I would also likely put this issue to the admins, and Global Moderators to get their opinion on it.

You're responsible for your content that you have posted. Lets give a more extreme version of this. Let's say someone murdered several people many years ago, and they have only now been caught, but the evidence leads back to a few years ago. Wouldn't you want them to be busted? The issue with making cut off points such as 6 months is when a user plagiarized 6 months and 1 day ago. They wouldn't be banned, and would escape by the skin of their teeth. That's also a terrible model to base bans off of, and would cause much more controversy than the current approach.

I much rather the current moderation approach on plagiarism; considering the context, and banning if justified despite how long ago the post may have been made.

Which is exactly why context should be considered. Plus, I highly doubt someone would be banned for saying "Bitcoin is a digital currency". That's not plagiarism like you said. Plagiarism usually results in the user copying content from another user on this forum or elsewhere on the internet (such as articles etc), and not merely using commonly used phrases.

The Pharmacist is likely referring to Nuking as deleting in this case. Posts aren't nuked in the same way as accounts are nuked. If an account is nuked then they are banned permanently, and have all of their posts removed.

Hardly anyone reports a post just because of grammar, and even if they did, and the sole reason for the report was due to having a few misspellings then it would likely be marked as bad. Lets not confuse low quality posts with poor grammar. They're different, despite most low quality posts having poor grammar the majority of the time.

Ideally, in the perfect world everyone would post in the appropriate sections of the forum when opening a new thread, however we definitely don't live in a perfect world, and I'll admit it can sometimes be difficult to decide where to put it when you haven't been a user of the forum for a number of years. Its not too much of an issue if you do post in the wrong section. Just don't make it a habit of purposely posting in the wrong section. We moderators like to sip on tea, and have breaks every once in a while.