Who wields the Banhammers? Do we have enough?

[HodorHodl]

Hi all,

Just want to open up a conversation about mods, and user-bans.

The recent introduction of the merit system was a major step forward (in my not very humble opinion), towards a useful forum, free of spam. The trust system was all we had before that, and it didn't really fit. I was a bit passionate about that in threads like this one. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2806313.msg28705551#msg28705551

Am feeling like I was a bit harsh now, tbh.

I get what the DTs were doing, discouraging spammers by tagging them early so they'd just delete. But the problem was that it diluted the value of the "scammer" red mark of plague. Which, to be honest again, is valuable.

With the merit system out there, and the DTs on low-alert, the responsibility is largely falling on the mods to identify (or react to reports) and ban these spam and scam accounts.

Do we have enough mods? Can they cope? Does this need review?

Thoughts welcome.

H.

PS: I am not volunteering. I am but a junior, with a pacifier in my mouth, still, and an attitude to boot. You probably don't want me. I'd do some fucking banning though, there is that. Trading boards....om nom nom. Anyhow

[1686418936]

1686418936

[krishnaverma]

The recent introduction of the merit system was a major step forward (in my not very humble opinion), towards a useful forum, free of spam. The trust system was all we had before that, and it didn't really fit. I was a bit passionate about that in threads like this one. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2806313.msg28705551#msg28705551

Am feeling like I was a bit harsh now, tbh.

I get what the DTs were doing, discouraging spammers by tagging them early so they'd just delete. But the problem was that it diluted the value of the "scammer" red mark of plague. Which, to be honest again, is valuable.

With the merit system out there, and the DTs on low-alert, the responsibility is largely falling on the mods to identify (or react to reports) and ban these spam and scam accounts.

Do we have enough mods? Can they cope? Does this need review?

Here are my observations regarding this:

1) Merit system will make the work easier for mods. This is because a lot of shit posters will just leave the forum as they know that they cannot rank up now just with activity.

2) We will also see less registrations ( account farming) and genuine people will come here.

3) They might have to handle the additional work related to merit but we can make things easier for them. That can be done by accurate reporting. There are some members who opened exclusive threads for helping the community.

[Lauda]

1) Merit system will make the work easier for mods. This is because a lot of shit posters will just leave the forum as they know that they cannot rank up now just with activity.

It is not so simple, and we are far from that scenario. Merit is being abused left and right, especially in local sections. Account farmers and shitposters are essentially that, pest. From experience, one should know that exterminating pests isn't easy.

3) They might have to handle the additional work related to merit but we can make things easier for them.

I don't see any extra work for moderators that is a direct consequence of the merit system.
The answer is: No, we do not. This place has gotten considerably worse since BadBear departed.

[Jet Cash]

Banning may be a bit extreme, except in the case of major abuses. 30 day suspension could mess up the sig spammers, and would give them a chance to behave in the future.

In my opinion, the biggest improvement that could be made by the mods would come from cleaning the boards. There are several ways to improve board hygene -

- Merge duplicated threads,
- Close the rubbish long tail spam fests ( You need to be pretty immature to even talk about Bitcoin replacing banks for example)
- Delete garbled nonsense posts.
- Move threads onto the correct boards to avoid having allboards as general crypto discussions.