@Admins: Merit not working as configured, trolls just don't care (no surprise)

[fxstrike]

I kinda agree with Carlton Banks.. I believe bitcointalk has reached a stage where everything has been answered... most of these posts by newbies are repeats.. Like how to export wallet key etc.. They keep on repeating the same stuff.. They need to learn how to use the search function.. Plus the general discussion section gets spammed with shit posts which are repetitive and are in broken English, which ruins the reading experience for other users.. Like if you believe you have something super important to add to the discussion which has been missed by other users then happily pay a 500 Satoshi fee... Also i kinda like the repayment idea.. Like if your reply gets merited you get back your 500 satoshi.. This can work and can do wonders for this community.. But on the other hand i believe the merit introduction has been working wonderfully.. So far the posts i have read have been less shitty.. So by giving it more time it will eventually give us the same result..

If people have to pay for their post do you think they will ever post BTC development enhancement for free from their part or they will post bounty related material so that they can earn back some reward, furthermore once we set some kind of fees they will post whatever they want and without fear of getting caught because they consider their posting as paid posting that more like advertisement then anything else

[hilariousetc]

I kinda agree with Carlton Banks.. I believe bitcointalk has reached a stage where everything has been answered... most of these posts by newbies are repeats.. Like how to export wallet key etc.. They keep on repeating the same stuff.. They need to learn how to use the search function.. Plus the general discussion section gets spammed with shit posts which are repetitive and are in broken English, which ruins the reading experience for other users.. Like if you believe you have something super important to add to the discussion which has been missed by other users then happily pay a 500 Satoshi fee... Also i kinda like the repayment idea.. Like if your reply gets merited you get back your 500 satoshi.. This can work and can do wonders for this community.. But on the other hand i believe the merit introduction has been working wonderfully.. So far the posts i have read have been less shitty.. So by giving it more time it will eventually give us the same result..

The forum is wall-to-wall shitpositng but I don't think this is the solution. Simply banning the crapcoin campaigns that do nothing but pay for any old broken English spam would go a long way and is the bare minimum we should be doing but if we were to charge for anything it should be for a signature. If you get money back for receiving merits it will just lead to even more abuse and the system is already heavily exploited by those giving merit to their alts and "friends" so this would just happen in even greater numbers when there's cash refunds on the line.

[MagicSmoker]

The forum is wall-to-wall shitpositng but I don't think this is the solution. Simply banning the crapcoin campaigns that do nothing but pay for any old broken English spam would go a long way and is the bare minimum we should be doing but if we were to charge for anything it should be for a signature.
...

Hah, my suggestion to charge for sigs has taken hold subliminally! 

I did think there might possibly be some merit to charging a fee for posts that varied inversely with rank, but upon further consideration I now think this is unavoidably regressive/centralizing. Dedicated spammers/scammers will figure out a way to game any system so I am starting to warm up to the idea - which is not at all original - that such offenders be automatically temp-banned if, say, x different members mark any of offender's posts as "shitposts." A possible implementation would be to scan for keywords in a moderation report such as, shitpost, bot, spam, scam, off-topic., etc. Temp-banned users could appeal via a single thread in meta - same as now - which only non-bots would attempt. If the same user is auto-banned three times then make the ban permanent.

[Thekool1s]

The forum is wall-to-wall shitpositng

Agreed...

If you get money back for receiving merits it will just lead to even more abuse and the system is already heavily exploited by those giving merit to their alts and "friends" so this would just happen in even greater numbers when there's cash refunds on the line.

Hmm Interesting perspective.. Didn't thought of it in that way...

[hilariousetc]

The forum is wall-to-wall shitpositng but I don't think this is the solution. Simply banning the crapcoin campaigns that do nothing but pay for any old broken English spam would go a long way and is the bare minimum we should be doing but if we were to charge for anything it should be for a signature.
...

Hah, my suggestion to charge for sigs has taken hold subliminally! 

Not quite. I've been suggesting we remove signatures from ranks for years.

Dedicated spammers/scammers will figure out a way to game any system

I don't think they'll be able to game paying a hefty fee for a signature, but any way of being able to achieving anything here naturally will be gamed/abused though.

such offenders be automatically temp-banned if, say, x different members mark any of offender's posts as "shitposts."

This would be abused. People would just report or bot people's posts they don't like.

[MagicSmoker]

The forum is wall-to-wall shitpositng but I don't think this is the solution. Simply banning the crapcoin campaigns that do nothing but pay for any old broken English spam would go a long way and is the bare minimum we should be doing but if we were to charge for anything it should be for a signature.
...

Hah, my suggestion to charge for sigs has taken hold subliminally! 

Not quite. I've been suggesting we remove signatures from ranks for years.

Hence the overly-smiley emoticon... I didn't think that suggesting charging for sigs (or avatars, etc.) was terribly original, either.

such offenders be automatically temp-banned if, say, x different members mark any of offender's posts as "shitposts."

This would be abused. People would just report or bot people's posts they don't like.

That's why I said it had to be x number of different members, where x is greater than 1 (and less than, say, 10), and that the temp-ban could be appealed in meta - if a moderator/admin looks at the offender's post history and sees that they are not, in fact, shitposts/scams/etc. then it would be those who unfairly reported the posts that get the ban.

That said, I have long since grown weary of "free" services/sites on the internet. How is that Facebook doesn't charge any of its is >2B users yet still brings in >$12B in revenue each quarter? Well, that's because you are the product... Honestly, I would much rather pay for a service like that rather than exchange all of my privacy for the proverbial beads and trinkets; same applies here - it is undoubtedly costly to host this site and paying an annual membership and/or to unlock various accessories/accoutrements would not only be fine by me, it would be preferable.

[TreXzar]

Nuke the old rank status for all members, re-adjust according to merit only

I agree with this part only. This would be the first pay to post forum, sure its revolutionary, but more likely it'll fall flat on its face.
Like if you started to charge for breathing air, then people will just go somewhere else to breathe

[Dilemmaremma]

I really don’t believe paying to post inspires conversation and theymos has made it abundantly clear that while he intends to continuously moderate and promote people to moderate, he does not want to inhibit the discussion at all. It seems to be one of his main goals when determining who is capable of the responsibility.

I believe signature campaigns are still fine, but I don’t understand why there is a necessity to make people post x amount of posts in a week, that should be against TOS because it incentivizes posting. Those that are higher ranking got that way because they’re active already and don’t really need to be told how to contribute to the forum and those who are lower ranking shouldn’t be as active in an ideal situation so why are we okay with bounties telling them to be?

Also- I feel like we’re all focusing on punishments or deincentivizing current activities. I don’t think this works well with any problems we encounter that include others. I believe what we actually need is a reason for the spammers and trolls to stop posting here. Eliminate jr member, make newbies and members have a scaling post limit(% result of posts/merit) until they get to full member at 100 merit and create a very very slow merit drip site like in a telegram channel that allows spammers to earn .5 merit after 500 posts but have a bot that deletes duplicates, spam, links and advertisements. I’m okay with someone posting 1000 posts on a chat channel to earn 1 merit if it eliminates the 1000 posts that individual would have posted on btt and earned 4-5 merit for. Plus if they do it too much, telegram has anti spam capabilities already monitoring the users that would allow mods to remain focused on the forum itself and promote personal responsibility because it might have an effect on their telegram account. OR.. you know, just have a scaling post limit.

The entire situation reminds me of dealing with children. Telling them what they can’t do rarely works as smoothly as you’d expect, but distracting them by telling them what they can do works like a charm. We need to give trolls and spammers an avenue that allows them to benefit, because they will find a way to benefit regardless and we're currently trying to stop an entire flood with a bucket. Isolating them from the communal aspects of BTT is a strong approach and I'd be surprised if they didn't go willingly to something they believe benefits them more than junking up BTT.


We all have our suggestions and there are reasons all of them won’t work. Merit is pretty new so it wouldn’t come as a surprise to me if they revamped their policy with new specifications in the future.

[o_e_l_e_o]

That's why I said it had to be x number of different members, where x is greater than 1 (and less than, say, 10), and that the temp-ban could be appealed in meta - if a moderator/admin looks at the offender's post history and sees that they are not, in fact, shitposts/scams/etc. then it would be those who unfairly reported the posts that get the ban.

I still don't think this would work. There are a number of members with large numbers of alt accounts who could still easily abuse this, and mods are busy enough as it is without having a bunch of fake bans to review.

[MagicSmoker]

That's why I said it had to be x number of different members, where x is greater than 1 (and less than, say, 10), and that the temp-ban could be appealed in meta - if a moderator/admin looks at the offender's post history and sees that they are not, in fact, shitposts/scams/etc. then it would be those who unfairly reported the posts that get the ban.

I still don't think this would work. There are a number of members with large numbers of alt accounts who could still easily abuse this, and mods are busy enough as it is without having a bunch of fake bans to review.

Okay, so you don't like my suggestion but didn't suggest an alternate approach yourself... Forgive me if I don't take your rebuttal too seriously, then.

[o_e_l_e_o]

That's why I said it had to be x number of different members, where x is greater than 1 (and less than, say, 10), and that the temp-ban could be appealed in meta - if a moderator/admin looks at the offender's post history and sees that they are not, in fact, shitposts/scams/etc. then it would be those who unfairly reported the posts that get the ban.

I still don't think this would work. There are a number of members with large numbers of alt accounts who could still easily abuse this, and mods are busy enough as it is without having a bunch of fake bans to review.

Okay, so you don't like my suggestion but didn't suggest an alternate approach yourself... Forgive me if I don't take your rebuttal too seriously, then.

Providing an alternative is not a requirement for disagreeing with someone's point of view, and not providing an alternative does not make my argument any less valid. Your system is too open to abuse and manipulation.

[actmyname]

Okay, so you don't like my suggestion but didn't suggest an alternate approach yourself... Forgive me if I don't take your rebuttal too seriously, then.

That's pretty close-minded, mate. Rejecting opinions just because others don't offer a solution to a problem isn't logical. It's just ignorant.That's something along the lines of a Russell's Teapot argument where you place an onus on the opposition.

You definitely cannot do anything in which users have administrative power over others. The red-trusted scammers would have a field day just using the system against the people who had sent them the feedback.

[o_e_l_e_o]

You definitely cannot do anything in which users have administrative power over others. The red-trusted scammers would have a field day just using the system against the people who had sent them the feedback.

Pretty much this. Under this system most of the default trust network would be banned within the hour as all the scammers and spammers they had red-tagged retaliated against them.

[Slava79]

This might be somewhat unpopular, but is popularity the goal? A good resource should be the goal IMO, I exclusively read this forum for about 1 year before I felt knowledgeable enough to post at all.


Getting the signal:noise ratio up can probably only be achieved using real resources. I'd be very happy if a BTC cost was introduced for posting:

• Nuke the old rank status for all members, re-adjust according to merit only
• Charge BTC for every post, low rank = highest fee
• Set the charges incredibly low to begin with, slowly increase to tweak the quality level

Lightning payments would be necessary, of course. Maybe I'm taking too hard a line, but if I have to pay even 500 satoshis per post, that would be a small price to pay to improve quality again.

Look at the inverse situation: 1000's of accounts are posting meaningless, obvious, copy-pasta or troll content, only in order to get paid per post by sig campaigns or trolls-in-chief.

Price discovery can solve this problem, it's a geniune "tragedy of the commons" issue after all.

Probably charging for posts is too much, but it could be acceptable to require some amount of PoW instead? Say, mining one of the Cryptonote based currencies for btctalk account?

[TheQuin]

Probably charging for posts is too much, but it could be acceptable to require some amount of PoW instead? Say, mining one of the Cryptonote based currencies for btctalk account?

That's got to be the wackiest idea yet. Is there any particular reason that you think spammers can't mine?

[Slava79]

Probably charging for posts is too much, but it could be acceptable to require some amount of PoW instead? Say, mining one of the Cryptonote based currencies for btctalk account?

That's got to be the wackiest idea yet. Is there any particular reason that you think spammers can't mine?

Well, spammers can mine, spammers with $ can pay, merit can be traded, accounts can be created in masses.

I got it the way things can be improved only, not totally fixed.

PS. But thank you, I at least won "The wackiest idea" prize

[TheQuin]

Well, spammers can mine, spammers with $ can pay, merit can be traded, accounts can be created in masses.

I got it the way things can be improved only, not totally fixed.

I gave my reasons I disagree with the OP here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3345485.msg35059537#msg35059537

Paying to post is effectively a tax that the spammers could pay. Making it mining is just a different payment method of the tax.

PS. But thank you, I at least won "The wackiest idea" prize

You earned it. 

There's a number of good suggestions about. The most effective would be to ban the ICO bounty campaigns from advertising here. They've already been banned from taking out banner ads on the forum and extending that to signatures would reduce spam dramatically.

[MagicSmoker]

That's why I said it had to be x number of different members, where x is greater than 1 (and less than, say, 10), and that the temp-ban could be appealed in meta - if a moderator/admin looks at the offender's post history and sees that they are not, in fact, shitposts/scams/etc. then it would be those who unfairly reported the posts that get the ban.

I still don't think this would work. There are a number of members with large numbers of alt accounts who could still easily abuse this, and mods are busy enough as it is without having a bunch of fake bans to review.

Okay, so you don't like my suggestion but didn't suggest an alternate approach yourself... Forgive me if I don't take your rebuttal too seriously, then.

Providing an alternative is not a requirement for disagreeing with someone's point of view, and not providing an alternative does not make my argument any less valid. Your system is too open to abuse and manipulation.

No, providing an alternate solution isn't a requirement - and I didn't say it was - but if you do provide one (and, even better, the reasoning behind such) it certainly makes me pay more attention to what you have to say.

As of now your argument is merely that members with lots of alts could "take down their enemies" by reporting posts maliciously, and that relying on admins to police this abuse would add to their workload. I agree that both are possible, I just don't think that this kind of abuse would happen often enough.

But I'll allow that I might be putting too much faith in my fellow man to act responsibly.

[LeGaulois]

Not quite. I've been suggesting we remove signatures from ranks for years.

I now think it won't really resolve the problem but rather create new ones. And it will be worst. I can imagine another type of "campaigns" coming from behind the scene of the forum, and you can imagine the result here...

@Carlston Bank

Yes, I have a signature but as I posted, even if I didn't, my opinion would be the same.
When you're in a community you have to think about others, it's how a community works. You surely forgot my question, but what about if your friends are now asking you some money to talk with. (I know you can say, Bitcointalk users are not your friends but you get my point)

How can it be good to ask people money to share their opinions with others, or someone trying to learn, etc? Bitcoin is not a private club and the forum either...

Your solution is rude and not really friendly. This said I would pay if I have no choice but would consider the forum as not so friendly and a kind of "private club" which isn't what I am looking for.

Paying a membership to be allowed to have a signature is something I would have no problem with. I used to pay xxx$ per year in some forums to have access to either some sections or to be allowed to open some topics related to sales.

Theymos is apparently thinking it isn't a good idea, but believe it or not, there are a lot of people who will have no problem to pay for something like this.  

I aslo wonder what do you think would be the criteria to estimate the price to post here

[Carlton Banks]

Paying to post is effectively a tax that the spammers could pay. Making it mining is just a different payment method of the tax.

Is there a price scale that's too high for low-ranked spammers, but also low enough for high-ranked genuine posters?

Say,

• Newbies - 100 satoshi per post
• Juniors - 5 satoshi per post, + 1% returned
• Members - 2 satoshi per post, + 2% returned
• Full Members - 1 satoshi per post, + 4% returned
• Seniors - 0.1 satoshi per post, + 8% returned
• Heroes - 0.001 satoshi per post, + 16% returned
• Legendaries - 0.0001 satoshi per post, + 39% returned

(keep in mind I become a Member under this proposal)

I'm pretty sure that the 80 page shit-post spam fests, titled "can my Freindz still makes monies of Bitcoinz in thhis days?" would all just disappear completely. Instantly.

Could trolls afford it? Most couldn't. And those that could would end up paying for the Seniors (and above) to post.


I don't see the problem. I'm not afraid to rank up, or to pay, under that kind of system.