It's no wonder we are infested with bounty and airdrop spammers

[TheQuin]

The problem I can see is that they would just sign up another 10 alts, copy paste with them and then report their own alts. Thus gaining their main account that got banned back.

I thought of that, that's why the accounts they report need to have a higher activity than their own. It's not worth spamming with 10 new accounts, just to get one back.

My bad. I missed that higher activity thing. Might work but I'm not sure that most of these people are really likely to put any work into something. There might be a few exceptions where someone just wasn't aware they need to link to the original source.

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[Jet Cash]

What's the community opinion on discussing Steemit here? I did a quick search, and a couple of years ago threads with Steemit links were being deleted. I joined it recently to pick up a few dollars from my photography, and that was the original purpose of Steemit. However, it seems that the current focus is on promoting the Steem crypto-currencies, and blogging about bounty and other scams. I think honest rewards for content producers is worth discussing, especially if payment can be received in Bitcoin.

[r1s2g3]

The problem I can see is that they would just sign up another 10 alts, copy paste with them and then report their own alts. Thus gaining their main account that got banned back.

I thought of that, that's why the accounts they report need to have a higher activity than their own. It's not worth spamming with 10 new accounts, just to get one back.

My bad. I missed that higher activity thing. Might work but I'm not sure that most of these people are really likely to put any work into something. There might be a few exceptions where someone just wasn't aware they need to link to the original source.

Then I think you mean Merits/Rank only, because Activity will be gained with time but it will not cause account to rank up.

[Jet Cash]

Then I think you mean Merits/Rank only, because Activity will be gained with time but it will not cause account to rank up.

Activity is the only thing that initiates a rank update, and it is based on regular community participation over a period of time, and it has limits to avoid over-accelerated rank increases. Merit is a barrier to prevent spammers and other low value posters from increasing rank - it does not initiate a rank update in itself.

[TheQuin]

Then I think you mean Merits/Rank only, because Activity will be gained with time but it will not cause account to rank up.

I think you didn't understand what the subject of the conversation you quoted was. It had nothing to do with rank.

[r1s2g3]

Then I think you mean Merits/Rank only, because Activity will be gained with time but it will not cause account to rank up.

I think you didn't understand what the subject of the conversation you quoted was. It had nothing to do with rank.

I just want to point that you can have Jr.Member with 250 activity and Senior Member also with 250 activity. (Due to Merits).
If somebody Sr.Member account get banned at 250 activity and we follow the logic proposed by LoyceV then it simply means that banned Sr.Member can now create 11 accounts and will lurk in all mega spam threads for an year ( to gather activity more than his Sr. member account.).

Afterwards he will report his 10 alt accounts with 11^th  account (I assume they will remain Jr.Member only due to their shit post and will have activity more than 250) and he will get back his senior member account (because he reported 10 accounts that has more activity than him.)

That's why I stressed on rank, if we take rank then he need to report 10 hero accounts to get his account back.

But do not know how the "Legendary" will get their account back, might be they need to report 10 Legendary.


Proposed  by LoyceV

The problem I can see is that they would just sign up another 10 alts, copy paste with them and then report their own alts. Thus gaining their main account that got banned back.

I thought of that, that's why the accounts they report need to have a higher activity than their own. It's not worth spamming with 10 new accounts, just to get one back.

My bad. I missed that higher activity thing. Might work but I'm not sure that most of these people are really likely to put any work into something. There might be a few exceptions where someone just wasn't aware they need to link to the original source.

[TheQuin]

~and we follow the logic proposed by LoyceV then it simply means that banned Sr.Member can now create 11 accounts and will lurk in all mega spam threads for an year ( to gather activity more than his Sr. member account.).

Do you really think these spammers are going to spend a year to get one account back?

[stompix]

~and we follow the logic proposed by LoyceV then it simply means that banned Sr.Member can now create 11 accounts and will lurk in all mega spam threads for an year ( to gather activity more than his Sr. member account.).

Do you really think these spammers are going to spend a year to get one account back?

This can be easily avoided by requiring that account to maintain at least half of maximum activity during that period.
Not going silent and after a year bum! 10 reports.

I wound't be concerned about them cheating as they would also have to compete with other members in spotting the posts and if somebody is reporting all his 10 catches just a few minutes after the post have been made it's clearly suspicious.

There is another problem, while this restricts them from reporting their own alts it also narrows their potential true reports, as most of the plagiarism here is done by members with low activity who just want to get a low level account for bounty purposes.
So I doubt anyone would take this offer...

I've only caught 2 doing that and they were both juniors (I think), this while I've checked more than a hundred texts, so from my point of view it will be next to impossible recovering my account in such a short time to actually be worth it if I were an account farmer with god knows how many alts.

[bitart]

~and we follow the logic proposed by LoyceV then it simply means that banned Sr.Member can now create 11 accounts and will lurk in all mega spam threads for an year ( to gather activity more than his Sr. member account.).

Do you really think these spammers are going to spend a year to get one account back?

Let's set them a time limit for reporting those accounts, like 1 month or 1 activity period. Both of the time limits are long enough to let them search for the other copypasters and report them. If someone really wants to get back the original account, this time should be enough if they try it hard... But I also don't think that they will care about one lost account, because I think they have a few others...

[wwzsocki]

snip

snip

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...
Suggestion to earn an unban after plagiarism:
What if someone who is banned for plagiarism can earn an unban by redeeming themselves reporting others? If someone reports 10 accounts (with more activity than their own account) for plagiarism, I suggest to give him another chance. This could lead to a growing number of cheaters competing to find other cheaters, nicely cleaning up the forum.
...

I got into trouble a few months ago and opened a reputation thread to clarify the situation. One of the users Digaran suggested to me to find 200 attempts of forum rules abuse and then again ask for the withdrawal of the red trust.

I thought this is a great advise so I started to report abuse. At first, I had problems and I was not sure if I was right because many spammers and others dealing with bending the system are very smart and know how to mask. For a few weeks, I found 14 attempts to break the rules with the accuracy of 85%. Over time, I've trained myself and started to notice rules violation much faster. Recently I reported over a dozen of such cases on a daily basis and my result is more as 300 reports with 99% accuracy. I found all kind of forum rules abuse spam, off-topic, merit trading, account farming, spam bots, not in English, ref links, only quotes, plagiarism, scam, etc.

Of course, it didn't help to undo the red trust but I wanted to share these story with you because now you know, more or less, how much time it can take to report 200 or more abusers to an ordinary member who has never done it before.

[LoyceV]

I got into trouble a few months ago and opened a reputation thread to clarify the situation. One of the users Digaran suggested to me to find 200 attempts of forum rules abuse and then again ask for the withdrawal of the red trust.

I like this suggestion, but I can find 200 bad posts much faster than I can find 10 users guilty of plagiarism.

Recently I reported over a dozen of such cases on a daily basis and my result is more as 300 reports with 99% accuracy. I found all kind of forum rules abuse spam, off-topic, merit trading, account farming, spam bots, not in English, ref links, only quotes, plagiarism, scam, etc.

One piece of advice: don't search for them, just read threads you're interested in. You'll find them without searching for them.

Of course, it didn't help to undo the red trust but I wanted to share these story with you because now you know, more or less, how much time it can take to report 200 or more abusers to an ordinary member who has never done it before.

Each report takes me about 5-10 seconds. If you don't just search for them, it's not much extra work to report them when you see them.

[Theb]

We cannot control these video tutorials flooding in Youtube, as they are either increasing their views/subscribers or they are benefiting from it the other way. Just like what bloggers are doing, having both a Youtube Channel and a Steemit account where they show tutorials on how to have more up votes and how to increase followers. So what Bitcointalk do is to either limit the bounty and signature campaign or limit and control the members flooding the site.

The Merit System will only affect members participating in Signature campaigns but Bounty Campaigns seems to be not affected with the Merit System as their campaigns run externally through social media sites. Either BCT should limit the bounty campaigns each month (through a bidding system) or limit their participants of the campaign, so that only a few members can participate.

[Jet Cash]

We cannot control these video tutorials flooding in Youtube, as they are either increasing their views/subscribers or they are benefiting from it the other way. Just like what bloggers are doing, having both a Youtube Channel and a Steemit account where they show tutorials on how to have more up votes and how to increase followers. So what Bitcointalk do is to either limit the bounty and signature campaign or limit and control the members flooding the site.

This highlights one of the problems. Different platforms have different perceptions and rules on the promotion of your posts and ranking, I posted an entry about the Bitcoin merit system on Steemit - https://steemit.com/bitcointalk/@upr8/clarification-of-the-bitcoin-talk-merit-system , but it has had few views as I'm pretty new, and I haven't got my head round their ranking system yet. I've had several suggestions that I need to pay $100 or so to get some upvotes so that I can earn $1,000, but that makes it sound like a ponzi. I've started a small group so that we can upvote each other on Steemit, and this seems to be the approved method. Obviously this is comletely the opposite of the policy here on Bitcoin Talk. I'm sure many new members don't understand the radical difference between the two platforms.

I've decided to use upr8.com to help members to understand the different policies, but so far I have only decided on the template, so I haven't created any content yet. I'll post a link when I have something meaningful on the site.

[Theb]

We cannot control these video tutorials flooding in Youtube, as they are either increasing their views/subscribers or they are benefiting from it the other way. Just like what bloggers are doing, having both a Youtube Channel and a Steemit account where they show tutorials on how to have more up votes and how to increase followers. So what Bitcointalk do is to either limit the bounty and signature campaign or limit and control the members flooding the site.

This highlights one of the problems. Different platforms have different perceptions and rules on the promotion of your posts and ranking, I posted an entry about the Bitcoin merit system on Steemit - https://steemit.com/bitcointalk/@upr8/clarification-of-the-bitcoin-talk-merit-system , but it has had few views as I'm pretty new, and I haven't got my head round their ranking system yet. I've had several suggestions that I need to pay $100 or so to get some upvotes so that I can earn $1,000, but that makes it sound like a ponzi. I've started a small group so that we can upvote each other on Steemit, and this seems to be the approved method. Obviously this is comletely the opposite of the policy here on Bitcoin Talk. I'm sure many new members don't understand the radical difference between the two platforms.

I've decided to use upr8.com to help members to understand the different policies, but so far I have only decided on the template, so I haven't created any content yet. I'll post a link when I have something meaningful on the site.

Yes you are right some members mostly the new ones don't care about policies or proper forum etiquette as all they care about is on what is making money for them inside the forum and like people who only care for themselves is they are exploiting it and they are even proud of it as discussed and shown in this thread (which you also replied), their thirst for earning is making the forum look bad overall.

Good luck with getting up votes in SteemIt although members can up vote once every article, it seemed like they are only up voting those who have high reputation as they are the ones maximizing your up vote power (as your up votes also give you Steem). Also a lot of factors come into play from your title construction to what topic are you putting your post at, but overall having a high reputation is one that gives you more up votes by default.

[bitart]

...

Recently I reported over a dozen of such cases on a daily basis and my result is more as 300 reports with 99% accuracy. I found all kind of forum rules abuse spam, off-topic, merit trading, account farming, spam bots, not in English, ref links, only quotes, plagiarism, scam, etc.

One piece of advice: don't search for them, just read threads you're interested in. You'll find them without searching for them.
...

That's really true, don't rush for the bad posts, they'll show up anyway...
My personal favourites are when newbies (or jr.members) copy 2 sentences from an earlier post from the same page of the topic... If they made the effort to search for a similar topics and copy something from the posts found there, it would be much difficult to spot them, but they simply don't care...

[coolcoinz]

Here is just one of the YouTube spamming tutorials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQH7B5lWFSE

"bitcoin gold is very good cryptocurrencies i love it"
What a moron 

I've been talking about it for a long time. The wave of illiterate spammers from Indonesia and Pakistan is overwhelming. The merit system has made it harder for them, but it's nothing more than trench that is slowing them down, weeding out some of the spammers, but the more persistent ones remain. The idiot from the video can't even write bitcointalk right and calls it a "form"

[Flying Hellfish]

The idiot from the video can't even write bitcointalk right and calls it a "form"

Maybe he means it's his income form...    Like a 1099 form for misc income in the US!!   
 

[digaran]

I got into trouble a few months ago and opened a reputation thread to clarify the situation. One of the users Digaran suggested to me to find 200 attempts of forum rules abuse and then again ask for the withdrawal of the red trust.

Did you report at least 200 garbage and off topic posts on Bitcoin discussion section? did you PM hilariousandco to ask for a reconsideration on your negative trust? why did you leave positive trust for The Pharmacist without any reference? why do you have positive trust for a trade without any reference? I wouldn't remove the red tag from you if I were him.

Each report takes me about 5-10 seconds. If you don't just search for them, it's not much extra work to report them when you see them.

Each report alone would take you 5-10 seconds to click on the report and write a word  and then click on send. what about the time you are spending on reading the posts?

The idiot from the video can't even write bitcointalk right and calls it a "form"

Maybe he means it's his income form...    Like a 1099 form for misc income in the US!!   
 

Is prostitution one of those 1099 forms of income in the US? lol.

[Tyrantt]

Well let's be realistic, all those videos like "how to earn on this website", "How to rank up",etc... are a normal thing once the website get's popular enough. Nothing new at all.

That's why we have merit now.

[TheQuin]

My personal favourites are when newbies (or jr.members) copy 2 sentences from an earlier post from the same page of the topic... If they made the effort to search for a similar topics and copy something from the posts found there, it would be much difficult to spot them, but they simply don't care...

I think those ones might be bots. Copying from the same thread is their way of making it on-topic. They don't seem to realise that anyone who is following the thread and reading will spot it instantly.