Community generated suggestions to improve the forum (+ eventual voting on them)

[hilariousetc]

One day we're going to wake up and the forum will be 99% bot accounts and copy and pasters. Anything else can just be considered for development on the new forum if it hasn't already.

We aren't too far from that stage. I literally have to search for non-spammy topics and boards in order to join some relevant discussions. I don't even remember the last time I posted in the Bitcoin Discussion section. 

I know. It gets worse every time I go in that board. Even threads that are created about something worthwhile quickly get spammed by Junior Members writing their generic one/two liners often just replying to whatever question is asked in the title. Even worse is that when you see a constructive comment written it's often a copy and paste from somewhere else online or some other user in that thread.

How about we remove the default merits completely and everyone starts from ground zero? That would really sort the wheat from the chaff and stop all the whingers about it not being fair.

That's one way to go about it but after being on the forum for all these years and finally hitting the legendary is some sort of achievement. And if asked to start from the scratch again, I don't think I'll have the time or energy to do so. I mean it would be demotivating for people like me who have worked their way up starting from the base.

People could go back and merit all the posts that are deserving. I know there will be hundreds of my posts that deserved merit that were made before the introduction of the merit system. I think we should concentrate on the newer users that are signing up here just to claim bounties and sig spam etc though.

The safest bet is to make a totally proprietary one.  The more obscure, the better.  But not text or numbers.  Use pictures.

I've suggest that some of the potential money brought in from something like more donator ranks or ad slots could be used to fund the development of new projects such as a decentralised forum and a better captcha service. Do you have any suggestions for a more efficient one? If a foolproof one could be created wouldn't it have been by now? 

[1714119705]

1714119705

[TheQuin]

I found it best to completely avoid any of the established captcha providers.  Back when I used to run a phpBB, I had a little-known visual captcha called KittenAuth.  It basically gave you 9 pictures in a 3x3 grid and the default setting was to select only the kittens.  But you could change the pictures to something more thematically appropriate for your site.  I found that far more effective than any other captcha I've ever encountered.  Only human beings got through after that.

The safest bet is to make a totally proprietary one.  The more obscure, the better.

I don't how long ago this was but captcha solving has really moved on in just the last 4 or 5 months I've been involved with trying to fight bots. Something like that with a 3x3 grid they would just brute force like they do with reCAPTCHA. There's only a certain number of combinations and they have a powerful backend server just trying until it gets a token to pass to a worker bot.

Back to the matter in hand we already know that these spambots can log in, so they must already have the ability to solve reCAPTHCHA so asking them to do it again to post will not make any difference to them. They just need to add a couple of lines to their script.

The bottom line is if there is a financial incentive to do so someone will find a way to defeat any type of captcha.

[athanz88]

I dont know if this is already mentioned by the others, but i really think it would be great if we have something like "spoiler box" feature in a post making, so we can decide to hide a content and others who read our post can show or hide our content which has a really big image or other long post by a click.

I tried it already but it seems doesnt work with our forum. Here is the link which describe the feature I mentioned about www.minecraftforum.net/forums/forums/forum-discussion-info/514283-how-do-i-make-spoilers-on-the-forum

Thanks for listening. I take any comments

[r1s2g3]

• Require at least one merit to become a Junior Member (bots will never rise past Newbie status then and can be nuked once spotted).

Going through the activity logic, if Full member require 100 merit and 120 Activity, then Member should require 50 merit and Jr. member should require 25.
So definitely we can increase the Merit requirement for Member rank and introduce Merit concept for Jr. Member.

• Remove signatures completely from lower ranks (at least Juniors). Purchasing a Copper Membership (or higher) could still get you one.

I do not think anyone will agree with my suggestion but to control Signature spam, we can introduce the requirement to get at least 2 Merits in previous month. (If I have not got any merits on July, then signature will be disabled for August month (even with Coopper membership, irrespective of rank in forum. If I receive 2 merit or more in August then it will be enabled for September and you again need to earn 2 merits in September so  that it will remain enabled for October. )

On a side note, this will halt the account sales too.

Since system is already in place for more than 6 month, so we should decay all the default sMerits so that no more merit abuse can take place.

[LeGaulois]

Most of the ideas are good, some need a little more brainstorming (something that a lot of users are not able to do).
But the real question is, is there at least an interest to improve the community and its platform from the staff.
If I had to choose only 1 it's about the email verification to be able to change email/password. To protect its users is something to consider important. It's as if someone raped you in my living room and I tell you I have no time to look at it

I won't have a problem to see more advertisements displayed because I don't find it intrusive the way it is here

[hilariousetc]

Most of the ideas are good, some need a little more brainstorming (something that a lot of users are not able to do).
But the real question is, is there at least an interest to improve the community and its platform from the staff.
If I had to choose only 1 it's about the email verification to be able to change email/password. To protect its users is something to consider important. It's as if someone raped you in my living room and I tell you I have no time to look at it

I'm all for brainstorming. I'd rather my ideas be shot down or picked apart than nothing getting discussed at all. I'm not saying all these ideas are great either and some certainly have flaws or may cause more harm than good, but I'm just putting them out there. I'm sure many of them can be improved by others suggestions, and hopefully people can suggest far better proposals. Somethings like captchas just might not really make much of a difference and cause more annoyance than issues they solve, but other things like assigning sub board mods and requiring a merit achievement for Juniors are no brainers in my opinion and are not disruptive. Same goes for punishing ICO campaigns who are responsible for the majority of the destruction here.

I won't have a problem to see more advertisements displayed because I don't find it intrusive the way it is here

Theymos seems to be against them going by a comment he made today. One at the top of a few of the main subs like this would be lucrative:



That way advertisers can target their market ie a gambling site would advertise in the gambling board and so on.

[Silent26]

I vote for these suggestions to be implemented.

• A newbie welcome message or link to a welcome thread upon sign-up explaining the basic rules and links to everything they need to know including the full forum rules, helpful guides and FAQs etc. No excuses for not knowing the rules then.

I like this one, I still remember that I made a proposal about this idea before.

• A publicly displayed 'banned' rank under a person's username for permabanned accounts (people are wasting both theirs and staffs time reporting already banned users and bots).

This will be helpful for reporters to focus more in reporting unban accounts.

• Require at least one merit to become a Junior Member (bots will never rise past Newbie status then and can be nuked once spotted).

I prefer to make it 3 to 5 Merits.

• Remove signatures completely from lower ranks (at least Juniors). Purchasing a Copper Membership (or higher) could still get you one.

A very wise idea. Nowadays, these spammers are only here for advertising ICO using their signature spaces so that they can earn money. Implementing this one will really change a lot of things hete. I highly recommend this one.

 
• Posts from lower ranked accounts don't bump ICO threads to the top (which would then render paid bump spam useless).

I like it as well. So that bumping threads by those shills accounts will be useless.

 
• More patrollers/mods who just handle sig spam or farmers.

• Restoring the memberlist search and stats (very useful for finding huge farming abuses).

• Enforce the sig campaign guidelines. If a campaign is spotted that is doing little to nothing and is abused en mass by spammers, farmers, bots and copy and pasters they are warned. If nothing changes then they are punished with such things as bans, threads trashed, signatures blacklisted site-wide etc.

 
• A 'bump button' for the marketplace that only allows you to bump your thread once every 24 hours. Manually bumping by posting will then be disallowed. As mentioned above, posts by lower ranked accounts could not be able to bump threads thus curbing potential abuse.

In addition for this one. Once another bump has been made after 24 hours, the old bump will automatically be deleted.

• More admins or demi-admins added to help with account recoveries and other admin duties.

Recoveries are not really prioritised but I want this idea as well.

 
• A captcha added to a user's first post or two/three etc to curb bot usage (purchasing a Copper Membership could remove these).

• Require email verification for new accounts.

• Require email verification first before passwords/emails are changed.

[LoyceMobile]

I am against removing merit for deleted posts, because some posts are worth reading until the entire thread gets trashed. For example: a scam warning.
But I'd have to agree the large majority of merited deleted posts must be merit abuse.

I have a different suggestion: in the user profile, behind the merit amount, add the percentage of merit earned for deleted posts. If it is 2% nobody will bat an eye, of it's 80% it is obvious not to rely on the merit count for that user.

[TheQuin]

I am against removing merit for deleted posts, because some posts are worth reading until the entire thread gets trashed. For example: a scam warning.
But I'd have to agree the large majority of merited deleted posts must be merit abuse.

I have different suggestion: in the user profile, behind the merit amount, add the percentage of merit earned for deleted posts. If it's 2% nobody will bat an eye, of it's 80% it's obvious not to rely on the merit count for that user.

What if it was only when the user deleted the post themselves? Surely that would be the indicator of abuse rather than it being in a thread that got trashed.

[Welsh]

What if it was only when the user deleted the post themselves? Surely that would be the indicator of abuse rather than it being in a thread that got trashed.

That could be something that's implemented. But, honestly I don't think its that big of a deal to implement something like this. These users abusing the system will likely not be able to generate good enough posts to gain merit legitimately, and will eventually run out of sMerit to abuse.

[LeGaulois]

.

I surf on interesting topics sometimes, but it is drowned among all the other topics, and in the topic itself there are more posts to be put in the trash than posts that participate in a normal discussion the forum made me become anti-ICO anti-altcoin. (I follow the thread about Zencash and it's the only one I am interested in. I refuse to read anything else there.)

So, I suggested (as your OP) a few times to make a membership to pay to be allowed to use the signature space. (I don't know something like $xxx per year) And I am sure a lot of members would agree to pay it
And to allow ICOs to post about their crap project only after paying a fee it would be a fee that worth to pay honestly, and I am sure they won't have any problem with paying a fee.
And finally, to distribute a bunch of warnings to the campaign managers. They are also concerned. I don't know very well the sig campaigns but for sure they don't really care about the quality of the participants. Surely some campaigns will reply, "I have no time to check xxx participants". Then if they are not able to provide a job correctly done they shouldn't accept it.
I am currently participating in a campaign managed by Darkstar, this is the most strict campaign I've ever seen. (I'm not licking testicles here, I prefer a good pussy btw) and before it, I participated in Bitmixer which was managed by Lauda if I remember and it was also one with strict rules.
I say strict rules but if you are a normal user, there is nothing strict in. Just to say I would be happy to see all campaigns managed this way

I then started to think Theymos doesn't want to change something around thinking it's good that the members can earn some bucks freely using the forum. It's honorable and I would be a hypocrite to say no because I am one of the members using my signature space and earning extra cash, I am happy but I am not interested to post all kinds of nonsense. People tend to forgot Bitcointalk is a discussion board and not the job center. For the sake of my brain, I will be happy to see something done.

The donator rank shouldn't be created to give more benefits. I mean members should donate because they want to donate to the forum not because there is something coming with. I bought the Copper membership not to be able to post images (since I already could) but to make a donation indirectly. Like I participate in the forum life as I can.

I think it's crazy to get there, trying to find a solution to something that shouldn't exist. It's the very first forum I am a member of that need to find such solutions to fight the spams. I will be happy to see more restrictions on Bitcointalk (even if it restricts me for something btw)


An advertisement slot like you posted in the image is fine and not intrusive at all, and advertisers could get a good CTR at the end, a better ROI, and so an advertiser coming back then..

[Welsh]

The thing is there's good campaigns, and then there's bounty/altcoin campaigns. It seems that the majority of well managed campaigns are paying in Bitcoin, and are managed by reputable members. Although, the ones that pay in altcoins or even worse promising payment in "shares" of their own coin. These are the ones that are opened by low ranked accounts, and encourage spam rather than looking at offering a fair way to earn money, but also assure that quality users are selected.

We could either require a payment for displaying signatures or if that's not something theymos is particularly into implementing. We could just impose restrictions on running campaigns in the altcoin/bounty sections.

[LoyceMobile]

I wouldn't be completely against the idea of removing the default merits to further distinguish the good quality posters from those who earned it by just being around here for a long time, and being somewhat active. Probably a little bit of an extreme measure though.

A less extreme option would be to remove zero-point-something merit from the airdrop per day.
That would instantly drop the rank of users with very bad posts, while people who earned some merits once in a while won't be effected.

I don't think it's fair to expect Legendary users to earn 1000 merit in half a year to keep the rank, while a Full Member only needs to earn 100 in the same amount of time.

[Thekool1s]

I have a couple of suggestions that I would like to make.

1) Allow users to see the boards/Sections where most merit is given, In the "Merit Stats" page. From what I have noticed in the past couple of weeks is that more posts in "Meta" get merited as compared to other section. I will suggest this thing to BPIP too.

2) If the case made above is true, Then I suggest assigning a merit source to different boards/sections. This will ensure that people making "Quality" Post elsewhere get merited too.

Imagine a user who is posting quality content in his/her local section but they haven't been seen by a merit source. They will not receive the merit they deserve. An average user can send only a handful amount of merit. What I propose is to assign merit sources just like moderators to different boards/sections to make the distribution of merit even.

Would like to hear the thoughts of the community on this.

[DdmrDdmr]

<...>

I believe theymos was on to that, as per his statement:

Here you go: https://bitcointalk.org/merit.txt.xz

Similar to trust.txt.xz, it'll be updated weekly. It will show only the last 120 days of data; someone else should archive the old ones if you want them.

I am especially interested in analyses of this data which could point to sub-communities where the initial sMerit is exhausted and new sources are necessary, and people who might be good merit sources.

Edit: Note that for a little while I had user_to and user_from as names, but I decided to change it to IDs.

Lately I’ve seen a couple of people postulating to become a Merit Source with a local board strong component, so hopefully these will increase with that idea in mind.

In terms of merit distribution per section/subsection, If we take a look from the 1st of July 2018 onwards, the Merit percentage awarded per section is as follows:

Code:

section                       subsection                         nMerit    %     
Alternate cryptocurrencies    Altcoin Discussion                 1039      4,41  %
Alternate cryptocurrencies    Announcements (Altcoins)           2157      9,15  %
Alternate cryptocurrencies    Marketplace (Altcoins)             549       2,33  %
Alternate cryptocurrencies    Mining (Altcoins)                  625       2,65  %
Alternate cryptocurrencies    Speculation (Altcoins)             349       1,48  %
Bitcoin                       Bitcoin Discussion                 1107      4,7   %
Bitcoin                       Bitcoin Technical Support          167       0,71  %
Bitcoin                       Development & Technical Discussion 928       3,94  %
Bitcoin                       Mining                             351       1,49  %
Bitcoin                       Project Development                104       0,44  %
Deleted                       Deleted                            790       3,35  %
Economy                       Economics                          1926      8,17  %
Economy                       Marketplace                        1574      6,68  %
Economy                       Trading Discussion                 787       3,34  %
Local                         Arabic                             35        0,15  %
Local                         Chinese                            29        0,12  %
Local                         Croatian                           152       0,64  %
Local                         Dutch                              50        0,21  %
Local                         French                             242       1,03  %
Local                         German                             660       2,8   %
Local                         Greek                              64        0,27  %
Local                         Indian                             14        0,06  %
Local                         Indonesian                         569       2,41  %
Local                         Italian                            201       0,85  %
Local                         Japanese                           76        0,32  %
Local                         Other Languages                    77        0,33  %
Local                         Philippines                        349       1,48  %
Local                         Polish                             15        0,06  %
Local                         Portuguese                         228       0,97  %
Local                         Romanian                           4         0,02  %
Local                         Russian                            2704      11,47 %
Local                         Spanish                            347       1,47  %
Local                         Turkish                            911       3,86  %
Other                         Archival                           13        0,06  %
Other                         Beginners & Help                   495       2,1   %
Other                         Meta                               3029      12,85 %
Other                         Off-topic                          189       0,8   %
Other                         Politics & Society                 265       1,12  %
Other                         Serious discussion                 406       1,72  %

The real issue really though is not down to which sections are less merited, but which lack merits in relation to the content/quality of the posts they bare. We can look at it numerically, and even ratio it to the number of posts being created, but the number of meritable posts that go unmerited needs to be scouted somehow visually in order to detect these situations. In the past I believe at some point we has a conversation going on on the matter, where ideas like having mods or trusted people give "alerts" on unmerited sections could help (the idea was to have trusted people alert on unmerited sections so a merit source could be considered).

One would say that Bitcoin Sections are extremely undermerited looking at the numbers, but I'd say that Merit Sources do visit those boards. Nevertheless, we also find plenty of spam there (Bitcoin Discussion), and the really technical stuff is not that easy to follow and neither do those sections have a large amount of posts on a daily basis.

[criticoflife]

I would like to see a feature added so that you can chose to look at threads by the date they were created rather than by the thread that was most recently posted in. this would enable me to see new threads more easily instead of having to fight my way through a whole lot of older threads that have been bumped up by dare i say shitposters. Very often as they attempt to keep there thread at the top of the que and often being rewarded by it from various coins as they see it as keeping there threads in the spotlight.

[Vod]

I would like to see a feature added so that you can chose to look at threads by the date they were created rather than by the thread that was most recently posted in.

Played around for five seconds:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=24.0;sort=start

[Theb]

For account security purposes I would like to see the forum have a email or any kind of notificatiom about a failed log-in attempt and also a permission via email to allow an unrecognized log-in to a new device or ip address. In this way our accounts will be secure from people who are trying to steal it. This kind of early prevention is similar to what other websites/apps are doing and it might really help a lot of people on protecting their accounts.

[criticoflife]

I would like to see a feature added so that you can chose to look at threads by the date they were created rather than by the thread that was most recently posted in.

Played around for five seconds:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=24.0;sort=start

How did you get it to show like that? i tried all the different combinations i can see and it won't list it like that anywhere apart from your link? please explain steps if you have time. thanks

[suchmoon]

• A newbie welcome message or link to a welcome thread upon sign-up explaining the basic rules and links to everything they need to know including the full forum rules, helpful guides and FAQs etc. No excuses for not knowing the rules then.

And/or add a link to the rules at the top of the forum next to Home, Help, etc. Make it red and blinking if that's what it takes to get noticed.

- what if merit--all merit--slowly deteriorates over time?

So satoshi becomes a newbie and so does anybody who takes a lengthy break from the forum? Not a good idea.