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

[BTCforJoe]

I dunno if this sounds VERY naive; but do away with the DT; people should have to modify their Trust list to get the red/green/amber etc.

I believe DT gives a false sense of security on the forum and reduces checks and balances which otherwise people would do more.

Instead when clicking on someone's trust the trust feedbacks should be displayed in the order eceived by the most merited(over the default merits) and older members. A weighted system to display the feedbacks is what I mean.

I don't know why so many people tie merit to trust. It's not the same thing. One should have absolutely zero correlation to the other.

At least with the DT network, there are far fewer members "abusing" it than the merit abusers.

EDIT: Also feedbacks by staff, admin and mods should be displayed on top.

I disagree. Just because a member is a moderator doesn't make their feedback more valuable then, let's say someone who deals with thousands of dollars worth of transactions a day.

EDIT: DT imho is the most abused system on the forum and also a breeding ground for group fights.

Again, I disagree. The merit system is obviously more abused than trust. I think you're just taking it personal because you were previously red-tagged.

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[suchmoon]

Instead when clicking on someone's trust the trust feedbacks should be displayed in the order received by the most merited(over the default merits) and older members.

Makes no sense. You're replacing an imperfect system (DT hierarchy) with a stupid one (trust linked to post quality).

Theymos has already suggested a DT replacement. I wouldn't hold my breath though.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=914641.0

[LoyceV]

Instead when clicking on someone's trust the trust feedbacks should be displayed in the order received by the most merited(over the default merits) and older members. A weighted system to display the feedbacks is what I mean.

That puts my trust power right under theymos (unless satoshi comes back for this, then I'll be right under satoshi)! Great plan, I like it
In reality, apart from the fact that making good posts doesn't make someone trustworthy, Merit is being traded for money (or sex). That should not turn into power over who's good or evil on the forum.

EDIT: Also feedbacks by staff, admin and mods should be displayed on top.

I disagree with this too: although I don't know the exact criteria used, I'm pretty sure not all staff members are picked because they can be trusted with money, some are picked because their local boards needed a Mod.
And Admins are on DT already.

[Welsh]

I disagree with this too: although I don't know the exact criteria used, I'm pretty sure not all staff members are picked because they can be trusted with money, some are picked because their local boards needed a Mod.
And Admins are on DT already.

I imagine some trust is still needed for local moderators as well though. It could be argued that they might be able to get away with more malicious actions, because of those reviewing their actions not knowing the language natively.

I think it goes without saying that admins have to have a lot of trust between theymos, and them.

[allahabadi]

Makes no sense. You're replacing an imperfect system (DT hierarchy) with a stupid one (trust linked to post quality).

The way you put it, it does sound a bit odd; but that's not the only or absolute thing I said; I also wanted to factor in an account's age and activity; not just a newbie making a couple of posts casting aspersions and leaving negs. What's your opinion on the mod/staff opinion thing I have proposed?

Theymos has already suggested a DT replacement. I wouldn't hold my breath though.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=914641.0

We can HOPE!

I imagine some trust is still needed for local moderators as well though. It could be argued that they might be able to get away with more malicious actions, because of those reviewing their actions not knowing the language natively.

I think it goes without saying that admins have to have a lot of trust between theymos, and them.

Exactly, this is what I had in my mind too; while the language barrier can be an issue; it can also be a boon. Most members might not know what sort of scam is going on; in let's say Japanese or Korean threads or the mods(who r usually versed in the language) will know better.

[Thekool1s]

Was waiting for someone to pop up with "Trust" being an issue. TBH bitcointalk needs some sort of "centralization", One can point out issues like trust abuse etc, But it is now needed more than ever! Scammers are getting smarter, Farmers are getting organized in ways we haven't seen in the past. Removing/Replacing the current Trust will cuz a havoc. I believe the opportunity to replace the "Trust" system has been long gone and replacing it with something less "Centralized" will be a bad move.

Imagine all the ratings applied to loan defaulters having no more value. It's like giving them a second chance they don't deserve. Coming up with something to "Decentralize Trust" has to be revolutionary and shouldn't give a clean sheet to scammers from the past. Unless you have found a way to keep everything intact moving forward, I believe its best to leave the issue of trust alone.

P.S Trust based on merit isn't the best solution IMO. You can argue that it can act as a voting system but for what exactly?

[suchmoon]

Makes no sense. You're replacing an imperfect system (DT hierarchy) with a stupid one (trust linked to post quality).

The way you put it, it does sound a bit odd; but that's not the only or absolute thing I said; I also wanted to factor in an account's age and activity; not just a newbie making a couple of posts casting aspersions and leaving negs. What's your opinion on the mod/staff opinion thing I have proposed?

This would shift more responsibility (or as some would put it - "power") onto moderators. I can't think of any positive result from that. As it is now, moderators can be added to DT when needed but also other members can be added without giving them the privilege of moderating the forum. Same with merit sources. Why would we want to sacrifice that flexibility?

[coinlocket$]

~
Imagine all the ratings applied to loan defaulters having no more value. It's like giving them a second chance they don't deserve. Coming up with something to "Decentralize Trust" has to be revolutionary and shouldn't give a clean sheet to scammers from the past. Unless you have found a way to keep everything intact moving forward, I believe its best to leave the issue of trust alone.

P.S Trust based on merit isn't the best solution IMO. You can argue that it can act as a voting system but for what exactly?

I believe that if one day we will have a system in replacement of the current trust system, it will be a system that will take into accounts the current values of each person on the DT network.
I do not think they will ever make a system where everything goes away and everything will starts from zero again, it would make no sense and as you said, even a merit based system does not make sense as many old people here have several high rank accounts and it would easy enough for them to abuse this thing. (we have some people with over 200 merit points abused right now)

[hilariousetc]

Theymos, can we do some of these in the 'ok' category? Things like the welcome message, enforcing sig campaign guidelines, assigning more sub board mods and admins surely can be done now or soon enough? Things are getting way out of hand and the longer we leave things the worse it gets.

I'd also really appreciate if you can take some time out to give the reasons for some of the 'no's' or 'not yets' when you get chance. Things like removing signatures from lower ranks and/or requiring merit to become a Junior would help things tremendously in my opinion.

I'm not going to respond here in detail to all of these ideas. It'd be extremely long. I will classify them as OK/maybe/no:

• 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.
• Dedicated sub board mods for most boards that don't have any mods or non-global mods already assigned (Bitcoin Discussion, Beginners & Help, Off Topic etc).
• 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.
• A report queue for reported messages. Currently every global and admin are spammed by any reported message and half of the time when you go to handle it it has already been handled, thus wasting everybody's time.
• More admins or demi-admins added to help with account recoveries and other admin duties.
• 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.
• A Beginners and Help board for the Alt Coin section (the bitcoin one is mostly swamped with alt coin and bounty-related issues).
• Add badges as a reward for high reporters and/or merited users (some perks would also be nice). Maybe we could have a 'most merited' user of the month badge. Prizes or awards could be given at the end of the month/year for the biggest rats/grasses/ass-kissers merited users or reporters.
• More options for self-moderated threads (being able to limit participation to certain ranks ie no Newbies or Juniors etc or banning certain users from being able to post in your thread at all to stop trolls and personal attacks etc).
• Signature bans. Bans that remove the signature for x amount of time or even permanently (actually proposed by theymos but never followed up on). Being able to blacklist an entire campaign's signature would also be helpful for those campaigns that refuse to do anything about spam.
• Certain sub boards shouldn't count to post count or activity (Bounties, Games & Rounds and possibly Off Topic).
• Awarding merit doesn't take you to a new page. Clicking the merit button multiple times could pump up the merit one by one. This would make awarding merit much swifter and less annoying.

OK in principle, would require thought/adjustment/implementation. Many of these things are more complex than they look at first glance.


Maybe.

• 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).
• Implementing a redirect notice/landing page for when users click an external link urging them to double check the url for phishing and possibly warning them of the dangers of buying things from autobuy links and that they should likely use a trusted escrow etc).
• Require at least one merit to become a Junior Member (bots will never rise past Newbie status then and can be nuked once spotted).
• More donator ranks such as Silver and Gold Member that come with additional perks such as avatars and Full/Hero member-sized signatures etc (which will severely curb account farming and sales). You could also even have an expensive premium 'Platinum' rank (bling bling) that comes with further benefits (for example: image banner in signature, animated gif avatar, custom title, ability to change username etc).
• Remove signatures completely from everyone (or everyone only has a basic signature) and to get one you either need a very high amount of activity & merit or:
B) Buy them via new donator ranks (theymos did initially comment: "This may be a good idea. Though I do think that people who don't pay should be able to get a small signature." [though Newbie signatures have been removed completely since this comment was made]).
• Posts from lower ranked accounts don't bump ICO threads to the top (which would then render paid bump spam useless).


• Disallowing lower ranks from posting in Off Topic (this is bitcoin forum, why would they head to that board straight away other than to easily farm their accounts (alternatively, posts not counting towards postcount or activity there would also work).

No. Or not yet. Or the idea would need to be significantly modified.

[pugman]

This article was written about bitcointalk's marketing: https://hackernoon.com/marketing-on-bitcoin-talk-what-can-go-wrong-d6d5bd6c6174

Most of the ICOs face the same issues. Have a few suggestions in mind:

- Make a god-damn campaign guidelines for newbie campaign managers.

- The bitcointalk rules should be viewed everywhere(similar to reddit, shown on the right-hand side). At least then, people can know what the rules are, and the fact that rules actually exist(This can be really helpful).

[hilariousetc]

This article was written about bitcointalk's marketing: https://hackernoon.com/marketing-on-bitcoin-talk-what-can-go-wrong-d6d5bd6c6174

Interesting perspective, but not surprising. Letting people come here and run their business or campaigns however they want is like a company hiring someone off the street to do your advertising or work in a job they have had no training or guidance for.

Most of the ICOs face the same issues. Have a few suggestions in mind:

- Make a god-damn campaign guidelines for newbie campaign managers.

There is one: it's called the signature campaign guidelines thread, but it's useless when most people don't read it (or any other guide/rules thread) and even worse when it's not even enforced. As long as people can come here and vandalise the place with no repercussions then they will continue to do so. This is seemingly ok because "freedom".

- The bitcointalk rules should be viewed everywhere(similar to reddit, shown on the right-hand side). At least then, people can know what the rules are, and the fact that rules actually exist(This can be really helpful).

Well that was the proposition with the newbie welcome message proposition, that theymos did initially "ok", but whether it will ever happen or not is another issue entirely.

[Joel_Jantsen]

Make a god-damn campaign guidelines for newbie campaign managers.

If not that, the quickest and the easiest way to go about it would be incentivizing newbie accounts in order to manage campaigns. A newbie account has to pay a certain fee to become a campaign manager. After paying the fee, they will be publicly judged after 1st week of their management and decided if they're capable to continue. If they're not capable, the thread should be locked until company hires someone else. Not only newbie accounts but any rank lesser than Hero Member shouldn't be directly allowed to manage signature campaigns.

[YOSHIE]

• Warnings in red displayed to lower ranked users when they go to post alerting them to the most commonly ignored/broken rules. They should be specific to the sub board that they are going to post in as well. Ie  Press: Alt Coin articles do not belong here. Alt coin Anns: Please don't post generic posts like "good project" "watching", "looks promising", "waiting for the airdrop", "any bounties?" etc as they are not permitted. Maybe in the Marketplace we can have a warning to Only bump once per day and remove old bumps etc. Bitcoin Discussion: Do not post topics on the value of bitcoin - they belong in Speculation etc. A lot of people break the rules because 're just not aware of them so they would then have no excuses.

Regulations are permissible to obey the sub-forum sometimes even higher levels also ignore this rule who is wrong,
1. Who makes the rules
2. The rank is low / high or
3. It was deliberately ignored for the sake of sensation.
For example:
= This is the same as the cross signs on the highway: It means to stop but those who feel themselves as dignified dignitaries actually go without stopping.
= and one more reason why corruptors are sentenced to 2 months
= Why is the chicken thief in a 2-year prison.
Regulations are good for all the main ones who must obey, especially the commander. bari the soldier.

[khaled0111]

What about reviewing the merit system!
I am sure many members don't like the actual merit system because they don't receive any merits despite the effort they make when writing helpful posts.

[TheQuin]

What about reviewing the merit system!
I am sure many members don't like the actual merit system because they don't receive any merits despite the effort they make when writing helpful posts.

The Merit system is the only positive improvement to the forum in years. We're looking for ways to go further in that direction and curb spam and shitposting, not reviewing the thing that actually helped a little.

[hilariousetc]

What about reviewing the merit system!
I am sure many members don't like the actual merit system because they don't receive any merits despite the effort they make when writing helpful posts.

The people who don't like it are usually the exact type of people the merit system was implemented to stop in the first place. In fact, I think the merit system should be even stricter in some aspects and there should be a merit requirement to become a Junior Member. We can already see that the merit system works because low quality posters likely won't ever rank up past Junior and there's going to be a hell of a lot of people who never make it past that rank, but it's useless when anyone can create an unlimited amount of Junior members here and get paid for them and not having a requirement just forces users to make multiple accounts to maximise earnings from bounties. That's why I'm a big proponent of removing signatures from Juniors and requiring some minimal amount of merit to become one.

With that being said, the system probably needs some tweaks. More merit sources need to be added and people should probably start being more generous with their merit (myself included), or I wouldn't necessarily be against lowering the merit requirement of some of the higher ranks as even for a good poster it may take a very long time to get there but that will become apparent over time and whether it works efficiently or not and can be tweaked and tailored as needed.

[HellRey]

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

Why don't you add another? This seems like a quick fix for a few things. If there was more staff and admins added you and cyrus would be bothered less and less. You would be less annoyed by the barrage of PMs and users would be less frustrated and every other Global will then stop being spammed with the same questions for things they don't have the authority to do. It's pointless you two even being messaged about certain things like account restorations if you're not doing them at all which currently seems to be the case. I could even do admin duties full time here if you wanted and I'm practically on the forum all day anyway, but something tells me if I was going to be made an admin it would have happened by now. If you don't trust me to do it for whatever reasons then fair enough but there must be someone else who can do it on staff - Mprep, rickbig, Mitchell or one of the other long-standing mods. Maybe even ask one of the veteran/trusted users here like vod or whoever (in b4 quickseller complains). If none of us are suitable have you spoken to BadBear recently? Maybe try email him asking if he'll come back. You mentioned a while ago that you've considered hiring someone to run the forum so why not hire BadBear? It makes sense for him to do it over some Marlon Rando. BadBear was a great admin as you also said and he knows how the forum works, which would make sense rather than hiring someone external who has to learn all the ways of the world here which wouldn't be easy or something you can learn in a short time.

hilariousandco says very correct things and are necessary as an air to the forum in all his post, but at the moment I am only interested in the part of him that I quoted.
Since I fell out of the forum for a long time already (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4654337.0) and there is no administrator who would pay attention to this and help me get back on line, and from this temporary account I do not want to write on the forum.
Several times I sent letters to administrators responsible for the restoration of accounts in PM, but the answer was never received.
So if you do not have time to deal with these questions then why do not you transfer this work to other people, especially hilariousandco himself says that he is ready to take up this work - so give him such an opportunity. Already a lot of members of the forum are waiting for you to help, how much longer do we have to suffer in anticipation.
I myself am ready to take up this work, I have as much free time, I would solve these user problems in 1-2 days if I correctly assess the scale of the problem, but this is realistic, we are ready to participate, help in this . We understand that you have a lot of work and you do not manage everything, so at least give this part to someone.
Please consider this opportunity.

[khaled0111]

What about reviewing the merit system!
I am sure many members don't like the actual merit system because they don't receive any merits despite the effort they make when writing helpful posts.

The people who don't like it are usually the exact type of people the merit system was implemented to stop in the first place. In fact, I think the merit system should be even stricter in some aspects and there should be a merit requirement to become a Junior Member. We can already see that the merit system works because low quality posters likely won't ever rank up past Junior and there's going to be a hell of a lot of people who never make it past that rank, but it's useless when anyone can create an unlimited amount of Junior members here and get paid for them and not having a requirement just forces users to make multiple accounts to maximise earnings from bounties. That's why I'm a big proponent of removing signatures from Juniors and requiring some minimal amount of merit to become one.

With that being said, the system probably needs some tweaks. More merit sources need to be added and people should probably start being more generous with their merit (myself included), or I wouldn't necessarily be against lowering the merit requirement of some of the higher ranks as even for a good poster it may take a very long time to get there but that will become apparent over time and whether it works efficiently or not and can be tweaked and tailored as needed.

I am not against the merit system and I am one of its supporters since it helped alot in stopping abusers and spammers, but I am still convinced that it require some improvements (members are not generous thus this system can't be 100% fair).

[hilariousetc]

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

Why don't you add another? This seems like a quick fix for a few things. If there was more staff and admins added you and cyrus would be bothered less and less. You would be less annoyed by the barrage of PMs and users would be less frustrated and every other Global will then stop being spammed with the same questions for things they don't have the authority to do. It's pointless you two even being messaged about certain things like account restorations if you're not doing them at all which currently seems to be the case. I could even do admin duties full time here if you wanted and I'm practically on the forum all day anyway, but something tells me if I was going to be made an admin it would have happened by now. If you don't trust me to do it for whatever reasons then fair enough but there must be someone else who can do it on staff - Mprep, rickbig, Mitchell or one of the other long-standing mods. Maybe even ask one of the veteran/trusted users here like vod or whoever (in b4 quickseller complains). If none of us are suitable have you spoken to BadBear recently? Maybe try email him asking if he'll come back. You mentioned a while ago that you've considered hiring someone to run the forum so why not hire BadBear? It makes sense for him to do it over some Marlon Rando. BadBear was a great admin as you also said and he knows how the forum works, which would make sense rather than hiring someone external who has to learn all the ways of the world here which wouldn't be easy or something you can learn in a short time.

hilariousandco says very correct things and are necessary as an air to the forum in all his post, but at the moment I am only interested in the part of him that I quoted.
Since I fell out of the forum for a long time already (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4654337.0) and there is no administrator who would pay attention to this and help me get back on line, and from this temporary account I do not want to write on the forum.
Several times I sent letters to administrators responsible for the restoration of accounts in PM, but the answer was never received.
So if you do not have time to deal with these questions then why do not you transfer this work to other people, especially hilariousandco himself says that he is ready to take up this work - so give him such an opportunity. Already a lot of members of the forum are waiting for you to help, how much longer do we have to suffer in anticipation.
I myself am ready to take up this work, I have as much free time, I would solve these user problems in 1-2 days if I correctly assess the scale of the problem, but this is realistic, we are ready to participate, help in this . We understand that you have a lot of work and you do not manage everything, so at least give this part to someone.
Please consider this opportunity.

Realistically, more admins and staff are going to need to be added at some point to keep up with the growing userbase and workload so I don't understand why that time can't be now (or soon). Most staff are already swamped and there are others that could help but can't do much about anything because they don't have the power or ability to. More mods and admins can be added at the touch of a button, and it doesn't even have to be me who does admin duties or account restorations either if theymos doesn't trust me with that for whatever reason, but someone needs to be doing it. Plenty of simple things that would greatly help improve the forum are just being needlessly ignored like assigning sub board mods etc and the forum continues to circle the drain in the process whilst we stand by and watch helplessly.

I am not against the merit system and I am one of its supporters since it helped alot in stopping abusers and spammers, but I am still convinced that it require some improvements (members are not generous thus this system can't be 100% fair).

It does need some improvements as I've already addressed, but have you suggested anything to make it better?

[YOSHIE]

What about reviewing the merit system!
I am sure many members don't like the actual merit system because they don't receive any merits despite the effort they make when writing helpful posts.

A few suggestions from Newbei about merit, peace:
as a forum management tool must have a system Good Member management is appropriate with the development of the times. Therefore there is a need for management processing to produce members of the Forum member professional, has basic values, ethics profession, free from political intervention, clean from the practice of corruption, collusion and nepotism. Forum management based on the merit system is wrong one form of bureaucratic reform that is being developed in its use Forum principle. System merit is a form of appreciation from the Forum to Members for good work and satisfying. This system is used for oppose a bureaucracy that is full of behavior nepotism and spoils system (loot system) in filling in the Rank / public rating. The merit system simply points to the best person chosen for Rank because quality and ability, not because non-factor factors such as politics, family, friends, ethnicity, religion, ethnicity, region, class social, gender, wealth and etc. The merit system is a Member system in management  Members are based on skills, appointment of the best person for good work that particular post. By having a management system the good doesn't change patterns existing work behavior and professionalism.

There are still many acts of abuse of authority and
Rank owned by the Member,
one of them is nepotism. This incident
very regrettable considering not necessarily
people who occupy a certain rank
it has quality and competence
which is in accordance with the duties of responsibility
what is needed in the Rank.
Nepotism also triggers social jealousy
among members because they feel treated
unfair in the merit process
not according to career level.

Sorry I'm still a beginner / Newbei only gives a little view of merit even though I don't have merit yet.