Enhanced newbie restrictions & requirements

[coinlocket$]

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If Jr. Member requirements go up by 1 Merit point every 6 months, it will demote the farmers again

Yes but we know it! It is easier to buy 1 merit for 100 account than 5 merit for 20 accounts! But this is a great start from Theymos

[JamescrypTrader]

--snip--
I already see several Newbies who complain (or compliment) in this thread, and suddenly received 1 Merit today! See this example, he received 1 Merit for an old post 17 minutes before posting in this thread.
I'd say the next step should be for everybody (all Ranks!) to lose 1 Merit every x days. It could be as low as one per year, or maybe once every 3 months. That should demotivate users from buying one Merit somewhere.
Any normal poster won't be influenced much by losing 1 Merit once in a while.
--snip--

I already noticed the same thing... Maybe it would be a good idear to generate some statistics in a couple of days and create a list of posts that were given exactly 1 merit AND this 1 merit was needed to stop the demotion of the receivers... That way we could filter trough these posts and neg tag anybody who clearly tried to cheat the system by trading/buying exactly 1 merit....

Creating such a list would be easy (i can do this without needing anybody's help), but filtering out the abusers would be a daunting task...

As for the proposition of anybody losing 1 merit every x days: i must say i'm against the proposition... What about people that seldomly post? Even if 100% of their posts would be high quality, it would still be probable for them to demote if they didn't forcefully post a couple posts every couple of days...

Fully agreed with you. I have also noticed this. Even some higher profiles are also gaining merit. Isn't the waste of merit when merit for quality post will not be available???

[Piggy]

I just wonder now when all these new thread keep talking about the demotion will start to wear off, they just keep popping in all shape and forms.
The good thing is that now that the change has been put in place, is going to be relatively easy to tune it up if it's not enough, by raising the minimum amount of merits needed. For the moment we just need to wait and see if there are going to be any results and visible improvements in those sections that become totally unusable.

[athanz88]

But if you're incapable of posting anything worthwhile, then you will never rank up, and you shouldn't: this isn't the forum for you.

The best news i have read from Theymos since i registered on this forum, and the best line we have got so far from the Admin itself. This will make the popular word in this forum become official :

Merit ruins my life

like any other popular word (ex : HODL)

The additional of merit sources is so great. I hope the distribution can be wider and faster after this additional of merit sources. 120 merit sources is a great number in my opinion.

[CryptoJoop]

I have 386 and 196 activities that wasn't easily gotten. Only to be demoted. People don't share merit anymore I know because of the massive influx of persons in btt. If this affect you , you could be smiling but people that has worked and for no fault of theirs didn't cross over need a little leniency. 200 acitivities for a merit is still a good option . They can pursue other merits from Jr member

And isn't it amazing how you magically came up with a merit today from a post that's worthless from back on july 1st?

From a negative trust account that has been associated with scamming bounties with multiple accounts.

This is exactly the problem, people like you, multi-accounting bounties, spamming the forum for signatures rewards and stealing the rewards from genuine Bounty Hunters.

The Coinlocket$ posted this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4139632.0

One guy with 1000 accounts steals 150K in bounty rewards.

[TheBeardedBaby]

I already noticed the same thing... Maybe it would be a good idear to generate some statistics in a couple of days and create a list of posts that were given exactly 1 merit AND this 1 merit was needed to stop the demotion of the receivers... That way we could filter trough these posts and neg tag anybody who clearly tried to cheat the system by trading/buying exactly 1 merit....

I remember theymos saying not to tag them for small abuses, and I for sure won't do it.

This is a great news, maybe 5 merits for jr members are even better, I'm very happy with this change.

If Jr. Member requirements go up by 1 Merit point every 6 months, it will demote the farmers again

You can feel the pain of loosing money /in terms of copper membership/ or loosing time and effort (or money again) for making this one post to get you the missing 1 point.

Now is perfect time to hunt for the plagiarism, many will come forward with copy/paste guides like this one I reported today >  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5030651.msg45821554#msg45821554

[piyaths]

So the forum thinks people who haven't merits are scams. I have 140 activities and still didn't get any merit. it is good to remove scammers. but what will happen to real enthusiastic people?

Due to restrictions of some bounties, I can't even get stakes from some bounties also.

[Balinsayaw]

All the best newbies' activities, for now, is to read the forum. Thymos is correct, if we never got any merit then this forum is not for us.

[Piggy]

many will also take advantage of the situation to sell merit at a cheaper price than a copper membership. I don't think there is going to be much that can be done about it, since the merits are notoriously not moderated, but i bet that Friday when the new log is coming out we are going to see a ton of users that went from 0 to 1 merit and even more in the next weeks.

[GGurol]

So the forum thinks people who haven't merits are scams. I have 140 activities and still didn't get any merit. it is good to remove scammers. but what will happen to real enthusiastic people?

Due to restrictions of some bounties, I can't even get stakes from some bounties also.

Im very dissappointed that most of high level users thinks we contrubute the forum with our sh*tposts if we dont have merits.
Because merit distrubuters are very objective and fair 100%.

[zemuks]

I think this restriction does not solve the problem of shitposting, 1 Merit not enough.
People will just buy it from the high-rank sellers for their army of junior member. I personally saw today a guy bought 60 merits for his farm in the telegram chat.
If we want to stop an army of Junior member bots, we need to add more restriction.
As I see the main problem is bounty campaign with encouraging people to make more post or bump ANN tread.

There a few solutions which I see:
1) Don't take Jr. Member in signature bounty only member+.
2) Too many messages with social reports and  "joined"? Encourage all bounty managers to use Google forms for weekly reports.
 
To implement this we need the strict rule for bounty manager to not encourage shitposting.

[CodyAlfaridzi]

So the forum thinks people who haven't merits are scams. I have 140 activities and still didn't get any merit. it is good to remove scammers spammers. but what will happen to real enthusiastic people?

Due to restrictions of some bounties, I can't even get stakes from some bounties also.

Merit has nothing to do with scams. I correct that for you. Anyway, 99% of your posts are bounty entries, do you really expect to gain merit from that kind of posts? Real enthusiastic member doesn't care about merit, rank, and bounty.

I think this restriction does not solve the problem of shitposting, 1 Merit not enough.
People will just buy it from the high-rank sellers for their army of junior member. I personally saw today a guy bought 60 merits for his farm in the telegram chat.
If we want to stop an army of Junior member bots, we need to add more restriction.
As I see the main problem is bounty campaign with encouraging people to make more post or bump ANN tread.

There a few solutions which I see:
1) Don't take Jr. Member in signature bounty only member+.
2) Too many messages with social reports and  "joined"? Encourage all bounty managers to use Google forms for weekly reports.
 
To implement this we need the strict rule for bounty manager to not encourage shitposting.

As theymos said in OP, he's reluctant to add more restriction because he doesn't want to create an "unwelcoming" atmosphere for real new newbies. The administration of this forum has nothing to do with bounty so your solutions can't be enforced by the forum, unless you can convince thousands of bounty organizer to enforce such rule. Btw, posting "joined" is no longer allowed and will lead to permanent ban https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2284371.0

[Delphinus]

One merit might take a while to gather, but it's not unreasonable to ask before being promoted.

For the new merit sources, perhaps they could be given the guidance to focus specifically on accounts with 0 merits (and a quick review of their post history). That way new members won't get frustrated, since they should receive a merit relatively soon if their post history is "normal".

I don't think that "buying" older accounts is a problem necessarily. If moderators ban spammers, it's a lot of money to keep buying new accounts just to spam.

My only recommendation is to further limit PMs for newbies (maybe just 2-3 per week, why would anyone need more right at the start). If we focus on giving them one merit pretty soon, it shouldn't remain a problem for long anyway.

[Crypto_1_]

This will not change things for the better... Not all newbies are spamers. And they can spam now as they did before.

How will a newbie create an announcement post, a serious one, without pictures in it???

 

[stompix]

So the forum thinks people who haven't merits are scams. I have 140 activities and still didn't get any merit. it is good to remove scammers. but what will happen to real enthusiastic people?

Due to restrictions of some bounties, I can't even get stakes from some bounties also.

No, we think that guys like you who don't bother to read or understand are sPammers, not sCammers

An easy fix would be to lose 1 Merit each time you go up 100 in Activity.

If Jr. Member requirements go up by 1 Merit point every 6 months, it will demote the farmers again

Sadist mode activated  
With 23k merit available from merit sources in a 30 days period, that would be enough for almost 150k members to keep their rank, not such a big deal unless you're a farmer.

[CryptoJoop]

I think this restriction does not solve the problem of shitposting, 1 Merit not enough.
People will just buy it from the high-rank sellers for their army of junior member. I personally saw today a guy bought 60 merits for his farm in the telegram chat.
If we want to stop an army of Junior member bots, we need to add more restriction.
As I see the main problem is bounty campaign with encouraging people to make more post or bump ANN tread.

There a few solutions which I see:
1) Don't take Jr. Member in signature bounty only member+.
2) Too many messages with social reports and  "joined"? Encourage all bounty managers to use Google forms for weekly reports.
 
To implement this we need the strict rule for bounty manager to not encourage shitposting.

Here I totally agree with you.

I am a Bountyhunter and 95% of my posts are reports and confirmation posts. I noticed whole armies of Jr. Member accounts scamming the bounties that I participate in. A lot of them have been flagged already by high ranking members on the forum for multi-accounting bounties, but they are still accepted and receive stakes in most bounty campaigns (apart from signature).

Make the possibility to wear a signature from member+ or even full member+. Most (if not all) of the spamming on the forum is a result of greedy multi-accounters.

[crocus]

oh sad my account ranked down to newbie but my posts was not a newbie poster at all, newbie need now at least 1 merit to rank up to jr. member and I think my account now should have 1 merit can somebody check my posts to be a jr. member.

[farukahmed]

Thanks sir theymos for update information. It was great to read the post. Actually a very good initiative has been taken. I think scamers will be very careful through this. There are many scammers who will now be forced to leave bitcointalk. But many active members have been damaged. To consider all aspects, There is a very good and important decision taken from the editions. I support 100% of this decision, But the truth is that I am one of those who have been affected. There was no mistake of trying to get a merit. But maybe my forehead is bad. However, Sir theymos again thanks a lot for taking such a very good decision.

[Kay94]

Due to excessive garbage-posting, you now need 1 merit to be a Jr Member. All existing Jr Members who didn't meet the requirement were demoted. Also, newbies can no longer set any signature or personal text.

Note that this does not affect:
 - PM rate-limiting, which is based purely on activity & whitelisted status.
 - "You must wait ___ seconds...", which is based purely on activity & whitelisted status.
 
But it does affect:
 - Voting in polls
 - Patroller jurisdiction
 - The "ignore newbie PMs" option.
 - "The body is omitted from this email because the sender is a newbie."
 - BBCode limits
 - Reduced-accuracy link filtering
 - Board restrictions

Many of these limitations can be eliminated with a copper membership. In particular, you can set a signature at Member level if you wear a copper membership.

One reason that I was hesitant to do this before is that there are an awful lot of newbie restrictions, and I don't want the forum to be unwelcoming to good newbies. I'll think about tying some of those to activity instead of rank in the future.
 
With help from DdmrDdmr, I just added 36 new merit sources, which should help newbies achieve the requirement. But if you're incapable of posting anything worthwhile, then you will never rank up, and you shouldn't: this isn't the forum for you.

This is great from the man himself. Although I joined this forum not long but getting merits have been a problem. I make sure I make quality posts but seems my posts are not seen by the merit sources. You can check my post and see if I deem some merits. All the same thanks to Sir Theymos. I think this is the time for me to work hard and acquire some good merits.

[Delphinus]

oh sad my account ranked down to newbie but my posts was not a newbie poster at all, newbie need now at least 1 merit to rank up to jr. member and I think my account now should have 1 merit can somebody check my posts to be a jr. member.

Here you go. I've gone through your post history. You're posts aren't perfect, but it's pretty clear you're a real account with a long post history of on-topic comments.
Definitely deserve to be a jr. member