Enhanced newbie restrictions & requirements

[suchmoon]

Too many rules, in the future new users would would not register here instead to a new bitcoin forum. This crazy rules alienates new users that is possible bitcoin adopters. I've seen bigger forums than bitcointalk that is properly run and maintained without resulting to such rules.

It may alienate some people who come here to make money - a problem that most likely doesn't exist in those other forums that you mention. It doesn't have any effect on users who come here to discuss stuff.

[1714901190]

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[1714901190]

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[Silent26]

So what's your Merit image of the day? I think here happened a lot today, good material for memes

Well here's mine so far. It took me about 10 minutes to finish it.

Oh by the way, this guy looks familiar, seems like I've seen this guy before licking his boobs since 1970

[CarinaChen]

so many bounty hunters need jr member rank,and is difficult to have a metrit i have 140 activity but got not metrit.today i've downgrade become a newbie and i very sad.i think better if need 100-200 activity to become jr.member even 5p,i can post 1 that meaning i only can work 20 bounty for a day before i can made 100.what can i do now give up a dream become a bounty hunter and stay at home and do a daily homework..so hurt felling

[suchmoon]

so many bounty hunters need jr member rank,and is difficult to have a metrit i have 140 activity but got not metrit.today i've downgrade become a newbie and i very sad.i think better if need 100-200 activity to become jr.member even 5p,i can post 1 that meaning i only can work 20 bounty for a day before i can made 100.what can i do now give up a dream become a bounty hunter and stay at home and do a daily homework..so hurt felling

I think that's exactly what you should do - homework. Also work on those dreams, aim for something aspirational.

[philipma1957]

This forum is really challenging now, and this is actually good so those who are just posting to make money here will be lessen. I just hope that everyone will get merit based on their quality and not just because they know each other.

The giving of merit still seems to be discretionary, and likely members are going to give merits based on knowing the other person (through posts), and you become known by providing good posts, no?

I am retired I have time > I told thermos to send me some of the list to go over If he does I will post.

So, potentially, you are in agreement with 2weent6 that there might be a kind of widespread abuse of merits given to friends instead of quality of posts?

Maybe you are talking about sources rather than regular members?  And, I would think that it would be difficult to find farmed account kind of abuses that give small number of merits spread out; however, it might be easier to find merit abuses if you starting out with members giving larger quantity of merits, and perhaps patterns can be found, even though I still wonder how systemic of a problem that could be, unless sources were engaged in such an abuse of merit behavior?

I am now a source the best way for me to be neutral is to look at a list of names of jr to newbie and read posts.

I now have a list and have decided to pass on the first 2 people on the list.

   I do have a concern about people selling merits.  0.0010 is cheaper then 0.0020  for copper purchase.  I am not selling merits I am reading posts on the list I have been given.


But My concern would be other sources will sell that 1 merit  for 0.0010 btc.

[nniecan001]

Interesting update from Master Theymos...

For me, 1 merit is not so hard to get, as long as you have a creative mind with a sort of facts and interesting idea. We don't have to take it so seriously, just be confident enough if you know the rules and knowledge around here in bitcointalk.org. For me, this is a challenge to prove that "WE" is able to be more serious and responsible in creating comment/post ( at least once, but better if more than that 1 merit ) .

So good luck folks! Welcome to be a newbie again!

[philipma1957]

first four looked at on list all a no go.

once I look at  first ten I will post the names .

[suchmoon]

I am now a source the best way for me to be neutral is to look at a list of names of jr to newbie and read posts.

I now have a list and have decided to pass on the first 2 people on the list.

   I do have a concern about people selling merits.  0.0010 is cheaper then 0.0020  for copper purchase.  I am not selling merits I am reading posts on the list I have been given.


But My concern would be other sources will sell that 1 merit  for 0.0010 btc.

They'd be risking red trust if they do that. More likely some old/hacked accounts could engage in such sales.

[ethtrader16]

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.

How to do this?

[bones261]

so many bounty hunters need jr member rank,and is difficult to have a metrit i have 140 activity but got not metrit.today i've downgrade become a newbie and i very sad.i think better if need 100-200 activity to become jr.member even 5p,i can post 1 that meaning i only can work 20 bounty for a day before i can made 100.what can i do now give up a dream become a bounty hunter and stay at home and do a daily homework..so hurt felling

I looked at your post history, and except for this post, it seems to only contain reports of your social media activity for bounty campaigns or signing up for bounty campaigns. You will never get a merit that way. All you need to do is get 1 merit. Your facebook profile indicates that you are from Indonesia. Perhaps this thread can help you get your 1 merit. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3315373.100 I'm not sure though, since I do not read or write Indochinese at all. There may be other threads in the Indochinese local board that can help you too.

[libert19]

I hope it will help reduce spam a little bit, but unfortunately for account farmers, 1 merit is not a big deal they always can buy it.

Yes but this will decrease bad postings to most extent. Everything can be gamed one way or another, we can just try to decrease it.

[philipma1957]

I am now a source the best way for me to be neutral is to look at a list of names of jr to newbie and read posts.

I now have a list and have decided to pass on the first 2 people on the list.

   I do have a concern about people selling merits.  0.0010 is cheaper then 0.0020  for copper purchase.  I am not selling merits I am reading posts on the list I have been given.


But My concern would be other sources will sell that 1 merit  for 0.0010 btc.

They'd be risking red trust if they do that. More likely some old/hacked accounts could engage in such sales.

good point.

I looked at the first part of the list sent to me from thermyos

| id      | name                      | loginDay | activity |
+---------+---------------------------+----------+----------+
| 1197204 | ZUTEN12000...........|    17792 |      364 |
| 1183714 | rakkhusi.................|    17792 |      336 |
|  985565 | abdu_hz..................|    17792 |      324 |
| 1192004 | cobs27...................|    17792 |      322 |
| 1130372 | Anhdienhg .............|    17792 |      308 |

| 1240244 | scolcoin                  |    17792 |      308 | He may get a merit

| 1298826 | wandogim................|    17792 |      308 |
| 1333241 | dendenseptember.....|    17792 |      308 |
| 1341161 | suzychan.................|    17792 |      308 |
| 1382518 | D4smin....................|    17792 |      308 |

I do not want to  get these people marked up with red trust  but I do want to continue do this tomorrow.

I have hundreds more to check these have the most posts.

My assumption is posting this list is okay but I will stop if thermyos says not to post it.

One caveat is there are some posts in other languages which I don't know.

about 475 names  on the list sent to me.

[bones261]

I am now a source the best way for me to be neutral is to look at a list of names of jr to newbie and read posts.

I now have a list and have decided to pass on the first 2 people on the list.

   I do have a concern about people selling merits.  0.0010 is cheaper then 0.0020  for copper purchase.  I am not selling merits I am reading posts on the list I have been given.


But My concern would be other sources will sell that 1 merit  for 0.0010 btc.

They'd be risking red trust if they do that. More likely some old/hacked accounts could engage in such sales.

How would that be much of a deterrent? Wouldn't that actually be good advertising for someone's merit selling business? I always thought the punishment for selling merit as a merit source would be to get stripped of the privilege and perhaps a ban on the account.
Edit: Now that I think about it though, I guess someone would have to be really bad at covering their tracks in order to have a sufficient case for the staff to implement such measures. 

[philipma1957]

I am now a source the best way for me to be neutral is to look at a list of names of jr to newbie and read posts.

I now have a list and have decided to pass on the first 2 people on the list.

   I do have a concern about people selling merits.  0.0010 is cheaper then 0.0020  for copper purchase.  I am not selling merits I am reading posts on the list I have been given.


But My concern would be other sources will sell that 1 merit  for 0.0010 btc.

They'd be risking red trust if they do that. More likely some old/hacked accounts could engage in such sales.

How would that be much of a deterrent? Wouldn't that actually be good advertising for someone's merit selling business? I always thought the punishment for selling merit as a merit source would be to get stripped of the privilege and perhaps a ban on the account.

well working on the list 9 of 10 simply don't qualify  If we have a list vetted and checked that would help.  but selling merits could be a problem.

I am going to work the list tomorrow .

[bayu7adi]

apparently this new policy made all my friends cry 
the purpose is good, which is reducing waste posts that only aim to add activity
now, we must be more useful and valuable to everyone
write replies not only by hand, but we must use our heads and hearts

[Piggy]

well working on the list 9 of 10 simply don't qualify  If we have a list vetted and checked that would help.  but selling merits could be a problem.

I am going to work the list tomorrow .

On friday we can see how many peole went from 0 to >=1, after the demotion took place and is going to be possibile to check as well how many of these are questionable. However i doubt there is going to be any action taken, unless there are hard proof. That is how has been so far.

[Lafu]

Can we maybe open up a thread with in  big "Newbie Merit Complains Thread" or something so they can Post in there and dont open up every min. a new thread about !

And the most of them realy Shit threads !

If this dont stop i start report them ! 

[SyGambler]

It feels like merits are more common on English boards compared to local ones, so I think this change is going to have a bigger effect on local forums. Are there any statistics on what percentage of merits are given on local boards?

yeah I find this true , at least for the Arabic section since it's the only local board that I visit
but also to be fair there are way less constructive topics and comments there comparing it with the English ones , not sure about other local borads but this is the case with the Arabic section
I'm still trying to make people post better there by rewarding the good topics , maybe we will start seeing better posts in local if members started to get rewarded there

[Piggy]

Can we maybe open up a thread with in  big "Newbie Merit Complains Thread" or something so they can Post in there and dont open up every min. a new thread about !

And the most of them realy Shit threads !

If this dont stop i start report them ! 

Meta has fallen 

I doubt they are going to follow that rule, every each of them want to have some visibility to get merits, still it may be worth a try. I suggest to lure them in a thread with the title FREE MERITS HERE!!!! and trap them there.

[Lafu]

I suggest to lure them in a thread with the title FREE MERITS HERE!!!! and trap them there.

Something like this ?