Ideas for topic ordering in altcoin announcements?

[o_e_l_e_o]

If a Thread has more then 2 or 4 exactly the same messages like copy and paste (plagiarism)  the thread get locked by the system !

Or if the Thread last 5 posts only "Good Projekt"  the thread gets automatically sorted out and reported to the Mods !

Again, this would be easily abused by campaigns hiring bots to spam competitors' threads with identical posts and therefore get them locked.

I suggest bump of topic only happen when somebody who had earned 5 merits in last six month reply on it.

I would make the criteria somewhat stricter, say 5 merits in the last 30 or 90 days, but I like this idea a lot. However, it does still run the risk of creating a marketplace for certain users to sell their "bumping ability".

[mu_enrico]

- make the topics bumpable once in an interval, not once a day, this sounds too much, but maybe 8/6/4 hours?

Agree with this idea. Bump once every 24 hours seems nice. For example, if 10 posts were made in the last 24 hours, then the thread only bump one time.

I suggest bump of topic only happen when somebody who had earned 5 merits in last six month reply on it. It will take power of bumping from those people who got mass chunk in one go and are suspected merit abuser.

This idea wouldn't work on the bounty section because of "#proof of authentication" post, and because of some bounty that requires the participant to post on the ANN thread. Therefore, it gives unfair advantages to merited members and easily abused.

[manfredmann]

There's a strong incentive to spam replies to topics in altcoin announcements and a few other sections because there's a lot of activity and competition for eyeballs there. This spam should just be deleted, but I'd also like to remove the incentive by changing the default ordering of topics in those sections from "last post" to something new. (You'll still be able to click/bookmark something to get the old ordering.)

What are your ideas for new ordering methods? My current idea is:
 1. For each topic, get a list of the distinct users who posted there in the last 24 hours.
 2. Give the topic a score equal to the sum of each such user's total earned merit.
 3. Sort by topic score descending, and secondarily by the usual last post time.

With that, you still have topics with recent conversation listed first, but it requires more resources to manipulate, at least, and newbies have no influence. Maybe it'd give certain users overwhelming influence, though.

I want to think about it quite a bit more, so I probably won't do it soon.

My Idea is to screen each projects in that section and let them pay for it for  you to enable to form a group that will screen every project. This will avoid creating scam projects which likely will reduce the percentage of accused scam projects from 90% scam projects probably down to 5% or below will be good. There is no problem with how the topic was being arranged but the problem is that people are likely to scam because of anonymity feature of cryptocurrency. If we can limit this feature for the team who composes in a project and should have made a registration for the project for a good results even if it will fail for there is still a refund to be conducted.

[suchmoon]

I suggest bump of topic only happen when somebody who had earned 5 merits in last six month reply on it. It will take power of bumping from those people who got mass chunk in one go and are suspected merit abuser.

This idea wouldn't work on the bounty section because of "#proof of authentication" post, and because of some bounty that requires the participant to post on the ANN thread. Therefore, it gives unfair advantages to merited members and easily abused.

They would still be able to post but their posts wouldn't bump the thread to the front page. And requiring to post in the ANN thread is already against the rules.

Although I still prefer stompix's idea of having to spend merits to bump a thread. This would cost abusers a lot more than just getting a merited account and using it for unlimited bumps.

[stompix]

Although I still prefer stompix's idea of having to spend merits to bump a thread. This would cost abusers a lot more than just getting a merited account and using it for unlimited bumps.

Glad you like it, this is the best I could come with that would not let to serious abuse. Of course, merit can be bought but is going to cost them a lot and they would be far easier to identify.

Still, I wouldn't go as far as saying that suddenly people will want to make meritable posts in the altcoin section.


But from what theymos proposed I'm really concerned with the point you've raised:

Also if I want to comment on some scam I would likely bump it to the front page (which happens now too but the front page bump in the new system would be far more valuable). An opt-out from the score would be nice.

So if an ICO is discovered to be a scam with a  fake team or anything else and you, loycev or marlboroza post in it warning people about the issue that topic would probably be on the first page forever although your warning posts will be buried under a ton of one-liners.

So the system would backfire seriously in this case, turning scam warnings in the most generous promoters ever.

In my case, for example, I posted only once in the last month on an ANN, congratulating BCH for the flippening.  
Pretty obvious that with the new system I would have stayed away, so this might have some weird consequences.


LE:
@cryptohunter

I see you've edited your reply but the first time you've mentioned: "a person" that was doing the scanning and is now banned from the board. Who are you talking about?

[cryptohunter]

There's a strong incentive to spam replies to topics in altcoin announcements and a few other sections because there's a lot of activity and competition for eyeballs there. This spam should just be deleted, but I'd also like to remove the incentive by changing the default ordering of topics in those sections from "last post" to something new. (You'll still be able to click/bookmark something to get the old ordering.)

What are your ideas for new ordering methods? My current idea is:
 1. For each topic, get a list of the distinct users who posted there in the last 24 hours.
 2. Give the topic a score equal to the sum of each such user's total earned merit.
 3. Sort by topic score descending, and secondarily by the usual last post time.

With that, you still have topics with recent conversation listed first, but it requires more resources to manipulate, at least, and newbies have no influence. Maybe it'd give certain users overwhelming influence, though.

I want to think about it quite a bit more, so I probably won't do it soon.

My Idea is to screen each projects in that section and let them pay for it for  you to enable to form a group that will screen every project. This will avoid creating scam projects which likely will reduce the percentage of accused scam projects from 90% scam projects probably down to 5% or below will be good. There is no problem with how the topic was being arranged but the problem is that people are likely to scam because of anonymity feature of cryptocurrency. If we can limit this feature for the team who composes in a project and should have made a registration for the project for a good results even if it will fail for there is still a refund to be conducted.

This would be the IDEAL situation.

However there are only a handful of persons that can screen a projects design and make useful analysis.  Also with ico distributional processes having capped limits reached in seconds it is impossible to tell if that was just a very popular project or just a 100% instamine by colluding whales.

The paid group would also be under huge temptation to push forward projects brimming with ico bitcoins for back handers so this is quite a risky thing too.

Better to use age of account + merit (capped at 200 earned) for cumulative value of topic. The opt out button mentioned by suchmoon would be good idea too to avoid contributing to perceived value when posting to inform people it is a scam or questioning the dev team to get much needed answeres.

[cryptohunter]

Although I still prefer stompix's idea of having to spend merits to bump a thread. This would cost abusers a lot more than just getting a merited account and using it for unlimited bumps.

Glad you like it, this is the best I could come with that would not let to serious abuse. Of course, merit can be bought but is going to cost them a lot and they would be far easier to identify.

Still, I wouldn't go as far as saying that suddenly people will want to make meritable posts in the altcoin section.


But from what theymos proposed I'm really concerned with the point you've raised:

Also if I want to comment on some scam I would likely bump it to the front page (which happens now too but the front page bump in the new system would be far more valuable). An opt-out from the score would be nice.

So if an ICO is discovered to be a scam with a  fake team or anything else and you, loycev or marlboroza post in it warning people about the issue that topic would probably be on the first page forever although your warning posts will be buried under a ton of one-liners.

So the system would backfire seriously in this case, turning scam warnings in the most generous promoters ever.

In my case, for example, I posted only once in the last month on an ANN, congratulating BCH for the flippening.  
Pretty obvious that with the new system I would have stayed away, so this might have some weird consequences.


LE:
@cryptohunter

I see you've edited your reply but the first time you've mentioned: "a person" that was doing the scanning and is now banned from the board. Who are you talking about?

The only person I know of that was doing free design analysis of these complex new designs (ones that had strong technical whitepapers) and publishing his findings was anonymint. I was often bookmarking his posts and reading regularly because although I could not fully understand what he was saying in all cases I then used to compare what other devs would say in reply to him. By matching up whether they agreed, were still debating or disagreed one could get an idea themselves and make a best guess on if it was a good idea to get involved or wait and watch. Most of what he said about designs and future issues were very accurate from what I could tell.

[Welsh]

They would still be able to post but their posts wouldn't bump the thread to the front page. And requiring to post in the ANN thread is already against the rules.

Although I still prefer stompix's idea of having to spend merits to bump a thread. This would cost abusers a lot more than just getting a merited account and using it for unlimited bumps.

Alternatively, we give the owner of the thread a bump button which they can do at any point allowing them to bump their threads strategically or when they are online. Don't allow posts to bump threads anymore. Only allow the button to appear every 24 hours. 

[o_e_l_e_o]

My Idea is to screen each projects in that section and let them pay for it for  you to enable to form a group that will screen every project.

It is impossible to detect 100% of scams. Bitconnect traded for months and fooled thousands of people. EOS is a scam yet peaked at number 4 in marketcap and had the most successful ICO ever. It still has a daily volume of $800 million. The obvious scams are easy to pick out. The elaborate scams which will fool the most people are the ones that are the most difficult to detect.

By having a group that screens every project, you inadvertently present the idea that any project that makes it past the group and is posted on the forum is legit, when in fact, it could be one of the biggest and most elaborate scams yet. For the same reason that the forum doesn't moderate scams, I don't think it would be a good idea to try to moderate which ICOs can be posted. I can already picture hundreds of threads in Meta saying "I invested in a project approved by this forum and I got scammed - I want my money back".

[khaled0111]

Alternatively, we give the owner of the thread a bump button which they can do at any point allowing them to bump their threads strategically or when they are online. Don't allow posts to bump threads anymore. Only allow the button to appear every 24 hours. 

What about bumping the thread only when OP posts a reply and his reply should receive at least one merit (the next reply should be merited by another user to bump the thread again).
This way we ensure OP is active and interacts with other users.

[TheBeardedBaby]

They would still be able to post but their posts wouldn't bump the thread to the front page. And requiring to post in the ANN thread is already against the rules.

Although I still prefer stompix's idea of having to spend merits to bump a thread. This would cost abusers a lot more than just getting a merited account and using it for unlimited bumps.

Alternatively, we give the owner of the thread a bump button which they can do at any point allowing them to bump their threads strategically or when they are online. Don't allow posts to bump threads anymore. Only allow the button to appear every 24 hours. 

This seems like the best solution til now. Most of the "good project" posts will disappear and there will be no need for further control as there is no mote room for abuse.

[suchmoon]

They would still be able to post but their posts wouldn't bump the thread to the front page. And requiring to post in the ANN thread is already against the rules.

Although I still prefer stompix's idea of having to spend merits to bump a thread. This would cost abusers a lot more than just getting a merited account and using it for unlimited bumps.

Alternatively, we give the owner of the thread a bump button which they can do at any point allowing them to bump their threads strategically or when they are online. Don't allow posts to bump threads anymore. Only allow the button to appear every 24 hours.  

I wonder if those "ICO managers" or whatever they're called (the ones who create ANN threads on behalf of various shitcoins) could abuse this.

E.g. wait for your competitor to bump their thread and then bump 50 of your threads immediately, knowing that the competitor can't do anything about it for the next 24h.

Come to think of it, just create 500 dummy ICOs and bump anyone you don't like off the front page. Much harder to do that when there is a more tangible cost, like a merit.

[eddie13]

Sell the top spots to them like parking meters or youtube superchats. Send so much BTC and then the time ticks down for their positions.
Spend it on a superbowl add for BTC  

I think this is a joke. However the annoying part about this which hits home is that there are actually forums that do this sort of shit. Including several other crypto forums. Its ridiculous and wouldn't solve any problem at all. We already know that these projects are willing to spend money on spamming their threads up to the top because there are many services which offer bumping services. If the forum did this it would just be giving them permission to do it as long as they pay.

I posted this in a somewhat entertaining way I suppose because I think the irony of making them, who suck the money out of BTC and destroy the public image of crypto as a whole, PAY for some positive PR of Bitcoin would be sweet justice.

If the problem we are discussing is spam then yes this would solve that problem because they are using spam to get to the top. If they could get to the top without spam then they wouldn't need spam anymore and as a matter of fact I think they would start to make efforts to keep spam out of their own threads because spam in their threads makes them look like shit scams and hurts their image.
Anyone that is serious about "investing" or serious about the technicalities and merits of the coins code is going to be turned off having to wade through spam.

We know that they are willing to spend money right. Instead of that money going to bad actors (spammers) that money could go toward the advancement of Bitcoin.

Have you thought any more about this that you put in the Maybe category:

• Charging ICOs a fee to make their ANN here. You could even get rid of the ANN board completely and give them their own sub once they've paid the fee. If there's no Ann board then there will probably be no paid bumping because it will be useless, but let them spam away in their own slum and squalor.

Maybe.

I think that would once and for all solve the paid bumping issue and it's about time ICOs started contributing financially to the mess they're causing here and the extra manpower that is needed from staff to clean it up.

If it solved the paid bumping issue once and for all then their would be less manpower needed to clean stuff up. They can self-mod their own threads and keep them clean if they want to look professional. Spam in their threads looks very unprofessional to me.

I think a better solution (and as I have suggested before) would be that lower ranked member's posts in there just don't bump the thread at all. I think they'll just get around it though by using higher-ranked accounts which could easily be purchased (if they don't even have them already or some high ranked bumping service will then pop up to meet demand).

I also like this idea where say only member and above accounts bump threads. Sure they would build high ranked bumping services but they would eventually run out of easily available high ranked accounts in the same way we expect them to run out of airdropped smerits. It will not be easy fr them to farm up a bunch more member accounts with the merit system in place as it is now.

Their are a lot of good ideas in this thread relating merits to bumping but it is tricky.
If it comes to a system where you have to "spend" merit to bump threads I guess I won't be bumping anything until I'm over 1000 and have some to spare, like in another 1.5-2 years...

By having a group that screens every project, you inadvertently present the idea that any project that makes it past the group and is posted on the forum is legit, when in fact, it could be one of the biggest and most elaborate scams yet.

Absolutely correct. I do not think that Bitcointalk should get itself into endorsing ANY altcoin or project other than the one and only true Bitcoin.


One last thing is all of these "tokens" that don't even have their own blockchain. They are not pioneering the advancment of cryptocurrency technology but rather just sucking what they can out of it just using "crypto" as a marketing ploy and an easy convenient way of sucking in money.
I'm not sure they should even be under "Alternate cryptocurrencies" but why are their so many of them still under "Announcements (Altcoins)"? Not enough manpower to move their threads to "Tokens (Altcoins)"?
Myself I wouldn't even move them but delete them with a little note to the OP "Try again in the right section".

[coinlocket$]

We can create a formula to use for bumping threads with a cooldown with some rules.

1 - If OP posting bump cooldown every x hours can be 1-24-x, your call
2 - If total posts of user < 20 don't bump
3 - If total posts of user >= 20 & merit earned/activity=0 don't bump
4 - If total posts of user >= 20 & merit earned/activity>0 bump with a cooldown= activity/(1+merit earned)/ Trust (based on DT rating), result in minutes
5 - If a normal poster is posting bump the thread with a cooldown = Activity/(1+merit earned)/ Trust (based on DT rating), result in minutes
6 - If the normal poster is posting on the same thread, increase the cooldown of bumping x 2 every time

This can work, I can't find How to abuse it in a long-term, merit will run out.

This will count, activity, merit earned (not airdropped) and trust.

Good posters and trusted people will have a short cooldown for bumping the thread, shitposter will almost never bump the thread.

[TheBeardedBaby]

I wonder if those "ICO managers" or whatever they're called (the ones who create ANN threads on behalf of various shitcoins) could abuse this.

E.g. wait for your competitor to bump their thread and then bump 50 of your threads immediately, knowing that the competitor can't do anything about it for the next 24h.

Come to think of it, just create 500 dummy ICOs and bump anyone you don't like off the front page. Much harder to do that when there is a more tangible cost, like a merit.

Add a fee to post Ann thread. Restrct Newbie accounts from posting Ann thread.

Make a paid bumping button, + free bump for every earned merit.

Make a newbie ANN jail, and the only way get out of it is earning enough Merit.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Add a fee to post Ann thread.

The only downside to this is that you can almost guarantee that if the Announcement board becomes "pay to post a new topic", they will just start spamming their new topics in every other board instead. Obviously these threads will get trashed, but since we have so few moderators, the threads will likely be up for several hours and be spammed to high heaven before they are.

I like the idea of the owner having a "bump" button, and therefore completely eliminating paid bumping by any means. As an add on to this, I would suggest that each user can only bump a maximum of 1/3/5/whatever-number-you-like thread(s) they own per 24 hours, to stop the creation and bumping of mass dummy threads. Might be worth having a caveat that the owner has to at least be a member or have at least 10 earned merit or something similar to stop newbies from creating mass threads.

[r1s2g3]

Add a fee to post Ann thread. Restrct Newbie accounts from posting Ann thread.

Make a paid bumping button, + free bump for every earned merit.

Any paid option will just mean money is leading the forum.  Instead of restricting newbie account from posting ANN thread we can just remove the bump that is currently caused by newbie and Jr.Member.

A bump button , powered by Merit is good idea but that also need to be restricted for number of thread the user will be able to bump in a day (like max. 2 or 3 in a calendar day) because I suspect somebody start buying Merit and start providing bump facility to the ANN threads so even with Merit , you cannot bump all the threads on your wish.

Edit:  Once we have taken out the bump power of newbies and Jr. member , then punishing the spam will also become easier, because you are now risking a temp bans on a higher ranked account if you caught spamming.

[suchmoon]

Make a paid bumping button, + free bump for every earned merit.

0.01 BTC per bump and no free bumps. Aside from buying theymos another yacht this also has the benefit of sheer simplicity. No matter who creates how many threads etc - anyone can bump it for a fee.

I like the idea of the owner having a "bump" button, and therefore completely eliminating paid bumping by any means. As an add on to this, I would suggest that each user can only bump a maximum of 1/3/5/whatever-number-you-like thread(s) they own per 24 hours, to stop the creation and bumping of mass dummy threads. Might be worth having a caveat that the owner has to at least be a member or have at least 10 earned merit or something similar to stop newbies from creating mass threads.

There are some other issues with this. E.g. the OP going on a vacation or just disappearing outright would mean the thread can't be bumped anymore.

Any paid option will just mean money is leading the forum.

It's already happening, what with all the bot farms etc. Making it "official" would reduce spam bumps, which is one of the goals here.

Although I would still prefer a merit-based approach.

[Welsh]

I wonder if those "ICO managers" or whatever they're called (the ones who create ANN threads on behalf of various shitcoins) could abuse this.

E.g. wait for your competitor to bump their thread and then bump 50 of your threads immediately, knowing that the competitor can't do anything about it for the next 24h.

Come to think of it, just create 500 dummy ICOs and bump anyone you don't like off the front page. Much harder to do that when there is a more tangible cost, like a merit.

Underhand tactics in business who would of thought? Yeah, this could be abused by opening several threads, but maybe there could be restrictions to who can open threads in that section. Any of the higher ranked members caught doing this could be temp banned, and maybe permanently if they continue to do so. Its spam after all. I hate restrictions usually, but most of the solutions without any sort of restrictions will be abused, and unfortunately we haven't got enough manpower to actually recognize every single one. If someone is opening several threads, and bumping it then its definitely clear what their intentions are though.

We have to weigh up the options of imposing restrictions, and allowing spam. A restriction such as certain rank+ only able to open threads to prevent users not caring about registering hundreds of newbie accounts, and being hard to identify who is behind it. Maybe, copper membership. Yeah, its putting something behind a paywall which I'm also usually against, but there has got to be compromises somewhere for the betterment of the forum, because quite frankly in its current state the altcoin section is very hard to view.

[theymos]

0.01 BTC per bump and no free bumps. Aside from buying theymos another yacht this also has the benefit of sheer simplicity. No matter who creates how many threads etc - anyone can bump it for a fee.

I won't do pay-to-bump or similar because it removes any sense of fairness or community participation, and basically just makes a page of most-money-wins paid advertisements. (Paying a fixed fee to create a topic there is possible, though not high on my list, since that'd at least be fair.)


I'm currently still leaning toward some per-topic metric based on merit, though probably not exactly what I originally stated. Limiting who can bump would be easier to implement, but the roughness/immediacy of it makes it more easy-to-manipulate IMO.