Theymos why should we use external script for find important data like ban/merit

[The Cryptovator]

First I want thanks who had made external script for find profile details like merit and banned user.

But question is why should we use external script to find out such as important thing like merit history and banned user. This is hard to implement or any other reason behind it ? Especially some times if we need merit data we have to use external script. People's are reporting plagiarism but they need external script for check user banned or not.


Regarding merit data, currently showing 120 days sent and received history. It's ok for by default. But how it will be it if you add a option for input from date and to date for search merit history? So there is not need extra scrip to find full merit data. We will able to find it on our profile.


I think more important to mark banned user. Like we can see green on profile or on post if some one is online. Like below picture,

(For active member)

If offline then showing offline on profile. So why not show Banned on current status for ban user? Reality is he has got ban, that means his current status is banned. Even banned user able come online but he can read only, he can't reply or can't send PM. So online or offline for a banned user is same for us.

I am not hater banned user but we should know it, for example send merit to a banned user is equal to dry merit although his post deserve it but there is no benefits. Plagiarism reporter could easily find who has got ban already without any external script. How it will be if banned user status like below picture ?

(For banned member)

I am not suggesting any thing new because I think it's was suggested multiple time. But my question is if we are able to find details by external script so is it not possible find directly from forum?

I will not believe that someone will use continue banned account for reading post only. Obviously they will create new account. So I don't see any major issue to mark them banned on their profile.  

[1713880493]

1713880493

[1713880493]

1713880493

[hilariousetc]

The rank should probably just be changed to banned or something for permabanned users, like it is on many other forums, or at least marked on their profile somewhere as it already is for staff, but I think theymos is against this for some reason. He should probably state so though and clarify because this is something many people have requested in the past. It actually has a purpose as users and staff often have to waste time on handling reports for users that are already banned.

[jackg]

Why should it matter if a user is banned? Do we really need to process such a useless piece of information here and take up the database of bitcointalk. All that matters is who is still here now...

I think vod added it because it wasn’t so hard to implement and he has to scrape the modlog anyway so why not just sort that?

I’d like for the return of user stats pages before or even if this gets considered to be implemented but I think both take a lot of unnecessary computing power.

Edit ahh hilarious I didn’t see your post earlier, why don’t offending posts get deleted once a user is banned though? It takes an extra bit of code and an extra space on the profiles for everyone (unless there’s something built in or personal text is changed or something).

or do you think there's a purpose in people pointlessly reporting already banned users time after time and staff having to waste countless hours on handling them?

Do you mean people reporting the pliagarized post which got the user banned or some other spam post of the user which is still available to the public?

If a banned users post is still public (which it often is, except the account get nuked), and it is a spam post, should it not still get reported and deleted if necessary?
It is visible to all, and other users can still comment on their threads, so they should be moderated as active members are.

^ that
Otherwise we’re allowinf users to leave behind a legacy

[hilariousetc]

Why should it matter if a user is banned? Do we really need to process such a useless piece of information here and take up the database of bitcointalk. All that matters is who is still here now...

I think vod added it because it wasn’t so hard to implement and he has to scrape the modlog anyway so why not just sort that?

I’d like for the return of user stats pages before or even if this gets considered to be implemented but I think both take a lot of unnecessary computing power.

Yes, we do. Please actually read my post directly above you, or do you think there's a purpose in people pointlessly reporting already banned users time after time and staff having to waste countless hours on handling them? Also, please explain how it takes up space in the database. Staff can already see who is banned so making that available to the public changes nothing other than saving both staff and reporters time.

[The Cryptovator]

Why should it matter if a user is banned? Do we really need to process such a useless piece of information here and take up the database of bitcointalk.

Matter I have mentioned already on OP and hilariousetc also explained you. There are many reporter reporting spam and plagiarism. If report banned user what is the benefits ? Only waste if time of mod and reporters. I don't think it will effect much on database since thousand of spam post making daily. Can we stop them ? Is it not effecting on database ? If we can see banned status on external source that means it's publically already. Or if admin want to keep it hid then he should not allow to make such as external script. So what's is different if show on forum itself ? It will save few merit from dry and time of reporters and mod. If banned user important wealth of forum forum don't want to expose them whither they are already exposed on external script.

[Coyster]

Since theymos hasn't implemented a reason for a ban in the ban message,i doubt he'll yield to this as well,and both matters or suggestions are really of importance and if implemented would save most people's time and at least reduce unnecessary threads.
Most times banned users posts gets bumped up to the front page,such posts could be the plagiarised one or not, and it could get merits,merits that probably could have been handed to a genuine member to rank up,wasted/burned.(another reason why it should be implemented)
I really think this suggestion would be of help in here, and to spot easily those who aren't with us here anymore.

[Kopyleft]

or do you think there's a purpose in people pointlessly reporting already banned users time after time and staff having to waste countless hours on handling them?

Do you mean people reporting the pliagarized post which got the user banned or some other spam post of the user which is still available to the public?

If a banned users post is still public (which it often is, except the account get nuked), and it is a spam post, should it not still get reported and deleted if necessary?
It is visible to all, and other users can still comment on their threads, so they should be moderated as active members are.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

Great suggestion with solid backing (reasons why it should be implemented) and maybe the rank changing to banned suggested by hilariousetc could easily do the trick. I would love to add, how about giving the banned account a short period of time like weeks to appeal their ban (for the not so obvious offends) directly form that account instead of them creating an alt account to appeal their bans?.

[hilariousetc]

Edit ahh hilarious I didn’t see your post earlier, why don’t offending posts get deleted once a user is banned though? It takes an extra bit of code and an extra space on the profiles for everyone (unless there’s something built in or personal text is changed or something).

Sometimes they do get removed and sometimes they don't. Depends on the mod. I used to remove them mostly but personally I like to leave them now because more often than not they ask for evidence and in the past I haven't been able to find it again. People have even disputed their ban once the posts have been deleted claiming they never even made them in the first place (which is always a lie). Leaving the one that was reported behind isn't much of an issue anyway because plagiarisers usually don't just plagiarise the once but many times so more often than not it's a different post that is reported.

Since theymos hasn't implemented a reason for a ban in the ban message,

He has changed the message recently. It now states something along the lines of you were probably banned for copy and pasting.

Do you mean people reporting the pliagarized post which got the user banned or some other spam post of the user which is still available to the public?

If a banned users post is still public (which it often is, except the account get nuked), and it is a spam post, should it not still get reported and deleted if necessary?
It is visible to all, and other users can still comment on their threads, so they should be moderated as active members are.

As above, it's both. Deleting the one post isn't going to make much of a difference, but other mods probably do delete the post, but it will be rare that that's the only one they've copied.

[o_e_l_e_o]

If a banned users post is still public (which it often is, except the account get nuked), and it is a spam post, should it not still get reported and deleted if necessary?

As pointed out, people who are banned for plagiarism very rarely only plagiarize once. If I come across a post I suspect of plagiarism, I might spend several minutes Googling parts of the post and running it through a plagiarism checker to see if I can find the source. If it comes back clean, but I really suspect it is plagiarized, then I'm now searching to see if it has been auto-translated and plagiarized from another language, or maybe I'm checking some of the other posts made by the user to see if they are easier to find a source for. This is a huge waste of time if the user is already banned, and could be better spent reporting other spammers/plagiarizers.

[LoyceMobile]

I'd be happy if theymos can add a weekly data dump for banned users. Or even if it's only once, that's enough to be able to keep an external list up to date using modlog.

[The Cryptovator]

This is a huge waste of time if the user is already banned, and could be better spent reporting other spammers/plagiarizers.

Exactly that's the most important reason why I like to see ban indication on their profile. Few case might be happen like this that user already banned and we are searching him to find plagiarism. Sometimes we bother to report spam post, if user already banned then its really waste of time for both mod and us. So theymos should consider this option. If banned user is wealth for forum and not possible to exposed them then why should ban them ?

I'd be happy if theymos can add a weekly data dump for banned users. Or even if it's only once, that's enough to be able to keep an external list up to date using modlog.

Really I don't see any problem if marked them on their profile like I explain him. I don't know what is on admin mind if there is any valid reason.

[bitart]

This has been discussed before, but I don't remember the outcome now.
I'd be happy to see if a banned user changes rank to 'Banned' or something similar.
I remember now (hopefully well) that this was discussed in a topic about reporting, because this could really help those who report a lot to check if a post is worth to be read and check or not.

If I remember well, there was another suggestion too, that if a post has been already reported and still waiting for the judgement of mods, the 'Report to moderator' button should be hidden to prevent double work and let the reporters job more efficient.

[o_e_l_e_o]

This has been discussed before, but I don't remember the outcome now.

With even a very cursory search, I've found three threads in the last 6 months discussing this. In every thread, it is generally considered to be a good idea, but theymos has not commented, so we can only assume he doesn't want to show banned accounts publicly for whatever reason. In that case, I would propose a simple alternative - everyone with over 1000/2000/5000/pick-a-number "good" reports gets to see which accounts are banned. These are the people who are doing the majority of the reporting and catching the majority of the plagiarizers, and these are the people whose time is being wasted the most by investigating users who are already banned. Since we know that banned accounts are already marked as such for staff, then it should be fairly easy to implement.

[The Cryptovator]

If I remember well, there was another suggestion too, that if a post has been already reported and still waiting for the judgement of mods, the 'Report to moderator' button should be hidden to prevent double work and let the reporters job more efficient.

Correct is has been discussed also but I don't know why admin not reply like this important discussion. It could be safe reporter time so that he can report some other post.

These are the people who are doing the majority of the reporting and catching the majority of the plagiarizers, and these are the people whose time is being wasted the most by investigating users who are already banned. Since we know that banned accounts are already marked as such for staff, then it should be fairly easy to implement.

You are right. If an account already banned then we don't need to report like plagiarism. So we can search some others.  

I'd be happy if theymos can add a weekly data dump for banned users. Or even if it's only once, that's enough to be able to keep an external list up to date using modlog.

May be at least it will be some helpful. But I don't see any problem if mark on profile. Do you believe that someone will use banned account continue except create new account ? I don't think so.

[Initscri]

Why should it matter if a user is banned? Do we really need to process such a useless piece of information here and take up the database of bitcointalk. All that matters is who is still here now...

I think vod added it because it wasn’t so hard to implement and he has to scrape the modlog anyway so why not just sort that?

I’d like for the return of user stats pages before or even if this gets considered to be implemented but I think both take a lot of unnecessary computing power.

Edit ahh hilarious I didn’t see your post earlier, why don’t offending posts get deleted once a user is banned though? It takes an extra bit of code and an extra space on the profiles for everyone (unless there’s something built in or personal text is changed or something).

or do you think there's a purpose in people pointlessly reporting already banned users time after time and staff having to waste countless hours on handling them?

Do you mean people reporting the pliagarized post which got the user banned or some other spam post of the user which is still available to the public?

If a banned users post is still public (which it often is, except the account get nuked), and it is a spam post, should it not still get reported and deleted if necessary?
It is visible to all, and other users can still comment on their threads, so they should be moderated as active members are.

^ that
Otherwise we’re allowinf users to leave behind a legacy

It's probably already a field in the database. If you're running a query to get the user's information anyways, it's not much to pull that extra field of information from the database anyways.

I did make an extension (w/ Vod's approval) for BPIP: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5038684.msg46208761#msg46208761
Eventually, the plan is to add a feature where-by the "Banned" red text will be added to a user's profile.

[bitart]

...
 I would propose a simple alternative - everyone with over 1000/2000/5000/pick-a-number "good" reports gets to see which accounts are banned. These are the people who are doing the majority of the reporting and catching the majority of the plagiarizers, and these are the people whose time is being wasted the most by investigating users who are already banned. Since we know that banned accounts are already marked as such for staff, then it should be fairly easy to implement.

I like this idea, would be just fine for the purpose.
If we are facing more and more spam, efficiency can be a key for the reporters...
BTW, I can understand that theymos don't want to show to the public that half of users of the Altcoin discussion is banned already

[TheBeardedBaby]

You have to read a lot of theymos old posts to understand the way he thinks, at least try to understand him. There are different aspects and points of view, that really changed the way I was looking at some things, like the email confirmation upon registration etc.. (this was a discussion with Satoshi back in the day, so theymos is keeping the old legacy)

What I would love to see is the number of banned accounts per thread, only for the Altcoin section. This can be good guideline for reporters

[TECSHARE]

You don't have to take responsibility for who you ban if no one knows...

[Jet Cash]

Didn't the forum have a load of red Xs in the coin section for banned users. I think that could be a better solution, as it shows the rank of the banned user.

I'm grateful to the members who care enough about the forum to create external sites and scripts. It frees Theymos to spend time on essential internal forum maintenance. It also allows him to read threads and posts to form an opinion of members.

[TECSHARE]

Didn't the forum have a load of red Xs in the coin section for banned users. I think that could be a better solution, as it shows the rank of the banned user.

I'm grateful to the members who care enough about the forum to create external sites and scripts. It frees Theymos to spend time on essential internal forum maintenance. It also allows him to read threads and posts to form an opinion of members.

Also it makes the site more secure. IMO this is paramount. Every new bell and whistle is a potential back door. In this specific case though I am sure it could easily and securely be done it is just a matter of other considerations.

[The Cryptovator]

You don't have to take responsibility for who you ban if no one knows...

This questions isn't about responsibility, its important for reporters and merit sources. Lot of people's spending time here by report plagiarism, spam post. If the user already banned then no meaning make report again for plagiarism, single user might make multiple plagiarized post. So is it not better if known the status before report? Visit external script means extra time.

On the other hand may be banned user made meritable post. Send merit his post means you just lost it forever although merit deserve post, not a person but it's really waste.

Reporting spam post of banned user might be reduce forum spam but not much needed to report them.

[Veleor]

In every thread, it is generally considered to be a good idea, but theymos has not commented, so we can only assume he doesn't want to show banned accounts publicly for whatever reason.

Someone told before that if people will able to see on the forum that the member is banned, they will be biased against everything written by him/her.
However, the "banned" status might be shown to registered users exclusively, on the personal page of the banned member.
Therefore, in order to see whether a member is banned or not, you will have to go to his/her page specifically, and this will help to avoid bias.



Pros:
- users will not send private messages to banned members;
- users will not send merit to banned members;
- the number of unnecessary reports will be reduced.

In addition, I would like to note that a significant part of banned members is not listed on third-party websites like bpip.org and loyce.club.

[bitart]

In every thread, it is generally considered to be a good idea, but theymos has not commented, so we can only assume he doesn't want to show banned accounts publicly for whatever reason.

Someone told before that if people will able to see on the forum that the member is banned, they will be biased against everything written by him/her.
However, the "banned" status might be shown to registered users exclusively, on the personal page of the banned member.
...

Why don't we ask for a new feature, like a checkbox in the profile if you want to see if members are banned or not. The default would be not to show if a member is banned and only those who are interested would tick that box to show them the banned status instead of the rank under the username in a post.
This way, average joes won't see any difference but those who care (and report) would get an extra help from the system to be more effective.
Just an idea

[o_e_l_e_o]

Someone told before that if people will able to see on the forum that the member is banned, they will be biased against everything written by him/her.

I actually made that exact point in another thread. For the same reasons that we don't show trust in all boards because it would prejudice you against what an untrusted user is saying, I can see the point behind not publicly showing which users are banned.

I still think the best solution here is to allow frequent reporters to see the banned status. It is already shown to mods, so would be fairly trivial to implement for all users with >5000 good reports (for example). Banned status doesn't matter to users who aren't reporting, but would be very beneficial for users who are wasting their time investigating plagiarism and similar for users who are already banned. Both the suggestion regarding showing only on their profile page and a check box to turn it on or off could work alongside my proposal, but I don't think either of them are necessary if we are only showing the status to frequent reporters anyway.

[r1s2g3]

Someone told before that if people will able to see on the forum that the member is banned, they will be biased against everything written by him/her.

I actually made that exact point in another thread. For the same reasons that we don't show trust in all boards because it would prejudice you against what an untrusted user is saying, I can see the point behind not publicly showing which users are banned.

Do you think that publicly displayed banned profile will arouse the interest of other user and scrutiny by everybody?
I guess it is helpful in finding the ban evasion too.

[The Cryptovator]

Here is the list how many merit sent to permabanned user. That means total 1501 merits has burned.

Top senders to permabanned users, last 180 days

113: lyka
78: dbshck
64: GRAND EX
60: qwk
54: chimk
53: EFS
50: EddyGameta
47: MoreFun
42: trader_999
41: foserfox
35: teramit
34: Halab
32: suchmoon
32: OgNasty
28: andibongkol
28: P4ndoraBox
27: paxmao
26: Sofiaaa
25: WEX-UNOFFICIAL
25: MalReynolds
25: GloobaL
25: QSiontex
24: snakey
24: InVizibl
23: Chainsmokers
23: HasHe
23: frodocooper
23: 3x2
23: BeautifuLL
22: QX_Mix
22: TrablBit
21: theymos_away
21: generous
21: Melnik
20: fndsr
20: tyoA7X
20: Demirung
20: dgigit
20: rgornik
20: Danos
20: AMATEX
20: ALTIEX
18: dumbtool45
18: bones261
17: lowbander80
16: ladydark
15: Monnt
15: yo-blin
14: LoyceV
14: TimeTeller

[TheBeardedBaby]

The fact that they are banned doesn't make them automatically bad posters. I see LoyceV in this list and I'm sure he would not waste merit on meaningless comments/posts.
It is unfortunate that those merit are lost but we have enough merit generated per month so I don't see why we have to worry about it.

[LoyceV]

The fact that they are banned doesn't make them automatically bad posters.

It's even possible to merit their good posts after they've been banned.

I see LoyceV in this list and I'm sure he would not waste merit on meaningless comments/posts.

Interesting indeed! Last Friday, I had merited a total of 721 profiles (since the beginning of time, not just the last 180 days).
If I combine this list with my (incomplete) data on banned accounts, it turns out I have merited 14 banned accounts (sorted: oldest accounts first):

Code:

113099
220521
598832
904524
1155509
1331637
1712794
1738518
1830776
1958456
2124069
2189580
2448175
2452371

From my Merit stats:

Code:

  1522. 34 Merit received by nuno12345 (#113099) from 9 unique users in 10 transactions
  3586. 13 Merit received by ferall (#220521) from 8 unique users in 10 transactions
  1198. 46 Merit received by Sowik (#598832) from 13 unique users in 14 transactions
   399. 124 Merit received by ChiBitCTy (#904524) from 30 unique users in 59 transactions
  3526. 13 Merit received by sebinator (#1155509) from 9 unique users in 9 transactions
   140. 264 Merit received by zentdex (#1331637) from 87 unique users in 110 transactions
  7331. 8 Merit received by meterse (#1712794) from 5 unique users in 6 transactions
 13949. 2 Merit received by first_user111 (#1738518) from 2 unique users in 2 transactions
  1251. 43 Merit received by reactorjuno (#1830776) from 21 unique users in 31 transactions
 10798. 4 Merit received by Marcel555 (#1958456) from 4 unique users in 4 transactions
   253. 172 Merit received by vphasitha01 (#2124069) from 49 unique users in 86 transactions
   390. 127 Merit received by anunymint (#2189580) from 32 unique users in 57 transactions
 10918. 4 Merit received by Fies7aa (#2448175) from 4 unique users in 4 transactions
 14826. 2 Merit received by Snowflower11 (#2452371) from 2 unique users in 2 transactions

And from more of my Merit stats, these are the posts made by banned users, merited by me:
Sat Jan 5 17:12:49 2019: 3 to nuno12345 (history) for Re: We need some help to decode a hacker addon
Sat Oct 13 20:30:42 2018: 1 to ferall (history) for Re: [BUYING] Bitcoin. Have $7500 Paypal.
Tue Oct 16 14:16:52 2018: 2 to Sowik (history) for [Guide] Secure air-gapped crypto wallet storage method
Sat Sep 15 16:59:30 2018: 1 to ChiBitCTy (history) for How to sell Bitcoin on your Cell Phone from a Cold Storage Paper Wallet
Wed Jan 31 08:22:14 2018: 1 to ChiBitCTy (history) for How to sell Bitcoin on your Cell Phone from a Cold Storage Paper Wallet
Sat Feb 3 13:30:28 2018: 1 to sebinator (history) for Please ban "FB/Twitter Report" posts
Mon May 14 19:40:41 2018: 1 to zentdex (history) for 100 Days of Merit
Mon Sep 24 11:36:46 2018: 1 to meterse (history) for Re: 6 reasons why future ICOs will use Byteball instead of Ethereum (+screenshots)
Sat Aug 4 12:01:26 2018: 1 to meterse (history) for Re: BYTEBALL: Totally new consensus algorithm + private untraceable payments
Fri Oct 19 15:12:09 2018: 1 to first_user111 (history) for How Am Currently Being Scammed At Mercatox
Sat Jan 5 10:39:58 2019: 1 to reactorjuno (history) for Bitcoin, 2019 and next halving
Sat Aug 18 20:27:35 2018: 1 to reactorjuno (history) for Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
Tue Oct 30 19:05:42 2018: 1 to Marcel555 (history) for Re: Forum with continuous voting
Sat Sep 1 09:29:14 2018: 3 to vphasitha01 (history) for [RUPL] Ranking-Up Pipe Line of Forum Members
Mon Aug 20 22:25:54 2018: 1 to vphasitha01 (history) for Re: [GUIDES] on Bitcointalk. Index thread (until there is a dedicated subforum?)
Tue Aug 7 18:45:21 2018: 1 to vphasitha01 (history) for [RUPL] Ranking-Up Pipe Line of Forum Members
Wed Jul 4 09:41:39 2018: 1 to vphasitha01 (history) for Merit source applications of senior members....
Wed Jun 20 11:16:45 2018: 1 to anunymint (history) for Re: Why is it more profitable for a node with more than 51% computation power?
Wed Nov 21 10:59:59 2018: 1 to Fies7aa (history) for Buy high sell low! PRICE BTC 3800 eur. How?
Sun Dec 23 12:55:33 2018: 1 to Snowflower11 (history) for Re: Giving 4 Newbie Members a Chance to Rank Up To J. Member

I just checked the posts, and I'm not ashamed of meriting any of those. I am surprised by some of the names that got banned though, several of them were good posters.

[Veleor]

~ I am surprised by some of the names that got banned though, several of them were good posters.

However administrators do not pay much attention to this problem for some reason.

[TheBeardedBaby]

~ I am surprised by some of the names that got banned though, several of them were good posters.

However administrators do not pay much attention to this problem for some reason.

It's most likely that theymos don't want to change how the things are. It is possible to get unbanned but it's unlikely to happen,you need to have strong evidence and good reputation.


One nice quote discussing the iamnotback ban, but also a bit of theymos' view of the forum and regulations.
I don't want to edit the quote so here is the full comment.

He has several accounts all banned for ban evasion. It seems that the underlying offense which caused him to initially get into trouble (and often the thing which causes his alts to get noticed) is excessive multi-posting. But when he was warned and/or temporarily banned for this minor thing, he kept evading his bans. This forum cannot operate unless its few rules are followed, so ignoring the warnings and temporary bans that you receive and continuing to do the same stuff is unacceptable. People who do so are not welcome here.

His bans will not automatically expire, and any future alts we see from him will be permabanned. I may manually reconsider his ban if he promises to actually try not to break forum rules. The rules are not meant to silence anyone, but to keep the forum usable and fair. When someone multi-posts excessively, it monopolizes a thread in a way which harms everyone else's ability to communicate. Based on his posts in this thread, I think that he will just continue to break rules if unbanned, so I will not unban him at this time.

bitcointalk.org is not a normal for-profit company. Even if banning iamnotback somehow stopped all future ad revenue, he would still be banned, since his rule-breaking is disrupting the forum's mission of hosting free discussion of Bitcoin and related topics. (As explained above, "free discussion" is not "unmoderated discussion".) Similarly, I would welcome effective competition from decentralized forums, and I would be thrilled to be able to shut down bitcointalk.org in favor of a better-in-all-ways decentralized alternative. But although decentralized forums have existed for a long time (eg. Freenet's FMS is almost exactly what iamnotback keeps describing, and has existed since before Bitcoin), they have unfortunately not been widely used since the era of the semi-decentralized Usenet system, mainly due to vastly inferior usability.