Poll: is it OK to send merits to your own alts?

[suchmoon]

Please vote and make a post explaining your vote.

I'm strongly against sending merits between alts. The proper use of the merit system is to award good posts. Users can't objectively judge their own posts. Self-awarded merits are as meaningless as if we allowed users to choose their own ranks, and essentially that's what self-awarded merits do.

But I'm being attacked for that opinion so I'd like to gauge community sentiment on this subject.

This is a self-moderated thread so conspiracy theories and other BS will be terminated with extreme prejudice.

[1715026416]

1715026416

[1715026416]

1715026416

[The Sceptical Chymist]

No, it's not OK in my opinion and I thought it was pretty well-established early on that it was either against the rules to do so or at least was common knowledge that it's extremely frowned upon.  I also think some members have gotten tagged for doing so--in fact, I'm sure of it.

Giving a merit to an alt account is misusing the merit system.  It's like being on a corporate compensation committee and approving your own raise.  Sketchy at best.

[suchmoon]

I also think some members have gotten tagged for doing so--in fact, I'm sure of it.

I'm doing that when alts can be determined with a high degree of certainty.

[eddie13]

No, it is not OK.
But I think they are not getting tagged for it right? Because theymos said to only tag for extreme cases of merit abuse right? So it's not something I would try to bring to DT or put effort into proving if I saw it happening..

I'm being attacked for that opinion

Where? How?

[suchmoon]

No, it is not OK.
But I think they are not getting tagged for it right? Because theymos said to only tag for extreme cases of merit abuse right? So it's not something I would try to bring to DT or put effort into proving if I saw it happening..

I consider it extreme abuse, along with merit buying etc, and I'm red-tagging for it if the alts are provable. That's part of the reason for this thread.

Where? How?

Via PMs. I would prefer to not make it public yet but let's just say there were two obvious sets of alts, one exchanged 50 merits, the other - ~30 (plus more between suspected but not proved alts), and I posted neg trust for them.

[yahoo62278]

I'm 100% against it. It's no different than sending trust to your alt, Ban evasion with a 2nd account, or any other way to cheat the system.

[bones261]

 It is definitely not cool to merit your alts. I think it is perfectly justifiable to add red trust to someone who is caught, with definitive proof that the accounts are linked. Unfortunately, if someone is crafty enough, there isn't much we can do about it.

[Steamtyme]

Not cool in any way shape or form.

Sorta like laughing at your own jokes, but more severe a faux pas like socks with sandals.

There is no valid or legitimate reason to be meriting yourself. The only persons doing so would be account farmers here to bleed SIG and bounty earnings.

The other idea is theh are trying to pad the merit marketplace and hoping that their alts won't be traced back to them.

Really just another tale as old as time, account farmer meets roadblock finds shady path around roadblock, gets tagged.


> insert surprised face pikachu meme<

[mikeywith]

I think merting your own posts that comes from your own alt account is like a hotel owner reviewing his own hotel on TripAdvisor.
it is very unethical in my opinion, the merit system is already not doing so great, and if own merting would be allowed it will make things worse.

this will also affect those who don't have enough sMerit to send to their alts, and will keep the existing sMerit circulating among certain users own accounts, and newbies with good posts and without an alt full of sMerit will unlikely be able to get any merit.

[khaled0111]

So you write a post and loggout then you loggin with your alt to read what you already posted and say: "WoW!! How did I think about that! Thank you my other me".

If not for abusing the merit system, I would absolutely tag these users for being schizophrenic.

[Lucius]

It is enough to look at poll to see what the majority thinks about this issue. For me it is immoral, unfair, and abuse of merit system, so every case found should be sanctioned. We can conclude that many users have alts on this forum just by look this thread. It would be interesting to see how many merits is exchanged between proved alt accounts so far.

The world is not perfect, so we can not expect this forum either to be perfect - there will always be people who will somehow abuse forum for their own personal needs.

[Atomicat]

You have X sendable merit (sMerit) which you can send to other people. There is no point in hoarding sMerit; keeping it yourself does not benefit you,

Merits are meant to be sent to other people's constructive contribution to this forum hence using sMerits in ways that personally benefits the sender will always be frowned upon by the community.
If a post truly deserves Merit(this includes posts made by alts) there are multiple ways to bring it to the attention of Merit sources so there's no reason to merit your own posts unless it's of low quality.

IMO, It's not OK to send merits to your alts because it only effects this community in a negative way(low quality posts receiving merits).

[The Cryptovator]

No, I am strongly against to send merit to own alts. Although it's against forum rules but seems few peoples are doing that. Obviously its merit abuse and they should tag if caught with strong evidence. Still now I have seen 100% vote on No, it's prove that community against to send merit own alts. Usually they will attack you who got tag for abuse merit system. But I don't think admin also like it. So no need worry about tagging them.

[Pffrt]

Since there is no way of sending sMerits in self post, it's forbidden to send in alt too. Sending merits to alt should not be encourage here. It is counted as abuse. DT member would tag those users.

[coinlocket$]

Of course no, it will be to easy and not ethical level up alts in this way and is nice to see that everyone so far has voted no.

[actmyname]

No. Just as I conflate account trading with buying reputation, the same can be said of merit exchanges.

[LoyceV]

I voted No.
I kinda want to vote again from my Mobile

Meriting my own alt is like leaving myself positive trust: even though I trust myself completely, that's not what the system is for, and it doesn't help anyone else in judging me.

I can think of one situation were not being allowed to merit an alt would have been frustrating, but luckily someone else came to the rescue.

[suchmoon]

You have X sendable merit (sMerit) which you can send to other people. There is no point in hoarding sMerit; keeping it yourself does not benefit you,

Merits are meant to be sent to other people's constructive contribution to this forum hence using sMerits in ways that personally benefits the sender will always be frowned upon by the community.
If a post truly deserves Merit(this includes posts made by alts) there are multiple ways to bring it to the attention of Merit sources so there's no reason to merit your own posts unless it's of low quality.

IMO, It's not OK to send merits to your alts because it only effects this community in a negative way(low quality posts receiving merits).

Good point about "other people" (not accounts). So it's essentially a rule. The problem is that if we report to moderators there is not much they can do (merits can't be reversed). Should the abusers be banned? Should we tag them red? Or just wag the finger and be upset about it?

Now that I think of it I should have added these options to the poll.

[vapourminer]

voted no because of the same reasons others have mentioned:

if its merit worthy it will be merited and you can draw others attention to it if you truly think it was overlooked.

merit yourself because you think its an awesome post? riiiiight. here is the name of a psych doctor i think you should see.

only reason i can see to merit your alt is to get your alt higher up in the sig campaign food chain. thats not what merits are about.

[r1s2g3]

 I find my self very intelligent so all my merit should go to me.
Oh No! Theymos is not allowing me to self merit.

So I need to create the alt accounts and merit myself on that account.

But I'm being attacked for that opinion so I'd like to gauge community sentiment on this subject.

May be, because narcissism in increase while self-esteem is in decline.

Meriting Alts (claimed as friend's,wife ,husband,father,group of office colleagues) confuses the newbies how this shitpost get so much merit and defeat the real purpose of merit.

Some forum users standard are stooping too low. I do not think honesty is related to economic status (poor or rich) but thy cite their poorness as a reason for their dishonesty.

I recently come across a legendary, who merited (sent 87 merits) to his younger brother to make him Full member. Not only alts, I find this merit transaction also disgusting.

Should the abusers be banned?

Theymos is not at all interested in taking action against Merit abuse. Get them banned currently look distant dream

  Should we tag them red?

Feel free to tag then.

Or just wag the finger and be upset about it?

Keep reporting, Keep calm

 Unfortunately, if someone is crafty enough, there isn't much we can do about it.

Very hard to catch crafty ones but few are openly gaming the system without any remorse.

[Veleor]

What is about relatives which sending 10-50 merit to each other?
I don't see the big difference between them and alts because relatives (or "relatives") are often rating messages very subjectively, in my mind.

I kinda want to vote again from my Mobile

Is it OK to participate in polls with your alt? 

[LoyceV]

What is about relatives which sending 10-50 merit to each other?

From what I've seen, most of the transactions sending 10-50 Merit at once are not for good posts anyway.
Do as theymos recommended: don't waste sleep over it, in the end it will be a small fraction of total Merit. Remember: We're destroying more merits than we're sending. Like, way more., give it time and the spammers run out of sMerit.

Is it OK to participate in polls with your alt?  

Make a poll

And there's this:

I think that tagging may be appropriate in particularly obvious cases, or particularly egregious cases involving hundreds of merit points and several posts. But generally you should start out by assuming good faith, and only change that opinion as the evidence really piles up.

This isn't easy

[suchmoon]

And there's this:

I think that tagging may be appropriate in particularly obvious cases, or particularly egregious cases involving hundreds of merit points and several posts. But generally you should start out by assuming good faith, and only change that opinion as the evidence really piles up.

This isn't easy

So I guess the question is whether proven alts sending merits to each other is a "particularly obvious case"... of what exactly? Looks like 36:0 so far the consensus is that merit-to-alts is not ok.

And there's this:

Merit sales, transfers to aliases, back-and-forth trading, etc. are not much of an issue. All illegitimate merit will decay, and will account for a tiny and very expensive fraction of the total merit economy. It's basically a rounding error; fight it where convenient, but waste no sleep over it.

[Atomicat]

What is about relatives which sending 10-50 merit to each other?
I don't see the big difference between them and alts because relatives (or "relatives") are often rating messages very subjectively, in my mind.

If the posts are of high quality I don't see it as an issue considering the amount of merits sent isn't favoring the relative with extra merits over another member's post of similar value but honestly 10-50 merits is a lot to give out for a single post.
But doing this in order to alter your rank might still be frowned upon cause there's a very high chance if you need to ask a relative to merit your post it's doesn't really contribute much value to the community.

This again brings us to the point that if your post is actually contributing value to this community it's very easy to get merits by bringing it to the attention of merit sources.

The main issue this community is trying to prevent here is low quality posts eating up the merits in our economy.

I kinda want to vote again from my Mobile

Is it OK to participate in polls with your alt? 

No I don't think it's OK to manipulate poll results using alts but it's clearly a form of humor from LoyceV in this situation.


EDIT: I just want to also include this lovely quote in my post. Thanks suchmoon

Merit sales, transfers to aliases, back-and-forth trading, etc. are not much of an issue. All illegitimate merit will decay, and will account for a tiny and very expensive fraction of the total merit economy. It's basically a rounding error; fight it where convenient, but waste no sleep over it.

[suchmoon]

The main issue this community is trying to prevent here is low quality posts eating up the merits in our economy.

I don't know if that smiley indicates a joke but the reality is that (1) merits are not scarce and (2) merits that have been sent to alts probably wouln't have been put to good use anyway.

My main problem with alt merits is that it distorts the relative quality of posts/posters/ranks/etc and indicates the dishonesty of the perp.

[Atomicat]

The main issue this community is trying to prevent here is low quality posts eating up the merits in our economy.

I don't know if that smiley indicates a joke but the reality is that (1) merits are not scarce and (2) merits that have been sent to alts probably wouln't have been put to good use anyway.

Nah, I just pictured all the low quality posts eating up the merits in circulation. I kinda imagined a large fish(low quality posts) eating up the merits(smaller fishes) we have.
I tried to find a picture to make it a little clearer but was unsuccessful.

You're actually right regarding your second point but unspent merits in the ecosystem is still better than poorly spent merits.

My main problem with alt merits is that it distorts the relative quality of posts/posters/ranks/etc and indicates the dishonesty of the perp.

Agreed.
Making manipulative/poor merit spending a more frowned upon act in this community help increase the value of given merits/ranks gained from merit-based progression.

[MikeMike]

I think there is a valid reason to send Merit to a "Corporate Type" account
setup by the main Developer so as to manage multiple threads and projects.
It is given to denote the trust level the original Developer is designating to that legitimate account.
The account creds are held by the Team and others will be posting since it is too much work for any one individual.
Specially since it takes Merit to be able to post pictures and the threads need to be created soon.
NOTE:
At the time I was not aware of the option to buy a "copper Membership" that allows you to post pictures...

Below is my reasoning taken from the negative feedback and the reference links.
Please read it all carefully prior to responding to this post.

Also what must be considered is "Intent".
Did I do this to deceive people?
I fully agree those whom buy accounts with lots of Merit and trust and history
like some well known major coins devs do here should not be tolerated.
I also believe that those whom send Merit to deceive people should not be tolerated.

I have sent 3 DMs to suchmoon asking him to be reasonable in this matter with no reply.
I also asked the Mods to at least ask him to turn it neutral and keep a watchful eye on me/The KORE Team using
the KORE - DEV account and to see if we scam people which we will not. Our projects are real and we have invested hundreds of BTC into them.

MikeMike

EDIT:
Since one of my other posts were deleted Im adding these facts here:
An old KORE Team member called Clutch who was responsible for all the Language threads
left the Team and did not give us his creds.
We are releasing a new wallet soon and in my post made clear what the account was for.
I made sure to give the KORE Team the creds to the account and in time others will be posting.
My intent was to never have that happen again losing access to OP pages etc.







Here is the negative feedback reference link suchmoon the creator of this thread gave me:
http://archive.vn/aIT07#selection-2761.0-2790.6












Here is my reply to the negative feedback:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=234771
















My third attempt to reach out to  suchmoon.
Below is copy of this PM.
Look at the time stamp:
KORE - DEV / MikeMike negative feedback
« Sent to: suchmoon on: January 04, 2019, 07:33:01 PM »


Note the time stamp of the creation of this thread suchmoon created here:
Poll: is it OK to send merits to your own alts?
January 04, 2019, 09:10:54 PM

This IMO shows a clear refusal to be reasonable in this matter...
This is unprofessional behavior.
Please read these pms in their entirety prior to commenting...

Could you please reply regarding my previous pms to you regarding the consideration of removing or turning neutral your negative feedback.
We need to use the KORE - DEV account to create multiple new OP pages soon for the other Languages and coins.
From my first post I have been forthright as the the reason it was created.
I/We are not trying to fool anyone or scam people.
We need to be able to post graphics with this account soon and that is one other reason I sent Merit to it.
Besides wanting to show directly is is an account I/MikeMike approve of and created and showing also by Merit given to it.
I do not see where or how this is deserving of this negative feedback.

You don't have to believe it but I too am a person wanting to expose corruption and have in the past
with the old dev of KORE and other devs/coins as well as a main driving reason for the creation of these KORE Projects.
I am others were sick of being taken advantage of by scam devs.

Please respond.
My Personal PMs also prove this.


MikeMike

Below is a copy of my PM with the Moderator:
I sent this copy to suchmoon today:
Look at the timestamp:
Re: KORE - DEV / MikeMike negative feedback #3
« Sent to: suchmoon on: Today at 07:56:06 PM »

Thank you for your reply.
I could understand there being large gray areas whereby abuse is actuated.
These areas are most difficult to moderate.

As in this case I beg to differ that it is clear.
The negative feedback does not fit my actions.
I stated clearly what it was for and signed it with MikeMike so there was no
action by me of trying to hide anything.

I can understand you not taking direct action in this case
and can only imagine how difficult it is working with scammers and corrupt people.
But I'm not that kind of person and my actions will continue to prove that fact.

Could you both at least please consider reaching out to suchmoon
and ask him to consider at least turning it to neutral with a notation
that he will keep watch on me and if we as a Team or myself pull any
corrupt moves he will take action?


MikeMike

Hello,
Below is my 3rd attempt to reach out to suchmoon to have what I believe to truly be improperly submitted negative feedback.
Please review my other pms to you and the reference posts and reply feedback.
I really dont think I have done anything underhanded and we need this KORE - DEV account for below said reasons hopefully soon.

I appreciate any time you devote towards this matter.

MikeMike

Could you please reply regarding my previous pms to you regarding the consideration of removing or turning neutral your negative feedback.
We need to use the KORE - DEV account to create multiple new OP pages soon for the other Languages and coins.
From my first post I have been forthright as the the reason it was created.
I/We are not trying to fool anyone or scam people.
We need to be able to post graphics with this account soon and that is one other reason I sent Merit to it.
Besides wanting to show directly is is an account I/MikeMike approve of and created and showing also by Merit given to it.
I do not see where or how this is deserving of this negative feedback.

You don't have to believe it but I too am a person wanting to expose corruption and have in the past
with the old dev of KORE and other devs/coins as well as a main driving reason for the creation of these KORE Projects.
I am others were sick of being taken advantage of by scam devs.

Please respond.
My Personal PMs also prove this.


MikeMike

From https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0:

Q: Why isn't trust moderated?
A: Feedback isn't moderated (except for obvious cases such as pure advertising, hundreds of identical empty/gibberish reports on one user) for the same reason as scams - too much room for abuse.

No. I'm neither acquainted with the situation enough to make a judgement, nor am I interested in dedicating any time to understand it. Trust disputes should be resolved by the users involved.

That is disappointing.
Reading his feedback and my response and looking at the references is all that is needed to fully understand the matter.
I presume you may have read my emails as well detailing that I have already tried reaching out a few times
with no response and is the reason I reached out to you, the Moderator.
Seems it is just you two Mods.
It might be considerate to get another Mod just for these bogus feedbacks.
What I see and what people tell me, is more and more people are leaving BitcoinTalk and this in itself is a just cause.
How can the KORE Team be able to gain any trust here with red warning notations to trade with extreme caution.
I personally have a little history here and would like to keep our real projects here as an alternative to the massive amounts of scams.

Apologies for wasting your time.

MikeMike

[o_e_l_e_o]

It is given to denote the trust level the original Developer is designating to that legitimate account.

Isn't that what trust is for? Leave a neutral rating from each account to the other to confirm that it is a trusted account. As a side note, you've left yourself positive trust, which is also generally frowned upon.

Specially since it takes Merit to be able to post pictures and the threads need to be created soon.

This reasoning might have been valid if you had left yourself 1 merit, since it only takes 1 merit to be able to post images, not 40.

[MikeMike]

It is given to denote the trust level the original Developer is designating to that legitimate account.

Isn't that what trust is for? Leave a neutral rating from each account to the other to confirm that it is a trusted account. As a side note, you've left yourself positive trust, which is also generally frowned upon.

Specially since it takes Merit to be able to post pictures and the threads need to be created soon.

This reasoning might have been valid if you had left yourself 1 merit, since it only takes 1 merit to be able to post images, not 40.

Again "Intent" needs to be considered.
The fact is only after I received this negative feedback which is clearly unwarranted did I add each account to each others trust.
Still even IF I did this beforehand it would have been and was done to prove it is the legitimate Corporate Dev account for the KORE Projects.

Even with 50 Merit for some reason I could not post pictures.
Only after I paid for a Copper Membership was I able to post pictures.

I see by looking at your and suchmoon's Trust level that you both are here very active in trying to protect people.
I respect that.
But in this matter I/The KORE Team clearly from the beginning have been very open and forthright what the KORE - DEV account was for and why it was created.
Please realize we had an old KORE Team member create the last set of Language threads and they ended up leaving
without giving us access to that account.
Now they need to be recreated and my intent was to make sure this never happened again.


MikeMike

[o_e_l_e_o]

Even with 50 Merit for some reason I could not post pictures.

You need to be a Junior Member to post images, which has an activity requirement of 28 in addition to a Merit requirement of 1.

[MikeMike]

Even with 50 Merit for some reason I could not post pictures.

You need to be a Junior Member to post images, which has an activity requirement of 28 in addition to a Merit requirement of 1.

OK, thanks.
I edited my previous post.
Please review it again...

[Quickseller]

I would like to say this is not something I would do myself, nor is something I would personally condone.

With the above being said, someone has sMerits because they ultimately previously made a post someone thought is deserving of merit. As such, I consider sMerit (assuming they are not spending sMerit they have resulting from what they received from being a merit source) to be their property, and I am not a fan of telling others what they can and cannot do with their own property.

The underlying reason why others believe sending merit to your alts is because of the conflict of interest. However, as previously mentioned, the ultimate reason why someone has sMerit to spend in the first place is because someone thought they made (a) good post(s) in the past; the reason someone will send merit to themselves is to rank up, however if someone earned merit in the 1st place, there isn't any real reason why someone couldn't make good posts with their alt to earn merit from someone else.

Back to the topic of conflict of interest, a bigger concern is when people send merit to someone who they have a business (or other) relationship with. If there is a relationship between two people, there may be financial (or other) reasons why someone is giving merit to that person. It could easily be argued that the merit sender thought the post in question was deserving of merit. Unlike with cases of sending merit to yourself, it would not be trivial for the receiving account to earn the merit if there is already merit to spend in the 1st place.

[suchmoon]

I think there is a valid reason to send Merit to a "Corporate Type" account

No. That's not what merits are for.

Did I do this to deceive people?

I think so. You didn't earn those merits from other people. You didn't earn that positive trust either BTW.

I have sent 3 DMs to suchmoon asking him to be reasonable in this matter with no reply.

You keep insisting you did nothing wrong. I started this poll in part because of that. And the result was 36:0 before you showed up. It's 36:2 now. Can you tell us why?

With the above being said, someone has sMerits because they ultimately previously made a post someone thought is deserving of merit. As such, I consider sMerit (assuming they are not spending sMerit they have resulting from what they received from being a merit source) to be their property, and I am not a fan of telling others what they can and cannot do with their own property.

The forum already prevents sending merits to yourself (i.e. the same account). There is also a limit of 50 per account per month. There is sufficient precedent to make this "property" argument moot. I don't think sMerits are ours to own, we're supposed to send them to other people.

[theduuude]

Here's my vote, suchmoon, "you are not important"...suchmoon gets a gold medal in the imbecile Olympics.  Suchmoon is trapped in the virtual world.  Try to get out and go for a walk or something it might do you some good.  Or, start up your own forum and you can do whatever you want.

Whats what with this vote crap.  You don't own bitcointalk (unless i'm mistaken)

[suchmoon]

~

 - You sent 40 points to your own post.
 - You gave an excuse that it was done to post images, which doesn't make sense for a number of reasons.
 - Your other excuse (a "team" will use the account) is equivalent to account farming and sale.
 - You're multi-posting with alts in this thread.

I have removed a bunch of your posts - feel free to create your own thread and repost them there but I won't tolerate serial posting using sockpuppets.

[MikeMike]

I want to be clear about this.
If I had the ability to remove the Merit sent and it was sent with proper intent I would.
I do believe suchmoon would then remove the negative feedback.
I have reviewed his feedback history and seen him doing that with others so would expect the same.

Since I do not have the ability to remove the Merit sent I am asking him to be reasonable
and I presented facts stating my case and asked him to leave neutral feedback instead
but still state his concerns...


MikeMike

[bones261]

@MikeMike. Bring this up to Theymos. Not sure that he will bother, but he can nuke merits in extreme circumstances.

[Quickseller]

With the above being said, someone has sMerits because they ultimately previously made a post someone thought is deserving of merit. As such, I consider sMerit (assuming they are not spending sMerit they have resulting from what they received from being a merit source) to be their property, and I am not a fan of telling others what they can and cannot do with their own property.

The forum already prevents sending merits to yourself (i.e. the same account). There is also a limit of 50 per account per month. There is sufficient precedent to make this "property" argument moot. I don't think sMerits are ours to own, we're supposed to send them to other people.

My online banking has technical limits as to how much money I can send via wire transfer (and via other means), and many cars have technical limits as to how fast they will drive, and if they will play the radio if the seatbelts are not being worn. Both the money in my bank account and any cars I own are still my property, despite these technical limitations.

[MikeMike]

@MikeMike. Bring this up to Theymos. Not sure that he will bother, but he can nuke merits in extreme circumstances.

Hey thanks.
I did not know that.

[suchmoon]

My online banking has technical limits as to how much money I can send via wire transfer (and via other means), and many cars have technical limits as to how fast they will drive, and if they will play the radio if the seatbelts are not being worn. Both the money in my bank account and any cars I own are still my property, despite these technical limitations.

Merits are not cars nor money. It's a forum feature and you don't own it any more than you own the "Report to moderator" button - you can use it subject to rules.

I can withdraw money from the bank and put it under my mattress, or mod my car any way I want if I don't drive it on public roads. If theymos allows you to take the sMerits off the forum in some way then I would agree that you can own them and perhaps use elsewhere not subject to forum rules.


I'm removing the other annoying KORE troll as well. Mike, get your minions in line.

[MikeMike]

My online banking has technical limits as to how much money I can send via wire transfer (and via other means), and many cars have technical limits as to how fast they will drive, and if they will play the radio if the seatbelts are not being worn. Both the money in my bank account and any cars I own are still my property, despite these technical limitations.

Merits are not cars nor money. It's a forum feature and you don't own it any more than you own the "Report to moderator" button - you can use it subject to rules.

I can withdraw money from the bank and put it under my mattress, or mod my car any way I want if I don't drive it on public roads. If theymos allows you to take the sMerits off the forum in some way then I would agree that you can own them and perhaps use elsewhere not subject to forum rules.


I'm removing the other annoying KORE troll as well. Mike, get your minions in line.

Funny I was just going to ask him to chill
and why do you call him "my minion" and a "KORE Troll"?
That is not applicable nor justified.
But he is entitled to his opinions the same as you and I.
Perhaps you are dealing with too many scammers and corrupt people.
Im not one of them.

[bones261]

censorship is good...right?

This is a self-moderated topic. If you do not want to be moderated by the person who started this topic, create a new topic.

[MikeMike]

censorship is good...right?

This is a self-moderated topic. If you do not want to be moderated by the person who started this topic, create a new topic.

All depends on the reasons why the posts are deleted...
But yea.
Create your own topic.

[bones261]

censorship is good...right?

This is a self-moderated topic. If you do not want to be moderated by the person who started this topic, create a new topic.

All depends on the reasons why the posts are deleted...
But yea.
Create your own topic.

A person doesn't need "reasons" to delete a post on a self moderated topic. They could ask a Magic 8 ball or flip a coin if they wanted.

[suchmoon]

But he is entitled to his opinions the same as you and I.

He's not entitled to trash this thread. That's not an opinion. If you're happy with him posting useless crap in your KORE thread that's your problem but it's not going to work here.

[MikeMike]

But he is entitled to his opinions the same as you and I.

He's not entitled to trash this thread. That's not an opinion. If you're happy with him posting useless crap in your KORE thread that's your problem but it's not going to work here.

I did not say I was happy and posted that I was concerned of his posts.
Last thing we need is someone making wild accusations against me or KORE.

[r1s2g3]

Few things are worth noting here.
1. Mike have no idea that it require  at least Jr.Member to post the picture.
2. He have no idea about Copper Membership too?
3. He have no idea about ethical use case of Merit.
4. Trying to involve mprep in trust issue, that moderator do not entertained.

So much ignorance here on mikemike part is worth noting.
Only honest part is open acknowledge of giving merit to the Corporate alt account.

Mikemike, you are tagged for your ignorance and I do not think you can blame suchmoon for that.

What you can do :
Try to ask suchmoon what your further action will help suchmoon to remove that trust instead of justifying a community frowned action.
Few options that I can think of (but you and suchmoon both need to agree)
1. Since 40 merits are abused, so you need to merit 40 current newbies for their good post,that are not discovered by others till now.
2. Acknowledging your ignorance and requesting Theymos to undo this transaction ( but I guess Theymos may not entertain you)
3. Might creating some good content in this forum from your personal experience and knowledge that we do not have discussed in this forum.
4. Any other idea that suchmoon proposes.

In short, you cannot blame suchmoon/anybody for your ignorance.

[suchmoon]

But he is entitled to his opinions the same as you and I.

He's not entitled to trash this thread. That's not an opinion. If you're happy with him posting useless crap in your KORE thread that's your problem but it's not going to work here.

I did not say I was happy and posted that I was concerned of his posts.
Last thing we need is someone making wild accusations against me or KORE.

Ok, this is going way off rails, but you're running the self-moderated KORE thread and you're letting this crap through:

Good job KORE team!!

right on, right on...

Matrix, Great work!

GO KORE, GO BTC!

Holding KORE.

Go KORE, go BTC!

So what - any shitty bump is a good bump? Wild accusations? Come on. Shitcoiners gonna shitcoin. So why don't we stop debating relative merits (pun intended) of various shitcoins and focus on the topic at hand. If you can convince theymos to reverse the 40 merits I will revise my ratings to neutral. I think that's fair.


Ok this is getting ridiculous. After being explicitly warned about multi-posting you're still making multiple posts in a row. All that will be deleted, don't bother.

1. Mike have no idea that it require  at least Jr.Member to post the picture.

But somehow he "knew" that 40 merits are needed for that. I find that really hard to believe.

[MikeMike]

Few things are worth noting here.
1. Mike have no idea that it require  at least Jr.Member to post the picture.
2. He have no idea about Copper Membership too?
3. He have no idea about ethical use case of Merit.
4. Trying to involve mprep in trust issue, that moderator do not entertained.

So much ignorance here on mikemike part is worth noting.
Only honest part is open acknowledge of giving merit to the Corporate alt account.

Mikemike, you are tagged for your ignorance and I do not think you can blame suchmoon for that.

What you can do :
Try to ask suchmoon what your further action will help suchmoon to remove that trust instead of justifying a community frowned action.
Few options that I can think of (but you and suchmoon both need to agree)
1. Since 40 merits are abused, so you need to merit 40 current newbies for their good post,that are not discovered by others till now.
2. Acknowledging your ignorance and requesting Theymos to undo this transaction ( but I guess Theymos may not entertain you)
3. Might creating some good content in this forum from your personal experience and knowledge that we do not have discussed in this forum.
4. Any other idea that suchmoon proposes.

In short, you cannot blame suchmoon/anybody for your ignorance.

No I cannot blame him and have not done so.
I have been honest about "my ignorance" from the beginning and personally
yep, I had no idea what the heck proper use of Merit was and I take ownership of that.
EDIT:
In fact I did think it was related to Trust. Like Merit deserving of trust and gave you some status to post pics.
Now if it was called Post Rewards or Post Merits that would have cleared things up for me.
Im not the only one who fails to properly understand this as most never use it correctly.
That denotes a problem with educating the people using this forum.
Perhaps a notice the next time you login that explains it all could help.

I already PM'd Theymos and asked them to remove the merit I sent.

Regarding the "Copper Membership" this is another lack of educational effort to properly
inform those whom create a new account that the option exists.
I have not created an account since mine was hacked in 2015 so please lighten up a bit.
There is an oppressiveness to many posts here.

[MikeMike]

But he is entitled to his opinions the same as you and I.

He's not entitled to trash this thread. That's not an opinion. If you're happy with him posting useless crap in your KORE thread that's your problem but it's not going to work here.

I did not say I was happy and posted that I was concerned of his posts.
Last thing we need is someone making wild accusations against me or KORE.

Ok, this is going way off rails, but you're running the self-moderated KORE thread and you're letting this crap through:

Good job KORE team!!

right on, right on...

Matrix, Great work!

GO KORE, GO BTC!

Holding KORE.

Go KORE, go BTC!

So what - any shitty bump is a good bump? Wild accusations? Come on. Shitcoiners gonna shitcoin. So why don't we stop debating relative merits (pun intended) of various shitcoins and focus on the topic at hand. If you can convince theymos to reverse the 40 merits I will revise my ratings to neutral. I think that's fair.


Ok this is getting ridiculous. After being explicitly warned about multi-posting you're still making multiple posts in a row. All that will be deleted, don't bother.

1. Mike have no idea that it require  at least Jr.Member to post the picture.

But somehow he "knew" that 40 merits are needed for that. I find that really hard to believe.

I have no control over what people post and "go KORE" is not a P&D statement.
I personally dont like it and even asked them to not post it.
But you cant force someone not to be excited if they are and there is nothing wrong with that.
Perhaps they know more than you and remember you called KORE a shitcoin.
Come back in a year.

KORE was attacked and we lost an entire Coder Team.
I let you know this in PM.
I have been honest with you from the beginning and you are blowing things way out of context and making accusations that are frankly not true.


EDIT:
Regarding the 40 Merit sent.
It is what I felt comfortable sending JIC and thought it would be enough to post pictures.
Otherwise I would have sent more if I knew I get more Merit sent to my account regularly to give away.


Thanks,
I used the searchbox at the top of the forum.
Here are my searches:
"Merit System"
"bticointalk merit rules"
"how does merit work"

None were effective.
Bitcointalk clearly has failed in the proper execution of the "Merit System" they adopted.
Does it not make sense to have the terms of use in the actual Merit link in your profile?
Seems most my post that bring out very relevant facts here are being deleted as well as this link to very relevant information on proper merit use.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg49087465#msg49087465

[suchmoon]

No I cannot blame him and have not done so.
I have been honest about "my ignorance" from the beginning and personally
yep, I had no idea what the heck proper use of Merit was and I take ownership of that.

Fair enough. I have removed neg trust from "KORE - Projects" and I hope you won't risk doing it again.

The other two ratings can't be removed while that 40 merit transaction is still there.

I have no control over what people post and "go KORE" is not a P&D statement.

You do. It's a self-moderated thread and you should help the moderators out by removing trash like that. Nothing to do with P&D, just useless posts. But you like them for the free bumps (my opinion).

[MikeMike]

No I cannot blame him and have not done so.
I have been honest about "my ignorance" from the beginning and personally
yep, I had no idea what the heck proper use of Merit was and I take ownership of that.

Fair enough. I have removed neg trust from "KORE - Projects" and I hope you won't risk doing it again.
Thanks I appreciate your reasonableness here.
The other two ratings can't be removed while that 40 merit transaction is still there.
Lets hope Theymos removes the 40 merit.

I have no control over what people post and "go KORE" is not a P&D statement.

You do. It's a self-moderated thread and you should help the moderators out by removing trash like that. Nothing to do with P&D, just useless posts. But you like them for the free bumps (my opinion).
Im glad to see people excited about KORE,
and I do not like P&D posts.
With the wallet in its current state people are reluctant to post and I frankly dont blame them.
Thedudde is helping with the testnet and has some evidence of the new wallet
and so do some others...

I know it is hard but please try and separate KORE, myself and the KORE Team from scams you are used to dealing with.
Just give us a chance here is all Im asking.

EDIT:

I also had no idea that you get (could you confirm) 50 Merit per month?
I do believe most people are not aware of this and I think if they are
made aware would be much less reluctant, and that people would give it away daily even.
Again proper education about its use is key and another thing it took me awhile to get
is that when you send Merit it does not decrease your total Merit shown in your posts.
I think most people believe it does decrease that total Merit number and therefore again are reluctant to give it away.

[TheMatrix101]

oooooooooookkkkkkkkkkaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyy since my livelyhood will be attacked ill respond to this.
What this all boils down to is, are alt accounts ethical and is KOREDev an alt account.

Are ALT accounts ethical?

• NO
  

Is it ethical to send merits to your own alts?

• No, an alt is unethical, enabling those alts to do more damage is unethical as well.

What is an alt account?

• An alt account is a secondary, third, fourth, etc, account that is meant to hide activity you dont want viewable on your account, the only real reason you would have an alt is to deceive others. Seeing as KOREDev was not made for a single user and was not made to hide questionable activity it is not an alt.
  

Is KOREdev an alt account?

• NO, KOREdev was made to be a team account that multiple users could have access to in order to post updates in different language threads due to an old dev leaving who screwed us over and now we have no access to those language threads and have to effectively kill them.
• It could be argued that it is currently an alt because we haven't had the time/money to hire a set of translators. this has some grounds. however, due to the merit system, it would be pointless for us to do so until the activity level of the account is up and the account actually can be utilized by multiple translators at a single time without logistical issues

should we care more about "spam" comments

• Yea probably, but as long as it's not fud frankly we don't care, you could post "this is a weird project" or "who cares about privacy" and we probably wouldn't delete those either

Why are we (KORE) self moderated?

• Have you ever been on a mod moderated thread? increadibly slow to respond/delete things

Do I care for BTCT's merit system?

• NO, its stupid and a pain in the ass. I can see the use case for it but the execution is piss poor

I understand and respect wanting to protect people from scams, hell I do that and similar on an almost daily basis. Though I do not care for the unfounded attack on my ethics. It is good to question the ethics of everyone. But questioning ethics and attacking someone without learning those ethics first are two very different things.

Matrix

[actmyname]

should we care more about "spam" comments

• Yea probably, but as long as it's not fud frankly we don't care, you could post "this is a weird project" or "who cares about privacy" and we probably wouldn't delete those either

Right. As long as it's not negative, you'll let trash through. I see. Too much of a bother, eh?Inundating your team account with merit is not something that makes sense. That's artificially increasing the reputation of the posts, whether you care or not.

When a new system is introduced, shouldn't you generally check to see how it works and what effects it has upon other systems? If you had done so, you would have only sent 1 merit.^*

_{*assuming you were ignorant}

[suchmoon]

Do I care for BTCT's merit system?

• NO, its stupid and a pain in the ass. I can see the use case for it but the execution is piss poor

Great, then don't use it, problem solved.

Here's the issue with you and Mike and many other shitcoiners: you don't give a damn about the forum beyond the ability to peddle your shitcoin. Mike has a self-moderated thread but he lets the garbage posts in. None of you report those posts to moderators either. Mike multiposts with his own account and with the alts as well, including in this thread. He even tried to promote his sale thread here. Merits are stupid except when you can use them in some made-up scenario to make "corporate" accounts look better than they are. Plus a bunch of lame-ass excuses about images, translators, etc - makes no sense. Buy a Copper account, that's what it's for.

[rat03gopoh]

Lol, 10% of the poll results choose "Yes". Have they entered their reason in this thread? Or they give irony reasons because they did it (sent merit to their alts)

[suchmoon]

Lol, 10% of the poll results choose "Yes". Have they entered their reason in this thread? Or they give irony reasons because they did it (sent merit to their alts)

One of them did it (MikeMike). Not sure about the other "yes" votes. There is some reasoning on pages 2 and 3 but it kinda got drowned in off-topic nonsense.

[MikeMike]

For all the concern about the improper use of the Bitcointalk Merit system I cant get any clear answers nor links to the Merit Rules of use.
I just did a search and cannot find them.
One thing is clear.
The Bitcointalk Merit system is not working the way it should, people are not using it correctly, or not using it at all.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg49083888#msg49083888
Some of that misuse is clearly for ill purposes and some is not.
To set oneself up as the judge and executioner is a bit of an issue.
I do not see an effort to educate people here at all.
A bunch of posts about you should have known and ignorance are useless judgmental meddling without the dispensing of knowledge.
To impute bad motive does not help either and it is clear people are doing that.

This thread is not about education it is about judgment.
Post relevant links to the Merit System Rules.
How much do you get and when?

[suchmoon]

For all the concern about the improper use of the Bitcointalk Merit system I cant get any clear answers nor links to the Merit Rules of use.
I just did a search and cannot find them.
One thing is clear.
The Bitcointalk Merit system is not working the way it should, people are not using it correctly.
Some of that misuse is clearly for ill purposes and some is not.
To set oneself up as the judge and executioner is a bit of an issue.
I do not see an effort to educate people here at all.
A bunch of posts about you should have known and ignorance are useless judgmental meddling without the dispensing of knowledge.
To impute bad motive does not help either and it is clear people are doing that.

This thread is not about education it is about judgment.
Post relevant links to the Merit System Rules.
How much do you get and when?

https://www.google.com/search?q=bitcointalk+merit

First result:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0

See also the pinned posts in Meta: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=24.0 - particularly ones about rules and merit.

Any questions should be directed to those threads or create a new thread if you feel there is something that hasn't been addressed. This is not the right place for that.


Stop copy-pasting FFS.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Since there is no way of sending sMerits in self post, it's forbidden to send in alt too. Sending merits to alt should not be encourage here. It is counted as abuse. DT member would tag those users.

That's pretty solid logic if you ask me.

And while I think it's certainly abuse, I don't believe Theymos wants DT members tagging members who merit their alts.  DT members have done it in the past, but in the past few months I don't think a lot of merit-swapping deals have gotten negged.  It all depends on how blatant and extensive the abuse is and IF a DT member feels like giving them a neg. 

As for myself, I've pretty much bowed out of tagging merit abusers.  There is too much subjectivity in these cases and too many chances to erroneously neg a bunch of people all at once.  I'd much rather stick to the relatively black-and-white offenses of account selling and such.

[TheMatrix101]

should we care more about "spam" comments

• Yea probably, but as long as it's not fud frankly we don't care, you could post "this is a weird project" or "who cares about privacy" and we probably wouldn't delete those either

Right. As long as it's not negative, you'll let trash through. I see. Too much of a bother, eh?Inundating your team account with merit is not something that makes sense. That's artificially increasing the reputation of the posts, whether you care or not.

When a new system is introduced, shouldn't you generally check to see how it works and what effects it has upon other systems? If you had done so, you would have only sent 1 merit.^*

_{*assuming you were ignorant}

I havent sent merit to anyone (i dont think at least) i did look into how it works and i disagree with the impact it has on other systems. There is no way to "not use" the merit system as you are required to have x amount of merit for each bitcointalk level, you should know this as you are telling me to look up how it works.

As for negative comments, frankly i dont care about those either. There is a massive difference between negative/critical comments and fud/shitposting and you should damn well know that.

Matrix

[eddie13]

And while I think it's certainly abuse, I don't believe Theymos wants DT members tagging members who merit their alts.  DT members have done it in the past, but in the past few months I don't think a lot of merit-swapping deals have gotten negged.  It all depends on how blatant and extensive the abuse is and IF a DT member feels like giving them a neg. 

I agree and this is basically what I was trying to express earlier in this thread (post #4)

I don't mind that this tag was placed since it is an unethical act and was quite a few merits but the post referenced does lend credence to the claim it was a mistake made out of pure ignorance.

I have seen in the past seemingly legit companies ruining relations with bitcointalk out of pure ignorance and at times it feels a shame that they just didn't read the rules and understand the cultural etiquette here before they made mistakes.

It would depend a bit for me on the scammyness of whatever this "KORE" project is. I haven't really looked at it..
Can anyone that knows give me/us a quick scammyness rating of this on a scale from 1 to 10? (apart from this merit problem)

If the scammynss of this all is relatively low other than this meriting I think it would be nice of Suchmoon to possibly make a deal on this issue..

Some things I can think of......

1. Burn the merited account.. Send the password of it to Suchmoon for destruction of the account..
I think this would basically destroy the sent merit and Mike would just have lost the smerit..
Maybe all of its posts can be deleted too before burning it..

2. Maybe make mike read the rules and make 100 good reports and/or make him write you a small essay on the working of the merit system and the ethics thereof so he will be henceforth educated..

3. Make him wear the red for 3 months or so as a warning to others and then change it to a neutral..

If he otherwise seems to bring value to the forum..

Also depending on these "attacks"..
If he has been belligerent, violent, extremely disrespectful, threatening, much bad behavior otherwise maybe he should keep the red just for his reaction if it has been terrible..
I'm not sure we have all of these PMs/"attacks" available..

[suchmoon]

It would depend a bit for me on the scammyness of whatever this "KORE" project is. I haven't really looked at it..
Can anyone that knows give me/us a quick scammyness rating of this on a scale from 1 to 10? (apart from this merit problem)

I don't know about scamminess. But the thread is extremely shitty, self-moderated but not really moderated, and MikeMike himself multi-bumps it a lot with his own account and alts. Disregard for forum rules just like most shitcoin threads.

If the scammynss of this all is relatively low other than this meriting I think it would be nice of Suchmoon to possibly make a deal on this issue..

Some things I can think of......

1. Burn the merited account.. Send the password of it to Suchmoon for destruction of the account..
I think this would basically destroy the sent merit and Mike would just have lost the smerit..
Maybe all of its posts can be deleted too before burning it..

I have already agreed to not red-trust his new alts, just the two involved in the 40-merit trade. Normally I would neg-trust any known alts because a scammer is a scammer. So this would allow him to create the "team" account he wanted and abandon the red trusted one with 40 merits.

I hate these kinds of deals though because now it obligates me to watch if MikeMike and/or the team is involved in any shenanigans and if anything untoward happens it's going to be my fault. So that's about as far as I can go with it.

Also depending on these "attacks"..
If he has been belligerent, violent, extremely disrespectful, threatening, much bad behavior otherwise maybe he should keep the red just for his reaction if it has been terrible..
I'm not sure we have all of these PMs/"attacks" available..

Nothing violent in PMs. Just the regular "I didn't do anything wrong" spiel in a dozen different ways. The posts that I deleted in this thread had some ad hominems but I'm not gonna hold personal grudges. I'm not the nicest person to deal with so I expect nothing less in return

Defense of being slandered is not whining.

Please create a new thread in Reputation and post anything you want there. I will add a link to it here.

I'm deleting all this nonsense from this thread because you're clearly not listening. Your "defense" here is over and you're no longer welcome to post in this thread.

[r1s2g3]

Lol, 10% of the poll results choose "Yes". Have they entered their reason in this thread? Or they give irony reasons because they did it (sent merit to their alts)

One of them did it (MikeMike). Not sure about the other "yes" votes. There is some reasoning on pages 2 and 3 but it kinda got drowned in off-topic nonsense.

Anybody can create sock puppets accounts to vote Yes or No. Every vote is counted equally no matter how intelligent or stupid you are.
It is sad that users have created so flawed logics or feigned ignorance just to suit themselves.

[khaled0111]

...
Anybody can create sock puppets accounts to vote Yes or No. Every vote is counted equally no matter how intelligent or stupid you are.
...

"Democracy is the power of equal votes for unequal minds." Charles I of England

[suchmoon]

Lol, 10% of the poll results choose "Yes". Have they entered their reason in this thread? Or they give irony reasons because they did it (sent merit to their alts)

One of them did it (MikeMike). Not sure about the other "yes" votes. There is some reasoning on pages 2 and 3 but it kinda got drowned in off-topic nonsense.

Anybody can create sock puppets accounts to vote Yes or No. Every vote is counted equally no matter how intelligent or stupid you are.
It is sad that users have created so flawed logics or feigned ignorance just to suit themselves.

I was more interested in reasoning than the vote count. I don't think I've heard a compelling argument why meriting alts would be acceptable. There might be some disagreement as to what the correct remedy is though.

[LeGaulois]

I voted NO
It could be forgivable if the member just has a problem with his ego/self-esteem, the same way people like their own post on Facebook.
But we know very well that the reason is to be able to participate in bounty campaigns. Nothing wrong to participate in, but I just see it as abusing the forum, its members, the campaign manager, and the project advertised

[quote page 4]Anybody can create sock puppets accounts to vote Yes or No[/quote]
No

[quote page 3]Are ALT accounts ethical?
NO[/quote]

I would say No too but I am thinking someone could need an alt because his account represents a company/website, it's understandable.

[cabalism13]

Nope. It's not an ethical thing to do. And also it just represent an unfair distribution of Merits, no one will ever respect the system if they were given the rights to do that. I do have an alt but sadly I can't use it for I still needed to pay for its Bad IP.

And yet I dont even think about sharing my Merit to my alt, I'll be just fooling myself. I'd rather spend a year or two on ranking up than to be banned because of that Merit thing. Even if you think your post was good enough, I think letting it be, and wait for the others to notice it is still an achievement that's why its unacceptable to share Merits on Alts. (I can let myself an example to this for I was not caring about Merits, though I simply care about ranking up but the fact that I'm really not good on starting some posts,I'm really used on waiting for the others give some credits on my replies and comments. And now here I am having 67Merits for over a year of stay starting on 0 Merits. - Its already an achievement for I've been able to escape the shitposter zone)

[NavI_027]

And yet I dont even think about sharing my Merit to my alt, I'll be just fooling myself.

You nailed it! I also disagree on the concept of one's giving a merit into his alt account/s. Okay let's say that we will not put the violation of rules and being unethical into considerations yet for me it was still a terrible idea because you are only fooling yourself (like what cabalism13 said). Have you ever heard a story of a heroic soldier who gave himself the Medal of Honor as a reward for his own bravery? Of course not! There's no such thing like that. A true recognition should came from others — from other people who appreciate your work and effort, not from yourself. Giving merits to yourself is a form of "lifting one's own chair" and that is nothing to be proud of.

[rhomelmabini]

Definitely not, it is just like praising oneself for the thing that you've just did or laughing to your own joke and I think that is only present to fools.

[NeuroticFish]

Have you ever heard a story of a heroic soldier who gave himself the Medal of Honor as a reward for his own bravery? Of course not!

It's even worse. Why is merit needed? To rank up. Why is ranking up important? For earning (bounty, signature,...).
So if somebody merits his own alt, next steps would be either use the alt (too) in signature/bounty campaigns, either sell it.
The result would be that some older members of the forum would cheat/defeat the actual purpose of the Merit system.

Indeed, the obvious answer to the poll is no.

[LoyceMobile]

It's even worse. Why is merit needed? To rank up. Why is ranking up important? For earning (bounty, signature,...).

I just want to wear a(nother) hat

[rhomelmabini]

Indeed, the obvious answer to the poll is no.

Yes answers will be persecuted as it will not be aligning to the norm.

I just want to wear a(nother) hat

How I wish I can get one someday.

[NeuroticFish]

It's even worse. Why is merit needed? To rank up. Why is ranking up important? For earning (bounty, signature,...).

I just want to wear a(nother) hat

you get plenty of Merit for your helpful posts even for the second account, and you named both accounts the same. You'll get your hat, don't worry.
You know that this was not about you, you don't pose a risk to the (Merit) system.

[TheMatrix101]

It's even worse. Why is merit needed? To rank up. Why is ranking up important? For earning (bounty, signature,...).

I just want to wear a(nother) hat

you get plenty of Merit for your helpful posts even for the second account, and you named both accounts the same. You'll get your hat, don't worry.
You know that this was not about you, you don't pose a risk to the (Merit) system.

False, you get plenty of merit for posting helpful posts in the RIGHT threads with the RIGHT people, i have seen plenty of posts that were exceedingly helpful and they gained 0 merit. some were understandable as they were much older posts however i have seen plenty of new helpful and informative posts in random threads that received no merit. i could easily heavily abuse the system with a simple dataminer and then go to the right threads and post long and informative posts to get loads of merit. how would you do it?
simple, the forum software is very simple, you notice that the post url is just a post ID and not a post name this means you could make a timed for loop in python
e.g.

Code:

import urllib2
from time import sleep
header = {'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/23.0.1271.64 Safari/537.11',
       'Accept': 'text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8',
       'Accept-Charset': 'ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3',
       'Accept-Encoding': 'none',
       'Accept-Language': 'en-US,en;q=0.8',
       'Connection': 'keep-alive'}

for i in range(10000): #goto every page between 1 and 10001
    urlbase = "https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic={}" #of this url
    request = urllib2.Request(urlbase, headers=header) #with this request
    response = urllib2.urlopen(request) #and download the response
    html = response.read() # and read the downloaded response
    print html

    sleep(5) # then sleep for five seconds so as to not trigger the ddos-protection blacklist

then you could easily parse the data for who merits the posts and how much they merited (i am not going to post the code for this because im not going to enable, if you know enough (literally that code is exactly seven minutes of google and writing (i dont code in python)) then you could run another script to check the profile of the users who merit the most and then view where that user mostly posts and output that to a file, spend 20 minutes researching the coin and post in their thread a detailed help system for new users and bam easy free merit. its a broken system that is crazy easy to abuse, in an hour of my time i could easily abuse the system to get tons of merit. of course id have to run the python script overnight to get enough data and parse it to be able to use that hour best but still, one day and you could have hundreds if not thousands of merit.

you don't pose a risk to the (Merit) system. Wink

This is not a threat, but i myself, someone who doesnt know a damn thing about python, could easily destroy the entire merit system by finishing that little script, integrating a database utilization, and releasing it for free. Bitcointalk would need a massive update to how the entire software runs in order to mitigate that, not just to the merit system.
first, they would have to remove the ability for you to see who merits you, then they would have to remove the ability to see what posts were merited, they would also have to change how the forum recognizes threads, as well as blocking you from seeing who has what amount of merit. blocking that specific header will do nothing, i know how to have things use random headers.
hell i dont even need access to the post, this url gives me everything i need and MORE

Code:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u={userID here}

If you truely think the merit system is not broken in any way, boy are you sorely mistaken

Matrix

[LoyceMobile]

Lol, you don't have to scrape threads to find merit, theymos publishes a data dump for it.

[NeuroticFish]

If you truely think the merit system is not broken in any way, boy are you sorely mistaken

I can't tell it's already broken or not. I can tell for sure it's not 100% functional yet. I have the feeling that many users that could send merit don't do that or do it insufficiently.

Lol, you don't have to scrape threads to find merit, theymos publishes a data dump for it.

There's also that website from Vod's signature, with all the data nicely structured for each user.

[Harlot]

Its like judging your own work. If this is how we grade ourselves during our thesis phase I would grade my 1 page work to 100 even if it is just the cover page. I don't see how this is any different from trading merits because one way or another your alts will send back some merits to your account/s. It is simply an abuse of the merit system in my own opinion. BTW MikeMike's reasoning is really bad 40 sMerits on an announcement? I wish I was the one announcing so that I could earn that easily.

[suchmoon]

i have seen plenty of posts that were exceedingly helpful and they gained 0 merit. some were understandable as they were much older posts however i have seen plenty of new helpful and informative posts in random threads that received no merit.

Then you should report those posts instead of cooking up plans to abuse the system: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093271.0

[VINSIN]

Ok, definetly merit system fucked the forum. People just merit posts in their favor (Vod). And there are so many posts that are so much worth the merit and everyone just avoids them just because they are newbies.

There is not enough merit on going on the network. This is what I believe.

Also I have seen dark green trusted member getting merit for 2 words posts. Those people should be banned. That's my opinion. I might be wrong

[o_e_l_e_o]

And there are so many posts that are so much worth the merit and everyone just avoids them just because they are newbies.

I hear this a lot, and I spend a lot of time looking for good newbie posts to merit, and usually come up empty handed. I must be looking in the wrong places. Please report all these good newbie posts that are worthy of merit to us merit sources so that we can merit them - [self-moderated] Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source.

Also I have seen dark green trusted member getting merit for 2 words posts. Those people should be banned. That's my opinion. I might be wrong

You are wrong. theymos has explicitly said that you are free to merit whoever you want for whatever you want:

Aside from that, if people complain about whether things deserve merit at all, then that's something to perhaps think about, but if you conclude that they're wrong, then that's that. You don't need to stress about it or defend yourself constantly.

[VINSIN]

And there are so many posts that are so much worth the merit and everyone just avoids them just because they are newbies.

I hear this a lot, and I spend a lot of time looking for good newbie posts to merit, and usually come up empty handed. I must be looking in the wrong places. Please report all these good newbie posts that are worthy of merit to us merit sources so that we can merit them - [self-moderated] Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source.

Also I have seen dark green trusted member getting merit for 2 words posts. Those people should be banned. That's my opinion. I might be wrong

You are wrong. theymos has explicitly said that you are free to merit whoever you want for whatever you want:

Aside from that, if people complain about whether things deserve merit at all, then that's something to perhaps think about, but if you conclude that they're wrong, then that's that. You don't need to stress about it or defend yourself constantly.

Well this is my opinion and I saw it a lot. And regarding newbies I am not going to spend my alcoholic free time to report random posts lol

[suchmoon]

Well this is my opinion and I saw it a lot. And regarding newbies I am not going to spend my alcoholic free time to report random posts lol

Then please don't spend your precious free time posting about it ever again. Thank you.

[TheMatrix101]

i have seen plenty of posts that were exceedingly helpful and they gained 0 merit. some were understandable as they were much older posts however i have seen plenty of new helpful and informative posts in random threads that received no merit.

Then you should report those posts instead of cooking up plans to abuse the system: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093271.0

I'm not cooking up plans to abuse the system dumbass is showing exactly how vulnerable the system is. if I wanted to abuse the system I could have easily done so the second it came out and i would have tens of thousands of merit. I dont plan on abusing the system, look at my merit, does it look like I'm abusing the system to you? piss off with your bullshit and libelous accusations. Again, if I wanted to abuse the system, i could have easily done so within hours of it being released and I still can because they don't care about making the system true. if I wanted to abuse the system why the fucking HELL would I post exactly how it could be done and why the HELL would i post how to fix it? if you really think I'm that stupid (which it's pretty obvious that's what you think) I still wouldn't report or give any feedback of the system. if I was abusing it I would say "NO! it's a great system! all you have to do is post helpful content!" instead of telling you exactly how broken and vulnerable it is. You know exactly my reason for posting the vulnerability and you try to shoot me in the foot with it with lies that you know are lies about me and my intent. that is the definition of libel. I seriously thought you had a moral compass and that your reports were just false negatives that you truly believed were honest. Well, maybe I was dumb about you.

I figured out your game, whether it is intentional or not, I see right through you.

Chill. this will be the last acknowledgment of your existence I make until you grow the hell up.


Maybe, just maybe, because of you I will complete that script. ill talk to the owners of the forum and give them my vuln list for merit, as a RESPONSIBLE person should, and if they don't fix it within three months (more than enough time to fix this issue) ill release the script

Matrix


EDIT: I have just messaged theymos

[TMAN]

Voted no, cos its SKAMTASTIC

[VINSIN]

Well this is my opinion and I saw it a lot. And regarding newbies I am not going to spend my alcoholic free time to report random posts lol

Then please don't spend your precious free time posting about it ever again. Thank you.

Why? It is my right to write about my showing more proves about it is not my obligation. Tho is a known fact and I have noticed it a lot of times. Just follow the post he gave merit over the last months (vod)

ps. I have nothing with this user but just I noticed this bad behavior.

[suchmoon]

I'm not cooking up plans to abuse the system dumbass is showing exactly how vulnerable the system is.

You're not showing anything new. There have been many newbies trying to butter up merit senders in what they thought would high-earning threads but that never works to any appreciable extent.

[Timelord2067]

I'm 100% against it. It's no different than sending trust to your alt, Ban evasion with a 2nd account, or any other way to cheat the system.

I can only echo the sentiments of others that I don't trust alts that have been given glowing trust (in any form) by themselves - it's as though they are preening themselves in front of a mirror saying "I trust you"... "oh stop it! I trust you too!"

[Harlot]

Ok, definetly merit system fucked the forum. People just merit posts in their favor (Vod). And there are so many posts that are so much worth the merit and everyone just avoids them just because they are newbies.

There is not enough merit on going on the network. This is what I believe.

Also I have seen dark green trusted member getting merit for 2 words posts. Those people should be banned. That's my opinion. I might be wrong

Maybe because you are an account seller that is why you are fucked up the most by the merit system. We all have different views about the merits system but the ones who are making the forum a business platform tends to express their opinions negatively. First of all there wouldn't be a merit system if most members here didn't abuse the previous activity only ranking system. But some abusive minds like you made it into a business so that is why we have the merit system now it is just a product of your own wrongdoing.