Shouldn't Theymos act on Bounty Managers Now

[o_e_l_e_o]

Rules or no rules, signature or no signature,  spam and unhealthy poster would still make there ill sort of post.  Even some that can not get one merit to rank up to the level of wearing a signature still constantly make redundant post.

This is true, but the problem is better than it was. This thread from LoyceV tracks the changes: The new rule (1 Merit for Jr. Member) is already reducing spam.

Essentially, changing the rules to require 1 earned merit to display a signature, and therefore knocking thousands of users out of their signature campaign, reduced the number of posts on the forum by two thirds. Even accepting there would have been some compounding factors such as the bear market, this is still a huge number and goes to show how many people are only posting because of their signature.

More users regularly reporting is only a good thing, but it will never overcome the mountain of spamming unless something is done about the root cause, which is bounty campaigns.

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[btcsmlcmnr]

Essentially, changing the rules to require 1 earned merit to display a signature, and therefore knocking thousands of users out of their signature campaign, reduced the number of posts on the forum by two thirds.

What happen if same requirements on minimum earned merits to display signatures, without demotions? I meant for each rank, users in that reach have to earned a minimum number of merits to be able to display their signatures. Demotions might cause mad situation, so such requirements to have rights of displaying signatures might be a good alternative for demotion. For example:
- Junior Member:  remains 1 as of demotion in September last year.
- Member: 15 earned merits
- Full Member: 25 earned merits
- Senior Members: 50 earned merits.
- Hero Member: 100 earned merits
- Legendary: 200 earned merits.

[o_e_l_e_o]

-snip-

In my opinion it's a good idea, and one I have suggested before. I don't think the requirements even need to be as high as you have made them - most spammers are unable to earn a single merit, let alone 200. However, users can and do buy or trade merits, and use one grandfathered account to rank up many alts. With that in mind, I would simply change it to require 10 earned merit, regardless of rank, before being allowed a signature.

[Pmalek]

Agree, I'm just referring that it was discussed long ago but don't have any output that has been done by our admins. I also liked to see how will admins set regulations to bounty managers because some of them are receiving huge payments just to fool the participants. I've been scammed a lot of times in a project and BMs are included in that action. ]

If you got scammed make a thread in the Scam Accusation section with appropriate proof and DT members will tag the bounty manager. Also make sure that you check the trust rating of the bounty manager prior to applying for his bounty. I would be careful of bounty managers who are new to the forums and have just created their accounts, with a bought copper membership, running a bounty campaign. 

Unfortunately it's a bit too much to expect theymos to know everything about the ICOs or bounties that get posted here. And users only get tagged and not banned for scams so everyone has to decide for himself what to take part in.

[posi]

I was Proposed guidelines for bounty managers, but unfortunately I haven't got any answer from admin. Likely admin don't want to moderate bounty section. I believe there should be something that would drive bounty managers on right way. BM are living now on freedom forum and they are doing whatever they want. I don't think admin will do something for bounty mangers and perhaps he left it for trust system .   

I agree with the guidelines proposal you created but I think there should also be an inclusion of penalty for project that don't pay bounty hunters for the tasks and time they spent.

[libert19]

The altcoin bounty threads are now messy.

User authentication posts, social reports every week — these threads are bound to be messy. What kind of knowledge one would seek in a bounty thread, anyway?

[r1s2g3]

Essentially, changing the rules to require 1 earned merit to display a signature, and therefore knocking thousands of users out of their signature campaign, reduced the number of posts on the forum by two thirds.

What happen if same requirements on minimum earned merits to display signatures, without demotions? I meant for each rank, users in that reach have to earned a minimum number of merits to be able to display their signatures. Demotions might cause mad situation, so such requirements to have rights of displaying signatures might be a good alternative for demotion. For example:
- Junior Member:  remains 1 as of demotion in September last year.
- Member: 15 earned merits
- Full Member: 25 earned merits
- Senior Members: 50 earned merits.
- Hero Member: 100 earned merits
- Legendary: 200 earned merits.

You mean no signature or a demoted signature(until you earn the required Merit) If there is no signature then legendary will envy of senoir who is able to get display signature by just earning 50 merit while legendary left without signature even after earning 100 merits

[mirakal]

Essentially, changing the rules to require 1 earned merit to display a signature, and therefore knocking thousands of users out of their signature campaign, reduced the number of posts on the forum by two thirds.

What happen if same requirements on minimum earned merits to display signatures, without demotions? I meant for each rank, users in that reach have to earned a minimum number of merits to be able to display their signatures. Demotions might cause mad situation, so such requirements to have rights of displaying signatures might be a good alternative for demotion. For example:
- Junior Member:  remains 1 as of demotion in September last year.
- Member: 15 earned merits
- Full Member: 25 earned merits
- Senior Members: 50 earned merits.
- Hero Member: 100 earned merits
- Legendary: 200 earned merits.

You mean no signature or a demoted signature(until you earn the required Merit) If there is no signature then legendary will envy of senoir who is able to get display signature by just earning 50 merit while legendary left without signature even after earning 100 merits

IMHO, not a good suggestion, you can't overrule the old rules with the new one.
Members who have a higher rank in the forum now earn it because of their loyalty, and we have to thank especially the Legendary that they stayed in this forum.

I am also afraid that there will be merit selling and merit farming with that rules being followed.
In addition, merit should not be the major basis as on our standing in the forum as I have seen a lot of good posters that posts were not merited.
Trust either cannot also be a major basis, as one can abuse the trust, but loyalty cannot be bought.

[Pmalek]

I agree with the guidelines proposal you created but I think there should also be an inclusion of penalty for project that don't pay bounty hunters for the tasks and time they spent.

I don't think they would care about that. If a project makes a bounty with the intention to cheat their bounty hunters they wouldn't be interested in the consequences. Considering that these projects usually only pay after a successful ICO, and not on a weekly basis, they would have already gathered enough funds and the ICO is over so posting proof that they are scammers and expecting a punishment wouldn't change anything. They already got what they wanted.

The only way to get some regulation in the bounty and ICO world would be enforce these campaigns to pay in a weekly basis (like BTC sig campaigns). There is still the risk of getting a bag of worthless tokens.
Or, force them to pay in BTC. It has been suggested many times before and it is certainly not on top of the admins to-do list.     

[o_e_l_e_o]

Members who have a higher rank in the forum now earn it because of their loyalty, and we have to thank especially the Legendary that they stayed in this forum.

I don't want to de-rank anyone. I agree that that would be unfair. I only want to remove signature privileges until you have earned 10 merit. That is not a difficult task for anyone who isn't a spammer.

I am also afraid that there will be merit selling and merit farming with that rules being followed.

There already is. A limit of 1 merit is too low because it is trivial to buy a single merit. Buying 10 merit is much more difficult and will mean the supply of merits being sold dries up much more quickly.

In addition, merit should not be the major basis as on our standing in the forum as I have seen a lot of good posters that posts were not merited.

Link to these good posts in this thread and they will be merited: [self-moderated] Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source

[Mpamaegbu]

I don't want to de-rank anyone. I agree that that would be unfair. I only want to remove signature privileges until you have earned 10 merit. That is not a difficult task for anyone who isn't a spammer.

Your suggestion, if implemented will also look chaotic like de-ranking. The forum will run amok and the Meta section will go up with petitions. We saw a little of that during the "1 merit" requirement for ranking up Jnr Members. Again, that someone doesn't get his posts merited doesn't mean the poster is a shitposter/spammer. It could (rightly so) that he isn't lucky getting them merited. I have seen great posts which aren't merited lot here.

[DdmrDdmr]

<...>I don't want to de-rank anyone. I agree that that would be unfair. I only want to remove signature privileges until you have earned 10 merit. That is not a difficult task for anyone who isn't a spammer.<...>

There’s also a number game behind the scenes to consider. Delimiting Campaigns by earned merits, whilst conceptually interesting, renders poor numbers to cover all currently running campaigns as soon as we start increasing the threshold.

If we take a look at how many merits people have earned, the numbers as of last Friday look like this:

1 earned merit or above: 28.339 accounts
2 earned merit or above: 17.419 accounts
3 earned merit or above: 13.606 accounts
4 earned merit or above: 11.888 accounts
5 earned merit or above: 10.739 accounts
10 earned merit or above: 7.503 accounts
 
Delimiting campaign signatures to 10 earned merits or above leaves only 7.503 currently qualified accounts that could take part. Likely small for all current campaigns, which could have some benefits on the other hand both overall and individually for those participating, but may cause a shortage of candidates and have an impact on the number of running campaigns.

Edit: I don't see it as a bad thing either, but likely there is a likely delicate equilibrium to keep, and a shortage of signature candidates may cause more than a ripple in that equilibrium.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Delimiting campaign signatures to 10 earned merits or above leaves only 7.503 currently qualified accounts that could take part. Likely small for all current campaigns, which could have some benefits on the other hand both overall and individually for those participating, but may cause a shortage of candidates and have an impact on the number of running campaigns.

I don't see that necessarily as a bad thing. The majority of running signature campaigns are for either trash or scams. When you can pay participants at no cost to yourselves from a token you've just printed out of thin air, then there is no requirement to either have a solid business plan or select good posters to maximize your advertising. If the majority of these scammy token/altcoin campaigns ended up struggling to recruit as many people as they want, then so be it. The campaigns paying in bitcoin for real services and business will continue to have no issue.

Your numbers are interesting. The massive drop between 1 and 2 merits, compared to the much smaller drops between 2-3, 3-4, and 4-5, suggests that several thousand accounts have bought or traded for a single merit. Even an increase to 5 would probably be sufficient.

[El duderino_]

I don't want to de-rank anyone. I agree that that would be unfair. I only want to remove signature privileges until you have earned 10 merit. That is not a difficult task for anyone who isn't a spammer.

Your suggestion, if implemented will also look chaotic like de-ranking. The forum will run amok and the Meta section will go up with petitions. We saw a little of that during the "1 merit" requirement for ranking up Jnr Members. Again, that someone doesn't get his posts merited doesn't mean the poster is a shitposter/spammer. It could (rightly so) that he isn't lucky getting them merited. I have seen great posts which aren't merited lot here.

Indeed but posters with tons of posts and never a single merit, stands a bit for sh*tposter or spammer, and indeed I would think earning 10 merit isn't bad to exclude more members with only intentions to sigh campaign and spam the place...

Most of the times people with interest in specific sections and making good or contributing posts will be noticed and be merited, i'm sure of that.

[roosbit]

Now that stringent measures are being put in place to eradicate plagiarism and spamming through ban and all that,

Plag busting isn't something new, and everyone that takes their time to read the rules know's the price to pay for this >>>BAN

will it not also be time for Theymos or the admins to put in place measures to checkmate Bounty Managers on the way they run their bounties? I mean shouldn't these mangers become strict (or be forced to) on crosschecking the post habits of their participants?

Not to defend anyone or anything but Most if not all bitcoin signatures at the moment have atleast reputable campaign managers that cross examine users post history before accepting new participants unless in a few cases were a company tries to manage it's own campaign with their hand picked manger...otherwise if your post history is bad you won't get into that campaign!

The altcoin bounty threads are now messy. What can be done to make it better?

Maybe the problem lies in the companies that are seeking for bounty managers services away from the forum were they get to engage newbies for the job and the end result is everybodies guess....spam but with the merit system it counters for better posting.

[TMAN]

Personally I think we should be tagging the shit managers, they are a bigger problem than the shitposters now

[stompix]

Delimiting campaign signatures to 10 earned merits or above leaves only 7.503 currently qualified accounts that could take part. Likely small for all current campaigns, which could have some benefits on the other hand both overall and individually for those participating, but may cause a shortage of candidates and have an impact on the number of running campaigns.

Edit: I don't see it as a bad thing either, but likely there is a likely delicate equilibrium to keep, and a shortage of signature candidates may cause more than a ripple in that equilibrium.

I consider 7500 as being a big enough number, and you have to take into account that a lot of people will slowly earn this in the future as they will get motivated to at least "earn" the merit.
Let's exclude 1/3, 2500 (and I think I'm pretty generous here) for the older members who don't give a damn about sigs, old accounts no longer active and you still get enough members for 100 campaigns with 50 participants.

According to this: we currently have 18 campaign running. Haven't' checked them all but I doubt they have more than 50 participants on average.

Oh, and obviously I don't care for ico/bounties sigs.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>According to this: we currently have 18 campaign running. Haven't' checked them all but I doubt they have more than 50 participants on average.

Oh, and obviously I don't care for ico/bounties sigs.

Those BTC paying campaigns would currently be covered, and they also tend to require a minimum amount of Merits per se.

What would not be covered are all those other signatures that pay in their own token. Much as we may like this fact (lack of mass candidates for ICO signatures), ICO campaigns are a large part of the current signature ecosystem. Unless the forum wants to play a hand here through means that have been suggested before (i.e. only accept BTC paying campaigns), the numbers would not add-up for them with the current volume of overall campaigns (plenty of smiles here I guess …).

[stompix]

What would not be covered are all those other signatures that pay in their own token. Much as we may like this fact (lack of mass candidates for ICO signatures), ICO campaigns are a large part of the current signature ecosystem. Unless the forum wants to play a hand here through means that have been suggested before (i.e. only accept BTC paying campaigns), the numbers would not add-up for them with the current volume of overall campaigns (plenty of smiles here I guess …).

I don't care much about those ICOs and most of them end up paying their "workers" useless tokens.
That "ecosystem" needs to be cleaned and invasive species exterminated
Overall a lack of people able to display a sig might end just like in the real economy, higher wage for those qualified, employers must prove they can pay you, better rates...and a lot of those who don't qualify will try to earn some merits to join the club.

I don't know if it's possible to find out, but would be interesting to know how many active users carry a hyperlink signature right now.

[suchmoon]

I don't know if it's possible to find out, but would be interesting to know how many active users carry a hyperlink signature right now.

Among ~32k users who posted at least once in the last 30 days ~5300 have "http://" or "https://" in their signature.