Newbie accounts should not be allowed to post in certain forums.

[daniel244king]

Bad actors are using newbie account to spread FUD, lies, and disinformation in certain forums.

There are forums where newbies should not be allowed to post; forums where it is expected for them to have more experience levels before they can contribute anything.

One example of such forums is the speculation forums.  As a newbie, they don't have enough knowledge or experience in crypto to speculate.

As they gain more experience in crypto and become full members of the bitcointalk forum, then let them speculate.

Here is an example of Bad Actors spreading Lies and FUD in speculation:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5154653.0

There may be other forums besides speculation where newbie accounts are being used maliciously.
[Note: I have nothing to do with the project listed above.  It is just an example.  I posted this in other forums but was told it belongs here in META.  Please excuse the other posts.]

IF YOU KNOW OF OTHER FORUMS WHERE NEWBIES ARE ABUSING THEIR ACCOUNTS PLEASE POST EXAMPLES BELOW:

[LoyceV]

Bad actors are using newbie account to spread FUD, lies, and disinformation in certain forums.

As much as I dislike that, it's not against the rules.

It's very unlikely theymos wants to further restrict Newbies:

The things on the forum which encourage spam are allowed mainly because it's part of the forum's mission to be as free as possible.
~snip~

Limiting newbie participation is very harmful for a community. Newbie jail will never return: I consider the newbie-jail period to have been extremely damaging to the forum. When barriers to participation are too high, then the best people often just won't go to the trouble of joining, and the people who are willing to jump through the hoops are often people who aren't good for the community: people with nothing better to do, scammers, get-rick-quickers, etc. Having a permanent newbie jail policy would improve things a lot in the short-term, but would end up being a fatal poison to the community.

[daniel244king]

Bad actors are using newbie account to spread FUD, lies, and disinformation in certain forums.

As much as I dislike that, it's not against the rules.

It's very unlikely theymos wants to further restrict Newbies:

The things on the forum which encourage spam are allowed mainly because it's part of the forum's mission to be as free as possible.
~snip~

Limiting newbie participation is very harmful for a community. Newbie jail will never return: I consider the newbie-jail period to have been extremely damaging to the forum. When barriers to participation are too high, then the best people often just won't go to the trouble of joining, and the people who are willing to jump through the hoops are often people who aren't good for the community: people with nothing better to do, scammers, get-rick-quickers, etc. Having a permanent newbie jail policy would improve things a lot in the short-term, but would end up being a fatal poison to the community.

I don't mean something as drastic as a newbie jail or anything like that.  I am just saying certain forums need to require a little higher membership levels before allowing newbies to post.  Just to stop the "instant accounts" used for FUD and spam.

[Csmiami]

One example of such forums is the speculation forums.  As a newbie, they don't have enough knowledge or experience in crypto to speculate.

Something is telling me that if they are speculating at the speculation board..... they are doing something right. Even if what they post makes no sense, the market is rather unpredictable and sometimes their gut may be true.

Besides, having a newbie rank does not mean that the person behind it has not been around reading and informing about the market, the ecosystem and other stuff; it just shows the the account has been recently created.

IF YOU KNOW OF OTHER FORUMS WHERE NEWBIES ARE ABUSING THEIR ACCOUNTS PLEASE POST EXAMPLES BELOW:

Sure thing, in Lending. But it's usually funny to see how far they are willing to go to sell you a lie

[The Sceptical Chymist]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5154653.0

It might be better if you quoted the FUD posts here instead of linking to the whole thread--I don't feel like reading through it to determine what might be a lie or misinformation, and I might not even know for sure anyway. 

I'll tell you, a lot of newbies use Speculation to drop multiple shitposts, because you don't have to write anything profound (or even coherent) in that section.  There's tons of nonsense and garbage posts, because the shitposters know they're not likely to have them deleted by the mods.  It's pretty loose as far as moderation goes.  Best thing you could do is to make a self-moderated thread, and don't think twice about doing so.  That way you can just nuke the idiotic crap.

It's very unlikely theymos wants to further restrict Newbies:

No he doesn't, and that's fine by me.  That's what self-moderation is for.  They should be allowed to participate in any thread, but that doesn't mean if the OP is serious about his thread he shouldn't be allowed to nuke garbage.  Go for it, OP.

[daniel244king]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5154653.0

It might be better if you quoted the FUD posts here instead of linking to the whole thread--I don't feel like reading through it to determine what might be a lie or misinformation, and I might not even know for sure anyway. 

I'll tell you, a lot of newbies use Speculation to drop multiple shitposts, because you don't have to write anything profound (or even coherent) in that section.  There's tons of nonsense and garbage posts, because the shitposters know they're not likely to have them deleted by the mods.  It's pretty loose as far as moderation goes.  Best thing you could do is to make a self-moderated thread, and don't think twice about doing so.  That way you can just nuke the idiotic crap.

It's very unlikely theymos wants to further restrict Newbies:

No he doesn't, and that's fine by me.  That's what self-moderation is for.  They should be allowed to participate in any thread, but that doesn't mean if the OP is serious about his thread he shouldn't be allowed to nuke garbage.  Go for it, OP.

I used that example because the FUD is kinda hard to miss (just scroll down a little on the first page and you will see obvious FUD in LARGE FONT RED CAPS!  It is so obvious FUD that the initial responses from other users are claims of FUD from the newbie accounts.  It's pretty obvious and can't be missed.

I wish I could self-moderate but I have never seen that option on creating a new topic.  Can someone show me how to make a self-moderating post?

[Csmiami]

I wish I could self-moderate but I have never seen that option on creating a new topic.  Can someone show me how to make a self-moderating post?

When creating the topic click "Additional Options...." and check the "Self-moderate" box

[hilariousetc]

Theymos is very unlikely to implement anything that is overly restrictive to newbies. All it does is punish/restrict genuine newbies whilst the determined trolls would just bare the obstacles and jump through whatever hoops you put in front of them. If you're having issues with newbies (or other users) it's best to self-moderate your threads and mod them however you see fit. I think there should be more self-moderate options though and I have suggested as such in the past and one feature where you could prohibit/bad certain users and even user groups from even posting in your threads.

[Coyster]

Restricting newbies is something theymos wouldn't do, at least not again. And I quite agree with him on that because to some degree it's not only the newbie account spreading the said FUD, lies and disinformation on some sections of the forum, a percentage of every rank is also guilty of such offense.
So newbie jail is a big no,its either total abstinence of that section or self mod your thread.

[daniel244king]

I wish I could self-moderate but I have never seen that option on creating a new topic.  Can someone show me how to make a self-moderating post?

When creating the topic click "Additional Options...." and check the "Self-moderate" box

Ohhh It's at the bottom.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!

[Last of the V8s]

Yeah don't limit that newbie - looks like he's doing God's work.
Locked, self-mod ANN thread because spam. Riiight

[xolxol]

1. satoshi would disagree
2. theymos would disagree

because people wont understand the basics if those who were here wont allow it.blockchain needs social awareness,people needs to educate how blockchain works.

[DdmrDdmr]

<...>

Talking about posting shoulds and shouldn’ts, you’ve now got three identical running threads, with the same OP content in them, on three different sections. Besides this thread, you’ve also got:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5155752.msg51513461#msg51513461
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5155738.msg51513082#msg51513082

One would suffice, and you can move it if you placed it in the wrong board. It’s a bit of a mess having three running threads with the same objective and content, with answers in three different sections. At least I’d say you should lock the other two.

[daniel244king]

<...>

Talking about posting shoulds and shouldn’ts, you’ve now got three identical running threads, with the same OP content in them, on three different sections. Besides this thread, you’ve also got:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5155752.msg51513461#msg51513461
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5155738.msg51513082#msg51513082

One would suffice, and you can move it if you placed it in the wrong board. It’s a bit of a mess having three running threads with the same objective and content, with answers in three different sections. At least I’d say you should lock the other two.

I addressed this in the Title Post.

Again I apologize. I did not know where to put my original post until someone kindly showed me where it needed to go.  

I noted in the other posts that the thread was moved here then abandoned them.  

The moderators should delete the old posts.

I admit I didn't think to lock them.  I will now.  Thank you.

[daniel244king]

I can't find the other posts, so I guess the mods deleted them already. 

[thd26bct]

It's very unlikely theymos wants to further restrict Newbies:
----snip-----

Not only this post in the forum, theymos explains more about his approach for the forum in Reddit. The forum is a centralized one, but admin has core approach to keep it as a free place to discuss for all, at least with some minimum restrictions and systems, to minimize spamming and scamming. Theymos admits that things become more complicated when bitcointalk.org become bigger over years, and it is hard to satisfy all users in the forum. However, he will keep giving people free rights to express their ideas, just under minimum rules and restrictions. If they don't agree with rules, or agree then violate rules, they should leave the forum and will be punished with some sort of punishments (temp / perm / signature bans)

Primarily, it's just that freedom + size = mess, and with bitcointalk.org I've chosen to keep freedom about as high as possible, for example allowing paid signature ads, poor English, micro-earning services which often attract a spammy crowd, etc. Banning these things (and other noise-generating factors) would be easily possible, and would immediately lead to a cleaner environment, but it'd also be a less free environment. IMO there are enough highly-controlled platforms around, and I'd prefer to try maximizing the freedom axis. (Maximizing freedom on the forum was a policy started by Satoshi when he was an admin, BTW, though it was years after he left before the forum became large enough for freedom to actually come in conflict with signal much.)

Bitcointalk.org is under active development on two parallel paths:

First, although the outward appearance hasn't changed much at all since 2010, I have made tons of changes to the code, including many features. About a year ago for example I added the Merit system, which has improved signal-to-noise quite a bit, by means of changing incentives.

Second, a completely new software platform has long been in development. This software is open source, can be run now, and an instance of it is available for example at https://www.cryptos-currencies.com/ . But I don't think that it's quite complete enough to migrate bitcointalk.org to it yet.

On both development paths, we try to tackle signal-vs-noise by methods such as categorizing posts better, improving incentives, trying to create smaller sub-communities, etc., but not via restriction, if at all possible.

While I don't claim to have nearly maximized the signal-to-noise which might be possible even given a high degree of freedom, bitcointalk.org is pretty anarchic, and it will always be so. (Though note that some sections are much better than others.) If that doesn't appeal to you, then you should use a different site. Smaller communities, like IRC channels and similar, can be both free and have a high signal-to-noise ratio. This was bitcointalk.org in 2010-2013, but it's now too large. You can also have large communities that are more strictly moderated, like /r/Bitcoin.

[actmyname]

If your ideas can't stand above FUD then there's something missing.
If you need to limit freedom of speech then there's something missing.
If you need to censor ideas no matter how idiotic then there's something missing.If a user is truly swayed that easily, then I don't like the idea of having them be interested in an ICO/token/uselessCoin37 to which they can be dissuaded from entering just as easily.

[Joel_Jantsen]

1. satoshi would disagree
2. theymos would disagree

because people wont understand the basics if those who were here wont allow it.blockchain needs social awareness,people needs to educate how blockchain works.

There are literally hundred's of blogs online which teach you bitcoin/Blockchain from the basics. Even though the forum has a good response for newbie related questions but it isn't an ideal place to start learning about bitcoins. Most of the accounts created here are to either make money out of signatures or providing crypto related services. You will encounter very fewer threads by newbie accounts that need help understanding bitcoins. Infact, some of the members have spent years here doing signature campaigns and what not but they have no clue what a real bitcoin wallet is.

[rhomelmabini]

I guess you don't have to discriminate all newbie accounts. There are some rare scenario that those accounts are sometimes handled by knowledgeable on the industry, if you limit newbie not just on speculation board and onto others as well I guess that's stereotyping them. We can't restrict those who do FUD as that's what they do you can ignore them if you want.

[thd26bct]

I guess you don't have to discriminate all newbie accounts. There are some rare scenario that those accounts are sometimes handled by knowledgeable on the industry, if you limit newbie not just on speculation board and onto others as well I guess that's stereotyping them. We can't restrict those who do FUD as that's what they do you can ignore them if you want.

At least the head admin does not have intention to reimplement Newbie Jail, and has not shown any signal that he will change this approach.
Disabling the right to wear signature of newbies, and restrict newbies whom can not earn a single merit to become Junior Members are good strategy to control them, and somehow motivate them to contribute more in the forum (to receive at least a single merits, before start to spam again   ). There are some other contributions from forum community, such as Spambuster club, and plagiabot, are also helpful to eliminate Newbie-spammers, whom are too lazy and dumb.