If I understood the premise correctly (you don't have to post in either of the threads to participate in the LTC part of the giveaway / low-effort bounty) then yes, that's completely fine.
That's good to know.
I understand the point you made at the start of this post, but considering how difficult it is to interpret the rules of Bitcointalk by regular users sometimes, and the fact that OP had clear intentions to give out bitcoin by escrowing the coins, could he be pardoned and have the permanent ban changed to a 2-week temp ban instead? His original thread would have to be re-written to be in line with the rules, either the way I explained in my previous post, or any other way that is better and/or more suitable.
Each ban is reviewed case-by-case and the decisions the staff make in this particular case don't need to have repercussions on other similar cases just like unbanning a user who copy/pasted wont make all copy/pasters unbanned.
For the record, I have not participated in the campaign by OP nor do I know him. Just in case someone asks. But I don't think that with him gone this community will either be safer, cleaner or a better place.
The ban isn't permanent - it is (or was; see end of post) 30 days.
-quote snip-
Although I am still hitting my head against the wall to understand mprep's interpretation, the topic could just move to altcoin (bounty) section since it's obvious that intention of OP was not promoting LTC but paying in LTC (low value amount to avoid dust payment) and BTC to perform a task which is to tweet Elon.
How would one determine if the task is not substantial. Those who will get paid in LTC was asked to make a certain tweet which was already given but those who will be paid in BTC was ask to make their own tweet, but it has to go with the original idea of OP.
This is where it gets even worse. Initially OP had plan to pay everyone using BTC. But when I suggested him that he should consider paying the small amount using an ALT (possibly I suggested LTC) to avoid dust output of BTC he agreed. Then I revised the terms and give him the revised terms to update his original post. With years of experience if my understanding of rule is not clear then how would we expect a user like OP (who is very new to this forum) will understand this special rule correctly. In fact, this rule is becoming confusing as we speak. If we focus on only the responses of this topic we will see except mprep and maybe PN7, rest of us are thinking the thread was just fine and actually protesting the action that mprep has taken.
How would you now apply the rule now when it's very clear that OP's intension was modified by me, and he reposted the topic after taking my suggestion. If it really is a bannable offence (let's say all of us are wrong but only mprep's interpretation is right) then does OP deserve ban, or it should be me?
The intention is irrelevant - the task and payment method is what's at fault. I could say that I'm paying X amount of BTC in coin Y and that'd still count as incentivizing posting in exchange for altcoins since all you are doing is changing the way you measure the amount of coin Y. As for what task is considered substantial, that has to be assessed on a case-by case basis. I listed all the most common cases in the pinned thread in Bounties (Altcoins) of what's allowed and what's not but in situations where those examples don't apply, it's up to the mod to decide whether the bounty is something that's dodging (intentionally or otherwise) the spirit of the "no on-forum altcoin giveaways" rule or is it something that no longer resembles a giveaway in the amount of effort the participant has to undergo. As for who's at fault, the onus on complying with the rules falls on the person making the decision to give away altcoins. Obviously, if such an interpretation is being maliciously abused to run altcoin giveaways with impunity while burning random fall guys, the same punishment may be applied to the person "suggesting" the idea (though this far from what has happened here).
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I am just wondering why low-effort and incentivized posting is allowed for bitcoin giveaways. Those are still spam posts even though bitcoin is the reward.
Cause only on-forum
altcoin giveaways are prohibited as per forum policy. As to why, I can't look into theymos's head and tell definitively but if I had to guess it's a mix of (1) the forum being
BitcoinTalk, (2) any amount of BTC given away being worth
something as opposed to a coin that you could create out of thin air, (3) the policy being consistent (no exceptions for specific altcoins) and (4) altcoin giveaways in the past generating tons of spam both directly (large number of low value threads and posts) and indirectly (if a user who's just there for the giveaways needs to reach a certain rank, he's rather likely to just spam the forum till he reaches it).
I've also seen many casinos give away small amounts of Bitcoin credited to the user's account. Those amounts are often lower than the withdrawal fees, and those giveaways don't get banned.
One could argue this isn't Bitcoin, but a token on a website. I can't say this is better than paying LTC on-chain.
You could argue that but crediting a gambling site's balance with BTC is still a promise to give BTC (essentially sending funds to a custodial wallet). Now, there's an entire discussion on custodial wallets and coin ownership to be had there ("not your keys, not your coins" etc, etc), but the common-sense perceived obligation on the part of the custodian is that the wallet owner has ownership over what's stated in said wallet (both in terms of the type of coin and amount). As can be seen from past events, that obligation isn't always honored but the forum doesn't moderate scams.
However, when it comes to LTC, you have to keep in mind that the forum considers it to be at the same level as No-Name-Coin that the dev could print billions of at no cost. So while most forum users would agree that LTC has a perceptible cost to acquire, there is no "established altcoin giveaways are good tho" rule for the sake of consistency and altcoins being second fiddle to the coin the forum was created for. This could change in the future (if theymos decides so) but I have no reason to believe anything of sort applies here.
Having read through all the arguments / points of view and (as I've mentioned) being on the fence myself about reducing the ban duration to 14 days, I've realized there's quite a bit of confusion and lack of information about this particular aspect of the "no on-forum altcoin giveaways" rule outside the altcoin sections. There's a reason I've started the unnoficial list of rules thread back in 2014 - information about how a regular user should behave was scarce and scattered all around the forum. So while I still believe that the banned user in question broke a number of rules by starting that thread, I no longer think the punishment fits the offense. Had the user ran a giveaway promoting a business, one could expect a much higher degree of professionalism and thus more thorough due diligence. However, since the user was just someone who felt like giving away BTC in the first place, considering the lack of a sticky in Games and Rounds I think this warrants a more lenient, albeit still rather strict treatment.
Reduced ban duration to 14 days minus time already being banned.
