Should every newbie have a limit in the bounty of social media?

[_BlackStar]

Almost every day tens to hundreds of new accounts are created for various purposes. I probably wouldn't be too skeptical to think that most of those accounts are created to join social media bounty like Facebook Twitter and so on. Not a few of them are also cheaters so it will only add to the burden on the cheater hunters to find them every time.

I'm just thinking of a solution for this and maybe it will reduce the burden for cheater hunters if the manager can implement the rules of no longer accepting newbie accounts for every bounty that exists. So if indeed admin are not enforcing this rule in forum and putting it in unofficial rules then I think every manager should consider this suggestion if they really care about bounty cheater prevention.

Is this possible for most top managers?


Taking some bounties as an example, are you sure all the newbie accounts there are not owned by the same person or group of people?

1. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5363393.0
2. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5357289.0
3. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5358513.0
4. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5359083.0
5. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5360169.0

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[The Sceptical Chymist]

if the manager can implement the rules of no longer accepting newbie accounts for every bounty that exists.

What precisely are you suggesting here, that bounties don't accept members of Newbie rank?  At all?  Or are you proposing that they limit the number that they accept?

I have signatures and avatars on ignore, so I can never tell who's in a bounty/campaign unless they have something written in their personal message space.  Are Newbies even allowed to participate in bounties?  I thought Jr. Member was the lowest rank that could participate.  Either way, I doubt that bounty managers (most of them, anyway) care much about keeping the forum clean, so this suggestion will just probably be ignored and forgotten about.  That's the sad truth, OP.

Edit: OP added those thread links while I was writing my post.  I clicked on the first three, and it looks like only Jr. Members and above can participate in the bitcointalk part of those bounties, which is good except that it doesn't take much to rank up from Newbie.  But who knows how many alt accounts there are in any of those bounties?  Probably tons of them, but it's been a problem for a long time and nobody seems inclined to do much about it.

[_BlackStar]

I might expect to be restricted by the manager, but it would be nice if the manager accepted nothing and excluded all newbie from any campaign. But I'm sure 99% of managers probably won't agree and that will only lower applicants. I say this so that newbie realize that interacting with other users is important and not a totality to make money so that we no longer find them only posting 100% reports from the time they first log in to the forum until the account is broken.

[Rikafip]

Reality is that bounty managers need those newbies joining in, even though we all know that they are probably alt accounts. They probably promise some numbers to their clients and without alt accounts it probably wouldn't be possible to reach needed numbers.

So no, I don't see that restriction being applied any time soon, or at least not by majority of bounty managers.

[isaac_clarke22]

~

If you suspect that a user is cheating with alts, just post it in this thread and just contact the CM/BM handling the campaign regarding the "cheating issue".

Every CM/BM have their own ways of handling their own campaign, OP.
Your suggestion could be read or considered if given a chance, but it is still up to the CMs/BMs themselves whether they would enforce your suggestion or not.

[Findingnemo]

I rarely visit bounties section but in the past there are some strict rules even for the social media campaign which is like atleast jr.member to join or the newbie account of certain age not a complete new account won't get accepted and also google forms were used for reporting the links. I don't think forum will restrict them and its the job of manager to restrict them if they feel the bounty become unmanageable but now they allows people to join so the workload is under control for them.

[_BlackStar]

Reality is that bounty managers need those newbies joining in, even though we all know that they are probably alt accounts. They probably promise some numbers to their clients and without alt accounts it probably wouldn't be possible to reach needed numbers.

So no, I don't see that restriction being applied any time soon, or at least not by majority of bounty managers.

Never know if it's justifiable or not. But maybe I don't agree with that way because generally cheaters will be tagged by dt members.

~

If you suspect that a user is cheating with alts, just post it in this thread and just contact the CM/BM handling the campaign regarding the "cheating issue".

Every CM/BM have their own ways of handling their own campaign, OP.
Your suggestion could be read or considered if given a chance, but it is still up to the CMs/BMs themselves whether they would enforce your suggestion or not.

isaac_clarke22, I do not have expertise in that field and I do not yet have the ability to identify it. Someone will probably teach me soon after this.

[JohnBitCo]

Taking some bounties as an example, are you sure all the newbie accounts there are not owned by the same person or group of people?

Newbies account can't take participation in signature campaigns. They can only join social media bounty like FB, twitter articles, youtube etc.
Clever managers do have a check and can identify the duplicates but sometimes newbies can get away with it and some might have fake identities in the social media to abuse the bounty. They can do the same with Jr. member too but it would be more difficult.

Its hard to create a rule a that Newbie won't be accepted because some managers will still allow and also many bounties have no managers at all. They are run by the project team themselves.

[skarais]

It would be hard to see managers considering the OP's suggestion of whether to ban or limit the number of participant on the social media bounty program. I've found some managers limit the number of participant on signature bounty as well as the number of participant on social media program, this will be very useful to prevent a lot of abuse. But if you want all maintainers to limit the number of participant, especially social media program, I'm pretty sure that won't happen. I'm not sure if this suggestion has been around before, but I think it will affect anything.

[Bitcoin_Arena]

Admins putting more restrictions on newbie accounts? I doubt if that will happen. At least not anytime soon.

Here is one of the famous quotes by Theymos in regard to restricting newbie accounts, and I personally tend to agree with him. If you restrict newbie accounts so much, expect a forum that will have a short life. Most old members who left the forum won't be coming back.

Right, I don't care about making money from the forum personally. (I've actually thought about getting rid of the forum ads, since it's often a big headache and the forum has enough reserves for a long time, but operating at a significant loss while there's money basically just sitting on the table feels wrong, even if the level of loss is sustainable for quite a while.)

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. Eg. banning bounties would undoubtedly reduce spam, but that'd be destroying an entire economy/population/culture which has been able to develop due to the forum's freedom. I am willing to take this sort of action, but only as an absolute last resort. It's always preferable to handle these problems by reshaping the environment to make them non-problems, rather than removing some freedom.

It's wonderful when someone is able to constructively do something on the forum instead of continuing with whatever they were expected to do under the status quo. Enabling that sort of thing is exactly why Bitcoin and this forum were created. Though bitcointalk.org is not a worldwide welfare organization, and people are not entitled to make money.

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.

The low signal-to-noise is a real issue which seriously annoys me and is often on my mind. But as you mention, fixing it non-destructively is difficult.

[PrimeNumber7]

The overwhelming majority of bounty hunters never post outside of the bounty section. Bounty hunters generate many thousands of page views that are the ultimate driver of ad revenue. Unless you are a bounty hunter with some merit, these bounty hunters do not affect any forum member. Requiring bounty hunters to have a higher rank and merit to post in a sub that no one else looks at is only going to create a market for higher ranked accounts and for merit, both of which in my eyes are a negative. It does look weird to see these bounty hunters, but they are not affecting anyone and trying to regulate them will only cause damage to the broader forum.

[lovesmayfamilis]

I don't think this will somehow limit the number of new alternative accounts if managers change the rules.
Participation in the bounty is no longer a goal for many "new" accounts. Accounts appear that are grown to participate in subscription companies. Some newbies follow the pattern, earning merits from Ratimov, from OgNasty on merits topics. And then hunting for merits, they quickly get the rank of "member", after which they start spamming a lot in threads.
The further fate of these accounts will be either participation in signature companies or the sale of these same accounts.
This is a well-built business that those who do it are unlikely to give up.

[aysg76]

Are Newbies even allowed to participate in bounties?  I thought Jr. Member was the lowest rank that could participate.

Yes they are allowed to join the bounty campaign but the minimum rank to join any signature campaign on the forum is junior member.The above links are of the bounty campaign where you could find various bounty allocation like Twitter, Facebook, reddit, YouTube, article or translation in which most of the newbie account participate and only rule is No Alt account and cheating is allowed not restricting any newbie from joining but still they join with alt farms to have more rewards.But if you see signature campaign then rules are you need to be alteast junior member to post on the forum to get rewards.

  

Except that it doesn't take much to rank up from Newbie.

It hardly takes 1 merit only and 30 activity to rank up to junior member and there are many helpful threads available for them to gain 1 merit.But as @lovesmayfamilis pointed out many of them still spam post the threads and without any dedication keep on with the same type of irrelevant posting and joining bounty campaign.

 
 But who knows how many alt accounts there are in any of those bounties?  Probably tons of them, but it's been a problem for a long time and nobody seems inclined to do much about it.

Most of the time you would find the same bitcoin address for many accounts in the bounty threads and it's clear sign of alt account and most of the bounty related threads face same situation so i simply ignore them and keep posting on the forum trying to make good contributions.

[Rikafip]

Admins putting more restrictions on newbie accounts? I doubt if that will happen. At least not anytime soon.

I think that you misunderstood the first post, OP didn't suggest admins putting extra restrictions, but bounty managers agreeing not to allow newbie accounts joining campaigns.

I don't think this will somehow limit the number of new alternative accounts if managers change the rules.
Participation in the bounty is no longer a goal for many "new" accounts. Accounts appear that are grown to participate in subscription companies. Some newbies follow the pattern, earning merits from Ratimov, from OgNasty on merits topics. And then hunting for merits, they quickly get the rank of "member", after which they start spamming a lot in threads.

Its true that those more capable/experienced ones will easily find a way to get couple of merits and circumvent that restrictions either via one of the giveaway threads, or making some bullshit story and writing what other members want to hear, therefore showering them with merit, like in this case, when someone allegedly went from first time hearing about LN and implementing it to having 4 different persons paying via LN, and all that in a matter of couple of hours. Easy 63 merits from that bs story. Rinse and repeat.

It would still stop bunch of clueless ones that never left bounty section and have no idea how easy is to get the merit. But as i said earlier it won't happen as its not in the bounty managers interest, no matter what they say.

[YOSHIE]

Most of the newbies who are in Bounty, they work for token pay programs like: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram etc., it's 80% profitable for companies in spreading their ads, rather than sig participants, it can't only be seen in this forum, outside the forum also visible through social media, except: sig count campaign with Bitcoin.

Newbie's, biggest asset for the Bounty program to be successful is by spreading advertisements through social media to attract investors.

If, the bounty is limited by only being advertised by high-ranking accounts with the current merit system, each company and manager only gets 20-30 accounts that can participate, this will result in the bounty promotion/advertisement going down.

For that the rules have been set by the bounty manager, obey the rules the bounty is complete, let the beginners do their job, it's the right of everyone who comes to this forum, freedom, the forum doesn't prohibit them from doing that.

[Little Mouse]

They probably promise some numbers to their clients and without alt accounts it probably wouldn't be possible to reach needed numbers.

I'm not sure if any campaign manager promises such amount or not but it's sure that there's some requirement put by the project owner. They look for more participants to reach more people (though I doubt this method is so much effective). I was asked for having a certain number of participants by the project owner which doesn’t suit my rules, I had to deny the offer since I can't guarantee any certain number.

I don't think anyone should be concerned on this issue. If bounty managers think newbie won't be a helping hand and waste of the allocation (token/coin), they are free to exclude newbie from their campaign. I think I have seen some bounty managers did this.

[Rikafip]

Most of the newbies who are in Bounty, they work for token pay programs like: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram etc., it's 80% profitable for companies in spreading their ads, rather than sig participants, it can't only be seen in this forum, outside the forum also visible through social media, except: sig count campaign with Bitcoin.

The way social media bounty campaign is usually done here is as effective as thread bumping, meaning its a waste of money and time.

I was crazy enough to check the work of an average bounty hunter several times while looking for alts, and to use that famous line from Blade Runner's "Tears in Rain" scene, I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. What do you think, what kind of reach can social media account have when it's usually followed by other bounty hunters, because who else will follow social media account that just spews crap from dozens of altcoin campaigns, simultaneously? Don't get me started on article campaign, where illiterate bounty hunters are text spinning wp content..

[Zedpastin]

I say we should limit the bounty board to full members+ the only reason people post on that board is to collect their earnings. If we continue to allow any one to post there they will continue to create multiple accounts and spam the board. If we limit it then that would reduce the amount of spam because some of the bounty topics have requirements that you post outside of the altcoin board. I guess we could see these bounties move off forum and still require people to post on this forum to collect their payment but I think that is still the better option.

The way social media bounty campaign is usually done here is as effective as thread bumping, meaning its a waste of money and time.

I was crazy enough to check the work of an average bounty hunter several times while looking for alts, and to use that famous line from Blade Runner's "Tears in Rain" scene, I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. What do you think, what kind of reach can social media account have when it's usually followed by other bounty hunters, because who else will follow social media account that just spews crap from dozens of altcoin campaigns, simultaneously? Don't get me started on article campaign, where illiterate bounty hunters are text spinning wp content..

It has 0 impact but they get paid in shitcoin tokens which are not worth anything. It is just creating spam for no reason and then they require you to post on this forum to collect your payment which creates more spam here. If we limited it to higher ranks then we would probably see the quality of bounties go up and the spam go down.

[The Cryptovator]

What if the manager is a newbie? You can see in the bounty section most managers are a newbie or Jr. Member. As usual, you can't expect better service from them. Since there are no limits for managing campaigns from the forum, it's quite impossible to limit participation, either by forum or managers. And lately, most campaigns have been running by projects author. They don't care about service, they just need to spread the word about their projects. That's why it's not possible to prevent newbies from joining bounty campaigns. For your information, many threads are already open here about this issue. But who cares?

[DaveF]

Meh, it's the way it is here.
There are 100s (1000s?) of users here that look like this person:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2156763
Or this one: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2297077

Thousands of bounty posts, no 'real' content and no merit. They are going to spend years here and still be a newbie.
If that works for theymos & the rest of the staff why should we care?
I think it's a waste of resources and time but that's me. With that I am really surprised that nobody has come up with a better way to manage bounties then pages and pages of posts like that. I would have thought by now some web developer would have come up with a nice online setup for people to submit stuff in instead of the way it's done now.
-Dave