Meriting Your Alt is allowed?

[stompix]

I saw a lot of drama in this forum regarding meriting alt accounts.

And you decided to make some more!

But, My question is- When a low ranked user gets caught by others meriting his alts, I see DT members give harsh replies and expose them in a toxic way. Some of them Added them to the Distrust list and also some DT members tag them.

So, Philip got caught with anything?
He came out in the open, told everyone those are his alts, never enlisted them in a signature campaign, he has only his own account on his trust list and I'm sure there is nobody who would claim here he is doing this to get more DT power.

The only thing you could accuse philipma1957 is of not really liking exaggerated rules and getting bored with the whole forum drama over petty rules, and yeah this applies to this case too.

Anyhow, what do you want to see? People distrusting phil because he created an alt and merited it?
Go watch the grass growing, at least in that case something will indeed happen!

And btw, just the thought of you actually trying to compare a cheating bounty hunter with philipma1957 simply pisses me off, just to let you know how members raelly feel about this case!

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[mindrust]

I just sent a PM to philipma1957 to let him know about the existence of this thread in case he wants to comment.

I think it's quite likely that he didn't even realize that this thread is about him, especially when his nickname is not in the title, because although he came to the reputation section to post his last alt in Timelord2067's thread, he spends a lot of time in the WO thread and in the mining section but I don't remember once seeing him comment here.

Possibly he ignored this part of the forum. I have certain sub-forums on ignore too. Since I am not interested whatever posted in those sub-forums; to me, those parts simply don't exist. If that's the case, he may never post in this topic even though you sent a PM because he is probably not interested in what anybody says here. Since nobody is going to do anything about this, why should he even care?

Let's say, he showed up and said:

"I did it, so what?"

What's you gonna do? Nothing...

[DireWolfM14]

I want to preface this post by saying that I think it's wrong to send merit to your own alt account.  We can't merit our own posts (I think, I've never tried) so we shouldn't be meriting our own posts regardless of how many accounts we use to make posts.

But, is this really merit abuse?  I haven't spent any time digging into the post that was sent 2 merits (it's been deleted and I don't have the time right now,) but I found something interesting about this post that was sent one merit:

Two days after philipma1957 made that post using his alt account, someone made a post questioning whether that was really philipma1957 or a scammer:

~

Are you seriously using a different account for your cell phone or are you a scammer?

If the former, WTF.  

In the matter of 1 minute and 50 seconds philipma1957 sent 4 merits in that thread, one each to 4 posts, as you can see here:




And this post in the same thread confirms what I originally suspected:

basically the cellphone is used to prevent a crowbar attack when I drive around
and the laptop is used to prevent a crowbar attack when I go to the farm in Clifton

I just gave the cellphone account a merit to confirm it is me.

Again, I'm not condoning this as a way to confirm your alts, but it seems rather obvious that is what philipma1957 meant to do.  It also seems rather obvious that philipma1957 is not trying to game the system.  Abuse of the merit system doesn't seem to be happing here.  Misuse maybe, but that can easily be solved by educating philipma1957 that this use of the merit system is frowned upon.

I saw a lot of drama in this forum regarding meriting alt accounts.

And you decided to make some more!

Maybe he's legitimately curious if it's safe to use his previous account to merit his newbie account...  

[Poker Player]

Possibly he ignored this part of the forum.

He has recently posted in this section, so what you say does not hold, unless he has removed from ignore the reputation section to post that, and as soon as he has finished posting he has put it back on ignore, which seems quite unlikely.

Let's say, he showed up and said:

"I did it, so what?"

What's you gonna do? Nothing...

I don't know what you say that to me. I'm not going to do anything and I've already said that I think it's a minor issue. Besides, with what DireWolfM14 says, this is nothing.

[philipma1957]

I want to preface this post by saying that I think it's wrong to send merit to your own alt account.  We can't merit our own posts (I think, I've never tried) so we shouldn't be meriting our own posts regardless of how many accounts we use to make posts.

But, is this really merit abuse?  I haven't spent any time digging into the post that was sent 2 merits (it's been deleted and I don't have the time right now,) but I found something interesting about this post that was sent one merit:

Two days after philipma1957 made that post using his alt account, someone made a post questioning whether that was really philipma1957 or a scammer:

~

Are you seriously using a different account for your cell phone or are you a scammer?

If the former, WTF.  

In the matter of 1 minute and 50 seconds philipma1957 sent 4 merits in that thread, one each to 4 posts, as you can see here:




And this post in the same thread confirms what I originally suspected:

basically the cellphone is used to prevent a crowbar attack when I drive around
and the laptop is used to prevent a crowbar attack when I go to the farm in Clifton

I just gave the cellphone account a merit to confirm it is me.

Again, I'm not condoning this as a way to confirm your alts, but it seems rather obvious that is what philipma1957 meant to do.  It also seems rather obvious that philipma1957 is not trying to game the system.  Abuse of the merit system doesn't seem to be happing here.  Misuse maybe, but that can easily be solved by educating philipma1957 that this use of the merit system is frowned upon.

I saw a lot of drama in this forum regarding meriting alt accounts.

And you decided to make some more!

Maybe he's legitimately curious if it's safe to use his previous account to merit his newbie account...  

If the thread and post exists once upon a time merit system was started and  I asked theymos if meriting an alt was possible and if possible was permitted.

The answer was yes. IIRC

As for why there are multiple alt accounts. I lost access to more than 2 or 3 of them.

Now maybe the rules changed and no-one is allowed 2 accounts.

But if that is true this thread should be deleted as it is obvious the op is an alt.


philipma1957 DT1

Philipma1957cellphone DT2 lost access when my cell phone was ported away from me. I have zero problem ending this but I have no access to end it.

Philipma1957onvacation lost access years ago don't know what email created it. I have zero problem ending this but have no access to end it.

philipma1957laptop I had to create this  when on the road and needed to talk on bitcointalk I will keep this.

I just formed a company with buysolar (forum member) and wanted an official 'business' bitcointalk account to match it.

I am transparent and in rules have changed from when merit was first started fine. I have zero issues with rule changes.

I will sign on with what is to become my main account. a1 Hashrate LLC2022

[a1 Hashrate LLC2022]

So am I now in trouble for back to back posts with a main account and an alt account?

I live in a country that has thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of tax laws. (USA)

I turned 65 this year and tax laws favor me to run an LLC not a schedule  c  which is what I did with mining and selling gear.

So I formed an LLC and I want to be able to show the USA government  that I exist as an LLC. This means I do not want to do all my posts here as philipma1957

I also did this with ebay.


my very old ebay account

https://www.ebay.com/fdbk/feedback_profile/philipma1957

my new ebay account


https://www.ebay.com/usr/a1hashratellc


I apologize if my efforts to comply with USA Tax laws have caused an issue.



I also would love to shut the cellphone and vacation  accounts down as I can't access them anyway.


Actually it would be nice to simply  get this account to 10 or 60 merits which I will do via using it much more often.

I want to understand where the merit rules changed to make it illegal to merit an alt account. Especially since I was transparent about what I did.
It has no profit motif for a signature campaign.
It simply helps me with my Federal tax compliance laws in 2022 and the future.



edit:

I asked how to shut the 2 old account down.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5401727.msg60310384#msg60310384


waiting on an answer.


this would mean

I would have main account https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=64507 philipma1957


Mobile laptop account       https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=537107     philipma1957laptop

new LLC for business account. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3482040 a1 Hashrate LLC2022

[DireWolfM14]

So I formed an LLC and I want to be able to show the USA government  that I exist as an LLC. This means I do not want to do all my posts here as philipma1957

Kind of off topic, so I'll be brief; I don't think that's necessary; you can have an LLC and a DBA (doing business as) at the same time, and they don't need to named identically.  As far the IRS is concerned they just want to make sure that you've accounted for (and paid tax on) all of the proceeds generated by your business.  If they see lots and lots of money flowing through your accounts that have not been disclosed on your tax forms, they start to get suspicious.  As long as you're paying taxes on the money that's claimed as taxable income, they don't care about much else.

I also would love to shut the cellphone and vacation  accounts down as I can't access them anyway.

There's no way to delete or remove those accounts, and if you don't have the login credentials any longer then they are effectively shutdown.  If you're concerned that someone may be able to hack the accounts at some point, it may be a good idea to use your philipma1957 account to tag them with a neutral or even a red tag to warn others that they were your accounts and aren't being use any longer.

ETA:  To this point: You can ask theymos to lock the accounts to prevent any login.  If I'm not mistaken he's done this before.

[philipma1957]

So I formed an LLC and I want to be able to show the USA government  that I exist as an LLC. This means I do not want to do all my posts here as philipma1957

Kind of off topic, so I'll be brief; I don't think that's necessary; you can have an LLC and a DBA (doing business as) at the same time, and they don't need to named identically.  As far the IRS is concerned they just want to make sure that you've accounted for (and paid tax on) all of the proceeds generated by your business.  If they see lots and lots of money flowing through your accounts that have not been disclosed on your tax forms, they start to get suspicious.  As long as you're paying taxes on the money that's claimed as taxable income, they don't care about much else.

I also would love to shut the cellphone and vacation  accounts down as I can't access them anyway.

There's no way to delete or remove those accounts, and if you don't have the login credentials any longer then they are effectively shutdown.  If you're concerned that someone may be able to hack the accounts at some point, it may be a good idea to use your philipma1957 account to tag them with a neutral or even a red tag to warn others that they were your accounts and aren't being use any longer.

ETA:  To this point: You can ask theymos to lock the accounts to prevent any login.  If I'm not mistaken he's done this before.

I will pm him.

My tax situation goes beyond llc and schedule c.

 My accountant wanted  me to have a separate account here if and when I sell gear this year.

I rather not go into a full explanation of my reasons but at 65 medicare becomes involved and I need to keep my records more separated thus a new alt.

My 1 merit to  my alt is allowed and If you go back and look I specifically discussed it when merits were started.

I will attempt to find the post.

[DireWolfM14]

My accountant wanted  me to have a separate account here if and when I sell gear this year.

Well, I reckon your accountant knows way more about your tax situation than I do.  I'm just going by my (meager) knowledge of California LLC laws.  I had one some years ago when I owned a gun-shop.  The LLC and the gunshop had different names (one was a DBA,) and I made a bunch of on-line sales on GunBroker with my personal account.  Of course firearms are tracked by serial numbers so if there was ever an issue (there wasn't) I could have used my bound-book to retrace personal vs. business sales.

My 1 merit to  my alt is allowed and If you go back and look I specifically discussed it when merits were started.

I'm sure it's fine, I don't think anyone here believes you're trying to cheat.  If it's for posting photos and such, you can always buy a copper membership.  That will allow you to have the same signature as a "Member" rank (IIRC) and post photos.  Here's the link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=credit;promote

[philipma1957]

Looking if I can find ported cell phone I may get into the cellphone account.

I did remove the cellphone account from trust list.

 I been here a long time and years ago in a now deleted thread on this section people complained that i gave too many trusts to buyers and sellers I used.

Trust has altered over the years

trusting good buyers and sellers was fine.

In an effort to not make the philipma1957 account get new trusts.

I stopped using it for trusts and set up the cellphone account to handle trusts.

It was all discussed and shown on the forum in multiple posts and threads.

I let the cellphone do trusts for a while essentially it was my opinion the cellphone account = the main account. Which in effect means they are one and the same. Nothing was hidden.

When I lost access due to the porting issue I could not shut the account.

[Crypt0S0ul]

This thread was to check whether the forum allows meriting alts to be permitted. Because I saw people negatively reply if someone merits their alt. I guess people reply negatively because most of them get caught by others. In my opinion, It should vary from case to case. Of course, philipma1957 didn't do that. He himself always admitted that this is my account.

I wanted to see the reaction from the community when it comes to a trusted well, known member.
Of course, it was a healthy discussion, so I don't see any problem here. Still, @philipma1957 if you believe it hampered your reputation or it's pissed off you. I apologize because I have respected your contribution over the years.