Why some promising newbies fail in the forum.

[KingsDen]

Preamble:
The forum and its users (especially the older users) have witnessed generations of newbies. Most of these newbies follow a predefined pattern that makes it possible for established members to successfully predict whether or not the newbie will be successful in the forum.
Some newbies start very well, but their success meets a sad end of premature failure. Yet, in some rare cases, some newbies who rather started poorly becomes successful on the long run.
In this thread, I will outline some factors that makes a promising newbie who is expected to spike end up failing.
Failure in the context of this thread

• Being Banned
• Stocking in a particular rank
• Having a legitimate negative trust
• Prematurely exiting the forum

Importance/Purpose of this thread

• To Newbies: This thread may serve as a reference or study guide to avoid making the mistakes of predecessory newbies
• To other members: This thread can give clue on how promising newbies fail and how to preserve the future of bitcointalk

CONTENTS =>Why Newbies Fail:

• Over Desirous To Grow
• Faking/Starting Wrongly
• Owning an Alt
• Forum Attacks and/or Policing
• Plagiarism
• Under-Meriting
• Creating Enmity
• NegativeTrust
• Mission to the Forum
• External Factors
• Conclusion

1. Over Desirous To Grow:
Growth is a natural tendency, every human wants to grow in any organisation they find themselves. In as much as the aspiration to grow is good, pursuing same desperately may lead one to engage in unethical behaviours. You will notice some newbies, all they post is; How to earn merits, How to rank up very fast and so on. These sets of over desirous newbies are the ones that can involve in merit buying and selling, sharing merits with alts and when these acts are discovered, it might be the end of the promising newbie.

2. Faking/Starting Wrongly:
In as much as it is not wrong for a newbie to study the methods or styles of successful users of the forum, it is very dangerous for the newbie to copy verbatim the writing style, the ideology and even the personal attributes of the supposed model. This might not be called plagiarism, but if a newbie does not have his/her own natural way of communicating in the forum, it will be difficult to grow. The hardest part of life is to live a life that is not yours. You will be a learner forever if you do. I was almost caught up in this clause in my early days in this forum when I made a forced (induced) topic My Dream Bitcointalk Forum. Though it was a quality post, but I struggled to make it. It was not long before I discovered my natural way of contributing to the forum, and from then, things has not been difficult with me in the forum.

3. Owning an Alt:
Being able to have an alt account is a privilege. Then, having the choice to make your alt known or not is a bigger privilege. This is because many online forums, casinos and exchanges do not allow the possession of alt accounts. I was surprised when I was being accused of being someone's alt few days into this forum and surprisingly till date such frivolous accusations have never ceased. The privilege of having an alt account sometimes hurt some promising newbies. When a fast growing account suddenly slows down or stocked in a particular rank, it is a likely indication that the newbie has created an alt account(s).

4. Forum Attacks and/or Policing:
Some promising newbies upon arriving this forum recieve a hostile welcome. To already members of the forum, it might seem normal, but a genuine (first time) newbie who knows nothing about how things work here, may immediately say goodbye to the forum. This would have been my fate, not until I met The Pharmacist in Pm and he said this to me

...In other words, if you're a newbie making suggestions about how the forum should be run, you should have a thick enough skin to withstand (and defend) any blowback from senior members, which you're obviously going to get.

Peace.

The message above gave me the guts to repel some hostility and moved on.

Again, I acknowledge the efforts of all that contributes to sanitize this forum by catching cheaters, bursting scam, reporting spam, catching ban evaders etc. Without them I can't imagine how the forum will be. But I am sorry to point out that some times policing contributes to the failure of some promising newbies. In my lower-ranked days, there were promising newbies growing together with me, but today I see them no more. Users like Rainbowkun, kxwhalexk, kaggie, etc. Though it can be true that there was a big farm then according to Ratimov claim, because after the claim, majority of the listed accounts that were flooding the forum then went silent and others banned. Then, a promising user like Rainbowkun failed. There were tons of quality bitcoin articles he wrote, but he couldn't continue, rather he visits the forum occasionally and unnoticed.

5. Plagiarism:
This is the notorious cycle shortener of the forum users. It's respectal of no user. It is possible that plagiarism committed during newbie days could hurt a user at high rank stage. The common excuse is "it happened in my newbie days when I don't know that plagiarism is not allowed in the forum". Most times the pleas fall on the deaf ears of the moderators, especially when the user contributed nothing to the forum. Plagiarism is one of the fast ways for promising newbies to fail. So, it should be avoided.

6. Under-meriting:
This is not common, but there is this feeling that some good posts go unmerited. This might be because of the boards and threads these posts are located. I have read an accusation that someone is posting in meta in order to recieve merits. It gave me the understanding that if some sections of the board recieve more merits, it means some sections recieve less merits. Especially mega threads in trading board and gambling discussion board. It is therefore right to say that a good newbie whose favourite board is gambling discussion might not grow in the forum.
It is therefore my humble plea to merit sources to occasionally tour the boards they don't frequent and spread some merits.

7. Enmity :
I might not have gotten the right caption for this, but a good or quality newbie who does not involve in arguments, debates or misunderstanding with merit sources is likely to grow faster than a quality newbie who goes about engaging troubles with merit sources. Some promising newbies who started well with merit sources, may end up not receiving further merits from them immediately they fall out of love. Merit might not only be for quality, but at the above instance a favour. So, in order for promising newbies to maintain their pace of growth, it is expected to be in peace with all men if possible.

8. Negative Trust:
No matter how promising a newbie might be, immediately a legitimate negative trust hit his/her profile, the journey of growth is 50% ended if not 100%. The ability to trade, offer and recieve services will be limited.  Negative trust (legitimate or not), hence it's from a DT member, is a factor that fails some promising newbies.

9. Mission to the Forum:
Under this factor, failure is subjective. What others see as failure might not be a failure to the user. If a newbies' mission to the forum is to shill a project, once the mission is accomplished, the user could abandoned the account and we can't confidently say that the user failed. Another instance is when a user's mission is to scam, once the scam is successful, the user will care no more about the account. Again, we see some users who are newbies but have legendary member activity because of only focusing on bounty. We cannot say that such users fail because to them their purpose of coming to the forum is achieved.

10. Environmental Factors:
There is a world outside the forum. That is the real world. And whatever happens in the real world affects a user's activities here in the forum.
Factors such as;

• Sickness
• Covid
• Work
• Death

Are factors that could make a promising newbie fail in the forum. 

Conclusion:
The above factors I outlined are my personal observations about my 11 months old in this forum. Since I am not old in this forum, some of the above points may be wrong. Please! Feel free to correct any obvious mistakes or misconceptions by me and I will not fail to edit, delete or add as the  case may be.
If you like this topic, you may also like a similar topic by me Some avoidable forum mistakes of Newbies

[Cookdata]

You have pointed out important things but I would like to emphasize one thing, it is "value". What can you do for the forum and how can you be helpful to others, that is what comes to my mind as a newbie.
There was a particular thread that discusses why some members preferred to merit legendary ranks over lower ranks and out of all the replies, one person said it's a value, legendary ranks are experienced, add value to others and provide help where necessary, so what can you do to be better than them in the forum.
I began to question myself about what can I do to help the forum since I'm a newbie who has little knowledge about bitcoin, I searched through the forum and there were many of them that you don't really need to be too technical about bitcoin to help others like to clean the forum by reporting scam and plagiarism, help others to answer questions in technical discussion, Bitcoin technical supports (you need the knowledge to achieve this), economical aspect of bitcoin but while doing this, stick to the forum rules and regulation.

Respect users and their opinions as long as they are not misleading others. Keep reading, someone's personal text once said reading will not make you spam.

[cryptoaddictchie]

Nice thread OP, I think this is good summarize for the thigns newbie should read. However, I think the words with hyperlink is confusing to others. When Ive clicked it I thought Im gonna direct to a certain thread detailining the words but instead to the samw thread in which it was explained. I think its better to change that into a bold instead. Just a suggestion.

[DdmrDdmr]

Just to point out briefly some of the comments that came to mind:

3. Owning an Alt: <…>

I don’t fully concur with what you state on the matter of Alt accounts. Alt accounts are allowed as long as they stick to the rules (i.e. not created when banned on a prior account) and behave in an ethical manner (i.e. not meriting each other, no fake conversations between them, no same campaign simultaneously).

There is no mandate to lists your alt accounts, which one may wish to keep completely separate from their main account for a variety of reasons (business, opinions, etc.), but it is true that Alt account hunting/detecting is a thing on the forum, so any wrongdoing such as what I mentioned before could, sooner or later, be spotted and highlighted.
This can of course produce false positives, due to patterns and or/similarities with other account’s styles and whatnots, so in a sense, you are right, although in theory you should only be right when they (account + alts) behave wrongly.

4. Forum Attacks and/or Policing: <…>

The case you mention was a weird story, but in terms of what he wrote, I personally found it too hippy-cult unsubstantial, to a point that he overdid it far and wide, pointing things towards his personal project (which is legit in intent, but no need to be sly about it). Neverthlesess, I can understand that others may have liked his writings.

6. Under-meriting: <…>

Rather than have Merit Sources roam boards they know little to nothing about, it would be better for board usuals to bring forward a case on Meta as to why there board is undermerited, with concrete examples and quantitative numbers.
If I were to go to the gambling board, I wouldn’t have the faintest clue what to merit, and would really need to get into the likes of the board to develop a reasonable criteria.

7. Enmity :  <…>

Sometimes though, the opposite happens, and in order to try to gain favour, people echo and mimic actions of others (there is a word for that). I think this is less of a thing as of late though.

[Xinarae*]

Everything is a good suggestion but if something is too carefully handled, so I think a good result for the next few months or weeks Because newcomers are always afraid, and there are many reasons to be afraid and if someone is not altered, then newbies is normal to be scared because the new ones are ignorant about most of the issues and there are many old members who are not aware of all the issues.

5. Plagiarism:
This is the notorious cycle shortener of the forum users. It's respectal of no user. It is possible that plagiarism committed during newbie days could hurt a user at high rank stage. The common excuse is "it happened in my newbie days when I don't know that plagiarism is not allowed in the forum". Most times the pleas fall on the deaf ears of the moderators, especially when the user contributed nothing to the forum. Plagiarism is one of the fast ways for promising newbies to fail. So, it should be avoided.

7. Enmity :
I might not have gotten the right caption for this, but a good or quality newbie who does not involve in arguments, debates or misunderstanding with merit sources is likely to grow faster than a quality newbie who goes about engaging troubles with merit sources. Some promising newbies who started well with merit sources, may end up not receiving further merits from them immediately they fall out of love. Merit might not only be for quality, but at the above instance a favour. So, in order for promising newbies to maintain their pace of growth, it is expected to be in peace with all men if possible.

8. Negative Trust:
No matter how promising a newbie might be, immediately a legitimate negative trust hit his/her profile, the journey of growth is 50% ended if not 100%. The ability to trade, offer and recieve services will be limited.  Negative trust (legitimate or not), hence it's from a DT member, is a factor that fails some promising newbies.

Finally, anyone follow your suggestion so I hope the good result and grow up every new and all member sometimes grow up slowly but successful one day the rank.

[Pmalek]

Newbies who fail to reach higher ranks and become established members do so because they didn't come here for the right reasons. In the past, people would sign up on Bitcointalk because it was a great forum to discuss and learn about Bitcoin. Then you have the marketplace where you can engage in some trading with other members. There are local boards where you can talk with people from your own country who speak the same language. And there is an altcoin section to discuss alternative coins if you like. As you spend time here, mature and gain knowledge, you realize you can earn a bit by getting into a signature campaign. In the early days, you could earn nicely in bounty campaigns as well. Nothing wrong with that when you take it one step at a time.

The problem with newbies is that many are not interested in any of the things I said, except the part about bounty and signature campaigns. They want you to tell them what they have to do so that they can get into a signature campaign. That's where they meet resistance and start calling the world unfair. Anyone with a genuine interest in Bitcoin who is ready to take part in normal conversations, won't find difficulties on this forum. Some need more time than others, but that's normal and that's the way of life.   

[KingsDen]

Nice thread OP, I think this is good summarize for the thigns newbie should read. However, I think the words with hyperlink is confusing to others. When Ive clicked it I thought Im gonna direct to a certain thread detailining the words but instead to the samw thread in which it was explained. I think its better to change that into a bold instead. Just a suggestion.

Thanks very much. The essence of the hyperlinks taking you same to the thread is, when a thread is somehow long, not everyone has the time and patience to read through. So, with the hyperlink (contents), one can decide to click a particular content that is of interest to him/her, read it and goes away. I don't know if you understand me.

[Welsh]

Also, remember that this is a discussion forum, and therefore has a lot of users signing up to ask questions, without ever intending on staying on the forum. The thing is, there's no mission, and there's no expectation that a new user is going to try, and reach the highest rank. Not everyone cares about such things, and they just come here to ask the occasional questions, and you know what that's fine. It's not a failure if you haven't progressed all that much, this isn't a place that we should be comparing who's the best, and what not. Ultimately, this place is here for information, and if a new user or even a old user wants information, and doesn't want to participate in the community, and achieve the highest rank/merit it can, they're perfectly within their right, and most certainly aren't a failure because of that.

So, on that note I don't agree with the prematurely leaving remark. This isn't a race, isn't a competition, and is a place of discussion, that's all.

[Doan9269]

I would like to emphasize one thing, it is "value". 

Having Value is one of the key requirements for everyone's progress in life and not on the forum alone, there must be a particular solution that one must be able to implement, as we all know how there's challenges in every areas of life and same is expected to encounter while on the forum but the value in you will bring a solution to end such, permit me to use another synonymous word "significance". We should always remember that to build a house take process but to destroy it only take a step, what significant impact is one's contribution to the forum community at large.

Another cogent factor to consider is "Character" and this goes along way, this portrait the real image and identity of a person, I don't need to see you in physical before assuming the type of character you've developed, here on the forum many think they can hide under what is uncovered, but immediately they type and make a post their real sense of humor got exposed unknowingly to them, character is like a flame which can't be hidden, sometimes one need not to post when he had nothing to offer, character is what makes a user discern from when his voice is heard and listened to than making a nuisance around, good character places one on a good reputation.

[lovesmayfamilis]

OP, I want to tell you that your post is the most adequate guide, and you are the same person who felt every point you described. And right now it looks very right since you have acquired not only "thick skin", but also good skills. Newbies coming to the forum with such guides seem ridiculous because everyone understands that this is either not a real newbie, or his guides have not been lived through by their nerves.
I also remember my attacks on you when you, as described in the first paragraph, wanted to grow up quickly. But today, please accept my respect and advice to all beginners to use this topic as a good parting word for further growth.

Based on this, I can also summarize that the example of a beginner who grew up before our eyes was combined with such qualities as friendliness, acceptance of criticism, understanding, and correcting one's mistakes. And also a strong desire to prove to everyone that you should not give up, longing to be noticed on this forum. Again, ambition is a very good quality.

[Z390]

About your alt account point.

So if I don't have any good topics to create and I just feel bored about posting for a while it means I have lowered my standard because I don't create posts like I used to and that means I probably move on to another account? Bro this point is pointless, I don't have to make quality posts every time, you are simply asking too much from me, which can lead me into creating nonsense topics, imagine if this forum has such rules 🚷 .

[Welsh]

So if I don't have any good topics to create and I just feel bored about posting for a while it means I have lowered my standard because I don't create posts like I used to and that means I probably move on to another account? Bro this point is pointless, I don't have to make quality posts every time, you are simply asking too much from me, which can lead me into creating nonsense topics, imagine if this forum has such rules 🚷 .

Well, community set standards don't always correlate with forum enforced standards. So, as long as you aren't breaking the guidelines, which you'll know since you'll either be warned directly or have posts deleted, or you'll be aware of it yourself, you can carry on posting like you do.

It kind of touches upon my earlier post that not everyone is here to be acknowledged for their knowledge, not everyone is here to make money, and some are here just to discuss about Bitcoin/Cryptocurrencies which is absolutely fine. Quality is demanded by the community, and while I do think that's a good thing, it doesn't mean every post someone makes has to meet it. I mean, there are plenty of extremely good users that post quality content, but also post rather lacklustre content to their usual standards, but they aren't spammers.

[Z390]

So if I don't have any good topics to create and I just feel bored about posting for a while it means I have lowered my standard because I don't create posts like I used to and that means I probably move on to another account? Bro this point is pointless, I don't have to make quality posts every time, you are simply asking too much from me, which can lead me into creating nonsense topics, imagine if this forum has such rules 🚷 .

Well, community set standards don't always correlate with forum enforced standards. So, as long as you aren't breaking the guidelines, which you'll know since you'll either be warned directly or have posts deleted, or you'll be aware of it yourself, you can carry on posting like you do.

It kind of touches upon my earlier post that not everyone is here to be acknowledged for their knowledge, not everyone is here to make money, and some are here just to discuss about Bitcoin/Cryptocurrencies which is absolutely fine. Quality is demanded by the community, and while I do think that's a good thing, it doesn't mean every post someone makes has to meet it. I mean, there are plenty of extremely good users that post quality content, but also post rather lacklustre content to their usual standards, but they aren't spammers.

I Concur @welsh, you said it all, you said it all 🙇‍♂️

[alik111]

As you told about promising newbies who fail in the forum, I will accuse the sixth point which is Under- Meriting. Because New users are always trying to learn as well as they are working hard to grow up. But when they have some good posts but no one supporting directly by sending at least 1 merits then they get demotivated. And they have a wrong thought which is, Higher Rankers send merit each other.

So I think new users should get more merits so that they can be motivated.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

Merits are, for many, a motivation, as it is both a stepping-stone towards rank and a sign of appreciation in a sense. Threads often receive multiple answers, and when one merits, one may tend to focus on those that were more useful or had more substance to them. More often than not, on a thread with multiple answers, lower ranks may not bring the best answers in comparison, and since Merit is about content (in spirit at least), it is logical that people that have been actively longer on the forum are able to come up with better content in their answers.

On the other hand, sometimes people take into consideration the above, and may lower the bar for posts from newer accounts (at least in some sections or local boards). Perhaps this exercise is easier said than done though in general terms, but the accounts also may need to place time and effort to better themselves.

[Shamm]

As you told about promising newbies who fail in the forum, I will accuse the sixth point which is Under- Meriting. Because New users are always trying to learn as well as they are working hard to grow up. But when they have some good posts but no one supporting directly by sending at least 1 merits then they get demotivated. And they have a wrong thought which is, Higher Rankers send merit to each other.

So I think new users should get more merits so that they can be motivated.

It depends on how newbies drive him/herself cause we all know that every one of us here in the forum past that stage or let's say newbies rank and we do our best to learn and contribute to our community.  And merits have been given to those worthy enough and good contributors here in the forum. As a newbies part we motivate our self not only by merits but also from knowledge shared to us.

[KingsDen]

Also, remember that this is a discussion forum, and therefore has a lot of users signing up to ask questions, without ever intending on staying on the forum.

Yes, this is a category of newbies that I didn't capture and they might not have fit into this topic. When I said promising newbies, it means that the user has already spent sometime in the forum and contributed in such a way that the community expected him to give more. For a newbie that signed up to ask questions and exit, he/she doesn't belong to this category.

About your alt account point.

So if I don't have any good topics to create and I just feel bored about posting for a while it means I have lowered my standard because I don't create posts like I used to and that means I probably move on to another account? Bro this point is pointless.

When we discuss issues of general interest, we intend to pay attention to the choice of words. If you can visit that paragraph again, I said "it is a likely indication". Which means not in all cases and we cannot also deny that it happens. The activities of a user having 1 account cannot be same as one having 2 or more. The efficiency must drop.

[nakamura12]

Under the point called under-meriting is because some newbies didn't post constructive that won't be merited for that reason and some didn't get merited even if the post is merit worthy. I have said in my other post that I know someone who is a  newbie and are introduced in Bitcointalk correctly but still he did do a plagiarism which gets him banned even though I told him about the forum rules. Some knows about Bitcointalk the wrong way so those newbies will surely quit.

[Findingnemo]

Good observation and useful thread for everyone not just only for newbies, what I think is most of the newbies fall for the rank trap so they work hard and at sometime they feel exhausted if they didn't get the appreciation what they worked for but this js the forum and we are here to learn things about bitcoin so yes it's okay to be average since not everyone is intelligent as some newbies we can see. Don't concentrate on the rank just try to contribute in the way you can.

[Rruchi man]

The above factors I outlined are my personal observations about my 11 months old in this forum. Since I am not old in this forum, some of the above points may be wrong. Please! Feel free to correct any obvious mistakes or misconceptions by me and I will not fail to edit....

Very nice observations OP, on my part there's nothing to correct but to add. There's one more i have observed that i will like to be added to the long list. I can describe this with one word which is "Effervescence" - where something starts up very vigorously and burns out all the energy that they could habe used to get a while further. Not like i'm trying to undermine newbies who have started very well, but in my opinion, it is best for me and always good if you start slowly as a newbie and pick up speed here in the forum, rather than starting really well and slowing down to almost a stop along the way.