Why not tag all bounty hunters?

[cryptoaddictchie]

Since forums are basically more concerned with fighting spammers than scammers, it would make more sense to just flag fraudulent participants from the signature bounty. I often see them littering the forum environment with one-line replies in some of their favorite sections (altcoins), if I'm right it's because they have to meet the post quota of all their accounts.

Forum is concern in dealing with sharing ideas and topic regarding bitcoin and its external and internal processes and uses. I dont think these are priority of forum to clean up such thing regarding bounty.

Some one liner post arent considered spam especially if they have sense. Why would you make a long response right if the answer needs a short one. There is an exception to that. Quota on signature can be counted for constructive one. A short post doesnt mean its not valid at least some manager consider it as long as the sentence is on point.

[LoyceV]

At least their "work" on the forum can be limited by reporting the spam posts. I'm almost sure that they are not happy when they see their posts getting deleted. And we have to keep the forum clean (of course, between the limits on what's possible).

It seems like fighting bots doing mindless tasks. I did a count in my posts archive. Facebook is mentioned 19.8 million times, Twitter 30.9 million times. This probably includes double counting the links, but even without that it's still staggering number considering the forum only has 60 million posts in total and I haven't included posts that were deleted in the first 10 years. And it's even allowed, so although useless, reporting is futile.
(counting the Facebook and Twitter posts took a lot longer than I expected, hence my late reply)

So yes, you're pretty much correct, but I don't think that anything is going to change.

Thanks. I tried

you may have wanted to say this politically correct.

That doesn't sound like me

I would say that the biggest blame here comes from bounty managers.

Let's check the last 5 bounty topics on patrol:
Created by a Copper Newbie
Created by a Legendary with many earned Merits
Created by a Full Member
Created by a Jr. Member with negative feedback
Created by a Sr. Member who barely earned any Merit
4 out of 5 have (almost) nothing to lose.

so the question is if you are one of the top groups and start a business, would run a bounty program like these currently running?

Anyone with a real idea pays pays for advertising in Bitcoin, not in made-up tokens. If they spend real money, they care for the quality they get.

I must admit the bounty section in particular is a completely different kettle of fish.

It always feels like a loophole on the low-quality posts, to spam the same "proof of authentication" posts in many different topics. Or the competely useless Facebook, Twitter and Telegram posts. Years ago, on-forum altcoin giveaways were banned for the exact same reason, and that's why they now use this even more useless system of linking to social media posts. I'm not buying the explanation that spamming Twitter is not a low-effort task.

I don't think it'll ever get implemented, as it's rather restrictive. However, I'd like to see some restrictions put in place where only x merit or activity can post in the bounty section. That way, you'd reduce the endless alt accounts, unless of course they build up over time.

That would largely reduce the spam, but indeed, I don't think this will be implemented.

Our only concern is keeping the forum clean and making sure no one is using multiple accounts to cheat, and whatever the projects turn out to be in the future is still none of our business.

I disagree. To me, 10 people spamming with 1 account each gives the same result as 1 person spamming with 10 accounts. But the future of most bounty projects is scamming gullible "investors". I'd say it's our business if Bitcointalk is being used to promote scams. They've earned billions from ICO-scams already and are no doubt still earning a lot of money. Meanwhile, we tag people for scams that are a million times smaller.

Eddie13 made some very good points:

I’m glad y’all saved sooooo many imbeciles from getting “scammed” by shutting that entire thriving economy down..

Oh right, the morons probably just threw their (saved from scam) money at one of the great 2017 ICOs instead..
I’m sure their filthy rich now thanks to all that saving grace..

“Campaign/bounty managers”, oh those valiant pillars of our community, surely made their cuts off the countless ICO scams and casinos designed from the start to suck up every Satoshi they can..
What heroes..
So trustworthy..

These “managers” are held in such high regard, yet never deemed responsible for their outcomes, of the biggest scams and suctions of satoshis this forum has ever seen..
Yet on they go, and nobody will speak a word against them in fear they will be ostracized by them from getting their own chance to earn a couple satoshis advertising the next big Satoshi suck on offer..

There could be bounties that pay in Bitcoins, maybe some puzzle solving, or completing other tasks unrelated to altcoins.
If you want to address issue of altcoin bounties than I think you should talk more with managers who organize them.

The ones that pay in Bitcoin (or anything else with real value) are usually a bit better, but as long as they work with "stakes" instead of a fixed payment per bounty hunter, they still don't benefit from rejecting spammers. The more people join, the more advertising they get for the same money.

problem is not just shitposters themselves but also presumably smart and rational users - some of them with e.g. ChipMixer signatures if that means anything - responding to those shitposts.

I think I've been guilty of this, but generally I don't reply to a shitpost unless it's to blast it for being idiotic or if there's actually something in it that's coherent and I want to respond to.

I've fallen for it a few times too. Sometimes it's not instantly clear it's a troll or shitposter, and sometimes I just can't help being sarcastic.

I have a question: if these newbies already get tagged and doesn't have anything to lose since they can create new accounts, why until now they never learn how to hide and not linked their alt accounts?

So you think the bounty spammers who can't be linked as alts are really different people? That's cute
I think most of them are good at hiding their alts, and only a few get busted.

Forum is concern in dealing with sharing ideas and topic regarding bitcoin and its external and internal processes and uses. I dont think these are priority of forum to clean up such thing regarding bounty.

Theymos posted about this 4 years ago (click for full context):

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.

[lovesmayfamilis]

I have a question: if these newbies already get tagged and doesn't have anything to lose since they can create new accounts, why until now they never learn how to hide and not linked their alt accounts? Because I've expose many new alt accounts that related with the previous busted accounts. I think if they're know why the reason they got red tagged, they will know how to play clean, isn't? but the fact is opposite.

Most of them only know that they were banned, but they never look into why they were banned in the first place, and because they have hundreds of alts, they don't give a fck and just reactivate, use the same address, and get banned again. Then repeat step one.

This is how much people differ from normal forum participants. Failure to understand your mistake is tantamount to the inability to have a normal account and participate in signature companies. One honest account would cover twenty alternative cheating accounts.

But these people are stupid and not ready to admit it.

I see LoyceV's annoyance and reason for creating this thread. Just look at the reputation branch. What discussions have there been lately? The account complains that it will not be able to "work" because it received a negative tag. And the section is full of such showdowns. If they were ignored, these accounts would never have made it out of the bounty reporting section.

But I can imagine with horror the picture if we start tagging all the hunters. This will turn into a natural disaster. All of them will come here with a document of their "honesty".

If the hunters are lazy and can't figure out how to keep them from being discovered, the only solution is to block all accounts.

If a person is found with an alt and gets banned from all accounts, then this gives him a chance to start to figure out what the mistake is.

[NeuroticFish]

I did a count in my posts archive. Facebook is mentioned 19.8 million times, Twitter 30.9 million times (this probably includes double counting the links, but even without that it's still staggering number considering the forum only has 60 million posts in total and I haven't included posts that were deleted in the first 10 years.
(counting the Facebook and Twitter posts took a lot longer than I expected, hence my late reply)

Wow. I didn't expect such numbers and I didn't also expect you count them (although I know that you have the data at hand).

It seems like fighting bots doing mindless tasks.
[...]
And it's even allowed, so although useless, reporting is futile.

I see it different, sorry.
I see it like cleaning the dust in the house, although knowing that more will come in.
I see it like cleaning the leaves, although knowing that, especially in the autumn, there will be the same mess again.
Making your surroundings more pleasant or at least bearable (not necessarily/not only for yourself) is not not really futile.
Should I start a career in poetry or such?


So yes, ignoring can help your mental health, but it can be done only per-user (maybe you can even make yourself a script based on certain "rules"). Reporting keeps the forum bearable. And we already have this. Overall, as I said, most probably nothing will change.

[LoyceV]

I see it different, sorry.
I see it like cleaning the dust in the house, although knowing that more will come in.
I see it like cleaning the leaves, although knowing that, especially in the autumn, there will be the same mess again.
Making your surroundings more pleasant or at least bearable (not necessarily/not only for yourself) is not not really futile.

But if you only manage to clean up 2% of the dust and leaves in a certain area, there's really no point in even trying. Just give up on the place, and keep the rest of your house decent. That's why I still report the bounty spammers when they shitpost on the tech boards.

[bakasabo]

If you propose to tag every newbie bounty hunter with "bounty abuse", what do you propose to do if these newbies start to gain merit? Will you remove bounty abuse tag then? Bounty managers wont accept participants with negative tag, but would gladly accept a participant, that gained several merits and is a Jr. Member with clear reputation now. Wont it trigger posting spam, as newbies will try to get this one merit? Followed by merit trade?

[dkbit98]

The ones that pay in Bitcoin (or anything else with real value) are usually a bit better, but as long as they work with "stakes" instead of a fixed payment per bounty hunter, they still don't benefit from rejecting spammers. The more people join, the more advertising they get for the same money.

I didn't saw any recent Bitcoin bounty that pays with stakes, maybe because you can't fool members so easy with some fixed future price of bitcoin, like you can do with fantasy tokens.
Some would even say that people participating in Bitcoin bounties are more intelligent than others, but that's a topic for different discussion

The ones that pay in Bitcoin (or anything else with real value) are usually a bit better, but as long as they work with "stakes" instead of a fixed payment per bounty hunter, they still don't benefit from rejecting spammers. The more people join, the more advertising they get for the same money.

By doing only this there is always a danger that landfill will spread and bring more trash to every other part of the forum.
There isn't one universal solution for this problem, so people should do whatever they think it's best, and this is still better than doing nothing.
I am fine with trash being kept just in Altcoin or bounty section, but I think everyone noticed it's spreading to reputation, meta and bitcoin discussion.

[DireWolfM14]

I see it different, sorry.
I see it like cleaning the dust in the house, although knowing that more will come in.
I see it like cleaning the leaves, although knowing that, especially in the autumn, there will be the same mess again.
Making your surroundings more pleasant or at least bearable (not necessarily/not only for yourself) is not not really futile.

But if you only manage to clean up 2% of the dust and leaves in a certain area, there's really no point in even trying. Just give up on the place, and keep the rest of your house decent. That's why I still report the bounty spammers when they shitpost on the tech boards.

This reminds me of the corporate slogan I often hear thrown around; "The 80/20 rule."

The premise is that resolving 20% of the root causes of an issue will often eliminate 80% of the problems with a specific process.  The inverse can also be true; to eliminate the remaining 20% of the problems will require significantly more effort.  An assessment of risk, reward, and value of the time and resources required to resolve the remaining 20% of problems will often show the payback is not worth the investment.

[Igebotz]

Our only concern is keeping the forum clean and making sure no one is using multiple accounts to cheat, and whatever the projects turn out to be in the future is still none of our business.

I disagree. To me, 10 people spamming with 1 account each gives the same result as 1 person spamming with 10 accounts. But the future of most bounty projects is scamming gullible "investors". I'd say it's our business if Bitcointalk is being used to promote scams. They've earned billions from ICO-scams already and are no doubt still earning a lot of money. Meanwhile, we tag people for scams that are a million times smaller.

And what business do we have if the hunters were paid for their services but the project turned out to be a complete sham in the end? There are perfect project scams out there that list their tokens/coins and then reveal themselves to be a scam project after 3-5 years. What I'm trying to say is that not every scam bounty is obvious or dumb to plagiarized whitepapers or uses a fake team, and there has been a bounty that has made so many bounty hunters some decent money in the past (I'm too lazy to start naming them here).

Most of them only know that they were banned, but they never look into why they were banned in the first place, and because they have hundreds of alts, they don't give a fck and just reactivate, use the same address, and get banned again. Then repeat step one.

I see LoyceV's annoyance and reason for creating this thread. Just look at the reputation branch. What discussions have there been lately? The account complains that it will not be able to "work" because it received a negative tag. And the section is full of such showdowns. If they were ignored, these accounts would never have made it out of the bounty reporting section.

We were stuck on the reputation board for ages with Vob vs OGnasty drama, and just when we thought we were about to enjoy decent cases and discussion, boom!! Account connection threads from newbies and witch hunters began to arrive. Will we ever have a decent discussion on the reputation board? No, Is there no solution? No.

[Coyster]

If you propose to tag every newbie bounty hunter with "bounty abuse"...

OP is actually in hindsight proposing the opposite, which is to ignore them, as long as they stay in their bounty section, as tagging them somewhat reduces the 'value' of the trust system.

what do you propose to do if these newbies start to gain merit? Will you remove bounty abuse tag then?

I don't completely understand, but very hardly do any of these Bounty hunters ever stop spamming and start posting enough quality stuffs to earn them a good number of merits. But i am pretty sure users who tag bounty hunters would not mind revisiting their trust page to change it to neutral if such user changes and becomes very positive to the forum in the long run.

Bounty managers wont accept participants with negative tag, but would gladly accept a participant, that gained several merits and is a Jr. Member with clear reputation now.

Quite a lot of these Bounty managers do not even care about negative feedbacks, good reputation or even merits. Many of these projects are run by newbies with no merit or any history of being helpful to the forum, so they do not care.

Wont it trigger posting spam, as newbies will try to get this one merit? Followed by merit trade?

It doesn't or wouldn't change anything like i have said. By the way, they are already posting spam, and even if they want to trade merits or whatever they would struggle to rank up above Jr Member, or Member, tops. The thing is they stick to the bounty section, and it is all good.

[decodx]

I believe that tagging spammers and bounty cheaters isn't a totally fruitless endeavor. From my perspective, there are a few positives associated with it.
Good bounty managers will avoid associating with such members, which means they'll give honest bounty hunters a better chance of earning fairly. Further, by tagging cheaters, we are tagging not only their bitcointalk profiles but also all their social media profiles, which will eventually make it harder for them to participate in campaigns with new accounts. As a result, some of them may decide it's not worthwhile to continue participating in campaigns with multiple accounts because they risk having all their accounts banned.

[_act_]

I believe that tagging spammers and bounty cheaters isn't a totally fruitless endeavor. From my perspective, there are a few positives associated with it.

Not fruitless at all because it discourage the spammers, it make some to become serious. If they are not tagged, it would be disastrous to this forum because this forum will be more lawless and more full of shit posters.

Good bounty managers will avoid associating with such members, which means they'll give honest bounty hunters a better chance of earning fairly.

But bounty hunters are most after money that bounty managers wants to give them, I checked on paying bounty campaign that have a signature campaign paying in altcoin in the bounty section in the past, people that applied for it did not have a single merit in the last 120 days, some just have less than 3 to 5 merits. It was shit posters that were applying, that is how bounties are.

But you are not wrong, some are having many accounts, join single bounties with many accounts, their account got connected and tagged by their bounty manager. This will help reduce spam because the more the accounts bounty hunters are having the more their worthless posts.

Further, by tagging cheaters, we are tagging not only their bitcointalk profiles but also all their social media profiles, which will eventually make it harder for them to participate in campaigns with new accounts. As a result, some of them may decide it's not worthwhile to continue participating in campaigns with multiple accounts because they risk having all their accounts banned.

The rules by bitcoin signature campaign managers are strictly utilized than bounty managers, bounty managers are less strict. I have seen people with negative trusted that got accepted into bounty campaigns but not signature campaigns, but what is just there is that if a campaign manager tagged someone by itself, it can be more difficult to be accepted into another campaign.

[eddie13]

But but..

One can get such good amounts of attaboy points by “busting” lowlife bounty “cheaters” who break the rules of lowlife scammy bounty campaigns with alt accounts! Which is so helpful to the lowlife bounty “managers” who can’t be bothered to do it themselves, probably don’t even care, and are happy to make a buck contributing to spam promoting scams!

It’s such a great method to easily earning a bunch of merits, getting on DT, and getting positive DT trust feedback from the circle of all others doing it, because they are soooo “helpful to the forum”..

How dare anyone claim this to be useless and futile! It makes up like half of DT and the votes for DT!
So important!

We were stuck on the reputation board for ages with Vob vs OGnasty drama, and just when we thought we were about to enjoy decent cases and discussion, boom!! Account connection threads from newbies and witch hunters began to arrive. Will we ever have a decent discussion on the reputation board? No, Is there no solution? No.

Rep has been quite boring for some time now that a certain group have been gone..
More peaceful, but quite boring..
Ahem.. Lauda and gang..

Think I spotted good old nully under a new account lately though, so their may be some hope for entertainment..

[_BlackStar]

I have seen people with negative trusted that got accepted into bounty campaigns but not signature campaigns,

1xbit pays all participant with bitcoin and all participant are members who have get some negative tag, did you ignore them. LOL
Also on one or two occasions I've also seen signature campaign managers accept participant who have received negative tags and still keep them in the campaign until now ^{[it's all based on manager's personal policy].}

About tagging all newbie cheats, it might be worth it. It should be an important lesson for every user so that they never cheat on campaign or bounties. But It's useless because this is a free forum where cheaters can easily register dozens of other accounts if the old account has been tagged. Sometimes tagging them is meaningless, but it's still important to do so.

There should be a significant change in the management of the bounty campaign, and if that is possible then I hope there are no more newbies who are 100% here just for the money. In the end I also think that flagging a novice account won't have much impact as it will keep repeating itself without any rule changes or restrictions.

Been asking the same thing before: Should every newbie have a limit in the bounty of social media?

[noorman0]

Forum is concern in dealing with sharing ideas and topic regarding bitcoin and its external and internal processes and uses. I dont think these are priority of forum to clean up such thing regarding bounty.

Some one liner post arent considered spam especially if they have sense. Why would you make a long response right if the answer needs a short one. There is an exception to that. Quota on signature can be counted for constructive one. A short post doesnt mean its not valid at least some manager consider it as long as the sentence is on point.

Despite the subjective judgment of the post, you are right on this point. Therefore, the tagging of cheating participants must be more objective. Because no matter how good their posts (including 1line posts), if the poster uses multiple accounts to join the bounty and can be proven, then that's a violation in this perspective. Unless you consider the post quality of cheating participants to be your point of consideration for tagging.

I remember that in the past chipmixer also had nice posters that joined with alts and they were tagged.

[AnotherAlt]

So I don't think tagging them makes the forum better.

But, tagging them helps bounty managers.

The funny thing is that most of the bounty tokens and coins end up scamming their community. All the bounty managers write a thing on their campaign that "They only handle the campaign, They are not involved with the team." So, If those token companies wipe out everything from the market, Bounty managers are not liable here. Forum members (except a few) catch bounty cheaters and expose them because it's a good source of earning merits. Most of the reporters (except a few) of known alt of anyone is hunting cheaters to earn merit. They left negative feedback on those newbie accounts so that they could get into the DT network (It's already happening and will happen in the future).

Because of the mentioned reason, Timelord was forced to create a self-moderated version for Known alts of anyone. A lot of newbie accounts were started reporting bounty cheaters to earn some easy merits.

So, If tagging those newbies doesn't help the forum, It's still helping some members to earn some merits and get into the DT network.

I don't think it'll ever get implemented, as it's rather restrictive. However, I'd like to see some restrictions put in place where only x merit or activity can post in the bounty section. That way, you'd reduce the endless alt accounts, unless of course they build up over time.

That would largely reduce the spam, but indeed, I don't think this will be implemented.

This is the best suggestion I have read from this thread. But, This will also reduce the work of some members and reduce the cycling of merits. Foxpup has to hire more members.

[OgNasty]

I think tagging Newbies for "bounty abuse" is futile. Accounts with high Activity and 0 Merit have nothing to lose, because they can easily create new accounts. Worse: it makes negative feedback very common instead of reserved for scammers, which leads to more and more people (including bounty/campaign managers) ignoring the warning. So I don't think tagging them makes the forum better.

Nice to see you're beginning to understand the problem.  You still have a ways to go, but I think you've reached the opinion I had in about 2016.  Maybe in another half a dozen years you'll start to see that you're actually contributing to the problem and begin working to fix the trust system instead of trying to empower those who are actively destroying it in order to maintain some form of control even though their lack of actual interaction trading and working with users makes them unfit to carry such responsibility.

[DireWolfM14]

Nice to see you're beginning to understand the problem.  You still have a ways to go, but I think you've reached the opinion I had in about 2016.  Maybe in another half a dozen years you'll start to see that you're actually contributing to the problem and begin working to fix the trust system instead of trying to empower those who are actively destroying it in order to maintain some form of control even though their lack of actual interaction trading and working with users makes them unfit to carry such responsibility.

There are multiple ways to abuse the power of being on DT.  For example there are those who frivolously red-tag members for petty offenses, and there are those who include every newbie who's ever left them a good review into their trust list.  Both are equally damaging to the reputation and usefulness of the trust system.