New moderator in forum?

[iBaba]

It's not new, last time I checked mprep did such merging of post with similar contents.

Here is a thread from Joker_josue where mod did such too

Reflection on moderation in service topics

IIRC I was the one who merged the posts (currently going through a large backlog).

Edit: It's either the post merged could be posted all together just using Horizontal rule to differentiate them from his perspective of posting, so if he (mprep) did the merging then it's the same issue with joker_josue.

I am quite impressed by such initiatives taken by mprep for the merging. I think this same approach should be exercised on individuals who often make similar threads in the same board. For instance, seeking for an exact solution from two different thread or ignoring an existing thread to start a new one with the intention not to continue with the existing one. I think more new posters trying to create threads should be encouraged of using existing threads with similar topics rather than creating a new one.

A typical example could be an existing thread with topic 'how to rank up to full members in the forum' and another new topic with  'I'm finding it difficult to rank up to full member, please help'. Such new topic can be a reply in the existing thread instead of creating a new one with same or extremely similar purposes.

[Lafu]

My bot doesn't delete anything - it gives me a list of links and I manually go through and decide which posts should be merged.

Okay glad to hear that your Bot only gives you a List of that kind of stuff that you looking for !

The contents of your consecutive posts (some of which were made within 24 hours of each other) got merged into the first post in a row and then the aforementioned consecutive posts were deleted

Helping the Forum and give a warning to other Users for and about Malware Links and Fake Anns and using every post as an new refference Link ,
for that report even when there was made back in the days a few consecutive posts is a reason for deleting it ?

Every refference Link from that post are now broken and dont work , i know Rules are Rules , but to be honest is this needed with all that old posts ?
hilariousandco told me in 2018 for not report old posts and threads , Threads aren't deleted either just because the op requests them so best just to leave them dead where they are. !

But thanks for the explanation at all.

[LoyceV]

As for there being months between posts, that's not relevant for rule 32 and especially rule 21.

But those rules aren't meant to be set in stone:

Almost all rules are subject to mod discretion.

So: do you think merging those old posts makes the forum better?

[mprep]

@mprep: What's the point of doing this, though? I can't think of any non-contrived upside to merging old posts, but I can think of a few genuine downsides: Destroying timelines, breaking links to specific message IDs, sometimes hiding/losing "Merited by" markers, sometimes hiding/losing "Last edit" markers, adding new divergences between the forum and its various third-party archives, generating notification noise, and just generally irritating the affected posters (and it's not like Bitcointalk has a flourishing user base, so, why annoy good members for no real upside?). I mean, how much sense does it make to bypass the reporting mechanism and produce these old-post amalgamations on your own? Especially when, as you've said, they likely would have been marked "bad" if they had been reported organically rather than found by your bot.

As for there being months between posts, that's not relevant for rule 32 and especially rule 21.

But those rules aren't meant to be set in stone:

Almost all rules are subject to mod discretion.

So: do you think merging those old posts makes the forum better?

My bot doesn't delete anything - it gives me a list of links and I manually go through and decide which posts should be merged.

Okay glad to hear that your Bot only gives you a List of that kind of stuff that you looking for !

The contents of your consecutive posts (some of which were made within 24 hours of each other) got merged into the first post in a row and then the aforementioned consecutive posts were deleted

Helping the Forum and give a warning to other Users for and about Malware Links and Fake Anns and using every post as an new refference Link ,
for that report even when there was made back in the days a few consecutive posts is a reason for deleting it ?

Every refference Link from that post are now broken and dont work , i know Rules are Rules , but to be honest is this needed with all that old posts ?
hilariousandco told me in 2018 for not report old posts and threads , Threads aren't deleted either just because the op requests them so best just to leave them dead where they are. !

But thanks for the explanation at all.

While the main reason for merging posts is to reduce the overall size of content posted by the same user whenever possible while maintaining general consistency of the rules, I now see that perhaps I was too overzealous in doing so for old posts. In the future, I'll generally refrain from merging old (as per what would be considered old when reporting a post) posts.

Thank you everyone for your feedback.

[dkbit98]

@mprep: What's the point of doing this, though? I can't think of any non-contrived upside to merging old posts, but I can think of a few genuine downsides: Destroying timelines, breaking links to specific message IDs, sometimes hiding/losing "Merited by" markers, sometimes hiding/losing "Last edit" markers, adding new divergences between the forum and its various third-party archives, generating notification noise, and just generally irritating the affected posters (and it's not like Bitcointalk has a flourishing user base, so, why annoy good members for no real upside?). I mean, how much sense does it make to bypass the reporting mechanism and produce these old-post amalgamations on your own? Especially when, as you've said, they likely would have been marked "bad" if they had been reported organically rather than found by your bot.

I fully agree with this.
In my own example of recently merged posts, they are all located in my own self-moderated topic, so I made sure it was clean-ish enough.
I don't care about few deleted/merged posts, but I don't like receiving a bunch of messages about for no good reason, and there is nothing improved in my topic.

[Cricktor]

In the future, I'll generally refrain from merging old (as per what would be considered old when reporting a post) posts.

After what time is a post considered "old" in this context?

I do report unnecessary consecutive posts that violate rule 32 when it's obvious the user didn't know or care about this rule or maybe simply was too lazy (or too dumb?) to reply to multiple other users' posts with appropriate quotes in just one reply.

I'm not sure where exactly I draw the line and leave "old" consecutive posts as not worthy to report. The reporting function warns when the reported post is too old. I didn't pay attention how old it has to be to trigger the warning.

It's also likely that mobile phone posters tend to less refine their posts or not bother to gather different quotes from multiple users into a single reply post. Unnecessary large quotes (basically unedited full quotes) and sometimes therefore excessive quote pyramids are another annoyance for which mobile phone users might be more likely to blame. I don't know, it just sucks how careless some people bloat threads. Something's clearly wrong when quote-to-own-writing ratio exceeds 5:1 or more (as some rule of thumb). Unfortunately reporting such bad habits is less likely to gain traction and action by moderators.

I understand it's more blurry and considerably harder to properly moderate such things, because simply deleting such offenses isn't likely the best and only solution.

[mprep]

In the future, I'll generally refrain from merging old (as per what would be considered old when reporting a post) posts.

After what time is a post considered "old" in this context?

I do report unnecessary consecutive posts that violate rule 32 when it's obvious the user didn't know or care about this rule or maybe simply was too lazy (or too dumb?) to reply to multiple other users' posts with appropriate quotes in just one reply.

I'm not sure where exactly I draw the line and leave "old" consecutive posts as not worthy to report. The reporting function warns when the reported post is too old. I didn't pay attention how old it has to be to trigger the warning.

It's also likely that mobile phone posters tend to less refine their posts or not bother to gather different quotes from multiple users into a single reply post. Unnecessary large quotes (basically unedited full quotes) and sometimes therefore excessive quote pyramids are another annoyance for which mobile phone users might be more likely to blame. I don't know, it just sucks how careless some people bloat threads. Something's clearly wrong when quote-to-own-writing ratio exceeds 5:1 or more (as some rule of thumb). Unfortunately reporting such bad habits is less likely to gain traction and action by moderators.

I understand it's more blurry and considerably harder to properly moderate such things, because simply deleting such offenses isn't likely the best and only solution.

IIRC the report page warns you about the post being old if it was posted more than 6 months ago.

[Little Mouse]

It doesn't look good- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=*.msg64912096#msg64912096

I have 5 weekly payments update on a single post.

[mprep]

It doesn't look good- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=*.msg64912096#msg64912096

I have 5 weekly payments update on a single post.

Putting away cleanliness requirements (as enforced by rules 21 and 32), each of those updates specify which week they're for, the links to transactions specify when the payments were made exactly, the posts themselves are repetitive and short as well as none of those posts are currently relevant in regards to notifying users of new payments (as a bump-like post).

[LoyceV]

the posts themselves are repetitive and short as well as none of those posts are currently relevant in regards to notifying users of new payments (as a bump-like post).

How would you suggest a user to handle this?

• If I post a new post in a topic, even though the last post was mine, I do that because I want to bump it. If I edit the post, the new content may be overlooked.
• If I edit it and also bump the topic by posting "bump" in a new post, that feels ridiculous.
• If I copy the post into a new post, add new information to that new post, and delete the old post, it feels like I'm cheating my signature campaign (if I'm in one) by "re-using" last week's post content again for this week.

None of those feels right to me.

[philipma1957]

i have over 48000 posts. edit 49000

So far I think 15 were merged so that makes

47985.

now if i have a signature which I do

my count ie lowered from years ago.

say I need 40 posts for max payment.

I make 50

thus 48000 + 50 =48,050 and I get paid for my 40 the max for the week.


with the merges

it is 48000+50-15 =48,035

I get paid for 35

even though these deletions well merges are from years ago.

I think I lost about 40 or 50 usd worth of btc due to the merging.

plus my manager had to ask me for post recounts multiple times.

Also many time the double posts are due to lots of photos for builds which do not work well as a big post.

So the work cost me money and it certainly makes more work for campaign managers.

[LoyceV]

with the merges
it is 48000+50-15 =48,035
I get paid for 35

So your campaign manager only looks at your total post count, and not at the posts made during the last campaign period? That's dumb (or lazy, or both). It's trivially easy to see how many posts you made.
Either way, I don't think the forum moderation should be adjusted because of with missed income from signature campaigns.

[mprep]

the posts themselves are repetitive and short as well as none of those posts are currently relevant in regards to notifying users of new payments (as a bump-like post).

How would you suggest a user to handle this?

• If I post a new post in a topic, even though the last post was mine, I do that because I want to bump it. If I edit the post, the new content may be overlooked.
• If I edit it and also bump the topic by posting "bump" in a new post, that feels ridiculous.
• If I copy the post into a new post, add new information to that new post, and delete the old post, it feels like I'm cheating my signature campaign (if I'm in one) by "re-using" last week's post content again for this week.

None of those feels right to me.

If you're the topic's OP or designated by the topic's OP as the user who bumps their topic, you post it as a regular bump-like post (at max once every 24 hours) and once it's no longer relevant (no longer your newest bump-like post), you merge any old consecutive bump-like posts. If the contents of your bump-like post is substantial (as opposed to the functional equivalent of "bump" or "up"), you can do so periodically / once in a while (as opposed to each time a bump-like post is no longer the newest). As not cleaning up substantial (content quality wise) bump-like posts is one of the least serious rule violations (AFAIK only seeing enforcement through merges but no punishment, that is if they were posted with at least 24 hours in between each other), you could also just leave it up for a moderator to clean up.

If you're not the topic's OP or designated by the topic's OP as the user who bumps their topic and the last post made in the thread was yours, you have to edit in any new content into said post or wait till someone else posts. Posting consecutive posts if you're not OP (or designated by OP) is a more serious rule violation and repeated (recent) violations will result in a ban.

i have over 48000 posts. edit 49000

So far I think 15 were merged so that makes

47985.

now if i have a signature which I do

my count ie lowered from years ago.

say I need 40 posts for max payment.

I make 50

thus 48000 + 50 =48,050 and I get paid for my 40 the max for the week.


with the merges

it is 48000+50-15 =48,035

I get paid for 35

even though these deletions well merges are from years ago.

I think I lost about 40 or 50 usd worth of btc due to the merging.

plus my manager had to ask me for post recounts multiple times.

Also many time the double posts are due to lots of photos for builds which do not work well as a big post.

So the work cost me money and it certainly makes more work for campaign managers.

Lost profits from signature campaigns and more work for signature campaign managers aren't valid justifications for rule violations, especially considering that quite a few of your merged posts were either violating rule 32 (consecutive posts as non OP, often within the same day; e.g. [1] [2] [3]) or rule 13 (bumping your thread more than once every 24 hours; e.g. [1] [2]).

[dkbit98]

If I copy the post into a new post, add new information to that new post, and delete the old post, it feels like I'm cheating my signature campaign (if I'm in one) by "re-using" last week's post content again for this week.

Maybe you noticed that one member was recently kicked out of signature campaign because he edited his posts and made big changes in them before week ending.
Nobody should not be forced to delete, copy-paste and edit their posts all the time if they want to bump the topic for some reason.
In my opinion this is not breaking any forum rules, but I would like to hear opinion of theymos and other moderators ^{(except mprep)}.

it certainly makes more work for campaign managers.

It can sometimes also create problems and errors with counting for managers, depending on time when bot makes this reports.

[Little Mouse]

So the work cost me money and it certainly makes more work for campaign managers.

No, it doesn't cost you money, and it's not more work for managers. Every manager would check the post count between the weekdays. Well, I would have a negative impression of that user unless I was informed what caused the mass deletion.

[philipma1957]

So the work cost me money and it certainly makes more work for campaign managers.

No, it doesn't cost you money, and it's not more work for managers. Every manager would check the post count between the weekdays. Well, I would have a negative impression of that user unless I was informed what caused the mass deletion.

holy shit does not anyone understand math.



why bother.

three respected people simply blew off my post with a complete lack of understanding of what I said.

it is sad that you do not read and understand what people say.

all three of you simply reply with insults.

I did not come here to insult people.

but all i got was insults tossed in my face.


of course it is more work for managers.

As it is all depending on where you post and what posts are allowed by that particular manager.

it is not about post count and post content.

I had four double posts merged when I deliberately spaced them four in a row
so as to make the photos  in them easy to read and comprehend.

Do I yell and scream at theymos when he cost me over ten thousand dollars with the mixer ban as I had to refund six months of prepaid signatures.

I am simply saying these merges are annoying.

And if I did 80 posts in a week and my signature did not pay for the wo post and I attempt content with good info.

I now need to count all my posts for the week.
I need to take away all wo posts
I need to remove some other posts.
Then see if I passed the 40 needed for max pay.

So
I started this sunday for the new week and right now I made 41 posts for this week

i now need to weed out the ones that do not count for my signature. 18

so i have 23 posts that are good 18 that are not.

if the manager looks at last 41 posts and pulls 23 good by saying

41 made - 18 no good= 23

So all seems well and why should anyone give a fuck if there is a double posts in the bad ones I did not make money with them as you wrongly supposed and insulted me that I am padding count.

which why I should not bother posting here at all.

Hey theymos give me back my refunded mixer money you cost me should be all i fucking say i could yous the thousands lost because of you.

[EFS]

Maybe you noticed that one member was recently kicked out of signature campaign because he edited his posts and made big changes in them before week ending.

That was a very different case. That person was basically posting a reserved message and then editing it days later to make it look cosmetically long and useful. People who do that bring no real value to their campaign because most of the time the post has already dropped to the back pages by then.

Nobody should not be forced to delete, copy-paste and edit their posts all the time if they want to bump the topic for some reason.
In my opinion this is not breaking any forum rules, but I would like to hear opinion of theymos and other moderators ^{(except mprep)}.

That depends on the message and the context. In the boards I moderate, some users do this purely for bumping purposes. For example, when a new product is added to their catalog and they already have the last post, they delete it and repost with the new product announcement included to bump the thread again.

Post merge is not an option for Patrollers like me. While every case should be evaluated individually, if it were up to me I wouldn't bother too much with merging older posts. After what Mprep said in this message I think the issue is resolved.

of course it is more work for managers.

-snip-

Your campaign manager should count the messages you posted in the last week. Deleted messages from previous weeks shouldn't affect your earnings for that specific week. If the campaign manager is undercounting, it means they're not doing their job properly (unless your agreement specifically states something like "there must be exactly 49000 posts when you start the week and 48990 is unacceptable" then such a strict post count requirement likely doesn't apply). They are paid to do this, it doesn't put extra workload on them. It shouldn't even be a big deal for them.

[philipma1957]

I dont care about the one or two posts short that got were caused by it .

I simply don’t see the use in doing this most my merged deletions were in 2023.

my manager contacted me ask asked for an upto date lifetime post count which i gave to him.

Now it is fixed and as I said it was not about the 1 or 2 post count issue.

it was about my manager contacting my for the up to date all time post count issue caused do to deleting posts via merges done in 2023 posts that were not used to earn signature money.

but that altered current numbers enough for my signature manager having to contact me for a count fix.

and to say it is the signature manager being bad as if he did something to 2023 posts that altered 2025 results is wrong.

and yeah do I double post yes I do and will continue to do so for multiple reasons some within and some not within my control.

But not to pad for money in any case at all.

I can show multiple reasons that double posts happen that are not for nefarious purposes on the posters part.