Don't Miss Duelbit's Attention Opens New Participants

[AI Buster]

However, what can be seen at the moment is that there are people rapidly exchanging merits with each other. Try to pay attention to all registered participants, my focus is on the Pakistan local board. Even old posts are now suddenly being given a large number of merits to meet the 50 Merit requirement. DT members, please pay attention to them.

[Bright0515]

However, what can be seen at the moment is that there are people rapidly exchanging merits with each other. Try to pay attention to all registered participants, my focus is on the Pakistan local board. Even old posts are now suddenly being given a large number of merits to meet the 50 Merit requirement. DT members, please pay attention to them.

You should try as much as possible to drop the links so that others can check. Bringing awareness without proof is a total waste of time. If you find anything suspicious all you need to do is post the reference link below your post just the way others are doing.

[AI Buster]

The most striking thing is that the merits only circulate within the same circle of names
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=2746686
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=3570681

The two accounts are like catching up to 50 Merit. The easiest ones will pay attention to those who have merit in the range of 50 Merit

[CryptoHeadlineNews]

Yes, the suspicion you just made is absolutely correct, because not only were these accounts able to gather 50 merits in the past 120 days, but the second account "Farhan99" was able to rank up so as to immediately meet the requirements made for the available slots that was made on the Duelbit campaign. Here are my observations.

For CryptoYar

I just made some investigation, and noticed that before Hhampuz opened those slots on Duelbit campaign, "CryptoYar" who is already a Hero member had just only 43 merits in his last 120 days, and immediately he saw the open slots and the requirements needed, he rushed to go gather extra 13 merits into his account in less than 2 hours as shown in the screenshot below.




For Farhan99

I also just made my investigation, and noticed that before Hhampuz opened those slots on Duelbit campaign, "Farhan99" had exactly 490 merits on his account as a "Senior Member" rank and 42 merits in his last 120 days, and immediately the slots were opened, and he saw it, he immediately rushed to get extra 10 merits from 5 different accounts, 2 each to enable him rank up as a "Hero Member" in less than 2 hours and likewise have the minimum merit requirements for the Duelbit campaign.



So it is obvious this is a merit exchange by these 2 alleged accounts, because they have both submitted their applications.

[CryptoYar]

The most striking thing is that the merits only circulate within the same circle of names
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=2746686

The two accounts are like catching up to 50 Merit. The easiest ones will pay attention to those who have merit in the range of 50 Merit

What a nonsense is this?


Do you really think all of this happened just for the sake of the campaign?

In reality, @CryptoHeadlineNews I wasn't even aware of any of this.


So, I am going to withdraw my application from the Duelbits Campaign. I cannot afford to ruin my reputation for the sake of such a small campaign.

[The Cryptovator]

The most striking thing is that the merits only circulate within the same circle of names
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=2746686
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=3570681

The two accounts are like catching up to 50 Merit. The easiest ones will pay attention to those who have merit in the range of 50 Merit

Not a big deal. Managers aren't stupid; they will visit the merit history before accepting the participants. They could easily detect the manipulation, and that's why they are managers managing campaigns. I don't see merit abuse in this case; it's better to spread your merits. Sending merits increases the circulation as long as they don't abuse the merit system. I can't see any big amount of merit exchange here. If I am missing something, please point me.

So, I am going to withdraw my application from the Duelbits Campaign. I cannot afford to ruin my reputation for the sake of such a small campaign.

Doesn't make sense. So why? Otherwise you have guilty.

So it is obvious this is a merit exchange by these 2 alleged accounts, because they have both submitted their applications.

Can you be more specific on that? Explain it.


Theymos thought about merits,

- Giving negative trust for merit trading and deceptive alt-account use may be appropriate, but you should use a light touch so that people don't feel paranoid.

And

If a DT member tags you for something stupid involving merit (ie. probably anything less than selling merit), then they're not going to be a DT member for much longer.

[CryptoHeadlineNews]

In reality, @CryptoHeadlineNews I wasn't even aware of any of this.

Alright, if you weren't aware then maybe it might be a coincidence, because considering the type the Open slots were made available, the time the merits were sent and the time you applied for the campaign, it kind of seems fishy just as O.P claimed. But I just got found out that "ThemePen" is a merit Source, and as a merit Source, he or she is free to send whatever amount of merits he thinks is worthy to any post. And as such, I have come to agree that this might be one of those coincidence when a user gets merited at the right time.

So, I am going to withdraw my application from the Duelbits Campaign. I cannot afford to ruin my reputation for the sake of such a small campaign.

I never asked you to withdraw your application, I just noticed you have done so. You can reapply. I guess this is one of those coincidence when we get merited at the right time.

So it is obvious this is a merit exchange by these 2 alleged accounts, because they have both submitted their applications.

Can you be more specific on that? Explain it.

Theymos thought about merits,

- Giving negative trust for merit trading and deceptive alt-account use may be appropriate, but you should use a light touch so that people don't feel paranoid.

I guess this might be one of those scenarios when a user gets merited at the right time. Because I just got to find out the sender is a merit Source, and as a source, he is free to send whatever amount to anyone at anytime. So my bad, despite my analysis done early.

Hence, I think this case lacks enough evidence and merit, and should be draw to a conclusion.  Thanks.

[Lucius]

However, what can be seen at the moment is that there are people rapidly exchanging merits with each other. Try to pay attention to all registered participants, my focus is on the Pakistan local board. Even old posts are now suddenly being given a large number of merits to meet the 50 Merit requirement. DT members, please pay attention to them.

I would personally set that requirement at at least 100 merits (or even more) considering that it is a period of up to 120 days. Even the fact that someone received so many merits does not necessarily mean that he is a quality poster, because there are some initiatives where merits are given for certain tasks that have nothing to do with the quality of the posts.

It's not that I'm interfering in the manager's business, but instead of 25 members, I would rather increase the number of max posts to 30 per week, leave the pay rate the same and take on ten more top members who would have to meet a much higher requirement of 50 merits/120 days. Then there would be no need for this topic.

[Satofan44]

However, what can be seen at the moment is that there are people rapidly exchanging merits with each other. Try to pay attention to all registered participants, my focus is on the Pakistan local board. Even old posts are now suddenly being given a large number of merits to meet the 50 Merit requirement. DT members, please pay attention to them.

I would personally set that requirement at at least 100 merits (or even more) considering that it is a period of up to 120 days. Even the fact that someone received so many merits does not necessarily mean that he is a quality poster, because there are some initiatives where merits are given for certain tasks that have nothing to do with the quality of the posts.

Unfortunately that does the opposite of what it is supposed to do. Occasionally I see a good poster that does not even have close to that amount of merits, probably because they are overlooked, they don't know anyone here and they are not farming merit with contests. On the other hand, I see many local board shitposters that have reached such merit requirements. See the users that are reported here, their posts are mostly generic junk.

I occasionally mention this, you can spot merit farmers and shitposters based on merit behavior. If they are giving a lot more merits to random shitposts in their local board than they do to the best posters of the forum such as d5000, then they are corrupt and malicious. There is nothing to discuss here at all. They frequently find themselves in the same topics as he is, but they rarely give him anything. Absolutely normal behavior.  

It's not that I'm interfering in the manager's business, but instead of 25 members, I would rather increase the number of max posts to 30 per week, leave the pay rate the same and take on ten more top members who would have to meet a much higher requirement of 50 merits/120 days. Then there would be no need for this topic.

More posts, fewer users would improve the selection of the campaigns yes. The pay rate is irrelevant, it does not have much of an impact on shitposts. When a forum has a lot of users who are shitposters, restricting the user count will improve the competition.

[Lucius]

~snip~
I occasionally mention this, you can spot merit farmers and shitposters based on merit behavior. If they are giving a lot more merits to random shitposts in their local board than they do to the best posters of the forum such as d5000, then they are corrupt and malicious. There is nothing to discuss here at all. They frequently find themselves in the same topics as he is, but they rarely give him anything. Absolutely normal behavior.  

I also see a lot of strange things when it comes to merits, but it's something that doesn't really make sense to argue about, considering that everyone can do whatever they want with their sMerits and there have only been a few cases where the admin reacted to some abuse.

As for the local board and their merit sources, it is logical that they spend most of their merits right there because that is what they applied for. Of course, we can always discuss whether a post deserves merit or not, but I always take into account that we are not all equal when it comes to determining the quality of anything, let alone a post.

More posts, fewer users would improve the selection of the campaigns yes. The pay rate is irrelevant, it does not have much of an impact on shitposts. When a forum has a lot of users who are shitposters, restricting the user count will improve the competition.

Pay rate has the effect of attracting the best posters, as was the case once with the CM sig campaign that dominated the forum for years. Today's model is different and works on the principle of scattering good users in several campaigns, considering that the pay rates are more or less the same in all of them.

[Satofan44]

I also see a lot of strange things when it comes to merits, but it's something that doesn't really make sense to argue about, considering that everyone can do whatever they want with their sMerits and there have only been a few cases where the admin reacted to some abuse.

Yes, you can do almost anything you want but that does not change the fact that what you do is a reflection of your personality and your intentions. That is my point. This is how you spot people who are behaving in suspicious ways without having any prior evidence at all, pattern recognition works well -- don't let the liberal retards suppress yours. If you take a note, I was explicitly referring to people who are in the same threads as d5000 -- this means that the only valid excuse, i.e., not reading his posts due to different posting habits or locations is not applicable. There is no other good reason for someone to have such an unbalanced merit distribution, therefore you can at the very least suspect (but I'd jump to confirm) that they are malicious or farming (their own accounts, boosting their friends or whatever other kind of farming they could be doing).

As for the local board and their merit sources, it is logical that they spend most of their merits right there because that is what they applied for.

I was not talking about merit sources, but generally many local board merit sources are meriting complete shitposts. Therefore they too are responsible for the farming. Whether they are connected to the farmers directly or whether money is flowing is up for debate, and that would require evidence. To observe and to conclude that they are causing harm does not require such evidence.

Of course, we can always discuss whether a post deserves merit or not, but I always take into account that we are not all equal when it comes to determining the quality of anything, let alone a post.

Hence why I pick extreme examples. d5000 posts are better than 99% user and 99.9% local board user posts. This does not apply either.   Just take a look at some of the posts of the linked users here, those that received many merits (but not necessarily from merit sources). Pure generic junk that I could write blindfolded, without thinking about the topic at all, in less than 2 minutes per posts. Subjective perspective.

More posts, fewer users would improve the selection of the campaigns yes. The pay rate is irrelevant, it does not have much of an impact on shitposts. When a forum has a lot of users who are shitposters, restricting the user count will improve the competition.

Pay rate has the effect of attracting the best posters, as was the case once with the CM sig campaign that dominated the forum for years. Today's model is different and works on the principle of scattering good users in several campaigns, considering that the pay rates are more or less the same in all of them.

What you describe is a thing of the past, what I describe is the reality of today. You can't attract more best posters with higher pay because they are simply not here, they do not exist. They won't appear just because the payment is now $500 per week instead of $80. In a normal functioning forum where the distribution of good vs bad posters is more balanced it would be true, but right now you have an extreme distribution here. Fewer than 10% of signature participants are good posters.

If one campaign increases payments that could attract some good posters over to them from another campaign, but that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about campaigns in general, as in the whole state of the forum. If half the campaigns or all of the campaigns increased or decreased payments significantly, nothing significant would change in the short term. There is simply a huge queue of average and junk posters and farmers that are willing to take any slots. In that case: more slots equals more spam. Fewer slots equal more competition and less spam. Is this clear now or should I make a numerical example?

$500 per week could make some quality members to come back or to be more active, but the overall effect on the forum would be minimal. I still remember when one CM member (I forgot his name) left campaign when payrate went down to "only" $300 per week, as it wasn't worth his time.

Yes, you have said it better than did -- much more precise. It would have some effect, but the overall effect would be minimal and we are talking about extreme pay rate increases which are unlikely. 20-50-100% increases would even have less of an effect.

[Rikafip]

It's not that I'm interfering in the manager's business, but instead of 25 members, I would rather increase the number of max posts to 30 per week, leave the pay rate the same and take on ten more top members who would have to meet a much higher requirement of 50 merits/120 days. Then there would be no need for this topic.

All that would cause is more merit manipulation and merit circlejerk. Merit worth is imho decreasing, seeing how many shitposters are reaching higher ranks so relying on that wouldn't have much effect on the quality of the campaign.

You can't attract more best posters with higher pay because they are simply not here, they do not exist. They won't appear just because the payment is now $500 per week instead of $80.

$500 per week could make some quality members to come back or to be more active, but the overall effect on the forum would be minimal. I still remember when one CM member (I forgot his name) left campaign when payrate went down to "only" $300 per week, as it wasn't worth his time.

Its a simple fact that there's far more spots in signature campaigns (quick look at one of those "signature overview threads" says that there's ~700 spots atm ) than there are quality members, and managers for sure won't reject a potential client due that, so what else to do other than lower the standards.

[mindrust]

Lol someone left CM because payment was downgraded to $300/week? The dude must be preparing articles for a big news agency or something if he found $300/week unacceptable. Some people really do prepare their posts in such a professional way though so it wouldn’t surprise me to find out such professional people were among us.

CM was great even though I never participated in their sig camp but I also remember bitmixer which was the real bomb because participation was automated from their website. You were typing your acc id and btc address and boom, done you were in. Unimaginable nowadays.

[goldkingcoiner]

Lol someone left CM because payment was downgraded to $300/week? The dude must be preparing articles for a big news agency or something if he found $300/week unacceptable. Some people really do prepare their posts in such a professional way though so it wouldn’t surprise me to find out such professional people were among us.

CM was great even though I never participated in their sig camp but I also remember bitmixer which was the real bomb because participation was automated from their website. You were typing your acc id and btc address and boom, done you were in. Unimaginable nowadays.

That sounds like an amazing system. What happened? Why is it nowadays unimaginable?

[Despairo]

That's a valid accusation, I would add this.

For CryptoYar

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=232519.msg66122346#msg66122346

For Farhan99

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=232519.msg66180761#msg66180761
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=232519.msg66147241#msg66147241

How can be those users intentionally meriting his old post when they've read and make a post after those post? it's like, they've read his post and waiting for today to give merit, is this make sense?

It might be make sense if they post like a list of unmerited post or rank up to the next rank, but I don't even find that post, so how did "those users" aware to give merit to the same users at the same time?

Not a big deal. Managers aren't stupid; they will visit the merit history before accepting the participants. They could easily detect the manipulation, and that's why they are managers managing campaigns. I don't see merit abuse in this case; it's better to spread your merits. Sending merits increases the circulation as long as they don't abuse the merit system. I can't see any big amount of merit exchange here. If I am missing something, please point me.

I agree managers aren't stupid and they might aware with suspicious activity, but I find them either don't care or didn't want to publicize it. Having @OP to create this thread isn't wrong too because this would be an eye open for other users.

Can you be more specific on that? Explain it.

Theymos thought about merits,

Well, he only said if there's a merit exchange, he didn't say if both accounts deserve to be red tagged.

[Xiestar]

I agree managers aren't stupid and they might aware with suspicious activity, but I find them either don't care or didn't want to publicize it. Having @OP to create this thread isn't wrong too because this would be an eye open for other users.

Lmao. Hhampuz is a merit whore enabler. He doesn’t check the specific quality of the post as long as the total merit received was high regardless on where did they get it.

@Jollygood just point it out the obvious when he created a thread against merit whore that’s why he recently done some minor action to kick some merit whore but still most of his participants are the product of merit whoring that exchanging merit through themselves or on some cooking show contest.

He is making the campaign exclusive for merit whore and user with close to merit source.

I also see a lot of strange things when it comes to merits, but it's something that doesn't really make sense to argue about, considering that everyone can do whatever they want with their sMerits and there have only been a few cases where the admin reacted to some abuse.

As for the local board and their merit sources, it is logical that they spend most of their merits right there because that is what they applied for. Of course, we can always discuss whether a post deserves merit or not, but I always take into account that we are not all equal when it comes to determining the quality of anything, let alone a post.

Merit exchange will not gonna be a big issue if campaign manager stop considering the merit count on accepting campaign manager rather just do their job on checking the user post quality manually.

Merit system is completely bias since the distribution is based on merit source preference while most of the merit source doesn’t cover all the board of the forum and there’s a favoritism on who to give.

[mindrust]

Lol someone left CM because payment was downgraded to $300/week? The dude must be preparing articles for a big news agency or something if he found $300/week unacceptable. Some people really do prepare their posts in such a professional way though so it wouldn’t surprise me to find out such professional people were among us.

CM was great even though I never participated in their sig camp but I also remember bitmixer which was the real bomb because participation was automated from their website. You were typing your acc id and btc address and boom, done you were in. Unimaginable nowadays.

That sounds like an amazing system. What happened? Why is it nowadays unimaginable?

Bitmixer went down and the campaign has ended naturally. They stopped their operations because they have foreseen what was waiting for them at the end of the road. (CM probably knew too, but they didn’t care)

It is unimaginable because there was no vetting process. Everybody could join and there was no limit on the slot number. Later then lauda was in charge to prevent spam but still, she wasn’t selecting the participants, it was still all auto join

Today people would riot against such system. “Take it down it creates spammmm!!!” Forum police would even hand them neg ratings probably.

[goldkingcoiner]

Lol someone left CM because payment was downgraded to $300/week? The dude must be preparing articles for a big news agency or something if he found $300/week unacceptable. Some people really do prepare their posts in such a professional way though so it wouldn’t surprise me to find out such professional people were among us.

CM was great even though I never participated in their sig camp but I also remember bitmixer which was the real bomb because participation was automated from their website. You were typing your acc id and btc address and boom, done you were in. Unimaginable nowadays.

That sounds like an amazing system. What happened? Why is it nowadays unimaginable?

Bitmixer went down and the campaign has ended naturally. They stopped their operations because they have foreseen what was waiting for them at the end of the road. (CM probably knew too, but they didn’t care)

It is unimaginable because there was no vetting process. Everybody could join and there was no limit on the slot number. Later then lauda was in charge to prevent spam but still, she wasn’t selecting the participants, it was still all auto join

Today people would riot against such system. “Take it down it creates spammmm!!!” Forum police would even hand them neg ratings probably.

I remember bounty campaign spam... No wonder nobody made any money.
Thousands of bots got an equal share of the rewards, leaving the real participants with peanuts...

I do not know much about the campaign you are talking about but without a vetting process I imagine it was similar to the others...
If it was the case, I'd red tag them too, just to warn others not to waste their time.

[mindrust]

Lol someone left CM because payment was downgraded to $300/week? The dude must be preparing articles for a big news agency or something if he found $300/week unacceptable. Some people really do prepare their posts in such a professional way though so it wouldn’t surprise me to find out such professional people were among us.

CM was great even though I never participated in their sig camp but I also remember bitmixer which was the real bomb because participation was automated from their website. You were typing your acc id and btc address and boom, done you were in. Unimaginable nowadays.

That sounds like an amazing system. What happened? Why is it nowadays unimaginable?

Bitmixer went down and the campaign has ended naturally. They stopped their operations because they have foreseen what was waiting for them at the end of the road. (CM probably knew too, but they didn’t care)

It is unimaginable because there was no vetting process. Everybody could join and there was no limit on the slot number. Later then lauda was in charge to prevent spam but still, she wasn’t selecting the participants, it was still all auto join

Today people would riot against such system. “Take it down it creates spammmm!!!” Forum police would even hand them neg ratings probably.

I remember bounty campaign spam... No wonder nobody made any money.
Thousands of bots got an equal share of the rewards, leaving the real participants with peanuts...

I do not know much about the campaign you are talking about but without a vetting process I imagine it was similar to the others...
If it was the case, I'd red tag them too, just to warn others not to waste their time.

There wasn’t a fixed prize pool. It was on par with CM in terms of payment amount. 0.035 btc / week. It is a lot of money now and back in the day it was still nice and started to grow as the btc prices climb.

The only difference was there was no active campaign manager (lauda tried to do something but it wasn’t like she had full control over anything, other than tagging spammers one by one)

It was… amazing. We haven’t seen anything like that ever since.

People were creating massive alt farms just to join that one and they were getting hunted by the dt one by one. Drama was endless.