Sockpuppet Police

[Hatch]

I wonder how hard it would be to limit participation in a thread until you had a certain number of legitimate posts under your belt? It would be ok to let a newbie start a thread to limit local prosecution from anyone in a non-crypto friendly locale, but then to participate in a discussion, unless you started the topic, you would have to have like fifty or one hundred, 150 or higher word count posts under your belt or something like that to participate... Maybe with the exception of newbie, help, and mining support forums for a new persona to get their post count up?

Everyone appreciates open and real discussion, but this forum is fast losing its value because of all the losers using sockpuppets to have negative conversations with themselves... All these obviously fake sockpuppet conversations would be stupidly hilarious if they didn't so badly clutter up otherwise informative threads with their nonsense.

It's one thing to voice legitimate concerns backing up your convictions with the user account that carries your reputation, nothing but a detrimental waste of space allowing these idiots to freely spout all the BS that they would never have the guts to post if they weren't able to hide behind an unlimited number of newbie sockpuppet accounts.

I think a such a simple and rational change would hugely increase the value and use of this information exchange.

How hard would something like that be to implement?

[hilariousandco]

How hard would something like that be to implement?

Very, and all you'll do is annoy and frustrate legitimate users with these suggestions. Trolls, fudsters and scammers will bypass or wait out any restrictions that are put in place whilst it will scare off regular newcomers so it'll likely have the opposite intended effect.

[TECSHARE]

How hard would something like that be to implement?

Very, and all you'll do is annoy and frustrate legitimate users with these suggestions. Trolls, fudsters and scammers will bypass or wait out any restrictions that are put in place whilst it will scare off regular newcomers so it'll likely have the opposite intended effect.

Yes, because "scambusters" shotgunning newbie accounts randomly with negative ratings hoping they hit a scammer or two by accident certainly does not have this effect right?

[hilariousandco]

Oh shut up. Seriously. You're embarrassing. Newbies aren't 'randomly negged' but for good reason, but that doesn't suit your agenda so as usual you exaggerate. You need to get over yourself.

[Hatch]

How hard would something like that be to implement?

Very, and all you'll do is annoy and frustrate legitimate users with these suggestions. Trolls, fudsters and scammers will bypass or wait out any restrictions that are put in place whilst it will scare off regular newcomers so it'll likely have the opposite intended effect.

The implementation difficulty I cannot question, but I tend to disagree with a logical restriction to counter the use of these sockpuppet accounts.

If everyone had to put their reputation on the line with every post, these forums would be so much easier to read, and probably take up less than half the page count and hard drive space needed displaying and keeping track of all the nonsense.

By far the majority of people using these false identities are instant gratification type personalities that would not bother with the trouble of "bypassing" or "waiting out" minimal restrictions. Maybe they would go through the trouble to develop one or two sockpuppets, but not create tens of them on the fly to infest a single topic that catches their attention... If you look at the majority of sockpuppet conversations, it is clear by syntax and grammer that they are primarily single individuals carrying on a conversation with themselves because the operators of this forums allow them to easily do so.

There is a reason that a LOT of the bigger discussion platforms are linking their forums with facebook accounts. I am not promoting that drastic of limitation, but this forum needs to start doing something to start weeding out the people that would turn such a valuable center of crypto discussion into the infantile circus side show it is slowly becoming with the growing awareness and participation of the general public in our cryptocurrency environs.  

[Blazr]

Lol! things have changed a lot recently, but I would say shotgunning is a pretty accurate way to describe what used to happen to newbies. They would do something stupid like for example make a loan request without knowing that the lending section is essentially only a honeypot and they would get negged as a result, and being newbies they would have no idea wtf to do about it. This seems to be changing now though.

[hilariousandco]

How hard would something like that be to implement?

Very, and all you'll do is annoy and frustrate legitimate users with these suggestions. Trolls, fudsters and scammers will bypass or wait out any restrictions that are put in place whilst it will scare off regular newcomers so it'll likely have the opposite intended effect.

The implementation difficulty I cannot question, but I tend to disagree with a logical restriction to counter the use of these sockpuppet accounts.

If everyone had to put their reputation on the line with every post, these forums would be so much easier to read, and probably take up less than half the page count and hard drive space needed displaying and keeping track of all the nonsense.

By far the majority of people using these false identities are instant gratification type personalities that would not bother with the trouble of "bypassing" or "waiting out" minimal restrictions. Maybe they would go through the trouble to develop one or two sockpuppets, but not create tens of them on the fly to infest a single topic that catches their attention... If you look at the majority of sockpuppet conversations, it is clear by syntax and grammer that they are primarily single individuals carrying on a conversation with themselves because the operators of this forums allow them to easily do so.

There is a reason that a LOT of the bigger discussion platforms are linking their forums with facebook accounts. I am not promoting that drastic of limitation, but this forum needs to start doing something to get start weeding out the people that would turn such a valuable center of crypto discussion into the infantile circus side show it is slowly becoming with the growing awareness and participation of the general public in the cryptocurrency environs.  

But none of those 'bigger discussion platforms' are based around a cryptocurrency where anonymity is very important to most. If you want freedom of speech that means you'll have to put up with people saying and doing things you don't like no matter how annoying it is and it's going to get messy from time to time so people need to learn to deal with it as this isn't the solution. You're also free to exercise your right to ignore people and if everyone did that to the users that annoy them I can't see the big issue. You're also forgetting the guy who is responsible for us even being here valued his anonymity and for a very good reason and that's his and everyone elses right. We really cannot expect people to put their real world identities at risk and those that wanted to get around those restrictions would just do so with relative ease anyway.

[Hatch]

But none of those 'bigger discussion platforms' are based around a cryptocurrency where anonymity is very important to most. If you want freedom of speech that means you'll have to put up with people saying and doing things you don't like no matter how annoying it is and it's going to get messy from time to time so people need to learn to deal with it as this isn't the solution. You're also free to exercise your right to ignore people and if everyone did that to the users that annoy them I can't see the big issue. You're also forgetting the guy who is responsible for us even being here valued his anonymity and for a very good reason and that's his and everyone elses right. We really cannot expect people to put their real world identities at risk and those that wanted to get around them would just do so with relative ease.

Please forgive, but what is "shotgunning?"

I understand your arguments and COMPLETELY agree with what I believe to be the core sentiments, but I think you're missing a few points...

1) How is anonymity compromised if NONE of the accounts are actually linking to a persons real identity unless they otherwise go out of their way to do so?

2) Now that we have cleared up the anonymity issue, I think that we can all agree that even anonymous accounts have a social value determined by the historical content and personality displayed by the anonymous poster over time. There are techies, comedians, helpers, haters, and all the same range of personalities that one might find in regular social interaction. All with anonymity still intact unless the poster wishes it otherwise. All we are talking about here are the permissions allowed "established" anonymous accounts vs the obvious disposable accounts.

3) Since point #2 makes it abundantly clear that we are not actually talking about anonymity, but rather the value of the reputation associated with an anonymous account that a given user has accumulated over time, logic begs to inquire as to the appreciation or value that the operators and moderators of this forum place on that reputation, ie: time and effort, so clearly invested by your veteran posters? Are you arguing the case that there is no value of the long term anonymous poster over the instamatic sockpuppets? Is it honestly felt, and by inaction encouraged by forum operator and moderators, for unethical persons to create and negatively employ as many disposable sockpuppets as needed to harass, hijack, and obfuscate otherwise helpful, friendly, and informational discussions by other forum members that are NOT afraid to post under their regular "invested" but otherwise anonymous BCT accounts?  

4) Is it honestly believed that it is in the best interest of the forum and its community to wade through page after page of repetitive and unnecessary sockpuppet sponsored FUD, insult, and defamation, even when "ignoring" more sockpuppets than not, to follow an otherwise positive and informative conversation? Are we all expected to "ignore" the valued community members using their "primary" accounts that we do respect and appreciate because they can't help but to quote a sockpuppet diatribe in the process of countering the disingenuous and usually repetitive BS spewed without consequence by yet another disposable account?

It is a shame that currently the best place to find the most up to date information regarding any cryptocurrency is at the same time the most antagonistic and difficult to locate said information through all of the unnecessary vitriol. Going a week without the search function exacerbated and demonstrated this effect to a large degree.

If this forum is/was never expected to grow much beyond being a fun hobby and these sockpuppet attacks are actually encouraged as a form of perverse entertainment to the few at the expense to the rest of us, then I digress. Let the circus go on and continue to hold no one responsible for their actions. But please lose the facsimile of concern for your new and veteran community members, or any honest and legitimate discussion, and ditch the EULA and "don't feed the troll" signs while your at it as they really are of no further use.

If however that is NOT the case, and the owners and operators of this forum are intent to help legitimize the crypto currency environment supporting those of us trying to grow crypto and community development, it is well past time that they figure out a way to step up and take action and hold individuals accountable anonymous or not. Quit hiding behind false anonymity excuses and stop the sockpuppet terrorism that is so rampantly employed by the asinine few at the expense of the current majority and future community members.

[TECSHARE]

Oh shut up. Seriously. You're embarrassing. Newbies aren't 'randomly negged' but for good reason, but that doesn't suit your agenda so as usual you exaggerate. You need to get over yourself.

Yep, my evil agenda of rule of law, equitably enforced, based on publicly posted rules (all which seem to be problems for the staff here).

[ABitNut]

I do agree that sock puppets and shills are bad for honest and open discussion. Detecting them, however, is not trivial. The most obvious sockpuppets are usually the least damaging. But a well executed use of sock puppets to derail/lead a serious discussion somewhere is hard to detect and much more dangerous.

If you have ideas/suggestions on how to reduce the number of sockpuppets, then I think it would be better to try and get them added to the new forum that is apparently scheduled for release this month. I highly doubt there will be any (major) new improvements to the current forum as it is.


PS. TECSHARE, do you have any input on the issue of sock puppets too? Or are you just here to taunt hilariousandco?

[SaltySpitoon]

-snip-
 If everyone had to put their reputation on the line with every post.
-snip-

The snippet of yours that I quoted is one of our motivations for allowing people to have multiple accounts. In the past we have made a stance against regulating the amount of accounts that a single person can have for a multitude of reasons. One, there is no enforcability. On the internet, we recieve no identifying information from anyone except their login/password and that is by design. Being banned for using the same Tor Node, or VPN as someone else is bleh. Sure there are punks that abuse the open stance on account creation, but the question we have to ask is, is it worth it to punish those that are using these features legitimately, to punish the punks. If everyone had to put their reputation on the line with every post, topics that need to be discussed wouldn't be discussed, and vital critism wouldn't be open. Some people aren't in a position to speak their mind. Being able to create another account that lets you do so is a very valuable part of free speech. If people are spamming, report them.

[Superhitech]

How hard would something like that be to implement?

Very, and all you'll do is annoy and frustrate legitimate users with these suggestions. Trolls, fudsters and scammers will bypass or wait out any restrictions that are put in place whilst it will scare off regular newcomers so it'll likely have the opposite intended effect.

+1. We were all newbies once, and I remember how the 360 posting limit annoyed me so much. Besides, scammers can easily buy a junior member account for around $2 to get around these limits. Surprising as it might be, there are legit newbies out there.

[CoinCidental]

it would only make the problem worse as people would be more incentivised to  account farming to sell accounts that already the required number of posts for a high price

instead of having the real noobs on new accounts posting silly crap there would be peoplpe making a living posting silly crap and selling the accounts the noobs to post more silly crap ..........

[Stargazer]

it would only make the problem worse as people would be more incentivised to  account farming to sell accounts that already the required number of posts for a high price

instead of having the real noobs on new accounts posting silly crap there would be peoplpe making a living posting silly crap and selling the accounts the noobs to post more silly crap ..........

This.

It would be a lot of work for nothing. Traders would still trade accounts and those with more money would just hire "bombers" (groups of people with high activity to write large posts, also containing FUD and accusations). If you make them spend more time and effort, you'll just eliminate the most lazy ones with nothing to gain. The real fudsters and especially those paid ones will stay.

[nubbins]

Yep, my evil agenda of rule of law, equitably enforced, based on publicly posted rules (all which seem to be problems for the staff here).

No, your agenda of being an incredible asshole to everyone who isn't interested in your fucking ridiculous white-knighting.

Here's how you responded to me posting a long, careful investigation into an obvious scammer.

You and the mob are judging people guilty until proven innocent based on the brainless accusations of that wildebeest nubbins

Yes, that's right, my careful collection of evidence, wasting hours of my free time to protect the forum, and you get to call them "brainless accusations" (brainless! With all that evidence...) and then call me -- of all things -- a wildebeest.  

TECSHARE, you're a fucking child and a piece of shit, nobody likes you, and you should just get the fuck out because LITERALLY EVERYONE is sick and tired of your BULLSHIT.

Fuck you. Ignored.

(EDIT: sorry for derailing the thread...)