Topic: Bring back newbie jail. (Read 1774 times)

We are going a bit off topic here, as this is supposed to be about newbie jail/newbies etc. I see how we got here from newbie trust spam, but lets try to tie this back into the issue at hand.

As far as newbie's role in the trust system, they are disregarded until they can prove some sort of claim. Frankly thats how every case should be, but its not the forum's fault that individuals are using poor judgement in judging who is trustworthy when dealing with a semi anonymous online currency. As we have all said a hundred times, the default trust list is just that, a "default" it was designed for people that are new to the forum, and by the time people have things figured out, they create their own trust lists. The fact that everyone relies so heavily on default trust is mind boggling to me. When I installed a copy of Windows, Internet Explorer was the default browser, how many people here use internet explorer?

I could name 100 people on the default trust list that I don't care about their feedback any more than I do a newbies. Unless they have support backing up their claims. Those on default trust that don't use good judgement in leaving feedback or use it as a vindictive tool, get a thread in meta which is then address. When there are people on the 1st depth of trust who are abusing it, thats when there are problems. Anything else is just business as usual, and it gets sorted out. If you or anyone else reading has a viable plan for a new feedback system, there is a thread in Meta where Theymos is soliciting ideas.

Is it really a big deal though? How many people get caught up being scammed by newbies offering no collateral for loans or no escrow for sales?



As you mentioned, everyone has negatives from people who don't matter, but its pretty much a non issue. feedback is completely irrelevant unless the person is someone that you in particular trust, or they have a detailed explanation of the situation + a reference link so you can judge its validity for yourself. I dont really think a captcha would make much difference unless someone had bots giving out negative trust, and we tend to catch bots pretty quickly.


You are right, we don't moderate scams at all, because there is no way that we could reliably do so. It is up to individuals to not get scammed. Trolls and spammers on the other hand are caught, the only problem is what is "trolling" and what is "spamming" is subjective. Just because you don't like something that someone says, doesn't mean they don't have the right to say it. We have had a lot of practice catching spammers and trolls, so we do a pretty good job, but of course, those that go unreported, or those that are really good at it get away with it longer. Theres not much that can be done about that.

Again, scamming is not something that we ever plan to address nor try to moderate. Its as under control as the community allows, its not something that we could viably deal with. As far as hero/trusted members scamming, there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about the long con. How does one see the signs of a scam if none are given, or the company/person in question has been genuine in the past proving their worth? Tradefortress is the only serial scammer that comes to mind having been on the default trust system, but then again default trust isn't necessarily about who is trustworthy, its about who can give accurate feedback. Anyone who cannot give accurate feedback is pruned by whoever is above them, else the person above them risks losing their credibility. I dont think holding the forums accountable for human behavior is fair.

Captcha won't solve the trust system issue. The trust system is used as a vindictive tool to strike at someone and give them no recourse to either prevent it or reverse it. A captcha won't even slow down the people using it as such, and that's it's primary use at the moment. Very little actual trade trust is placed on the system, the vast majority of it is either fake trust building or vindictive strikes.

Well I'm thinking more about the big picture, as in destructive and spammers/potential scammers. Actually I don't report specific users, as I might be wrong (which from my recent decrease in correctly reported posts show..). I've posted some numbers on registered amount of people a day. I'm pretty sure that more than half of them are shills. Sadly I don't see a solution in this problem either.

You did bring up very excellent points in addition to your story. The thing is, back when I registered I didn't even notice newbie jail. I guess we will have to put up with the trust spam and similar. I don't know why I'm even complaining, they did not get me yet..

But that's the problem. The moderators (or perhaps the site op directing the moderators) let the biggest scammers, trolls and spammers free run of the system. You may have potentially successfully combated the small scale, small time spammers and scammers, but you guys do virtually nothing to address the big time, most prolific spammers and scammers. There are countless examples of people cluttering up threads with useless posts that have nothing to do with the topics at hand. How many people on the default trust list have been huge serial scammers? How many "hero" and trusted individuals ended up scamming the community?

No, it's not under control, except in the smallest of scales unfortunately. I don't have a suggestion to fix it, so I'm not saying you (or I) could do better with what you have. I just wanted to point out the fact that it is not under control by any definition.

Oh yes, your point is valid . At the end the trust spam (see the vod story) isn't a big problem, but if someone really want to make a little bit of confusion in the trust system, he has only to create 50 brand new user and give negative trusts all the day and I think it will be really frustrating for the target.

Wait, why not put a captcha also in the trust system, this will retard all the works of those spammer users or am I wrong (it is only a suggestion).

Yeah, I would say the biggest detriment is the sheer number of newbie accounts seeking loans, offering goods for sale, or offering investment "opportunities".

I dont know how to counteract it, though. I remember being stuck in newbie jail, when I had questions about Bitcoin but felt like I couldn't ask them to people that might now the answers because I was sequestered to a small corner of the site. It'd be arduous, but maybe theymos could hire mods to screen recent newbie posts. Or make it so that members if a certain ranking can go through them and flag then. Only newbie posts, once someone "graduates", they would have full, uncensored speech on the site. Either of those could go a long way in cleaning things up

Very good points.

I was really annoyed when I started this topic because of the amount of shit that you need to wade through in this forum these days. I was always actually against newbie jail and you make some good points against it.

To be honest, I'm not really advocating bringing it back I'm just pissed off and it -seemed- like the easiest remedy. I think what actually may be needed is more manpower. The mods do an awesome job, but there just isn't enough of them. Speculation, which has been completely overrun by sockpuppet accounts from NotLambChop posting either racist or indecent images, only has 1 mod.

Not really, thats how the trust system is meant to work, if a 0 post 0 activity newbie wants to give you negative trust, they are welcome to, if someone percieves that as damaging to their reputation if no evidence to support their claim is given, then they might as well stop using the trust system, because they are using it wrong.


I dont know if I understand the situation the same as you do, as far as I know, I probably see 3-5 cases of newbies being distructive per day, so from whats being reported, we already have it under controll. The staff can't handle problem individuals if no one brings it to our attention, so I would say rather than ignoring them, report them then ignore them. If that isn't a good enough answer, what would you suggest? As I've already mentioned issues from newbies tend to be a very small % of the report que.

I am very adamant in my fight against the pointless proposition to bring back newbie jail. I have personal experience on both sides of it. I delayed signing up for these forums for a couple months electing to use a buddy's account, as I didn't want to deal with it. If I didn't have that buddy, I probably would have just passed on Bitcointalk. I also have dealt with the whitelist requests and such as a moderator during the newbie section's existance, it is not fun and incredibly staff intensive. In addition to those reasons, newbies were encouraged to post, "hello" and a few other spam posts to be allowed access to the forum, which in itself is a problem. Think about it from this point of view, if newbie jail was brought back, what would change for the worse?

• Someone who's mining rig was on fire would have to wait for a solution
• Meta ban appeals would not exist (although newbies have always been allowed to post in local boards in addition to the newbie section, so I dont recall if Meta was one they could post in)
• someone who just found out about bitcoin who is truely excited and looking for into would be told they can't ask questions
• Far less moderator time spent on other more important issues, as they are constantly watching the newbies penned in their sections

Its not about discriminating against new registered members, its about making them even bigger targets for scammers. Hey, why not scam them, they can't speak out against us. I haven't seen a single case where trust spam has been an issue, but if you have examples, please feel free.

So it seems there isn't a valid solution to the problem but at least remove the possibility to left a feedabck (neutral, positeve or negative) to all the brand-new and newbie (this could resolve the trust spam, but I am sure it will come an user here and say "we can't remove this possibility, it will discriminate all the new registered users).

I think bringing back the newbie jail would be counter-productive (and penalizes new legit users). Even if they put more restrictions on newb accounts, they could just buy a load of cheap junior accounts and carry on spamming/scamming as usual. Not sure what the answer is, guess we have to be vigilant and report as many of them as we can.

That's the same story from the staff again although it was expected. This discussion took place already, and no real proposals have been given. Okay so no newbie jail.
What are your plans on fixing the current situation? Or are you going to leave it as it is?
I mean I can tolerate it, although clicking ignore has become a painful task. There are some members that can't.

how about vod's case

newbie able left feedback ....


So it's called deadlock 

There is no reasonable limit that we could place that would prevent spam. Newbie jail would create a 4 hour bottleneck, and I dont mean that everytime a spammer/scammer wanted to create a new account, it would take them an additional 4 hours, I mean as a whole working system, 4 hours after it was implemented, things would be back to how they are. Its just creating a que line which means that spammer who created 5 accounts, will just have to wait a few hours, and while they are waiting, why not make some more accounts so there is a steady stream?

The reason it wont be implemented back again, is it has provably done nothing to prevent people from making new accounts for a malicious purposes, but it does discourage actual new members to join.

I made a post few days back and majority were against this quoting that all newbies aren't scammers, spammers and there was no solution to this problem. I don't know what's the harm in having few restrictions for newbies as they can be active here and then trade or leave feedback. Still people are saying newbies will spam the forum to increase their rank and so on  

When everyone seems happy with the scamming going on, let all live in piece.  

Sorry I currently have no valid proposal that would work. I'm sure that this smart community could come up with something (although quite a good portion don't take part in the meta subforum). Well there could be a minimum (as in minimum logged in time or something) member limit, until which point he or she can't post trust. This should be implemented only to prevent trust spam from newly created account. Any prevention is better than none.

Newbie jail is a flawed idea in general but what do you suggest is a 'proper newbie jail' exactly? It's ok saying 'bring it back' but it's not going to return unless there's some good ideas and arguments to why it would work because it clearly didn't before. And trust isn't moderated but what would you suggest to stop abuse? Newbie feedback is untrusted anyway but limiting them to leave it just opens up newbs to be abused themselves.

Maybe because the previous jail was flawed itself? Either increase mod activity or get a proper newbie jail for starters. Things haven't been really going as they should be around here these days.

At least do something about the trust spam coming from newbies. It's horrible and has been happening for a while now.

It certainly won't make their lives easier but trolls and scammers are usually determined and restrictions are only a minor annoyance to them. Even bans don't usually stop them and they'll just move onto another account whereas your average user doesn't want to have to put up with aggressive time-consuming restrictions and will put many off from even bothering.

I know it will not resolve the problem but I am sure that it will not make easy the "life" of those spammers and trolls. I think they will be tired and maybe they will stop to "farm/create & use" those accounts, or am I wrong (why not try again)?