Topic: Community generated suggestions to improve the forum (+ eventual voting on them) - page 7. (Read 26815 times)

If he has no time or desire, he may perhaps delegate this "power" to global moderators.
I say maybe, because I do not know how this power works on the forum and I do not know if you can pass this skill or he needs to create a new rank with more powers than a global moderator.

I hope it won't be based on a post but rather set in account profile without the option to update or remove it (except perhaps using a signed message from the old address although that opens some loopholes). At least that's how I'd do it. I'm not theymos in case you're wondering.

Lolwut? You got a source there? Newbies do buy accounts. Do you think it's just old timers that do? If newbies come here to earn and they realise they can buy an account then many of them do. Some people will just be told to buy an account straight away rather than wasting time trying to get merit and activity.


This isn't relevant to anything. This forum essentially sanctions the sale of accounts, so newbies will think it's fine and ok to buy one. Their sale might even go through ok (assuming they don't get scammed), then hours or days later their account is taken back.


How is this going to help when admins aren't looking into hacked accounts? Many people have signed messages from addresses that are still visible, but they're just not being restored and theymos' auto-system likely isn't going to help that either as I doubt it will take into consideration deleted posts, but even if it does what if somebody has another or an older address posted. Can they still claim the account back?


People should, but nobody is invincible or watertight with their security. The forum was hacked. Who's fault was that? Shit happens sometimes and anyone can slip up somewhere, doesn't mean they should just be left to languish in limbo for eternity.

Deleted messages in the forum are not really deleted, they are just hidden from everybody. The admin can see them, same story for edited messages.

But i don't understand why going through all the trouble and time spent doing these researches (considering the fact there could be more important things to do with that time) on the account hacked/deactivated.

More importantly everyone should take the responsibility for safekeeping his account imo.

Newbies who buy accounts aren't that new. Have you already bought an account before you even know the forum? Ignorance is not an excuse, otherwise, I will stop paying my taxes today and I would say that I did not know.

As I said several times paying a fee is a goo idea. I remember reading a post from Theymos saying the forum doesn't need money. However, there are tons of charities that need it. So why not make an annual donation in Bitcointalk's name, based on the community choice? It can be Bitcoin-related or not.

Or just severely increase account scams when sellers just take their accounts back after they've sold them. Most newbies won't be aware that they can be reclaimed in such a way and falling victim to this will become rife (unless theymos has though of a way to stop this). I still think we should allow users to purchase the bigger signatures via donating for Silver and Gold Membership etc. This would essentially kill the account sales market and account scams with it so it's win win for everyone and the forum gets the money instead of some account farmer or scammer. Users don't get scammed, the forum gets the money and users can have the bigger signature which is what they wanted in the fist place.

I also wonder what will happen to those users who can't sign a message posted here because the hacker deleted it but the address can still be found archived online or on one of the bitcointalk mirrors etc. There's also the issue of those who don't have a bitcoin address but can sign one from an alt coin wallet. I'm going to assume theymos' auto-recovery system will be bitcoin only?

if applied, what parameters are used in the script to filter these things?

An automated method to claim back your account could severely reduce account sales. Who's going to pay hundreds of dollars for an account, knowing the previous owner can claim it back at any moment?
Losing your bought account will just become an occupational hazard.

Doesn't really prevent accounts being sold, and then claimed back though. I'm not sure what the forums stance on selling accounts, and who the rightful owner is, but I assume that they would look for information that might indicate that the account was sold, and see if the credential changes link up to that too. Account recoveries can never be automatic.

you could add to the list: A way to bind your account to a BTC address automatically from the user profile, plus at the login an option to recover your account, all done by signing/verifying random messages.

I understand they are going through each account manually checking messages and in detail that everything make sense, but doesn't look like this is sustainable anymore given the amount of accounts hacked we are seeing lately.

Well hopefully it falls under the 'Or not yet' or 'Or the idea would need to be significantly modified' parts. Everybody I've mentioned this to seems to be back it in some capacity (and some think it should be much more than one merit). I haven't yet seen any better suggestions to stop or at the very least curb bots or the very worst of the worst of spammers from getting paid as Juniors.


They don't. Why does rank matter? If they can't get merit then they're still shitposters regardless of ranks. Requiring a small amount of merit isn't hostile, especially when it's majorly Junior Members that are causing so much damage. People can still post here without earning any merit nor do they need a signature to be able to do that.


I don't think it has anything to do with business decisions. Theymos has already said he thought about removing the one and only ad slot we have here so he can't care too much about traffic effecting forum revenue. The people who come here to earn aren't going to just give up because they need one merit or so to get a signature either. How about all the traffic and users that are lost from genuine users who leave because this forum is unfit for purpose and is 90% spammers posting nonsense about things they know nothing about just in order to get paid? That needs to change or this board will wholly become a welfare system for spammers. Requiring a minimal amount of merit isn't ridiculous nor restrictive. People can still post here or claim bounties, they just can't get paid to post until they've got the merit and I think this is how it should be, otherwise nothing will change and people will continue to farm Junior accounts in their hundreds if not thousands and that needs to be stopped somehow.

It’s probably one of those tough business decisions that can affect the forum noticeably, and the risks are there whether you embrace the idea and go ahead with it or not. It’s a question of determining which is the best business decision, and whether it needs to be played out right now or can be booted a few more month ahead to see how things go in the meantime (the latter seems to be winning I guess).

I gave it a go a few days ago, looking at very numerically conservative scenarios, and by imposing the 1 gained Merit for signatures, campaign slots (available people vs signatory demand) would likely only fill around 30%. That could move campaigns away from the site, along with traffic rather quickly (even if the upside would be that the forum would be way better, and remaining campaign signatures would be waved around by better posters). See detailed numeric scenario here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.44660431.

If I had to guess, there are probably concerns over the longevity of the forum in the future.  If the number of older, more experienced members starts to dwindle, newer users need to be able to rise up the ranks in order to replace them.  Perhaps theymos doesn't want to create an environment that's deemed too hostile towards newbies and risk scaring the legitimate ones away?

The older members should probably remember the likelihood that their early contributions to the forum may not have been quite up to the standards they would like to see now.  We can't expect too much, too soon.

This is the only idea I'm expecting that will be implemented for sure but, I still can't imagine why it's in the "No" list. I proudly said in some of my fellows citizens a few days ago that once this idea was implemented, bounty abusers as well as spammers will be lessen as I'm a hundred percent sure that this one will be implemented but seems like it was now just a dream.

I'm wondering, Why no? Or not yet? I really thought that this will be prioritised along with remove signatures from Jr. Members and Newbies but it didn't even passed the "Maybe" list. What a surprising result. Unexpected.

What do you mean the opposite? You mean you need something like 500 merit to become a Junior? I think there should be a merit requirement for them as well as their signature being removed, but it shouldn't be unnecessarily high. They will already struggle to get something like ten merits, but a decent poster won't have much issue with that whilst it will also severely curb the worst of the worst posters and also bots etc.


That has literally been suggested, along with being able to prohibit certain users from posting in it so you don't need to waste time removing the posts of users you don't even want posting in there or breaking your 'local' rule etc.

Self-moderated thread extension.

Self-moderation is great but I want to propose an extension to it. Allow the OP to choose who can participate in their thread, E.g if I want to create a discussion thread, Instead of self-moderating it, I would just choose the ranks who can respond to it. It's not a tool to counter spam but it could help in sub-boards like "Bitcoin-Discussion" and "Offtopic".

A spammer is not limited to newbies. There are a ton of spammers with Full Member, Sr Member, even Legendary ranks. Making it easier to rank up after Member (or whatever ranks it is) would be interpreted: "Hey, congrats on ranking up to Member/(anything)! Now you can spam more without fear!"

Btw, merit means the higher your ranks mean you have more contribution to this forum through your post. It is not solely to defeat spammers, but also as a "reward" for contributive users.

For example a Junior Member needs 10 merit points to become a Member while a Sr.Member needs 500 merits to rank up, I think it should be the opposite, if the aim of the merit system is to lemit the number of spammers then a new registered member should provide more effort to prove himself.
If he succeeds to collect a high number of merit and ranks up, that means he is not a spammer and ranking up should become easier.
What do you think?

If replacing the management would be a possibility I would put my vote there.

One more thing to be added to the list with suggestions: 
The patrol list should have an option to exclude the ignored boards.
I think someone suggested it some months ago.