Topic: Deleting Several Previous Posts/Comments To Reduce Post Count... (Read 445 times)

The way people talk about this ICO period, it seems that many shits really happened then. I think it was worse because I have read somewhere that some user alleged that the level of spamming then contributed to why some quality users left the forum. I don't know how true this claim is but I have my doubts. If the ICO spam was much, the spam should be concentrated in the altcoins board and not the forum at large. I mean anyone can ignore a certain board and continue using the forum.

Well, members who do so because they want to impress a campaign manager with their low activity but high merit will not even get accepted because almost all the managers have one similar characteristics for the selection of members during application which I have noticed. I will not mention what it is, but campaign managers don't even only look at merit earned; that's why you hear them (managers) saying that you should earn at least five merits in the last 120 days.

    It's always a member's decision to delete only a few posts (which is not bad) that they consider trash, as it doesn't look good on their profile again, but wanting to delete 100 or more posts at once is just a bit unethical.

Thanks for reminding me about the case, it's true that it happened more than a year ago which we can find in the thread referenced by @tranthidung. But during the ICO, I think some users also had similar habits like the above case. They're not doing it for merit, but I'm not sure what the motive is other than just not wanting to bother with making different posts in different threads.

I don't remember who did it, but someone seems to have uncovered it at the time. That is cheat behavior that is most likely just ripping off the campaign/ bounty manager. But deleting posts when you're not using any kind of signature for the purpose of ridding yourself of past junk wouldn't be a problem in my opinion.

That's right; thanks for the reminder. I couldn't remember the details, but I remembered that I had seen it.
Pretty tricky behavior, probably. Then I suggested that perhaps there are such craftsmen who, by deleting old posts, can write them again.
Thank you for pointing me to the right topic. There are so many events on the forum that some topics simply remain in memory but without specific individuals.

The case was solved and second chance should be given to any member who deserves it.

I believe it is the case you are talking about as I have never known about any similar case. He can receive merit by bumping his threads and don't need to archive old ones and create new ones.

That didn't happen in the ICO era, I haven't heard of that but it happened recently, maybe 1 year ago at maximum. There was a user who posted the same topic a few times. They used to delete the previous topic and create a new one exactly with the same content. They were trying to get merit twice for the same post lol and sadly they were able to get some merit until they were exposed.

There is an ulterior motive why someone would do it, but I believe they are just part of spammers.
So far I'm not sure if I've ever found anyone who did, but what @lovesmayfamilis is talking about is something that may have happened before during an ICO and the bounty exploded.

There have been a lot of bounty spammers gone since the forums introduced the merit system. Many accounts were simply abandoned and only some of them started changing their posting patterns and quality in order to rank up and build a better reputation.

That only works if you only delete the posts that have no merit on them. Because if you do, anyone can just look at your merit page and see a bunch of merit transactions for "(deleted/off-limits/ignored)", and even if you do that, looking at your post history and seeing all posts merited is going to look extremely fishy especially if people can see you are posting multiple times per day.

I do not get the privacy reason for deleting the posts. Is there any confidential information in those deleted posts that can harm the privacy? I am sure this is not the case.
Also, the merit-to-post ratio should not be a concern here because most managers will either look for the merits attained in the last 120 days or they will manually see the posting habits and sections where the person posts.

Maybe those people are deleting the posts as they think they have posted using AI or something like that and they now fear that they might get caught someday, so they decide to delete the old posts. That can be one possible reason.

Everyday in the forum we hear different stories of junky acts in the forum and this one sounds so absurd to me. I am trying to understand how stressful this will be for anyone to do. I mean does he delete the posts and paste them in notepad and later on be pasting them in the forum.

This idea doesn't follow. I mean this fellow cannot join a flowing conversation because something written months ago might not be relevant for current discussion. If I should ask, what happened to his brain. After making the first post, was the user's brain blocked from producing more posts?

You guys are definitely right, I mean like i stated in the op, for us who are not in the culprits shoe, we can only imagine a lot of different reasons why a user might decide to delete some of their posts, but in all of those imaginations, i am very sorry to say that a user choosing to delete some of their posts simply because of some sort of mistakes they made when they were newbies is the lamest of all, like i said before, I am sorry for seeing it this way but its just my opinion.

Yeah, Not every user looks at the forum's achieves sure thing, I myself probably have never looked there, so if you delete some of your posts for whatever reason, not everyone will call it to mind to look at the forum achieves to find out, this simply means that many will never find out.
And again coming back to mistakes made when the user was a newbie, I myself was for a very long time a bounty hunter before I even understood that there was more to this forum than just bounty hunting, I probably have made some mistakes as a newbie and bounty hunter, if no body ever asked me about those mistakes, even the managers of the different signature campaigns I've been a participant in never asked me before accepting me, or rejecting me with a note that my past mistakes is the reason why i was rejected, if none of this ever happened, what credibility or reputation does deleting this past posts add to me now as a user of this forum?

I totally understand your confusion here. But the selection method and criteria of many managers is still a myth to me. Because i am a person who have spent most of the time in bounties. And you can check i made more than 600+ posts in bounties making report, POA etc. Such posts are spam or not that i don't know about. But, when i started to participate in discussion i started to rank.

And when i became full members i was as happy as when i got my first merit. (Which according to my mindset was not free) but when i got one i came to know that merits are free and you can also give them to others. SO, is started to grow as my words are good to others (proof is they are giving me merits means appreciating my words). Overall, is, i when applied for Signature campaigns. i was rejected by many campaign managers. But one day i got accepted in Yomix signature campaign by Royse777. I was fully in confusion at that time after getting so much rejection and become to think that my profile is total waste as i made many posts which have no contribution to the forum and i also think to delete them but i cannot do that. Well, when i got accepted by royse777 i was relaxed to know that.

There is no such thing that you have made so many spammy posts before. That's in past, if you come to know that post quality is important and started to make some quality posts then managers might consider you. But still, there selection method is still myth to me. Because there are plenty of things they might observe before selecting one member. And of course they do not only rely on tools. As recently i made a mistake by using tools and manager was at right as she did it manually.

For some sections, it is not even allowed to delete the posts. Still if the bounty manager wants to check the deleted posts, it is again possible. Even you can check it.

Merit to post ratio doesn't matter to me. People can buy merits from what I've seen other users say. Only 1 or 2 managers even cares about merits and they probably could find quality posters just as easily by not having the merit requirement.

If you are a quality poster and lack merits to get into a campaign, maybe you are posting in the wrong board. Stay out of all the altcoin boards, those will get you nowhere. I'm not even sure why managers count posts in those boards. Try engaging in discussions without repeating the 5 replies before you as well.

Was a story, the user deleted his old posts, and in the future, he published the same posts. I can't find this user right now. It did not arouse suspicion of plagiarism until one day someone noticed that the same post had been written several months ago. Sometimes it is better to show such users, perhaps they can also participate dishonestly in the forum.
I deleted my old post history as there were a lot of junk bounty reports. The mistakes of youth sometimes make it better to clean up after yourself.

all your assumptions are probably right. everyone may have their own motives. but for accounts that have been inactive for a long time, then woke up and deleted several posts that might be related to bounty campaigns or address information and social media accounts. I am more inclined that there is a possibility that the account will be sold or the account has changed hands. especially if there is a history of password changes, it will strengthen.
but still, each such case must have a different motive. there wouldn't be many people who cared about people deleting their own posts.

If someone initially thinks their post quality is lower, there is nothing wrong with deleting old posts. Most people make some mistakes in their newbie days. If someone wants to fix the mistakes they made, they are welcome. But there might be some other reasons that Yahoo already mentioned. Even though someone deleted their old posts, those are already archived.

About signature campaigns, I don't think this could be because someone wants to decrease their post count. I don't think post count influences getting hired in a campaign. Most campaign managers look at earned merits and posting habits in the last 120 days.

Deleting a lot of old posts can result in a decline in activity and eventually loss the rank. If those users are thinking such useless efforts would help them in securing a position on a signature campaign then they are mistaken. The criteria on how BM decides a candidate is suitable for a signature campaign can be known by reading the Rules. Merits, posting behavior, and active members are three common checks. Different BMs have different ways of selecting a candidate as in the end the managers only want the business to benefit. That is why high paying campaigns have members with high merits and a large number of posts that are not meant to spam boards.

I know managers will use it is their filter tool after that they will look at latest posts to assess post quality. My post is not clear about it but I have a same old-fashioned as you about post quality and post quality checking.

Activity - merit ratio, post - merit ratio can not guarantee post quality. Recent received merit can not guarantee recent post quality because a poster can receive merit with posts made months ago.

I know several users that are deleting their posts after a certain period of time for privacy reasons. I guess, most of them know that their posts are also tracked via tools like Ninjastic or BPIP, but they don't want the posts to be found directly via Bitcointalk.

I think that is a fair concern. Not everyone wants their posts to be found via Google at first glance even years later.

I do not believe that the post/merit ratio is the decisive point here.

From own way of analyzing this deletion of post is that such person weren't doing well at the beginning stage or maybe would want to keep their profile clean as you said, then when I think deeply such account could either be bought account and wanting to free up some cheap post made by the original owner or the second users before getting to the final user who is then currently controlling the account.
From my observation deleting of post should be something that is not meant to cause any harm but they should be able to leave those post to reflect back to their early age if there would be need for that or using it to sight references for the newbies whenever they becomes too desperate about some specific issues.

Like then a thread I created and was asking question about how to increase my post quality some few users redirected me to their profile to see how they all started before I would want to post like them, sincerely speaking this has to draw my attention to reconsidered myself and take a bold step to start making quality post. Although to my self I might feels I have started making quality post but, only higher members that could be able to speak and get my profile reviewed if actually I have increased in my post quality or not.

Then lastly, talking about manager merging their merits with their post count to consider them as quality posters. See mate, from what I have seen so far majority of manager's doesn't care about post quality rather what they considered is the amount of merits earned so far within 120 days thereabout. Only few that doesn't count merits why some thread I scanned through here stated it that they must be earning at least 1 merits to their stay in the campaign, this made me to think that merits is what they look after and not post quality.

If not merits why then you would opened some campaign thread and see hundreds of applicants but only those with higher merits counts are being accepted, well I have no personal issues with this but, sometimes don't you think it would make those applicants feels more bad or is there no other way to evaluate users by either first come, first served so that they won't feel biased or having to think their merits is limiting them?

I can only encourage spammers to delete their own posts I've even considered doing it myself, especially on my Mobile account, but I decided I like the posts anyway. Even if they're short, it adds historical context (and it's far too much work to go over all my posts again).

Now I'm curious which accounts you're talking about. It's easier to see the context if you show the accounts.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'd like to judge people by their actual posts, instead of only Merit earned. If I'd manage a campaign, I'd only use the Merit count to quickly get rid of the obvious cases. So no Merit means no entry, but some Merit still means manual scrutiny.

I was a campaign manager, I wouldn't hire anyone because of activity - merit ratio. I also do not find it bad if people begin to delete their old posts but I will never do so because I value the old posts which represents my early days in the forum. Even if there were mistakes, I will take them as beginners mistakes and not delete them.

Again, if I was to be a campaign manager I will hire someone with higher post history for exposure than someone with a lesser post count. It is upto every individual what they want to do with their account. The forum is open for you to do anything in as much as you are not cheating.

I'm glad it's AFAIK on your part, but the answer is yes, not no. You can't certainly know what an account manager is using for their selection, and what they use to select in this campaign might not be the same as what they will use to select in another campaign. This applies to the same account manager, and if you carefully study their psychology of selection, you would know that it's not often favouring the ones with too many activities to lower merits ratio, except in a few cases they might want to consider more posting.

This is by no doubt one of the reasons some people would love to delete some of their posts but there are more.

This is illogical! You raised the alarm and if the evidence is needed you must provide it. You intrude into their profile for reasons best known to you while also you are aware that whatever they choose to do with their account is none of your business. Just like our other social media platforms, we delete posts/images we no longer find interesting and get rid of them with or without reason and the same is applicable here. Moreover, deleted posts here can be obtained on the ninja site in case it is evidence against them they're trying to get rid of.

If they're doing it maybe for the reason stated in your original post, then it will affect their rank as well since ranks work in hand with activity and I don't think anyone who is after the signature campaign (since you mentioned the campaign manager in your post) will prefer to have less activity with less rank since the higher the rank the higher the payment. You deserve an accolade for the research after all.

I've ever come to this conclusion. After a while I wondered if maybe those people have buried "past sins" while there are some archival tools that can record the reality and most of the influential managers probably use those tools to help their management activities.

I think there's only a small chance of someone wanting to do it, unless they hope to be involved in a drama one day.

I think there are only few members who do that and that's their right so no one can stop them from doing that. I don't think that deleting one's posts and making post to merit ratio higher would give someone edge over others when it comes to signature campaigns. A campaign manager often tries to select those members in his/her campaign that can write well constructed content which can help a campaign to get more attention of the forum users. For example a user having 1000+ merits having only 700 posts which are well constructed while another user having 1000+ merits having more than 15k+ unconstructed posts. In this case the one with 1000+ merits and 700 posts would get high priority to be accepted in a campaign than the one with 15k+ unconstructed posts.

The mangers often look for those participants that can be valuable for a campaign, and they try to avoid the fact that how many merits they have earned unless the funder of the campaign demands the members with higher merits only. I don't think that a campaign manager cares a lot about number of posts of a user when selecting him/her in a campaign because most of the campaign managers want those users who can produce good quality posts during the running time of a campaign, and there isn't any issue with their previous posts because most of the previous posts can be considered dead if they aren't in a active thread anymore.

That's my own opinion, however the managers might consider other factors as well. I'm quite sure that each manager who wants to run a successful campaign may give priority to those posters who try to make well constructed posts that can help solve the issues of the other users. And, yes if a user who makes constructed posts can post more than the requirements of the campaign then that's a plus point, and most of the campaign managers appreciate such users with bonuses.

I think you are right. A user may have made some multiple mistakes several times which may be caused by the user being new to the forum, typographical error, wrong information, wrong date etc and once the user is able to get the knowledge of the past mistakes he or she has made in the past that person can decide to delete it but deleting a post doesn't really mean the information is out completely as you earlier said the post can be found in the archival services but looking at the information contained in the post of the op, I think there is more to some users just deleting their posts than what we are thinking about.

Some people want to show that they are better with something like a higher merit ratio per post which should not be appreciated but since it has no bad effect on the forum then it's okay to clean up their own mess without loading the work for mods.

I am interested in knowing what the community thinks about it, I feel a pool about this will tell about it exactly.

Everyone has different reasons for deleting posts, but if I can recall correctly, I don't think I have done that before. A few of my posts have been deleted in the past by moderators, either because they were off-topic or because the thread was entirely deleted.
 
I happened to have a F2F conversations someone from my local and something of this nature was discussed, their were plenty of points given which I could only lay my hands on few; which is, most people deleted their post not because they are aiming to equal it with their number of merit or number of activities, but few do that base on the kind of post they have made in the past, where they have to revisit those threads where the comments are shared and realized it was all off-topic, most times wrong information passed, while some being filled with bounty authentication post, but when they have familiarize them self well with the forum the happen to wipe those post which makes them appear real stupid.
 
But to me, if I ever have to delete some of my posts today, the reasons will be:
If there has been any project or site that I have recommended to others in a comment that later turns out to be a scam, if I am aware of such, I will definitely wipe it out so as not to mislead the public.

There are many reasons why people delete their post, I was asked to clean my post history during my transition stage (from a spammer to a quality poster) and I deleted closed to 500 posts, I don't know what the reasons are for those you observed deleting their posts but we can't just assumed they're trying to cheat the system and also there's nothing they gain from campaign campaign managers when they delete their post. It doesn't increase their merit or post quality so I don't see why this is cause for concern. They're actuator doing the forum a good thing because it's less work for moderators to start deleting their posts when they get reported.

When they delete their posts it equals to less work for spam busters so they're actually doing the forum more help than harm but as they're deleting, their next posts should have better qualities. You should be less concerned about this as managers don't look at  how many posts you have instead they look at the quality of your posts, and to some extend having high quality number of posts could get you into campaign when your merits isn't high as others. Managers will prefer posters that can make more posts than those making just the minimum needed to be paid weekly.  More post means more promotion but obviously they have to be quality posts.

I think that deleting posts as well as writing them is a personal matter of each member, the same as what they will do with their merits or how active they will be on the forum. I understand that the OP has some "concerns" about how this can affect the overall impression when it comes to signature campaigns, but in the last 4-5 years (I'm not sure, maybe more) all posts are saved and exist regardless of whether someone deleted them on the forum (owner or moderator). I believe that no manager digs so deep into the past when deciding who to choose to participate in his campaign.

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I remember one case in which a member deleted thousands of posts, and it seems to me that this is one of the most extreme cases of deleting posts on the forum.

This member has weird stats.

Now, I am curious regarding to what OP said on the main post


From a campaign manager point of view do you (Yahoo) take post to merit ratio as one of consideration to accept a member into your campaign. I mean what if the person recently make a better posts and got many merits recently, but their previous 500+ posts rarely get merit (ignoring whether they make good or bad post, they just rarely get any merit)

I did notice some people getting their post count lower, but I didn't overthink it. I encountered it when I read many posts referencing a specific position, and it bounced back toward the topic, but the particular reference was gone. After that, I noticed some of the referenced posts the user had were also gone. It's probably the manager's discretion to see or consider that.

Making it look like you have more constructive posts would make you a good forum member and contributor.

I'm not going to talk about the campaign manager aspect since I have no idea on how they (the campaign managers ) select those that will participate in any campaign that's being managed by them.

If you take a good look at the forum, I see it as a historical place where you have several topics, discussion on different subject matter and sometimes when a newbie comes to the forum they are always advised to go through previous threads to learn more om certain issues or topics, but if you as a forum member that's supposed to contribute to the already existing knowledge or opinion in the forum decides that you don't what to instead you want to delete your posts (that could have helped a newbie or someone in search of such knowledge in the future) just so that your account stats can look cool and admirable, you're not only cheating yourself but also the potential of the forum. Sometimes we go back to our account post history just keep scanning through them to see the growth that we have been able to achieve since the time we came to the forum.

Another reason could be that they are deleting some posts they feel are spam maybe during their early days or due to the amount of knowledge they had during the time they made that post.

But if they are doing it to cheat their way into a campaign and you're very sure of it, then you can simply notify the campaign manager of it and if they find it unethical they can remove them from their campaign but if they're cool with it then we all move on with it. Just my 2 cents.

It is possible that people grow over time and their post quality might improve as a result of their growing as a person/forum user. I say it's possible, but obviously there are other scenarios that might be in play here.

1. Account sold. New owner trying to cover up old posts maybe because old owner was a regular poster in Nigeria local, new owner Indonesia or whatever different locals.

2. account hacked, and hacker is trying to clean up the account for resale

3. former spammer trying to make the account look better to join a sig campaign

I'm sure there may be other reasons, but these are what come to my mind.

That's really insane if truly some users were found in this kind of mess, which could also indicate many things such a user should be suspected of aside the reason you gave here from your perspective, what i see that might have led to this kind of action or when a user is trying to engage on phishy or dirty acts personal to him and use that to serve as cover for such nasty behavior, maybe when the user bought an account which posting styles strongly indicate a change of hands or the user has been spamming the account with useless posts and want to be serious about it, but either of the ways, it's a bad idea to delete post one has already made over time except for suspecting reasons from any user.


Best known to them any of the reasons which i think none is valid enough for taking such behavior, i cant build a profile with my deliberate consciousness and think about deleting them, there's no reason for any justification on that for me, if i see a user that does such, I'd rather be careful and avoid such.

To be honest, I don't think that they are fooling anyone other than themselves if they think by deleting posts and having better merit/post ratio will get them into better paid signature campaigns. Likewise, any manager that can get fooled by that is not a good manager at all and is not checking post history properly.

Another reason why some members might do that is because they could be embarassed by their early posts when they just joined the forum but its hard to say without you sharing the names of those members wo we can see type of posts they were deleting.

I think it's okay to delete some posts that you deem to be of low quality or bad quality - you and anyone can delete them as long as your post is still deletable and doesn't violate anything. But what's the point of deleting if any of us can easily find the post history via the magic tools ninjastic.space and loyce.club?

If the deleted post was their way of destroying evidence - then surely some of us have the right to suspect it. But so far I haven't thought about much - ignore it as long as it's not something too important to take up much of your attention.

A moderator cant possibly delete over 200 posts from one user in one week, that's not possible even if the user is posting shit, he will surely get a temp ban even before the 20th post is deleted, so surely, what i am seeing here is not any user reporting another user's post and mod deleting them, its the owner of the account him or her self deleting his or her posts.

I understand the urge bud, I feel like posting the account name(s) too, if not for anything, to prove that what I am asking about is not just an idea born out of my own mind, but like I noted, I sincerely don't want to get anybody involved in this, what they are doing is not a crime and is not against the forum rules, so i honestly dont want to bother them, and more importantly, i dont want anybody seeing me as an enemy, so, lets just leave it the way it is.

You are free to do your research and find out who and who yourself.

Campaign managers will look at these following twos

Total merits
Received merits in the last 120 days (4 months)

Your total merits can give an early impression but campaign managers will look deeper to see your received merits in last 120 days. It is to see your post quality is maintaining at high quality or drop last for months. Deleting your old posts can not help you to pass through the manager checking.

Is there any manager use merit/post ratio to select their participants? AFAIK no.

What I know is: total merit earned in 120 days, posting habit, the frequent section, total merit earned, top recognized rank, trust rating, and some privilege e.g. staff, moderator, foxup merit cycling, phenomenal etc.

I think the higher total post, the higher chance people will see his signature because it's spread to many places.

I know you said you don't want to do it, but you better name names and let's see if they are really people who delete their own posts for certain reasons or if they are surely deleted by the moderators. The question so in abstract does not give for much, but the idea that you carry I think we are goin to tell you that it is wrong, as those of us who commented already did.

What if it is one of the moderators or some moderators that is deleting it. Some posts are reported and got deleted. You can see some posts that are reported to be many and belonging to one user and moderators keep deleting the reported posts.

If someone is intentionally deleting his post, go to the person posting history and see if he is a bounty hunter. He may want to change and get merit to get a signature campaign. You can check if the person's account password change or email changed, which means the account has been bought and looking for a way to join a signature campaign.

Managers don't blindly trust the earned merit vs post, they manually check the post quality before accepting participants. So, I don't think this is something which would benefit them. And the answer of your question is in the thread, there's no such rules so they can delete their previous posts. There's nothing wrong with that.

The only reason for which someone wants to delete their post history is to cover their stupid mistakes, wants privacy etc though that's not possible due to some of the archival services.

Hi everyone..

So some how, i discovered that there are some forum members who are periodically deleting tens of hundreds of their previous posts/comments, supposedly for no other reason other than to keep their post count low, probably to match the number of merits they have earned, or keep their post count at a little bit higher average, what ever their main motive for doing this is, I don't know specifically, but my guess is that, they may think or consider it that other forum users, or maybe campaign managers, may consider them spammers if they have a lot of posts, maybe in the tens of thousands and not many merits earned to back that number of posts up, this is true ?

I know of two or three accounts that have engaged in this act of deleting their own previous post, I've thought about why they do this and nothing else comes to mind except that which I've expressed above, i am not going to mention their usernames since this thread is not about them, but me personally asking if this is an ideal thing to do, i know there is no rule restricting users from deleting their previous posts when they feel like it, but I don't know why I feel doing such is a cheating on other honest forum members, as well as campaign managers who might believe you to be a quality poster based on your low posts count and merit earned, not knowing that you are just an average poster like most users of the forum, that deleting previous post is what has kept your post counts down..

What do you guys think or make of this?, its an honest enquiry please..