Topic: [Discussion] Bitcointalk Community Awards 🏆 - page 23. (Read 20111 times)

How to say, I think the idea is good: whoever gives merit to a post where he received a vote, that vote doesn't count.


Another idea would be the weight of votes. In other words, the vote of a Legendary was worth more than a Member.
A bit of what happens in the voting of sports associations, that those who have been a member for the longest time are entitled to more votes than new members.
I don't know if that would discourage meritorious motivations outside the voting topic. Since votes from new users would not be as valuable as those from older users. The older ones, in turn, don't need so many merits (allegedly).

Exactly what I was thinking. Bribing isn't prevented; what's prevented is the instant conclusion that there are bribers. Disability to merit means there cannot be Bobs and Teds who will gather their voters in one place and, essentially, sell their merits effectively. Alts can only get what they want if they ask for it privately, which discourages them due to merit whoring. Bribing is, ultimately, reduced in a large scale.

Loooooooool!

My dear 1miau, you exposed things in the most rigorous and academic way possible! Chapeau to that!


Thank you for your support. We (all) know that no method is bullet-proof but, at least, we tried something. Let's see how things will develop...

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Indeed, maybe Bob just wanted to show a sign of appreciation to all users which participated as you say. But then...


... but then another Bob appeared and observed "the benefits" of acting this way. See? So we have a Bob which had no bad intention but another one speculated this action and realized it is, in fact, an opportunity...


If you have any other solutions, always feel free to present them.

No more! It's worth noting that maybe Bob didn't do this with the idea of getting more votes, he might be giving merit to all the members who voted in the game.
But this creates a chain effect, difficult to stop and to prevent.

The measures presented really seem to be a minimally competent solution to prevent this type of situation.

I don't know if it's directly bribery what's our problem here, maybe we can call it "passive bribery".
The issue from our previous round has been somehow like that:

a) Account xy (Bob) is nominated by someone (Alice).
b) Bob notices, how Alice nominated him and sends a Merit to exactly the post from Alice, where Bob is nominated.
c) The post from Alice where Bob is nominated is now Merited by Bob
d) Other possible voters are coming over Alice's post and are drawing the conclusion that if Bob is your nominated Account, you'll receive a Merit from Bob.
e) c) repeats multiple times, resulting in more d)
f) Some opponents (Ted) of Bob will see his practice farming votes by Merit and Ted will give out Merit to everyone who voted for him as well.
g) shitposters are activating all their Alt Accounts to get free Merit from members like Bob and Ted for nominating them.

= everyone who wants to obtain a Merit will start to nominate Bob and Ted, therefore Bob and Ted are "indirectly bribing" voters and possibly, more members will act like Bob and Ted.

The motive behind it is a mixture of of shitposters looking for a cheap Merit and in our case some members (like Bob) abusing the greed / need of shitposters for Merit. Then, members like Ted join because he notices how Bob is getting more votes.  

In my opinion, all steps taken by icopress and GazetaBitcoin to prevent participants from abusing Merit is a very good solution.
Members engaging in such "passive bribery" will be punished accordingly, which should prevent abuse.  

Can't wait to see the post live. Have a criteria to vote for best WO hat concept 😉?
You all are forgetting WO has a long history on the forum and some crazy OGs spend their time only there.

I'll let icopress announce the date

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We will try to be as cautious as possible regarding such shenanigans... No method is bullet proof but, if suspicions arise, we will pay attention to such particular cases... Let's hope though that most will see things in a fair way and not try to cheat by any means. Of course, if other users observe shady things, they are free to highlight them. But let's adopt a positive attitude though...


Sadly, yes. But still (maybe I'm too naive?) I believe in people honesty. It's about having fun, not about finding sophisticated methods to cheat...

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Thank you both for your feedback I got your point.

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Don't worry, joker_josue, it's good to bring as many ideas, by different users... In the end this is how things can be made better (in this particular case, but also when speaking at large). Some ideas may not be suitable but others can. And with such open discussion bright ideas may arise So don't hesitate if another thought crosses through your mind.

Well, I didn't remember that second point. They could start creating user just to vote in the poll. 

So forget the idea! It won't be one of the best ideas!

I see 2 problems with this: first, not all users who voted the first time, will vote again. And worse: a forum poll can be voted by anyone, which opens it up to alt-abuse.

However, I remembered something that could mitigate some of the points mentioned here.

Voting at this time is done with the post. Then the idea passes, so that these posts instead of being the final result, but just serve for a classification.
That is, each one made their post, with their choices. After gathering all the votes in each category, the 5 most voted would go to votes among themselves. A topic would be opened for each category, with a poll, where users were invited to vote on what they think should win that category.


Well, maybe it's a bit far-fetched idea, but they think it would be nice to share.

The thing is the financial rewards should only be considered bonuses, and shouldn't really effect the running of the community event all that much. Obviously, give some consideration to it, especially when it came to users meriting users for voting for them, however that made sense without the financial aspect anyhow. However,  at the end of the day it's a bonus, and not a guarantee that you benefit financially for winning.

However, the coefficient just seems wrong to me. Either you prevent previous winners from winning or you don't. While, I do like the idea of seeing new faces of the winners list, I think that's rather down to the community rather than anyone else. If users want to see new winners, then vote for new users, and not the popular choices. A rule change probably isn't necessary in this case, at least for me.

I also suggest doing this.

Bribing is pretty much of a big concern for the world-- not just for this forum. Even if there wasn't a merit system, nominees could bribe their voters with other currency (and yes, I imply that merits can be considered an in-forum currency, that is used to "purchase" certain ranks, which can later on give you money in return).

So, we should put some trust on the nominees, as we can't eliminate it completely. I don't have a problem with that, as long as the nominees promise to not bribe (if I recall correctly, bribing wasn't against the rules, nor had there been a discussion about it, and that's why some did abuse it).

Without communication, it's impossible to prove that there is bribing going on, but also the 'voter' won't know whether they just got a merit for a legitimately good post or as a reward for casting a vote. This ambiguity / uncertainty whether you do or don't get a merit by user X for voting for them, goes both ways - and should reduce the incentive to 'vote for merits', right?

That's possible, or it can happen in a local (translated) topic. But it'll be hard to prove it's because of the vote: I've Merited many of the users who have voted for me on other posts, but this had nothing to do with their votes.

Or, without explicit communication, it can be implied. Or expected. There is no perfect solution, unfortunately.

So, as far as nominees are concerned, there's nothing prohibiting them from abusing with merit bribery, right? If someone wants to buy votes with merits, all that's needed is to merit them at some other post. The problem with this however, is that communication between the nominee and the voter is required (in contrast with previous contests wherein the voter knew it beforehand).

I was more thinking of expanding the "Note":
If this can be expanced to include users who didn't earn their Merit at OPs discretion, abuse is much more difficult. When in doubt, just check the Merit history, and if that user got 50 Merit for a worthless post, it doesn't count.

Exactly for this reason I would not mind to see a 50 merit requirement. It's a good number. Higher number reduce the possibility to abuse. Earning 10 to 20 merits by abusing is way easier than earning 50 merits.

We will always learn from the experience. When will we go live?

I feel the same way, I understand putting a limit on it. However, these are suppose to be community awards, and therefore involve the community in determining who gets those rewards. Excluding a rather large portion of the community just doesn't feel right, in light of that.

I know we're trying to limit abuse, but abuse is probably going to happen somewhat anyway. Even if it's not intended abuse, users will vote for their favourite users despite what they've done in the previous year. There's always going to be a bias. I think the threshold for merit should be lowered though. Try to exclude those that haven't been considered by those with merit, to have contributed greatly enough yet, but don't not include those that have earned a decent amount of merit. 50 is a lot, especially when you're a newish user that has joined this year.

I've previously said I like these sort of award events since it encourages the newer users or even users that haven't been nominated to be eventually push on, and become someone who actually wins in a category. Therefore, including them in the voting process actually helps, since they feel even more involved. Excluding, users doesn't. Although, there should probably be a limit, since we don't want to encourage abuse, 50 is a way too much in my opinion. Something like 10-20 would probably suffice.

In the moment of submitting a vote, a user must have earned until then at least 50 merits. If he earned only 49 he will have to wait until meeting the minimum requirement for voting. Only earned merits are counted, not airdropped ones.


Thank you for your feedback.

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Good point. Besides, always keep in mind that -- normally -- for a user to be nominated at any category, he should have done something extraordinary during this year. Otherwise what's the point of nominating him? Imagine there was someone who made a post in April 2022. Okay, he is eligible to be nominated, as he was active this year. But he made only 1 post. What's the point to nominate him?

We don't need to struggle too much with these very minor details, in my opinion... Such details such be common sense... Of course, if 1000 users would vote for someone with only 1 post made this year, that person would probably win a category, although he did not bring any notable contribution to the forum... but chances for such particular events to happen are very low, I believe.

Of course, everybody can nominated anybody they want (if the nominees are eligible) but, in my opinion -- and I thought this idea is shared by others too -- nominees should also be iconic figures of the forum during 2022, right? Not just someone who made a post in the entire year and which is still eligible to be nominated.

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Yup, I got your point

This is why we asked for feedback -- to see what everybody feels about this suggestion.

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I replied above


Yes, this is correct. The measure was taken after the events which occurred at previous two contests.


Yup, thank you for your feedback.


Thank you for showing these numbers, LoyceV. I am not sure how many users voted at previous contests but, for sure, they were much less than 2924 Let's see how it goes this year and if changes will be required, we'll readjust for next year, as we already did now