Topic: [Discussion] Bitcointalk Community Awards 🏆 - page 23. (Read 20375 times)

I bow down to that, brother!
If I could, I would offer you the diploma with my hand, as you fully deserve it. It's just I am not an academician, thus I am not (yet? ) entitled to do that...

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You may have said it in a funny way but, for sure, there will be "top tier detectives looking into suspicious" activity...


I am also thinking in a positive manner, as I wrote in the previous posts as well -- meaning to think (hope) that people will understand this event is for fun and appreciation to forum's iconic figures, thus they should be all incentivized to play fair. But again, if there will be ones more attracted to outsmart the other participants, I hope we will be vigilant enough to catch all these particular cases.

Nice to hear abusers got EXPOSED.  
Maybe I'm getting a Ph.D. in exposing abusers.  


Exactly and for the rest I'm sure we'll get some top tier detectives looking into suspicious Accounts participating in that event, all evidence of abuse will be compiled and Alt Accounts will get busted.  
Jokes aside, Bitcointalk's Community awards will be a very fair event and we should be able to detect any sort of abuse because rules are massively improved compared to the last time and since we had already several Bitcointalk Community Awards, multiple offenders like Alt Accounts only used for Bitcointalk Community Awards voting could be spotted easily if Merit requirements aren't enough.

That's not quite what I mean. A Legendary doesn't need merit to level up, so it's less influenceable - in that respect.
As an example (just an example): a Legendary vote was worth 4 votes, while a Member's vote was only worth 2. This is an example, it doesn't have to be that way.
That is, there was not so much interest in assigning "bribe" with merits users to receive votes.


PS: With these exchanges of ideas, we end up giving ideas to those who think trying to manipulate the results. 

You probably mean "the vote of an more experienced and dedicated member is worth more" here, instead. All experienced and dedicated members are legendaries (or that's where they're heading to), but not all legendaries are experienced and dedicated.

And I'll have to disagree with this thinking. Being a year here is equivalent to being a decade when it comes to judging the quality content.

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).