Topic: [Discussion] Bitcointalk Community Awards 🏆 - page 30. (Read 19675 times)

I believe you should leave feedback whenever you think it's deserved, especially if it's about neutral feedback. I also think it doesn't matter much for a spammer who has negative feedback for advertising a scam.

Thing is, you didn't have to be genius to predict what will all this vote-meriting lead to. Just some common sense, but as we can see its not so common.


Oh, so you agree that these posts are not merit worthy, yet you are meriting them nevertheless. And yeah, merit that you earn via other members is not any less worthy than the ones you are getting as a merit source.


Once again you prove that your moral compass is completely off, if you have any. You have to be told what is right and wrong, and even several times before you get it, this is just another example of it.

Quoting for reference.

I do for the forum what I can, and staff and mods know it - but I have no need to brag publicly about such things, especially at a time when voting is in progress. It must be a coincidence, isn't it?

You are using merits in the wrong way, regardless of giving them to those who voted for you or everyone else - that is completely irrelevant in this story. You've turned the forum into your business, and luckily I don't have to bow my head and pretend I can't see anything.

Everything I had to say is posted in these few posts on this thread, I have no intention of arguing with you anymore.

But it can raise questions against the fairness of the vote. Obviously there are some voters who has no idea about their voted members. They have done it either for the merits or for the prizes.

It make sense, but the user has done it in questionable way. He has voted you in ‘Bitcointalk Ninja’ category. But I think that he doesn't have the idea about your contributions in this forum. Even you have suspected that it was something like copy and paste.

I haven't said it in this way. Just look at his profile. He is wearing the avatar and signature of a well known scam betting site. I was thinking that you were checking some users activity before giving them merit. I have thought it in this way after watching this post from you, “Post titled: When tarable really wants merit”

No one does it, and I didn't mean anything like that. The situation is different in this case. Our voting posts are neither constructive nor informative. However, those are important as it will help to determine few best & ideal forum members in those specific categories. But the situation is getting messed up there when the users are receiving merits just for submitting votes.

There is a rule like that “You must have 50 merit or be a full member or higher to vote”.
I think it would have helped to reduce those copy and paste votes if the rule was like that: You must have ‘X’ earned merits to submit your vote.

I suggest that given the Russian aggression on Ukraine and all the immoral things with the voting, all crypto awards should be donated to charity in Ukraine. Since @icopress is from Ukraine and participates in the defense, he certainly knows who needs help the most.

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It never occurred to you that your behavior with rewarding voters actually encourages abuse? If you and others hadn't rewarded the people who voted for you, that thread would have twice as few pages as it has now.


Merit sources should act responsibly and not use their position to achieve their personal goals. Apart from OP, no post on that topic deserves merits.

What's everyone's opinion on leaving neutral trust on those that deleted, and posted again in an attempt to gain more merit? My thinking is that negative might be too harsh, but it should probably at least be recorded on their profile that they've looked to exploit certain users gratification in order to get more merit. I don't usually like the idea of using the trust system for merit related issues, but it just doesn't sit right with me that a user has attempted to artificially increase their merit count even if it's a drop in the ocean in the grand scheme of things.

I like to give most users the benefit of the doubt, so I expect that this was done in a way of saying thanks, or appreciating the vote. I don't think there was any other motives to it, at least at the start. I still probably am on the side of that other users voting were changing their votes based on the potential merit they could earn, rather than integrity.

Good work on figuring that out, I suspected that there were users that were going to try this, but didn't have time to check myself. This just confirms our suspicions.

Some have posted here since that they're going to refrain from rewarding merit based on users voting for them, although it's likely too late for the integrity of the votes, they are definitely standing up, and acknowledging that this could have been an issue. Again, the OP could potentially look at the voters, and exclude any votes they believe were artificially voted for due to looking to gain merit, I believe there was a rule that they could use their discretion for who can, and can't vote.

Although, I'm definitely not ridiculing them for rewarding merit, it's not something I would have seen as merit worthy, but I can understand from a different point of view that they want to show their appreciation, and if we take a look at the grand scheme of things the odd merit isn't a problem. The problem was, that other users voting saw this as an opportunity that they could abuse it, which not only artifically increased the votes for certain users, but it also could have potentially reduced the votes for other users in the running if that user was going to vote anyway.

For me, it was quite obvious in several categories that towards the latter end of the event, several voters were adjusting who they voted based on the merit, your little discovery only backed that up further.

Your family, yourself, and your situation definitely takes precedence here. Don't worry about it, and we're all hoping you, and your family remain safe.

i will now proceed in the same way until the end of the voting and thank you to all honest users who have voted for me👍

I already stopped giving merit to people with similar activity/post count, as those are usually accounts being farmed, and accounts with low merit and no good posts, but I'll just stop giving merit all together for the remainder of this contest (even if that's just a few more days).

Anyone who voted for me, legitimately and not for merit, thank you very much.

i asked exactly this guy and two others at that time to edit my nick and write it correctly, because it looked 100% like copy&paste and these guys didn't bother at all with the research of the respective candidates.
but that he completely deletes his previous post and creates a new one with other candidates, i would not have thought now...

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.59181711

He even changed his votes (old / new), no doubt hoping for Merit from different people.

The random prize draws for voters are no doubt a motivation too.

Crazy, what a mess going on... Wishing you & your family all the best!!

Good spot, damn, it would be interesting if this is a pattern.
I have no doubt users like Ratimov just wanted to express a 'thank you'. But deleting the vote and submitting a new one in hope to receiving new merits is really shameless. If they just wanted to edit the vote, they could have used the 'Edit' button, obviously.

Lol
I'm not surprised why many people dislike both of 1xbit casino and their participants, they're actually the shit and useless users in this forum.

preikaler: "I've got red tagged and I know there's no way to recover it, I don't care with anything as long as I got money and merit"

The situation is same here. I made the plan to submit my vote at this time when my name was mentioned by ‘icopress’ in that (All users who have earned at least 50 merit in the last year are mentioned, in the hope that those using the bot will be notified.)
But, lately it is true that many forum members are just submitting their vote to get merits! I haven't submitted my vote to get merits, still I received merits from two forum members.

Indeed, the respectable members deserve to be voted. But the respectable forum members shouldn't give merits to those people who are giving votes to them (I'm not accusing everyone). They should at least check the activity of the users before giving him merits.

But some actions need to be taken in this case. And some depth investigation is also needed to check if anyone else has done the same thing or not.

User preikaler had submitted his vote on 7th February for the first time and received merits from “mole0815, Ratimov, Mitchell, EFS, cygan”. Probably he has deleted his previous submission and submitted a new vote today. cygan and Ratimov has given him merits again today! I believe his intention is to get merits only. Click here to see his two voting posts at Ninjastic.



These abusers can do anything to take benefits from the forum. But the respectable members should show more responsibilities in this situation. I didn't expect it from Ratimov. Maybe he forgot to check the activity of preikaler before giving him merit again.

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The general and innocent people suffer much for these dirty politics and war. Praying to see the peace all around the world.

Guys, I'm sorry that I could not answer someone in a timely manner ... I'll do it later.

Forgive me for deviating from the topic, but I am leading to the fact that I will be counting votes from at least March 10th.

I'm not sure exactly, but we have seen a  similar situation before. For example, a April fools joke where we were jokingly selling Bitcointalk merch. However, it was implemented a little differently, he basically took back all merit that was spent in that thread. I'm sure if that's possible, it's likely that he could implement it not to show merit, or even not allow it to be sent if a url matches a certain one. I'm not exactly sure the implementation of merit on the forum, so that's just speculation on my end. I'm not even saying theymos would do it if it was possible, but I think it could be worth asking potentially. At the end of the day it's an unofficial event, and the amount of merit being distributed is rather small, so on that side of things he probably doesn't see the problem. I'm coming at it from a integrity of a vote point of view, which again isn't really his issue. Although, as suggested before I like the idea of the event, I think it promotes good habits within the community, and could prove beneficial in getting the community a little more tight knitted, which I do believe we've lost over the years.

Could do that, although that would likely result in a lot of users not actually understanding or reading it, and having their vote not counted, which could amount up. I doubt everyone has read the entirety of that original post. Whether we put that down to their problem is another thing.

Like I said before, there's definitely ways to cheat pretty much any voting system we implemented, the only way to totally prevent that would be to prevent merit being sent in that thread, but who knows some users might try to bypass that on other threads. However, I'm not sure its a problem with the users meriting those that vote for them itself, its a problem for voting integrity that some users have caught onto that, abuse it to get merit, which artificially inflates certain users votes.

I'd just like to think that this event isn't ruined year on year, from this type of influence that occurs. I want to see those voted in genuinely voted in based on merit (not forum merit ). That isn't perfect by itself, and would be hard to get to that point, but in a ideal situation, users wouldn't be voting because they think they can earn merit.

There's also other issues which we definitely can't mitigate, users might vote for x because they're trying to gain trust off of them, you know there'll always be problems with things like this, I just think there's a way to prevent much of the merit issues, I just don't know if theymos can implement it in a easy way, and whether or not he thinks it's necessary.

When you say limit, do you think the forum software allows for modifications where theymos could "blacklist" a specific thread, so to speak, and make it impossible for anyone to send merits for posts in that blacklisted thread? If that is possible and theymos cared about doing that because he feels this whole thing is a problem, that could be done in the future. Personally, I don't think he cares.

It's even easier to not have the admins involved at all and make the rule sound something like this: Any member voted in isn't allowed to merit the person who voted for them. For each merit sent, they will be deducted the corresponding number of points when announcing the winners. So if you feel like meriting your voters, sure go ahead. But 10 merits sent to them results in 10 points being deducted from you in the total count.

But if you wanted to cheat, you could easily bypass that as well. You merit some other post of your voter, just not the one where they voted for you. Unfortunately, there isn't a perfect system.

Go boy! For you and yours! I believe it is not an easy situation.
I think the guys here on the forum will be hoping that everything goes for the best.
We hope things calm down as soon as possible!

I don't think many users are accusing others of voting solely based on the fact that they might get merit. Although, I think it has been made quite clear that some are looking to earn merit that way. I'm definitely not questioning the integrity of the user they've voted for, I don't think that's the issue here as a lot of them are actually pretty respectable users, and probably do deserve to get voted in. In my mind you vote for who you want to vote for, I just think the current implementation has room for abuse, and those that are giving out merit aren't necessarily doing it for more votes, its just something that some users have caught onto, and are looking to exploit.

I don't think there needs to be any action taken against anyone voting or anyone meriting for votes, I don't think that's something that even needs any in depth discussion, I just think in order for the event not to be ruined, and made as fair as possible, possibly the admins could limit merit in the thread in future events. I'm not sure that they would do that, I just see that as a solution. By no means if the competition or event official, but I do think it could actually prove beneficial to the forum in the long run. If it becomes a regular event, and is sponsored every year by someone then that could be the motivation for some users to improve on the forum, and personally regardless of the motive I'm in support of that.

I like to stay away from drama and not get myself involved in such contests. I didn't vote last year. I forgot, but maybe I wouldn't have even if I didn't forget. This year I voted because I got tagged by icopress, so I put that on my to-do list. Had I known we would be having this conversation, I would have stayed clear. I stand by what I said previously. If I think that member X is the best in that particular category, I would vote for that user. Him or her meriting people wouldn't change that. The contributions to the forum don't change with those merits. For example, If I knew that you had the same or better results as the user who merited my post, I would put your name instead.