Topic: [DT only] Question about Bitcointalk Awards (Read 953 times)

Even if we've reached consensus, I'll cautiously say:

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These are the incidents that make me wonder how's merit abuse tackled from the forum in general. Merit rules aren't many; actually there are none unless you're a merit source where you're forbidden to sell merits.

But, perhaps, should we define this more precisely, to avoid similar cases in the future? Should there be, directly, money transferred between the merit source and the receiver(s) for the activity to be considered illicit? Is merit bribing the same as merit selling?

I'm relatively new to the community and probably one of the most recent users who became merit source. Were there similar occasions in the past? Did we ever have a merit source who was caught to selling merits? What was the evidence?

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd also like to express my opinion here, although, most likely, it will not influence the consensus already achieved.

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First of all, I want to say that I agree, in most parts, with the statements of the Supreme Leader, LoyceV, NeuroticFish, RikaFip, fillippone et al. And "in most parts" represent that I agree 99% with all of them. Obviously, I also agree that merits given to OP should not be counted as abuses. And yes, it's unfair to change rules during a competition.

However,

Although what I'll write below will not change anything, I am kindly asking you all to read carefully.

Everything you stated above is correct -- in normal conditions. But what we are dealing with are not normal conditions. History showed us that extraordinary events lead to extraordinary measures, measures not included in any contract, any set of rules of any competition.

Example 1:
When pandemic started in 2020 many football leagues had to stop. The federations from those countries did not know what to do. Therefore, questions appeared: should we stop the league?; who should we declare as winner?; should we declare a winner?; who will be demoted to second league?; who will be promoted to first league?; if we stop the competition what will we do with the televisions, which paid us a fixed amount of money for delivering them a fixed amount of games? -- and so on.

Covid pandemic was an extraordinary incident which needed extraordinary measures. In this case, although it was not stated in any set of rules of any football federation about what to do in case of a pandemic, each federation changed and adapted its rules during the competition. In this case, some declared winner the team which was on first place when the league was stopped, no matter there were still games to be played, no matter that teams from places 2-6 still had chances to win the league. Some federations stated that no team will be demoted to the inferior championship but still, 2 teams will be promoted to first league, extending the first league team number by 2. Some federations broke the contract with the television by not delivering them the previously settled number of games. Some federations did not declare any winner.

Of course many teams objected, especially those which still had chances to win the league or those interested in qualifying in European cups but the federation denied their chances etc.

No matter these objections, the federations changed the rules during the competition as they were facing an extraordinary incident, which needed extraordinary measures.

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Example 2:
Manchester United suspended Mason Greenwood after the player became the subject of a Police investigation, as he was accused by his fiancee for violence and domestic abuse.

I believe that there was no rule written in the contract between the player and his team regarding the possibility of domestic abuse. Furthermore, I am more than sure that there is no such rule stated by UK footbal federation. However, player's behavior was an extraordinary incident, which needed extraordinary measures. Therefore, the club took the one-way decision to suspend the player.

Furthermore, the player was arrested by Police. As there was no rule in his contract to allow the club to suspend him if he gets arrested, then logically thinking the player should have been let as able  to play. (I know, this sounds ridiculous, but please bear with me here.) So in this case, as there was no such rule inside his contract, then also logically speaking, if the player would evade Police arrest he would be able to play in Premiership, right (until Police would catch him again during the game)? But of course this can not happen, excepting the fact that there are almost zero chances for him to evade from Police arrest, but also because he is suspended by the club. And again: the club took a one-way decision, although there was nothing in player's contract regarding what happens if he is arrested by Police, and the club took this extraordinary measure because it was needed by this extraordinary incident. We can say that the club set a new rule for this player, although his contract was still active with its previously set of rules.

Example 3:
Russia's national football team and all Russian football teams (plus teams / players from other sports) were banned by FIFA and UEFA after Russia invaded Ukraine. Furthermore, Russia was forbidden to even use its name in case they will ever play again. Russia's national team was banned from qualifying round to World Cup from Quatar; Spartak Moskow football team was excluded from Europa League; UEFA Champions League final was moved by UEFA from St. Petersburg to Paris. Furthermore, UEFA cancelled the contract with Gazprom.

UEFA and FIFA took these extraordinary measures because of the extraordinary incident representing Russia's invasion in Ukraine.

I think you all realize that there was no rule stated within FIFA's / UEFA's football regulations for how to proceed in case Russia invades Ukraine. Therefore, we can say that both FIFA and UEFA changed the rules during competitions. Even regarding the contract with Gazprom, I am sure there was no rule within the contract about cancelling the contract if Russia invades Ukraine. So again, UEFA changed the contract terms only on its own, and in this case changing the contract terms means that it declared the contract from being active to cancelled.

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The above examples represent the 1% for which I can not totally agree with what was written above. We are facing a case of extraordinary incidents during this contest, which need extraordinary measures. On one side, there are so-called merit-giver abusers, which are meriting voters for their own benefit, looking for more nominations and, on another side, we have so-called merit-whores, meaning those voting just because they know they'll get merits from that.

Now indeed, if such extraordinary measure were to be taken, they would also affect users which gave votes only from their big heart and with no interest. I would never think about fillippone, for example, that he would try to attract votes by giving merits to voters. fillippone is a man with spine, which would never do that. icopress also merited the voters. This is ironical, as he would also lose his nominations. But again, I am 100% certain that he did that only for fun or for encouraging purposes and he never thought about obtaining more votes. Examples can continue, but there's no point in doing that.

What I was saying was that many users, which had no shenanigans in their mind, would be affected. But same happened in summer of 2020, when football federations denied the chance of many teams to win their championships. Extraordinary measures were taken, because extraordinary incidents happened. In our case is the same.

And I consider that in such extraordinary cases, no matter a rule was not stated from beginning, it can be applied though, as it's a case of an extraordinary context / incident what led to even think about that new rule. If the context was all normal there would not have been even a discussion about a new rule, in first place. But since the discussion was started, it was started because it was needed. And it was needed because some tried to cheat the system for 500$ or a few votes.

I'd also like to thank to all which took their time to read this.

I see no reason to continue, because I think we have already reached a consensus. Therefore, starting next year, I will not take into account the votes to which merits were sent. Also, since we've got it all figured out, please be discreet in the discussion thread and don't add fuel to the fire regarding any abuse of merit..

I merited every single post on the competition thread expressing valid nominees, plus the OP (if I had somehow forgotten to merit any post, it’s an error from my side).

I knew that meriting any subset of posts might be considered unethical, even before being considered illegal, so I decided to merit all of them.
I took this “risk”, because I wanted to encourage users to express their vote, whichever it might be, just for the good sake of the fun and the success of the competition.

If I thought someone could infer a pattern in my meriting in this thread, I wouldn’t have done that.
Of course, If I had read any rule about post meriting, I would have certainly abided by it.


I have a clear preference in mind, regarding changing retroactively the rules, but being involved in the discussion, it’s better to abstain on this.
Whatever final decision, it’s ok for me.

I really want to vote "+ ^{[even though few of them actually merited my post]}", but it wouldn't be fair to suddenly change the rules at this point!

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@icopress
I'm sorry that you have to spend time on such things while there's an ongoing invasion in your country ^{[shame on those who are contributing to this drama in a negative way, SMH]}!
^{- This isn't the first time I've seen veteran members misusing sMerits [regardless of their intentions]...}

Don't change the rules during the game. One way or another some people are going to be unhappy about the result. That's unfortunate, but inevitable for this round. If you change the rules now it makes you look bad.

There's a flaw in this proposed rule:
I've sent 48 Merit in that topic, but none of them for a voting post. I'm just a Merit source doing Merit source things. I took myself as an example, but the same goes for many more people. Look at the Merit OP alone received:

I would always try to stick to rules set in advance wherever possible.
If there was a rule (before the contest) that you can disqualify someone you deem dishonest / trying to trick the system (not sure if such a rule existed), you could disqualify people that according to your judgement blatantly tried to cheat.

Personally I don't think I gave a single merit in the voting thread, but I would gladly return any vote where I sent a merit.
But that should be a rule for the next contest.

+1 for this proposition.
by changing any rules, which may contribute to someone losing an obvious win in the category, it can ultimately be interpreted that the change is directed towards that participant. in the end it could be understood that the whole process was subject to the wishes or ideas of one or only a few users. sounds pretty centralized, doesn’t it?
especially after a short drama with Ratimov, we assume who would be blamed for "falsifying" the results.

all this certainly takes up too much space already, I would say it is time to bring it to an end. however it ends, someone will end up dissatisfied.

I didn't even vote in the awards but you can make your proposed rules much less complicated by replacing it with this:


Handing out merits when you're in the election ultimately leads to bribes.

Also, the proposed rules can be abused by DT1 people including their buddies on the trust network to make them DT2 and let them vote for whoever they are voting for (not saying this happens in practice, it's just a theoretical possibility).

Last time I checked, I was on DT2, but haven't followed up on checking due to inactivity so sorry in advance if I'm actually not qualified to vote here.

Yes this will be fair

Because changing the rules on the go - pure swindle and disrespect for the people

While I do think that vote meriting sucks big time (I said that right at the beginning in the discussion thread) and it was obvious from the beginning what that will lead to as it happened with the first contest as well, its too late now to change the rules so drastically. If you did this change at the beginning when you saw that certain members are meriting only those that vote for them, I would say go ahead.

Imho best is to just suck it up, count the votes per current rules and make better ones for the next year's contest to reduce this kind of abuse at the minimum.

I think that it should not be generalized like this, because it can be seen as unfair by some (and please don't think that I care at all how many votes I will have at the end).
I will give my example: I've voted 2 voters I liked their list/post and I was very careful to not vote posts that mentioned me.
So, as usual, generalizing is bad because it may not take everything into account correctly.

Also I agree with


The fact (I agree with) that some merited people to snatch more votes should be at best punished by theymos reconsidering whether they are indeed fit to be merit source.
And you, @icopress, will have to remember this and set better rules next year. But right now I don't think that you should do more.

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Edit: although my vote is clear, I'll also add it as code, since it has occurred to me that probably a script will be used for counting

HEEEEYY.

Why is it not said in the conditions of the "BTT Awards" competition that another vote will be introduced during the counting of votes, which these very conditions can change

That trick from icopress intended to discredit Ratimov, because icopress started to hate every russian users

After this, no one will trust you icopress.

How can you have anything to do with a man who changes the rules on the go?

Any members of the dt and those who have earned at least 1000 merit (sponsors do not represent the public, they represent the companys).

I agree in principle that this may be the wrong way to fix some things after the vote is over, but given the value merits have for all members who need them for ranking, no matter what, I think a large number of votes are motivated precisely because they wanted to get the award. I am also called an idiot, a fool, and a clown because of my views (and I especially thank those who supported it) - all because someone wants to win rewards in every possible way, unscrupulously trampling on everyone to their goal.

If it is possible to change this in any way, even in a way that may not be 100% correct, my vote is for the proposed changes to be applied to the current vote.

I will have to side with Foxpup on this one. That wasn't the rule when the competition began and changing it this late would be wrong from an objective viewpoint. If the change was suggested in the first couple of days after voting began, I would have voted otherwise. As the OP, you still have the right to disqualify every vote you believe was submitted for the wrong reasons though.

I would love to see some stricter rules in future competitions though.   

No matter what the intent, retroactively changing the rules threatens the integrity not just of this contest, but all future contests as well. If the current rules are inadequate to ensure fair competition, then it is far better to just accept that this contest was potentially unfair and vow to do better next time, than to allow the threat of arbitrary rule changes to taint all future contests.

I will begin

Rules are imperfect, people are imperfect. I hate to admit it, but the event, which at the time of its creation was of an entertaining nature, turned into another drama. Quite a few people commented that after the addition of material prizes, the event took on an unpleasant aftertaste. Next year there will definitely be more effective ways to deal with abuse, but now we need a decision, a decision that I cannot single-handedly make as this is a public event.

• Therefore, I propose to decide whether to add this rule in the current vote or not.

• Your vote will be counted if you are a DT member or if you have more than 1000 merit earned, (no airdrop).
• The decision will be made by at least 15 votes, I think this is enough to reach a consensus.
• Only published votes before 17.03.22 until 23.59 UTC will be counted.