Topic: Give good posters amnesty (Read 453 times)

@mocacinno

I don't think 'verjaring' applies here (also speak Dutch btw), plagiarism should be compared with academic plagiarism IMO.
When that happens, the also go through the entire body of work of the author and academics can actually lose tenure over something like that.
I mean, it's amazingly hard to fire someone who has tenure, though universities do it when severe cases of plagiarsm have been found.
As I've mentioned in other threads, I don't think the hard-line approach is bad in cases of plagiarism, no matter when it was committed.

In this case I'm talking about cases of blatant plagiarism, not simple mistakes by forgetting to add a source to a quote or something.

I had the curiosity at some point last year as to how far back in people’s history did the rules apply (see A couple of quick questions related to forum rules). The answer was that there is no delimited timeframe for rules to apply.

If I recall correctly, my curiosity was aroused when I checked the forum rules to see when rule 33 had been written:

- It was present at round November 2016 (rule number 33): https://web.archive.org/web/20161121133329/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0
- But not in May 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20160506061123/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0

Of course, these rules are basically a privately applied based guideline, and obviously can apply to whatever timeframe the Forum wishes, with disregard to the fact that the rule infringement may have been committed prior to the rule being stated.

The fact that the rule on plagiarism (for example) seems not to have been introduced until somewhere between May and November 2016 could be controversial with regards people being banned for plagiarism committed before that period. On the other hand, we could understand that all rules are fully retroactive and that’s it. I personally would prefer a 3 year timeframe or so, but that’s all it is, a personal preference. 

I've actually had a quite similar tought as the OP for a long time. In my country there's a time limit for each crime.
This is the wiki page (sorry, it's in dutch): https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verjaring

For example, a traffic violation can only be punished if it's brought before a court within 1 year after the crime has been committed. Other crimes carry an expiration period of 5, 10, 20,... years, but only crimes like commiting genocide don't carry an experiation period.
If this expiration time has passed, it can still be proven that a crime has been comitted, the person is still guilty, but the court finds that it's no longer a good idear to actually punish somebody for a crime they committed so long ago (given the fact that they didn't re-commit the crime afterwards).

In forum terms: it's Theymos's forum, he's the admin and by having an account on bitcointalk you'll have to follow his rules. That being said, i think we can still make an argument towards Theymos and maybe make him changes his mind.
I, for one, would like to see *some* crimes "expire". Not because i have an alt account that's being banned, but because i think banning people for things they did years ago will make good community members leave this forum, making it a worse place. If somebody commited 1 act of plagiarism 5 years ago, but never did anything wrong after this 1 act, while still making hundreds of helpfull posts, would it still be a good idear to punish him/her (even with a sigban)? Offcourse, if he plagiarised 5 years ago, and re-commited plagiarism 1 year ago, he can't be punished for the crime he comitted 5 years ago but he CAN be commited for the one 1 year ago.
I think, legally, it might also be a good idear to remove old, plagiarised posts by a red warning so no offending content can be found on bct, and an offender should still receive a public or private notice that what he did was, in fact, a crime, but he's not being punished because the crime expired....

Just my inner toughts here... Open for debate..

It depends upon kind of rule you violate. There are some kinds of violations will get temporary bans with ban notification each time you get temp bans. There are maximum three temporary bans, and the fourth time will be permanent ban.
In addition, users also should notice delete message when their posts deleted by moderators, it is early signal of temporary bans if they keep spamming.
However, there are some sort of rule violation, such as plagiarism will result in permanent bans without any kind of warning. It clearly states from topics to topics, so it does not actually depends on forum users, it depends on forum rules.

At first I thought that banning users with full member rank and up are just given warning before getting ban. Thinking now that it has been ban without warning? then I think admin now are starting to change the forum for its betterment removing copy and paste users.

If you are running a big business through the forum, then you should have your own website. Post the rules on that, and then link to them in your transactions.

Such act will only encourage creation of alt accounts by defaulters. Just like in the trust system (all known alts get tagged when a user turns out to be a scammer or tried scamming), when an account get permanently banned it simple means you (including your alts) are no longer welcomed on the forum. You get a grace of creating an alt account to appeal your ban but commenting outside your ban appeal threads get"s you ban (again) for commiting ban evasion which technically are what your alt accounts are doing if they are allowed to stay active.

@philipma1957

I think you are misunderstanding what autoban means, it does not mean a "bot" banned the member, a bot might have found/reported it but a human "mod" must look at it, confirm it and act accordingly.

Your argument makes sense, he was announcing a fact, pretty clear he did not intend to steal the words of others, but still he is pretty lucky or maybe Cyrus likes you  .

I still remember the guy from the mining section who copied a comment from a youtube video  which he posted ( no way he planned to take credit for it) and he is still banned as of now.

So long story short, one should be extra careful, anything that you suspect that someone else could have written 5 years ago is better quoted  

Hear me, I have a solution, ban those members (who copy paste old posts or whatever) from posting, let their remaining profile stay active.

I helped bittawm get his ban lifted.  I was asked by him to help out and the mods replied to me.

With enough info to check what was wrong.

I made a fair argument that the bot is flawed and that if you read both threads  in question they  are stating the exact same set of facts because in each case the exact same set of facts was true for the two separate threads. (Group Buy sales)

Ie  if the rules of the group buy are exactly the same  then saying the same set of rules is not  a copy and paste with intent .  It is a statement of a fact.

This would fool the bot which it did.

I do not mind the auto bot  but  since it makes some mistakes having a ban list  thread is needed and it should show  the newly banned person in the pm telling him he or she is banned.  Plus show the 2 posts.  If the bot  can make a match   and pm a newly banned person it should be able to tell them the posts and give him a link to the posts along with a link to a ban list.


I do poke around and look at the banned complaints.  I can say the bot is at least 95% accurate. As the 20  banned people I looked at  only bittawm had a clear case of bot error.. So I would say my numbers are 19 and 1.

I just do not have the time to look at the bans.

I also have to say I made 30000 plus posts. I have no idea if I have a perfect quote record.
I even did some signature sales for a while.

but I did feed back the coins earned in the difficulty promos I ran for a few years.

Also no one did many bans in 2012 or 2013.  I may not have really looked at all my stuff for accurate info and links and quotes. No one pushed doing that.

I must say I look now and I make pretty sure I link the quotes.  

I don't think there are any kinds of more reduced sentence in general. There is only one case that even did not get signature ban after permanent ban lifted, but such cases are rare (likely only one case so far). If someone plagiarise again after getting reduced sentence from permanent ban to temporary ban and signature ban, they will definitely be permanent ban without any kind of consideration on their ban appeals.

 I can only see plagiarism in academic production or in journalism. Here in the forum what happens is copy and paste because of the laziness of the users, and this generates spam. Spam is bad, it diminishes the quality of discussions and debates, and it is excellent that the forum is working to reduce it. But banning users who already contribute to the forum with high quality posts and topics and, more importantly, make Bitcoin something of their day to day, does not seem the best choice. And much of this quality content is produced thanks to the incentives offered by some signature campaigns, such as the chipmixer.

The forum loses more than it earns. 2 months ban would already be enough for any member who has contributed positively to the forum. And then he could continue with their normal account, if he repeated the behavior, he would be punished more severely. If this Bot is really as good at detecting such cases as it appears to be, no one else would repeat this behavior. And the forum would not lose these members.

Anyone can appeal their ban. I have seen many long time users getting their ban made temporary with a years long signature ban added on.

I would consider plagiarism a very bad form of dishonesty. It is stealing other people's words, and the motivation is often financial in nature, and is also stealing from the person you are advertising for if you are wearing a paid signature, which is often the case. I do not believe someone who clearly plagiarized should be let off without punishment.

In short, if theymos does not care about that, we actually have not see something changed:
- Alternative for permanent ban (due to plagiarism): temporary ban + signature ban
- Allow global moderators new rights to unban users and give signature bans to speed up progress of Ban Appeal Investigation.
Being able to take the second chance or not totally depends on each banned users (their past violations (times + severity), contributions and their net-effects).
There is a topic in which you can observe users that got unbanned within current banwave: ✅[UNBAN APPEAL] Total list + Unban progress
Other users got unbanned or temporary ban + signature ban originally are: ChiBitCTy, Limx Dev, redsn0w; bill gator

Edited: theymos' newest clarification

If only you had a little idea that the forum doesn't see itself as a business platform.but a forum to learn, interact and discuss issues relating to bitcoin (cryptocurrency in general) then you would had understand the forum doesn't care if doing the right thing by banning users for plagiarism will interrupt what ever the defaulters were doing on the forum in regards to their businesses.

We have cases were merit sources, DT members etc have been banned. you operating a business through the forums doesn't make you Immune to the punishment regular members get when they break forum rules.

Respectable Hero+ members with a good track record don't deserve to be part of the recent mass hysteria of banning. You are interrupting big business which is conducted via PM in here daily. Im talking BIG numbers. People like Bittawm whose has 6 figures escrow'd banned as well as other knowledgeable people because they did shitpost or copypasted something more than 2 or 3 or even 5 years ago. Who fucking cares. Consider the big picture here. Ban the actual idiots and bots which the forum is still flocked by and stop interrupting real business with established 4+ year old members in here. Even government tax crimes are cleared after 4 years in most countries yet I have to deal with many of my contacts missing because of some nonsense. Again, consider the big picture. 100's of BTCs are moved daily throught PM networks. I have to deal with many people which stick to PM only for security measures and they have no way to get me back because some broken janitor decided to report posts from half a decade a go, meanwhile the forum is still filled with idiots which do not deserve their signature spots. Get some fucking perspective