Topic: [Guide]How to detect rule-breakers.Techniques and tips. - page 2. (Read 1291 times)

Regarding this point,

I have seen a lot of bounty campaigns which put it as a rule specifically that the signature participants must make some count of there total posts in the ANN thread only. This in a way or other do promote bumping of the ANN Thread.

I personally, do not entertain a bounty campaign which encourage to pump there own ANN as per my mindset, if a project is worth a thousand words, it will not require a bump up post.

But for the bounty campaigns and managers which do this as a hard and fast rule, are they in any way breaking the rule?

So, my question for you is:
How to know and give evidence that those ones deleted their threads several days after publishing.
Of course, it might be really easy if a Junior member has 0 postcount due to his post-deleting activities. In contrast, for a Junior member who has 60 post in total before deleting. Then, he decides to delete 30 shitty threads, his total postcount will be 30, consequently. The figure is appropriate for his rank, so I guess other users won't know he deleted 30 threads, especially users who don't have IT skills to retrieve detailed data from the forum.
Thanks for great topic, iasenko.

Another technique to add, ico bumping from newbie accounts. Easy to detect, they delete every comment after short time. Normally are registered a few weeks ago.
Easy to report.

You can do that also. Whatever, way you go about it you'll come to the same conclusion. Even, if there's hundreds of links/sources before the post you only need to include one which happened before the post. You could even combine the two if you wanted.

When I come across a post that seems familiar or otherwise likely to be plagiarism I pick a distinctive phrase out of the post and do a google search like this:

"" site:bitcointalk.org

And if there is more than one result then I report the post and in the comment field I mention the number of hits returned by a google site search of the key phrase. This is less cumbersome than trying to put a link in the comment field to an identical post, especially when there might be *hundreds* of identical posts to choose from.

For example, the last post I reported had a peculiar phrase in it that I had seen before - "mining and swimming pool" - so I did a google site search of that phrase and it turned up 110 posts that were all identical (make that 113 posts as of now... busy little spammers!).

Any duplicate threads even if it's posted by a different user, but has the exact same content should be reported. When reporting such cases you should report the latest one, and include a link to the duplicate thread.

So something like: "Duplicate thread with the exact same contents. Here's the original post: "

If one has a lot of meaningful discussion on it, and the other one doesn't it's probably sometimes best to specify this in the report field. The moderator can then decide the best course of action, and possibly merge the two.

I guess you can just report the second one and write in the report that there is already a thread started on the topic and link the first thread as reference.
So mods can just remove the duplicate thread.

What to do with the same news on 'press' board? Yesterday I noticed one upon another,  same topic, same text, just the date was different, one was 05/14 and the other 05/1. That is not the first time I see such cases.

@Welsh this is a great work man, thanks for helping.
I'll try to go into more details and examples and make the list more complete with the time. Please let me know if you find any error /not only grammatical/.

I found another one that checks also for homographs / "Characters i.e., letters and numbers—that look alike are called homoglyphs or homographs." *quote from the link /
It makes the homoglyphs bold, you can test it here with this comment >




LoyceV has done some good job reporting plagiarism, so I hope I can quote some of his cases, in the mean time, here is his full thread for copy/pasting investigations > https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/report-plagiarism-copypaste-here-mods-please-give-temp-or-permban-as-needed-1926895


Here is a fresh example of the homograph attacker >
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/sivesta-796088

All the vocals in his posts are with changed with Cyrillic ones.
Try searching for one of this letters just copy/paste>
and write in the "by user" field: sivesta
See the result by yourself.

I'll add pictures and examples in the guide for sure. Just I needed a base to start building.. see the Comprehensive guide to Bitcointalk /on the bottom of the OP/ and you gonna get the idea.

I'll try to chip in on anything that I think is worth mentioning. Depending on what you want for the guide it would likely be best to make it complete, and include examples.

Disclaimer: This is just my personal policy/format, and isn't endorsed by the forum.

Here's my two cents:

1. When reporting a thread which is in the wrong section specify where you think it belongs, and if it's not easily identifable offer an explanation why you think so. [e]

2. When reporting a post for plagiarism include a link to the original source/post. [e]

3. When reporting a user check their post history, and identify if they are making similar posts throughout their posts. If they are report one of their posts, and leave a comment in the report field stating this. [e]

4. If reporting someone for a malicious link/malware include any evidence that you can. Sometimes Total Virus can identify malicious links/programs.  [e]

5. When reporting someone for duplicate posts/threads include a link to the others. [e]

6. When reporting multiple bumps it's best to report the earliest bump and only that one, and include a comment in the report field that there's more in the thread. [e]

7. When reporting someone for ban evasion include a link to their profile, and the topic/post that proves they are the same person. [e]

8. When reporting someone for not following local thread rules. Quote the local rule, and explain why they have broken it. [e]

9. If you suspect a user of using an automated translation then include why you think so, and also a link to the translation text would be beneficial. [e]

10. If you are reporting posts similar to: "Great post", "Great project" or "This project rocks my socks off" then check the OP of the ANN thread, their website or social media and see if they are offering an incentive to post. If they are report the OP rather than individual posts. [e]

Examples:

1. A thread asking a question related to the forum which has been posted in Bitcoin Discussion should be reported as some variation of this: "Wrong section doesn't belong in Bitcoin discussion. Move to Bitcoin Forum > Other > Meta. as it's asking a question about the forum."

2. "plagiarism without providing a source: <link to original source/post>"

3. "Spam. Please check this users post history as they have made several of these types of posts"

4. "Spreading malware. Total virus has identified that this could be malware:" <totalvirus>" link.

5. "Duplicate post/thread: <link to duplicate>

6. "Multiple bumps in thread."

7. "This user is ban evading: <link to profile> here's the post connecting the two accounts: <link to connection>

8. The user that's being reported has started a discussion within the thread. "Broken local rule. 'Do not post discussion here only bids'"

9. "This post is badly translated, and doesn't make sense. Suspected automated translation. Please check here for an identical translation: https://translate.google.co.uk/#auto/ar/This%20is%20an%20example"

10. "Offering an incentive to post by rewarding those who do with a bonus, please check: <link to evidence>"



Yes, there's actually quite a few out there or you could just search up the sentences on Google yourself. Here's an example of one

Basically, a few users have tried to prevent staff from detecting their plagiarism by changing certain characters to others which look the same, and therefore don't impact readability. This can sometimes prevent copying a piece of text, and trying to find out it's source as the characters are slightly different. Another, method that some members have used in the past is changing words that mean the same, but aren't spelled the same. For example, one could replace "But" with "However". Which makes it harder to identify plagiarism. Online tools normally incorporate this. Plus, if you suspect a user is using one of the methods above just search up without words that are easily changed but, mean the same, and you should yield results. I'm struggling to find a way to show an example which would be clear, and concise. Hopefully someone else can chime in with an example.

Thanks for the support, as you can see, the thread is still under construction. I hope to have some more time to finish it soon, but I have to move out til the end of the month and I'm doing renovation at the same time so I can be finished before i move in in the new house.

I'll update it soon and fix the formatting as well.

Also looking for tips from other users so we can make a complete and useful guide at the end.

I have been waiting for this thread as I've remembered you mentioned making this kind of thread on another topic.

Question:
For checking plagiarism, isn't there any plagiarism tool available on the internet to check if either the post of a specific member is copied or not. I don't remember the name of the tools but it is easy to search for them in the forum or is it based on your experienced that pasting it in the google search is much better than a plagiarizing tool?

Also, I don't really follow detecting the homograph attacks. Can you please elaborate it more?

Tips >

Custom Patrol Links, here is hot you can filter posts from specific board.
Use this link https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;patrol;boards=
The board id you can find easily, just open the chosen board and see the board ID in the link. Like this :
The Altcoin disscution link - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=67.0
The Altcoin disscution board ID is 67 and your patrol link will look like this :
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;patrol;boards=67
So simple.

Examples>

1 Pumping cervices >
https://media.giphy.com/media/PoGhtzUb9tlFB0Q1zd/giphy.gif

2 Report form Suspected users that are abusing merit 3.0

   
3 Report form Known Alts of any-one - A User Generated List Mk III (2018 Q3)

Code here >

Intro : I think it's time for such guide. "Report to moderator" is an option which everyone should use on a daily basis so we can all together reduce the spam and the bot activity in the forum. It will be useful for the newbies too to know what they have to avoid doing in order to stay out of trouble.

I'm not the most skilled and efficient "reporter" that's why I need your help here so I can improve too and everyone can benefit out of it. Hope we can get some Mods on board too.
No more bull#, lets start the serious work.

---

How to detect rule breakers.

Note > All your conclusions have to be based on the RULES, except for the last point. What to write in your reports you can find in the  [Guide] Reporting effectively written by Welsh, its a MUST READ FOR EVERYONE.


Detecting one-line spammers
      

• Simple Techniques :
              
  • Using Patrol link - this is one of the best tools you can find, gives you view of the last newbie posts from the whole forum. Here is a link to it > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;patrol It is easy to have it listed above your "Watchlist". Just go to your profile page, click on the "Forum Profile Information" and put a tick on "Show patrol link:".You can customize it to show posts only from a specific board you choose, see the tips in the next post. Btw there you will find another useful option not enabled by default "Show post count by posts:" which I recommend to enable.  Searching through the patrol every now and then is easy to spot one line spammers, most of the time it leads you to our next point.
    You can customize your patrol to show posts only from a specific board, see examples in the next post
  • Browsing trough Ann threads - this is really easy, you go to the ANN SECTION you open one ANN page and you check for spam comments. How you determine if a comment is spam I will list in examples sometime soon, for now you can see the next point as reference. When you report you get an accuracy rating.

• Advanced Techniques :
            
  • Using the search engine for specific phrases like "good project", "good projekt", "nice project", etc. when you spend some time browsing through the ANN threads you will see a pattern in the spam posts, using all the time the same words and phrases. Those phrases you can use as a keywords in the search engine.

Detecting posts in other languages outside of the Local section
      

• This is usually done when you search for homograph cheaters, in the search results often comes multiple messages in Russian or other languages. It is important to exclude the Local sections from the search.

Detecting copy/pasting, plagiarism
      

• This is a bit more difficult, if you have the feeling that the guy has copied part of or all in his post then you can easily check the text in google, sometimes you get a 100% copy/paster sometimes, some words a changed but it's still a plagiarism. There should be a source mentioned in the post or the text should be quoted.      

Detecting homograph attacks
      

• Replacing some letters with the corresponding Cyrillic (or other alphabet) as they are lookalike, know also as homographs is not so difficult to detect as the forum search engine has the feature to search based on a single character. Great, what you do is to enter for example this >
  Here is the result with one simple word "the", where "e" is Cyrillic, but you can see it. Try searching for it in the whole forum I you are lucky you may get a result like this
  
  Resources > Cyrillic alphabet, just copy the letters not the codes. http://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/languages/europe/cyrillic/cyrillicchart/
  Checking for homographs, copy the suspicious text here : https://www.textmagic.com/free-tools/unicode-detector
  

Detecting ICO pumping/bumping services

• Those services are trying to keep specific ANN thread on the first page by posting in different forms every single day. I have reported quite some of those rule-breakers but most of the time those a bot accounts. There are different patterns to look for, most of the time are some "conversations" between different users quoting each other but posting only once per day. Usually those are accounts with 30-40 posts and it's really easy to be spotted by checking the post history. They have posts in the same thread every day, sometimes they are pumping more then 2-3 ICO simultaneously.

*See an video example ¹


Detecting activity which is not against the rules but is punishable by DT tagging.

• Reporting account selling Since it's not handled by the mod's and selling accounts it is not against the rules, no need to user "Report to mods" button for it. Buying an account has high risk of getting yourself scammed, also a lot of scammers trying to hide their identity behind an established account with positive trust score. So such (potential) trades are handled by the DTs. Reporting is done here... link
• Reporting Merit abuse As merit system came, almost everyone is hunting for it. So came the abusers too. If you do not understand the system yet check this link It is not moderated by the forum staff, and again the TD's are taking care of shady merit behavior, like exchange of merit between accounts, meriting low quality posts, trading merit. etc. Reporting is done here Suspected users that are abusing merit 3.0 using a special format
  *Report form see in Examples ²
  
• Reporting Alt accounts Having an Alt accounts is not against the rules as well, but you have to make it public, like leave a comment in your trust page that you own the accounts, and they are all related. There are specific rules in the most bounty/sig campaigns that you cannot joint with multiple accounts, only one account allowed so if those rules are broken you can report or there is a connection between accounts and its not officially announced you can report it here. Known Alts of any-one - A User Generated List Mk III (2018 Q3)
  *Report form see in Examples ³
  

Additional Resources and tips
Many examples for the above mentioned descriptions can be found in my List of Rule-Breakers. You can use it as a reference until I finish the guide.

• ModLog. Moderation Activity log
• SecLog Users change passwords activity log
• Report History. History of your reports. Note> not everyone has access only those with 300 or more good reports.

---

This guide is under construction. I just posted in the raw format so I can edit it from everywhere I login
Hope it will be helpful.

---

Links for personal reference >
List of Rule-Breakers.. | Comprehensive guide to Bitcointalk. | One (1) Merit point to Rank-up Service | BitcoinTalk Public Information Project (BPIP)