Topic: Hidden boards as a reward for high merited users and reporters - page 2. (Read 1047 times)

Great idea. As you say there should be sign free and exclude post count too, I am strongly agree with it. If this idea is implement that there will be fair discussion without spam. Because board will be visible only by potential member's, not by spammer.

There is a lot of talk about improving the forum, but withoutr the active participation of senior members nothing will happen. I've started a number of initiatives, and it is really hard work to get any traction or support. The things I have started at my expense of time and money are -

A private chat room for merit sources and DTs
A blog about my activities
A merit history of my posts ( thanks to Loyce for this )
An English tutorial forum
A learning accademy
I'm just setting up a voice chat facility to help members with their posting in real time

There are probably some others as well that I've forgotten. I'm getting close to the end with these ideas, as I feel that I'm just banging my head against a brick wall. Maybe I misunderstand the purpose of the forum, and I should just sell my signature and take the money like so many others.

It probably won't. We probably won't ever know whether theymos thinks it a good idea or not either, but it's worth discussing and to see what the community thinks and hopeful one day he will start taking note of the suggestions we make to improve the forum in various ways.


Probably best just creating a new sub for it to be honest, but I guess it could be used.


There isn't going to be a mass exodus of users from here to there. It's just an additional board to post in, one where the highest merited users can post about things they wish to have a decent discussion about like what used to happen here. As I said, the board doesn't have to be hidden and maybe it will be best being publicly shown, you just can't post in it until you've hit the high merit quota. Maybe that would be best. The reporter board should probably remain hidden though for obvious reasons. You could just change the requirements of Ivory Tower I guess.


I don't, but anyone can create a chatroom. Chatrooms have their place but they're not that useful for decent discussion. The donator board is separate. They never donated to have exclusive access to the only hidden board. And nobody is getting access to the staff board other than staff, so if you want to view that board then get reporting.


There should be another rank. Legendary doesn't mean that much these days and is becoming much more common with every month that passes. I think the next rank should require a very large amount of merit in addition to activity so only quality contributors will achieve it. I've suggested in the past that Legendary is fixed to 960 activity and the newer rank is 1920 activity (or Legendary could remain the highest rank and there's a new rank to replace it).


It's a ghost town because there isn't many donators to start with and of those that are even fewer are still active. I imagine this place will be much more active and constructive.

Would be nice and love the Idea ,  at the moment all users can read the threads about at what for we looking at for report and bots and spam shit!  So they can hide at other posts and spam there!

Sounds like maybe a sneaky reporting, yeah!

So, you're ok with the idea if the board is visible to everyone but only the eligible members can post?

I'm pretty sure the good posters won't stop posting outside the exclusive board just like they didn't even after the Serious Discussions Board. It's just that there are a few things that need to be discussed without all the generic shitposts that are created as an attempt to get a merit.

My vote is "No" (I do not believe Merit ruin lives but here are my reasons).

Forum already have so much spam and if we remove these good poster also and divert them to a hidden board,  then what will be left for us ?
These good post made us think and I believe they should be available to everybody.

I suggest to create a open board (same like Ivory Tower or Serious Discussion ) but only those user will be able to create and quote there who has earned more than 50 merits and at least got merited by 10+ user. (10+ user is also important as some  ANN topics got 50 merits by a single and I do not think  that ANN topic author should be eligible.)

This board will serve us with some good reading and spare everyone to weed out spam.

I voted yes, agree if we need private board for high merited user and i little bit nteresting with chatroom. It kinda looks like a features for high merited user.

But well, lets see how this vote going.

Fair enough, but still think that the Donator board be how it is, because after reading ibminer's post, I think the board should be rather public than hidden,if its going to be used for normal discussions between the high merited posters.

Not many people would get access to the boards, so chatroom getting messy shouldn't be a problem. But I think group chat(like the ones used in telegram/whatsapp) are much better.

A new rank makes it much harder to achieve because of activity.

It would only be a link, so SMF shouldn't be a problem, but the board should be public(read only access to everyone other than the top merited posters) if there's gonna be one.

Then perhaps there should be an additional merit requirement for the reporter board. Something low like 20 merits so as to not inconvenience legitimate users but it would be a significant hurdle for bot farmers.

Another option (if SMF allows) would be to make it invite-only and manually approve participants.

I kinda disagree. Imagine a thread like SpamBuster in a chat session. The things would get messy quite quickly. What I can agree on is your second idea, Along with a separate board for high merit users, introduce a chatbox for that specific section. This way it will become an effective tool to fight spam.


THIS!!! A new rank isn't required tho.

I totally agree. Ones of the most interested members on the forum`s health are already creating some awesome projects to help others to understand how to become a good asset in here.  The Fit To Talk project is seeking to increment their users in order to make good quality posts in here, as well as the chat room, in where I participate and every day we discuss the forum and how to improve some people behave in here.
A hidden board only will be an allicient for those really concerned about the forum, something hard to see in these days, the Ivory Tower is a great example of how few are participating and I also have come to believe that even the discussions in there are not as succulent as they should.

So maybe this is a futile effort.
From my perspective, hidden boards can be interesting only if they have some kind of amazing content or a worthy discussion. If they are dead, as the donators one, well, the people is not going to feel attracted by them...

There have been 5 posts on the Donators board so far in 2018.  I made 3 of them...

We need to look at the report stats. How many active users does 1500 good report have? How many have 3000 good report? How many have 5000 good report?

Calculate their number and based on it to determine the "entry threshold". Nothing too much but not too little private group members.

This is a good idea and I will support it.

However we should also consider the limitations and ways to combat it:

1) Suppose there is requirement to get 50 merits in 6 month period. This can be achieved with merit abuse. No added incentive may increase chances of abuse.

2) Keeping such a section active can be a issue. No one can question quality though as the cream of the forum will be there.

1500 seems a bit low to me.  If you're looking for posts to report in sections like Bitcoin Discussion, for example, you could easily report 50 posts a day or more and get your overall reporting number up very fast. 

On the other hand, I don't think any shitposters would have anywhere near 1500 reports.  I would definitely support a private board for both high reporters and members with a lot of merits.  I don't know how popular those boards would be, but it's worth experimenting with.

I think threads like this would best be done in private so that spam busters have an element of surprise, not that spammers do a lot of reading anyway. 

Hilarious, I think you mentioned that the donators board is like a ghost town.  Somehow I suspect your proposed boards would become much the same thing--but I do think it's worth trying.

When I first became a merit source, I felt that I needed some guidance from senior members. I know I can be a bit dogmatic at times. I created a chat room using free blab software, and I am grateful to those members who helped me in that room. The room is still active, but there are only 3 or 4 of us who chat regularly there - all legendaries btw. I would welcome any other merit sources or DTs to join the chat.

I've got as closed mod board on fit to talk, but that is only for that site. What may be more interesting are the closed boards for members to sanitise posts before submitting them to Bitcoin Talk. We are aware that some governments monitor forum sites looking for political dissenters, and we would like to help members to avoid this unwanted attention.

The beginners board is now completely useless, and I am considering creating an index of decent threads to scan for meritable posts. I no longer have the time to hunt through 4 or 5 pages of off-topic threads looking for the odd gem.

I am installing Teamspeak on a VPS, and I hope that this can be used to discuss posts with foreign language students as they make the posts. Comments about this would be welcome.

Voted yes, Merit Sources should be ensured entry too.

When people say the board is dead, they mean it's dead.  There have been (if my math is correct) 5 posts in 2018 so far in the Donators board.  One post was a happy new year with one reply saying thank you.  Another post was yet another thank you.  That means there was 2 post's in 2018 worth reading, one of the threads/post, was a cross post from another section and I believe the last post was also a cross post (not 100% sure on the last one).  In reality, anyone without access to the Donator board has missed exactly 0 post from that board in 2018.

Don't think anyone is getting pissed about other high quality users accessing the board, because no one is there to get pissed LOL!  I mean if they want a boys club no one uses meh OK fine!

I think a chatroom would be more effective than this. Plus, some donators might argue that they spent their money on something that could sort of be achieved  through other non monetary means. I think people would like getting read only access to the staff board than the Donator board, for I have heard that the donator board is way too silent.

Another proposal, instead of allowing only high merited users and reporters, why not make a new rank after Legendary, which requires high number of merit, a certain number of reports, a fixed activity (2000 for example). Trust could also be a requirement, but I don't want that to be a requirement.

This rank would have perks like getting access to hidden boards(read only or read/write both), ability to have custom Titles, bigger Personal Text,avatar, signature space and obviously different shiny coins, and a chatroom/ message groups(like a mini telegram/whatsapp but not requiring any phone numbers).

I have a few more ideas, I'll be pitching in that too.