Topic: Is there anything unusual in these screenshot? (Read 723 times)

I believe that this topic has been discussed before about excessive merit sharing on some local boards; I've noticed it myself in the past but didn't bother to create a thread regarding it. Firstly, I don't understand the language to judge; secondly, I don't pay too much attention; if they post on the other boards with gibberish English and zero effort, the post will be reported, and that'll be the end of it. I don't care what he does on the local board. On the other hand, I do believe that there's abuse by some users there, but I'm not going to get involved by trying to find evidence to back up this theory. Whether we have or not, it's suspicious to see a large number of merit transactions occurring on a few specific local boards.

Even if these two users mentioned earlier abused the system to enter a signature campaign, they'll eventually get caught because they'll fail to meet the necessary requirements in the long run and end up blacklisted.

You said it all in these few lines. Yes I agree them yo be unusual but, we have to come to terms with the fact that, the forum is run in English and being a global forum, you realize that some of the nations you would find here don’t have English as there first language. For those residing in those nations. They rely on translators to bring them close to understanding what goes on here and for the few that have learned the language, it’s just a few and a privilege for them.
Local boards I can find there are Pakistan and Bengali. Both of which are not native English speaking nations.

Hence, the unusual nature to it is justifiable by the posts which for good reason, you don’t wish to relate. It’s cool though but, we hope it ain’t what is perceived to be.

It’s a good find I must commend.

It's all about Merit, if you stick to a merit system that is not moderated by the forum, what is seen in the screenshot is nothing strange. Anyone can spend merit on worthy posts, not on liked posts. This case needs to be reviewed, where the merit was thrown, whether to an appropriate post or an inappropriate post. Who spends the merit and on whom is it spent?
While it is only limited to suspecting the existence of merit farming as shown in the picture, as long as there is no connection between the merit giver and the merit recipient who avoids the forum ban, there is no reason to stab them with red ink.

Nothing wrong with these two screenshots especially in case of first screenshot Junaidazizi. You should not hide the name of merit sender, mis lead to viewers. some merit was sent by Ratimov and hugeblack. Merit was sent to these users when they were very close to next rank. when any member 25% merit away from next rank then there are some thread created in beginners and Reputation section for helping those users. Moreover a new thread is created in the beginners section for helping local boards member to give merit to those member who have not recieved Merit in their local board. Giving merit to any good poster when anybody deserve is not crime unless any cheat not involved.




Moreover one can see the merit history of the users who received merit from different users and most of merit comes from legendary members.

The OP was merely speculating, and nothing the user in question will tell us that we don't already know, based on how those merits were received. He applied for two merit threads and received some from both the global and local boards. Nothing to see here, just a decent poster being lavishly rewarded.

The point of this thread ended after the 5 first posts

No, I didn't say they owe an explanation but their name came up and the local board is involved with the accusation of something suspicious from the same local board if they keep their mouth shut then it will feel like there is something as Op said, isn't it?

I don't really know what is the point of this thread!

They may not use a notification bot and are unaware of this thread. Did anyone knock them regarding this? Why do we expect an explanation from them since these two users are just an example in the OP? There are dozens of accounts with similar merit patterns. If you see they received most of their merits from a single or two person, then you may ask them what is the relation of those accounts with them. But when you see someone earned merits from their local board and those merits came from several different users, I do not see anything wrong here. But as we said, some merit abuse with alt accounts might exist. The problem is nothing is proved here. So, I don't think we can ask any of these users to explain what's happening. I just shared my unbiased opinion as a member of one of the local threads.

Sometimes they definitely try to. For instance there are at least two who try to get into Russian local board at the moment. The main problem is that automated translators are still far from being perfect, and we can easily see that someone writes in a very strange Russian and makes mistakes which are impossible even for those who just started learning Russian.

There are different rules against pointless posts, using automated translation, etc. So it's not such a good strategy to post in a language you don't understand at all, using just some automated translator. It could lead to big troubles.

Local boards have means of supporting and spreading their love to one another, so if they see any little effort from their locals, they give it a helping hand. Another thing that I believe is that most members have a lot of contributions that they can share on their local boards other than what they can offer the community in general.
 
Some people don't have broad knowledge over something, but most have wide knowledge when it comes to any matter regarding what's happening in their locality, so there is every possibility of them earning merit for sharing their opinions and teachings on the local board. Those opinions and teachings might look awkward in generational discussions, but they don't on the local board.
 
Another thing is that, like most other members have pointed out and a lot of others can also see, some local boards are very generous in giving out merit to those who post on their local boards; it's no longer something new. If not for some kind of strict rules that most local boards have, we could have seen merit farmers using Google Translator to explore those local boards. That's if they are not even doing it now.

No, they do not owe anyone an explanation because this is all speculation, and most of the merits received are from high-ranking members from his locale and the English board.

I'm not sure if Op posted this because he values the merit system or because he wants to eliminate competition, as both accounts he posted applied for the same signature campaign he did. 

And it's not that hard to find too...

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Have those mentioned users ever made any comments about the discussion going about them?

Possibly they can give the best possible explanation for this than others or members from the local boards at least. Or else there is something as OP accused.

Some of those "BLACKLISTS" have an element of biased with the persons compiling them excluding users based solely on their DT distrust list without an actual accusation being made against the user on the list.  You would have had to have been around at the time the various lists were compiled to know who was sledging whom and take some parts of their lists with a proverbial dump truck of sodium-chloride.

In case you get me wrong, whatever I have said here is based on my assumption and in a general sense. I am not the entire community and haven't talked to anyone about this matter. I did not ask anyone why they did not try to catch abusers. It's generally why community members did not want to hunt down anyone from the local community. In fact, I did not see anyone from our community to catch abusers yet. I am very young in the Bengali community and unfamiliar with it.

I have shared what I personally think. I thought those could be the reason why the local community members do not want to hunt down other members. Generally, global members already have a bad picture when they see members from our local. Most of the local members do not have their back. Let's say I found something fishy in our local thread, but I don't have proper evidence, do you think it's wise to ask the suspected guy about the matter? Even if I ask, he may deny it, and he will think badly about me from now on. I don't want to create enemies on an internet forum.

Now, back to your question. No, I do not think growing alternative accounts will help us get a local board. Using an alternative account is allowed. But the worst thing is abusing those accounts. I don't know how many of them have more than one account and abuse the system. I have seen that posting in the Wall observer thread and getting some merits from there to rank up is a common pattern in this forum. Not the Bengali members but other community members do that as well. But as you can see, I did not even write a single post there. At least I don't remember writing there once.


That's the point. If I start pointing out everything I suspect to be fishy, you and others will ignore me because that does not make sense. I have read a good quote in this thread or somewhere else: "Everyone is innocent until proven guilty". Usually, I don't look for other people guilty because that will make a lot of enemies. But what I can say is If I see something suspicious, I may let you know for further investigation as I don't like to get involved in dramas.

There is a connection between overt merit abusing between farmed/suspicious/alt-accounts in certain local boards, that is a fact but we all agree it does not mean anybody is alleging all members of a particular local board are merit abusers, farmed accounts or cheats. The practice is not limited to local boards, the global board is also affected.

I agree, all members (regardless of primary/local board) should understand they should build up their accounts and their ranks with honesty and contribute along the way with constructive posts rather than resort to other methods. Unfortunately, that is not how it works when some try to control a number of accounts in the hope of enrolling them on to multiple campaigns at the same time because of the lure of potential income.

That member has received 105 merits since registering on 30th May 2023 and considering it is 17th September 2023 and has reached Full Member rank, it seems he is on his way to where he wants to be because his previous three posts have been used to apply for signature campaigns.

Blame us for what, exactly? Mentioning someone's username to provide context to the discussion is perfectly fine as far as I am concerned. I did not accuse anyone of anything. I even offered one possible explanation for the merit flow the OP noticed.

I was talking about classic shitposters, not account farmers that abuse merit system and share it between their alts (by the way, I tagged my share of those).

Probably what's limiting it is the number of available campaigns, even if you would be able to farm 10 000 accounts, you can't have them all enlisted, so that's what's putting the breaks on it as far as I can think.


Overkill? Hardly! It's a guy that abuses the forum and secretly builds accounts claiming it's his childhood friend or disabled wife, would you trust this guy enough after such lies and way of acting? No, so it's definitely tag-worthy! I think we've become way to lenient on this, just like the discussion if WW deserves a flag 3 or flag 2 or a Spiderman shirt because of technically that and this. From my point of view a guy that talks to himself or merits his own posts it's either a tag or a psychiatric case!
But, I don't care that much anymore!


Just like in Nasreddin's stories, it would be far better to give him a beating before he does something bad, no matter how many times you slap them afterward the thing will not get undone. But out of curiosity, since you mentioned members exposing cheaters, has this stopped them from posting or participating in campaigns or giving away merits? I just don't think it stops them, not in your board, not in any other local boards not on the entire forum, so kind of useless.

Thanks for your words on this subject and confirming some of the things I already suspected. The point you bring up here does make sense, but there has to be a way to discourage people from attempting to rank up alt accounts so they can enroll them all in the same campaigns. Short of shaming them, I don't see what the solution would be.

What's most annoying to me are the following:

 - merit farmers/beggars
 - alt accounts of established members that spend too much time talking about how they're a newbie
 - the resulting flood of low-quality posts.

For instance, I strongly believe that a previously red-trusted member who was caught with multiple accounts not too long ago still has at least 2 (as-of-yet unconnected) accounts active on the forum, and yes it looks like he was talking to himself recently in your local board  

Still, its not fair to lump all people from one region of the world together and we have to wait for more sufficient evidence to be revealed before outing cheaters and liars, for the sake of not condemning an honest forum member unfairly.

Based on your words, I highly doubt that by following this behavior, your community will have any hope of getting a separate board at all. Do you think expanding the local community by multiplying alternative accounts is the right thing to do? Do you want to show how fast the Bengali section is growing by giving merit to your alts, believing that no one sees it? Many are already closely watching this board. I see a lot of "newbies" who, from the first posts, run to the WO thread or very competently explain to everyone what and how to do on the forum. Do these accounts look like newbies, do you think? Anyone who came to the forum may ask himself, "How did I behave, and what was not clear to me here?" But unfortunately, we see a different picture. You will explain to your colleagues that you need to play fairly, and what you do in your local section, cultivating dozens of accounts, is very noticeable. But yes, everyone’s concepts of morality and decency are different.

I don't know what I should say about this. There are some alt accounts in our local thread, and it's clearly visible. I do not have any problem if someone has more than one account because it's allowed. The problem is that people are sending merits to their alt accounts. Quote their own post and make a reply. One account is in trouble, and another account arrives to help it. Maybe someone will merit the post, seeing he solved some problem.

When someone is close to their next rank, they may get special attention from the local community, which I also support. Several things were discussed in our thread in recent times. I have seen users send PMs to members asking for merits when they are close to their next rank, and I don't know what to say about it.

The problem is we, the local people, always want to give our locals a 2nd chance or the benefit of the doubt. Even if they are doing something shady, we tend to ignore it and don't investigate it. There is a reason behind it. The Bangladeshi community has a dream: to get a local board. So, we all want to help others and grow their accounts, so we can say we have a handful of active users. If someone has two accounts, I don't have a problem with it. But the problem is when they abuse it.

Bangladesh community members should be the first to catch any abuse in our local thread. Some global members investigate the accounts and expose them. It's better to beat your son at home and teach him rather than police arrest him. The problem is we cannot speak without solid evidence; It will create chaos in the local thread. The community will be divided, and we don't want that.

So, whoever Bangladeshi is reading my post, I request you to watch your mate to see if he is doing any abuse, then warn him to stop. If they don't stop, expose them. The global community already had a bad picture of the Bangladesh community. Don't make it worse than this. It's better to have an empty cowshed rather than have bad cows.