Topic: Is this concerning? This could be a conspiracy too. (Read 938 times)

I just wanted to add here that since this post there has been a very evident improvement as far as the number of reports I have been making going unhandled. Thank you.

The report provided screenshots. I will provide here as well so that you can see for yourself.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.52473973

I think in this kind of complex case, creating a topic in reputation with proper explanation and bringing substantial evidence will help both reporter and moderator. I have noticed the comment section on the reporting page is not much long to include much text. If this was a text box with multiple raw then it could help.

Help me to find the suitable word. My vocabulary is limited :-D

Your report might have been correct, but it depends on what you included in the report field. If you have simply stated "copied from discord" then that's unlikely to get removed unless the moderator has time to join your discord, and check it. It's much better to provide a source, and as much evidence within the report field as much as possible. Even, if its including where the message exists exactly (what channel etc), and/or screenshots.

Welcme in the club, i got attacked by this too. I heard there are some badges coming so this is why they might be doing it.

quite pathetic.  

*my bold

It's not possible that it's a conspiracy, not because it's not against the law (not a prerequisite for use of the term), but because one person can't conspire with themselves.

Guess what? You just made a shit post lol
Did you even bother to look at op's post history or the responses left so far here from other users?

I bet the answer is, no.

Hmm, it is possible dude, I got to understand this few months ago, but I suggest you first try to improve your posts, and if it is conspiracy, leave it to God, to avoid prejudice, make sure you are diligent enough to be at a safe side, avoid copy and paste post, speak on different topics of the forum and make reasonable contributions. Asides, they don't just ban immediately, but after one or two warning suspension. One can be banned.

I have been noticing this since few months that old posts are getting deleted. I don't even remember where I posted it but seems like I posted it years back and it was a post where I asked the OP to include me in their telegram group. No clue why that post got reported and deleted. Some other reported posts were from threads that were trashed so I can understand why they got deleted.

While I absolutely share your disgust with the total disregard for the meaning of the word conspiracy, and in a legal context you are 100% correct, but the word does in fact have meanings outside of the strictly legal terminology.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conspiracy

that's not against the law, therefore it's not possible that it's a conspiracy



it's not illegal, it cannot therefore be a conspiracy



a theory that people are targeting users with malicious post reports is not a conspiracy, because abusing internet forums like that is not illegal, and therefore not possible to conspire about



giving people merits to manipulate an internet message board (or making a joke about doing that) is not illegal, and therefore cannot be part of a conspiracy

furthermore, if you commit a crime on your own, without planning it with others, it is also not a conspiracy, that is referred to instead as pre-meditated merit-milking (which is still not yet illegal)



a conspirator is the perpetrator of the planning of a crime not someone who accuses others of engaging in a conspiracy.

 


I am literally begging you all, please learn what the word "conspiracy" really means

Where are you getting your facts at and are you even aware of what is happening in the forum? Here is a good example of how a member who had plagiarized was given a second chance to post in the forum again. I am talking about ChiBitCTy and he was one of the first ones to be lifted unbanned due to plagiarism, now he can post in the forum but still is signature banned for about a year since his ban got lifted meaning that he can still post but without wearing any signatures. Banned accounts now here in the forum can be unbanned by having an appeal for the account and you should convince theymos that the account has contributed positively in the forum because it is a case by case basis according to him.

I did report it and the outcome was that my posts showing that the culprit/farmers copied my post from Discord was deleted. Their posts still remain. Is that what you are referring to by "dealt with accordingly?"

I am still very new to bitcointalk even though my account is over a year old. I recently found out what a useful resource this forum can be. I now understand the rules, how the rankings and merit work. Still a little fuzzy on the trust thing, but rule 33 on unofficial rules I found here https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/unofficial-list-of-official-bitcointalkorg-rules-guidelines-faq-703657

Says no plagiarism and the only detectable outcome of my report was the deletion of my post showing the proof and calling out the culprit!

I completely understand not wanting to give a false sense of security of banning the sale of farmed accounts because it is impossible to enforce, but rule 33 is enforceable.

Perhaps the moderator took too quick a glance at it. I don't know but what to do now?

This has been a common practice of account farmers for a number of years. Basically, they copy posts made earlier in the thread, because I assume they want it to appear on topic, and less likely to be reported. However, whenever you see this sort of stuff just report it, and it will be dealt with accordingly.

Maybe you are onto something about where they are getting their copied posts from..
Plagiarism is pretty serious business here..  Report it as that and they will be permabanned along with any alt accounts linkable to them..

While reading this post, I came across the word plagiarism several times. I was recently plagiarized several times by several people in the same thread.

It bothered me. So I quoted the post with a screenshot of where their post was my original thought. I never thought that mods actually checked and banned people for this.

My reason for bringing this up now in this thread is because my theory is that there are several people trying to build up bitcointalk accounts in order to sell them to "would be coin devs" because I have heard of bought accounts so that the person looks more experienced than they are.

Please do take a look because the last thing this world needs is more possible scamming.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.52473973

I know that what they are copying is not profound or ground breaking stuff, but that's not the point. The point is why are they plagiarizing someone else just to post?

There's a reason why I used those words, and I was careful the way I worded it. Basically, I don't have anything to do with the ban appeal process, and only know a little about the whole process from previous threads. I don't know how strict the unban process is, and I don't know what evidence is accepted. However, from my point of view the way I would handle it. I would certainly accept domain transfers as evidence that the user is no longer owning the website, and consider the context which the link was posted. However, this might also be down to the user. Any website you have publicly advertised might be worth checking in on every so often, and removing any links to ones which have turned malicious. This might sound absolutely crazy, but I believe that would be the moral thing to do. For example, any domains I've parted ways with I've made clear that its now been sold as far as I'm aware. I understand users forget to do this, and might even be too busy. However, I consider morals a priority when it comes to these sort of things. I'd also document this to the public, and message staff members about the change. Being transparent in these things, and going that extra mile that a "normal" user wouldn't do says a lot about morals, and the credibility of the person behind the account.

Yeah, I understand the issues you have with it, but I believe plagiarism should always be dealt with, and my viewpoint aligns with the forum. I haven't always agreed with the guidelines of the forum, and have voiced my opinion about that in the past, however the more I matured, and the more I used the forum I saw that the guidelines here are actually pretty decent. I think I was dead against not moderating scams because I just didn't get it. However, I actually understand why that's a rule these days, and lets just say I no longer have the opinion that I did years ago.

Welsh,

I understand what you are saying, I really do get it. But using your own words above it's still only possibly / probably.
So yeah, odds are said user will get their account back after jumping through hoops. But, it's still going to be a process.


It's a bit of a sensitive topic for me because when the massive plagiarism bans came in the spring / early summer. Someone I know got a ban for plagiarizing their own work.
From back in May just replace spam / plagiarize with bad links:



So yeah, many people have been banned, many people have gotten their accounts back. Some have been banned, and just walked away.

-Dave

This would likely be a well documented case if something used to be legit, and then turned into a malicious site. Bans aren't just handed out without doing research so there's definitely going to be some discussion on this point. Lets say that the staff member who issued a ban didn't see any evidence of this being legit back in the day, then I'm sure including this information within the ban appeal will solve the issue.

For example, if you owned a domain, and sold it off at some point, but still have links to it in your posts from when you owned it, and its suddenly turned into a malware site. You should be able to prove that the domain was moved on afterwards via domain records, and that might possibly help the situation. Being able to prove that you used to own a domain, and no longer do would probably result in the ban being removed in most instances.

At the moment there's been a lot of users getting banned for plagiarism that was posted a few years ago now that users have the tools to find this on a massive scale which is a good thing in my eyes. It has already been quoted in this thread, but theymos approves of banning anyone that has plagiarized in their post history no matter how far back.

There should be some kind of rule / limit to this.
The problem is that I can post a link today that is 100% legitimate. Be it for a miner firmware / altcoin wallet / pdf of useful phone numbers / whatever.
And over the years the domain it is linked to falls into the hands of a bad actor.
Case in point I now own roulettecoin.cc     https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/annrlt-roulettecoin-pow-new-algo-no-premine-gpu-miner-592251
and tenebrix.org      https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/announce-tenebrix-a-cpu-friendly-gpu-hostile-cryptocurrency-45667

and a few others. These were legit projects with some following that more or less died.

If I go nuts and turn them into bitcoin stealing malware sites and then start reporting everyone in every thread that linked back to them for spreading malware it's going to cause a lot of people a lot of grief.

There needs to be a limit on how far back in time it goes. OR a better ban appeal process for it.

Hell I'm 90% sure I have github access to tenebrix as back in the day it was linked to a tenebrix.org email address so I should be able to do a reset / recovery.

So outside of the fact that I just outed myself, how hard would it be for me to start playing games like that. Find old dead projects that people have linked to, get some domains and go to work screwing with people.

-Dave

Concerning the second issue then I would tend to somewhat agree, although I don't feel like someone should have a bad report because they've reported a post older than x amount. There's not any rules that say you shouldn't report posts which were posting x amount of days, months or years ago. So, its kind of a conflicting opinion in my eyes. Possibly, what I might do in the future is remove replies which have been reported on active topics only. In other scenarios where the thread has been dead for a long time, possibly mark the report as good, and message the user who reported it saying its not necessary, but I've marked it as good this time. However, if the user keeps on reporting that post, and another moderator deals with it they could game the system to get a report badge, and I'm not sure if that's even an issue to worry about.

I honestly don't know the best way of going about this, and I imagine there's a few moderators that do it differently. However, it certainly hasn't gone against you, and you can look back at my replies, and I'll have some insubstantial posts especially when I was new to the forum. I've had posts deleted before, and have even deleted some myself because I thought they were low quality on second look. Don't worry, us moderators don't have a section where we note down all the reports we've handled, and put a red mark against users

You did your job and I am not complaining about it at all. I had two reasons to create this topic:

1. I was curious to know the reasons given when reported.
2. Should a (some) very old post (posts) worth reporting unless it contains harmful contents like malware to download or phishing link etc (obviously both offense are ban worthy)

And while we discuss about these two points the other stuffs comes as side dish like possibility of ban for too many deleted posts by mods etc.

The answer for my question #1 is very straight forward which you and hilariousandco (^ post) confirmed and it's reasonable, and I am not complaining for any of it.

For the send one, obviously we will find mods will have different views and glad to know hilariousandco's (again ^) view about it. I agree with them here (bold emphasized):
Or we both (Jet cash and me):-P

Conspirator will always find a topic for them to stay busy :-D

They were essentially reported as unsubstantial. As for older reports on unsubstantial posts etc I tend to leave them alone but obviously not every mod will. I think it's not really necessary to report them either but people are free to report whatever they wish.


It would be if you had a chipmixer signature.

I gave you 5 merits for trying to introduce some humour into the forum.

Please note - this award is not part of a conspiracy.

Why it would be a harm for a user?
Can't see anything valid to be considered as harmful.

Anyways, back when I was eager to reach the 300 Good Reports, I was also doing that kind of reports, in our local their are much threads that has been long gone (left blank) and with that I was able to reach my good number of reports. Though it was just to clean our board, so I can't seem to find any reasons on why it should be staying on that place especially if it doesn't have any important info to be used.

So more likely if you'll gonna end up continuously receiving those messages because of your deleted posts I think there's nothing to be worried about.

When cleaning a Board/Section, old posts such that will be likely be on the lists that has to be deleted. Besides blank threads shouldn't stay IMO.

There you have it @Royse777, nothing can seems to be harmful unless it was a major offense against the rules.

There have been some successful appeals, mostly replacing a permanent ban with a temp ban + signature ban if the user was considered a positive contributor to the forum.

I don't think any appeal has been approved if the plagiarism has been already proven. Moderators are very strict on plagiarism. Even if a user has plagiarized some years ago, the ban will be permanent and the appeal won't be accepted.

Yeah, I deleted a few of your replies because I agreed that they were unsubstantial. Not sure if I handled all of them or only some of them. However, some of your replies were deleted because they quoted replies which were unsubstantial too. Its not too big of an issue, and sometimes we do get reports on old reports. Unless, its a serious offense you're normally alright. I do often wonder how users report messages from a few years ago when the topic hasn't been active since then. However, it the grand scheme of things its not likely to go against you.

Mods review each reported post one by one and the delete it on a case to case basis, the only way you will get banned if the post reported from you is plagiarized. You piling up deleted post on your end won't be something bad as there is no strike system I have heard of that once you hit this certain number of deleted post then you will get banned from the forum, there is no unwritten rule about that. The mods will also see that the post being deleted on your account are old posts and which in 2016 I think you are still a newbie and mods are aware that most high ranking members now have improved on the quality on how they post as compared to the days when they are just a newbie. It's similar on some successfully appealed permaban users get their appeals approved since the plagiarized post they made was posted when they were just newbies.

That's why I feel this is more of a coincidence rather than someone or group of persons conspiring against you or others.
A user could come across one of your posts that he feels should be removed and then go ahead to search for more and maybe find a whole lot and end up reporting them.
But I doubt that a user would simply just single out another user and make it a habit of reporting their posts,(except it's posts from a renowned spammer or troll),due to conspiracy or any other alike theory,

I wouldn't report a post that was that old, even if it was the worst shitpost in the world.  If it made it that long without getting deleted, it's probably best just to leave it alone--not to mention that old posts lose their relevance as time goes on.

As far as the conspiracy theory goes, it's certainly possible that someone could be reporting a lot of your posts out of spite.  I would think that a moderator would catch this, especially if the majority of reports are bad--and if that's the case, the result shouldn't end with posts getting nuked.

Have you seen how much time and effort members like cryptohunter (and all of his alts) put into ranting & raving?  If so, it shouldn't surprise you that a member or members would take the time to sift through someone's posts looking for ones to report.  Now I'm not saying that CH is involved in this, but you get my point.  There are a lot of anal retentive, OCD-type members on this forum who spend a lot of time researching things and whatnot.

I can't vouch for every individual reporter but I think you're wrong. Recently theymos is doing more stuff via software (like the merit system or the bumping change) to control spam, rather than throwing more moderators at it, so I don't think that potential career path is much of a motivation for reporting.

Badges might motivate some users, which could be a good thing if they ever get implemented. One wouldn't get a badge for bad reports anyway and there is no lack of actual shitposts, so I doubt there would be too much of an issue with people reporting something they shouldn't. But we do need more reporters, even they report just a few posts... more coverage in every corner of the forum.


Case in point... just hit "Report to moderator" when you see garbage, what's the worst that can happen

I am all for deleting a post that is containing malware or risky contents even if it was the very very old post but for plagiarism, or any other soft offense like shit post (my case technically it's was a sarcastic posts) and stuffs those are from five years back or even a year back - I will say keep them unhandled to discourage the reporters.

Sometime reporters finds this motivation that by reporting and increasing their good report number they may find some benefit in future like forum mod hence they keep looking for reasons to report a post where the post can be fit as genuine one in the topic. By the way, this is how I am thinking - the reality could be totally different and I could be very wrong.

Good to have your voice here bud and learning about the unhandled reports. May I know the reasons given for the posts, obviously if it's possible by the moderation rule. It's just a curiosity.

And what is your view about handling reported posts back from long ago except it has malware or harmful contents and risky for the users?

I think the blame goes to the reporter for taking such unethical advantages of reporting option. If mod can spot such actions then they can warn those users not to abuse it.

I can confirm. I have also been targeted this way heavily in the past, and banned as a result. Of course the reports I made were almost completely ignored.  More recently this hasn't been an issue, but a very large percentage of my reports still stay permanently unhandled.

A conspiracy is all this is. You're not going to be banned for having a handful of posts deleted and it's likely nobody has it in for you and is just reporting random old bumps or unsubstantial posts of yours. You have a few in the queue reported as unsubstantial so that's probably why.

If mods are not too busy perhaps it's not a big deal to handle those old reports although I do remember hilarious mentioning a few times that a flood of low-value post reports interferes with the handling of more urgent ones.


I would consider reporting old plagiarism fair game (or malware etc but those are typically handled contemporaneously). Old shitposts is kinda a waste of time for everyone involved.

The only guy I can think of is THE game-protect LOL but I am not accusing him without having any evidence. I know he has allergy against me :-P

These five and all was yesterday.

Tons of accounts were just banned recently for plagiarism found in very old posts so their is definitely precedent. Accounts getting banned from old posts linking adresses to prove ban evasion are also frequent..
Also as you mentioned, if you piss someone off sometimes they will dig your post history for any dirt they can find to use against you..
It happens.. It's probably happened to me too..

It seems to me that the general community considers this sort of post digging to be fair game so keep that in mind..
Did you piss off anyone good recently? About how many old posts did you have deleted total?

I still do similar type of sarcastic shitposts :-P
My concern was having 5 posts deleted in a single day, if I regularly get this number (more or less) then it may harm a user.

I am very well aware about it. Again not complaining at all.

May be mod can do something about it. Leaving unhandled will discourage the reporter not to repeat the same. Thoughts?

Everyday I see tons LOL
I am just not comfortable in reporting or I could make a good number in reporting :-P

It's kind of a shitpost but you won't get banned for that.

There is also a possibility that sometimes your post gets deleted because a post you replied to got deleted (the whole tree of quotes is removed).

Having said that, going back to 2014 to report low-value posts seems a bit pointless. There is enough shitposting within the last year or two to keep an army of reporters and moderators busy.

Nah! they are not bumps or plagiarism. I give you the oldest one as reference,

  Exactly! Plus camel free.