Topic: Merit against spam: reward spam reporters & punish spammers (Read 611 times)

Since the last post in this thread which I wrote about two years ago, not a lot has changed. It's because of a few recent threads in the Meta boards, that I decided to necrobump this thread.

I'd especially like to remind the suggestions I quoted above which apply especially to low-ranked members: if on one side, JetCash talks about more and more Newbies who are begging (even via PM) for Merit, and on the other, members are complaining about the increasing level of spam, why can't we think of a way of stimulating members to report spam?

I think I really tried to make a lot of possible suggestions in my OP back then, but they were apparently not enough too actually get enough support. In that case, feel free to suggest other ways of increasing spam reporting.

I was about to post this same idea, but then decided to first read if anyone had already thought about that - and here you are (damn, it could have been me to get those 8 merit - Lol)
As a matter of principle I think there is a true value in the OP idea, this should be recognized, but the difficulty of enabling such a mechanism in the real world would range from the extremely difficult to the impossible - I'm afraid.

The forum is never going to be an utopia,as there happens to be no utopia world/organisation,but that doesn't mean we wouldn't do our best to make it come close to that,so making reports and clearing up garbage to at least a reasonable level is quite acceptable..
No system or rules can be put in place that'll totally end spam on the forum for good

It is a never ending battle, and it will continue to be so long as someone somewhere can eek out a profit by spamming the shit out of this forum.

The reason you and anyone else who enjoys being here or has gotten anything of benefit out of being here; is just that. The forum has the tools (or at least some tools) for us to help fight spam and clean this place up. I use them because I get a lot out of this forum and enjoy coming here. If I'm not willing to actively participate in reporting, then I'd feel shitty earning anything from this site and coming here whenever I have a problem. I do both quite frequently. It's just a part of being a member of this fairly dysfunctional semi functional community group of people, and I don't think there needs to be any reward involved just awareness that it helps.

Here's what I see happening either people continue reporting and look at it like a side quest in a video game, just something you do along the way to whatever you where here to do in the first place. When that stops or the number of members dwindles to levels where it doesn't make a difference, the forum gets over run people leave, or theymos goes nuclear on the trash and we see where the chips/signatures/ico's/advertising land.


ROFL

Would that be ABC or SV, the world desperately needs to know  

We'll never get rid of ALL spam. We keep reporting because at this time it's the best we can do to make the forum cleaner, even if a little bit. We can also use merits for some positive incentive. If theymos comes up with other tools for us to use we'll do that too (sounds a bit brown-nosy but he is the dictator of the forum so what else can we do other than convert all our BTC into BCH and leave).

And this has been discussed every month this year nearly...
I myself has also suggested this in April and realized later that this is not a good idea...
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/idea-a-merit-after-reporting-10-or-20-copypasters-3275350
The thing is, that those people who are not about to abuse systems, don't even think that someone is willing to abuse the system... But later you realize that there are a lot of users who are just here to abuse this forum...

OK.

So in conclusion, if getting rid of ALL spam is not the plan, please remind me why I should continue to report ANY spam.

The more spamming is going in ANN threads. All the bounty hunters are not spammers but all the ANN threads bumpers are spammers. Therefore, you can't remove spammers at all, ever.

Indeed everyone should report, and rewarding reporters and punishing spammers would be the best way, I think, to clean up all that spam.

Of course there would be A LOT of reports. But that's because there are A LOT of spammers on this forum. This would only be a temporary phenomenon, until all spam and all spammers are out forever.

They are here, spamming for bounties, well then, as I said in the OP, attack them where it hurts: take away their Merits so they cannot participate in bounties (as long as they keep spamming).

Is it really possible that bots could make into this forum? I do not understand what is the purpose of captcha if bots in the forum could still make it to access in the forum. Indeed it will be really difficult for the admin to take on this bots one by one considering a huge numbers of bots in the forum. If really this does excess then OP's post about reporting will be useless. It is not tha easy though to report users that are spamming in tge forum. Anyway, I do believe that admin are acting on this already so it will be just a matter of time that these bots will going to dissolve.

For now, helping one another to report spam post and the plagiarist users would be a great form of help for the forum. This could not be easily done with few users to attain a good discussions for the forum. I can be a help of this too OP do not worry tine will come that the reporting habit will make a way cleansing the forum.

The main thing here is not to overdo it, as the reporters themselves can turn into spammers.

Those posts were from the old days.

I do have bounty posts, if you also consider it as a spam.

Imagine the designated mods on altcoin board, they would be like:

The meaning of Spam:
I will explore the notion of spammers and examples,
Actors are spammers, in other words spam spreaders are called spamming, such as blog spam, instant spam, spam wikis, spam web search engines, etc.
meaning forum spam, spam comments are usually comments that are nonsense / nonsense, or there is no connection with the topic, of course there are dangers and losses caused by spam.

Oxford English dictionary in 1998,
enter the word spam as a new vocabulary that has the meaning: "Message meaningless or inappropriate sent to the Internet on a number of newsgroups or users."

Aware or not the rules for warning methods are already in the forum.
It's not me who cuts the head and neck, the performers themselves do it themselves.

Sorry I'm not gayy who likes to suck dick.
Mod experts in assessing, do not have to bother to go up the stairs with less clear goals.

I guess the best way to punish spammers is to prevent them from posting again on the same board where they have been reported as "Spam" for couple of times, the time span should be more than a day or for worst is to prevent that user again from posting on that board.

If merit is the ultimate reward on reporting the report status to all mods will likely be a stampede, you know, the hunger pangs of individuals to merit.

There are a ton of people who report posts, catch scammers, expose scam ICO projects and they do not recieve any merit, or very less. Yet if you take a look at the admins merits recieved you will see they exchange massive ammounts of merits for basically shitposting. This is a sad reality and if you don;t feel your work is appreciated you should stop doing it.

First of all, such system would be abused easily as you can see from LoyceV example that he posted. Bad guys would be able to obtain merit in easy way and later sell it on black market or feed their own alts.
Secondly, merit is needed to reward quality posts only. If you want merit you need to make good posts, contribute and etc. I don't think that additional ways to get Merit is needed. Especially when theymos said that special badges will be given to most active reporters. Few most activer reporters like Welsh or Flying Helfish was already appointed as moderators. And I think that these users who are reporting spam aren't looking how to benefit from it. They just want to help mods and have cleaner forum. They expect to get Merit or other benefit for this activity.

My God - The Horror!!!

You mods seriously have your hands full with... lots of bot shit.
Everywhere I go its always bots nowadays. It's like there is no real efficient way to deal with it.


My simple suggestion would be to have Newbie - Jr. Member rank take more merit, like 5. With just 1, it seems like too much power and too easy to achieve.

Wow dude, that's the first time someone reminded me of those posts!

Oh wait, it's not! I've responded to this before, but you didn't really bother to actually read the threads or even the OP, did you? Reading is exhausting, isn't it, so I'll quote my post for you.


You are probably living in one of those countries where sarcasm hasn't been imported yet, so I forgive you. Please also tell me what a spamer is. My dictionary doesn't recognize it.

So, do you actually have something useful to add to my proposition for getting rid of spam? Or do you just like cutting of the heads of people who stick their necks out?

Oh and don't forget to report my posts to the mods!

(DISCLAIMER I've hidden a bit of sarcasm in this post)

Of course all bitcointalk members / goals and hope for the best and the results of posts that are also useful, the results are Merit.
Admin / Mod from the beginning has done it with a system of forum rules and away from spammers, of course that was discussed.

You speak spamer, is this post below yours?

Have you included one of the people who didn't do a spamer?
All there are important rules to read: [Topic: FAQ: Everything you need to know about forum 'activity, account ranks and merit] all spammers are lost.

But who wants a reporter badge ? seriously the psychology of that is just not great.

I face serious scammers and scamming projects face on. Spammers and sig chasers are often probably desperate and poor individuals/kids who i do not feel good about reporting at all. Or if they are bots you will never stop them with reporting because they don't need any requirement to shill post with others fake conversations for the icos coding them out.

I would rather have myself a promoter badge  or something to indicate I am giving merits to worthy people from the junior boards I would introduce. Or rather just one board that is clearly clearly needed an alt discussion junior board. Senior alt board ( current one would require 5 or 10 merit to post on)

the alt discussion board is the one that has been destroyed... bitcoin discussion is still usable really.

Now imagine this:
-bots create 10,000 accounts
-bots start spamming "great project" with 10,000 accounts
-1000 bots start reporting the other 9000 accounts
-1000 bots turn Jr. Member and continue spamming with signature
-Mods run away screaming

If you want to get Merits fast, write useful posts. That's what Merit was meant for in the first place.

If you are not able to do so but are not a spammer either, get your hands dirty and help us clean up this mess. So yes, I think 500 per Merit really is an acceptable amount. It's that, or writing useful posts, or nothing. Can't complain about an additional way of earning some Merits, right?

(But hey, we could test it and see if lower amounts give better results)

Reporter badge already has proposed by admin. Most likely he is working on it. One merit for 500 good report isn't big deal for forum. I don't think new people will encourage to make report only for single merit. Those can make 500 good report they can make one quality post and will receive more than one merit. So merit is not main fact for that. Those are reporting now they will continue even there is no reward. Actually we are reporting what we don't like really. Obviously its good for forum.

On the other hand detect spam post will very hard for spambie. So they will report wrong post and mod will too busy. It will be more better if we can motivate peoples for make good post. Even here is merit system peoples still doing spam so we can't stop spammer by the way. Just we can try to motivate them.

Reporting 500,000 to enable potential legendary sounds like a strange and hard to remember number. I would suggest keeping things simple and making it 1M.

Merit as the reward for the spam reporters is also abusing the merit system.I think the reward for the spam reporters are the reporter badges which will encourage the users to report more,if we have the merits for number of reports then the bounty hunters will click all the report to moderator button in every thread which makes huge work load for the mods.

Isn't it demeaning for a newbie to try to earn one single merit for reporting a mammoth/gigantic 500 posts, I'll rather stay on the forum without merits,and read,learn and report spam posts without really witch hunting for them..

Removing merits from spammers is impossible,there is currently no Demerits system in place in the forum,though @Loycev has made a thread proposing it, but it's yet to be approved..
So no matter what a user does,his/her merit remains with'em, even if they get banned...

I can't really see the advantage of this suggestion,as we'll simply be getting tons of bad reports from noobs who find it hard to earn one elusive merit the "right" way

Reporting spam posts is simply ones own voluntary way of contributing/giving back to the forum

There is a far easier solution to all of this which i have suggested many times.

Nobody wants to spend their time snitching and reporting real bad things and lesser evils that are  just annoying kids seeking a few bucks (cant say that i don't empathise a bit with some) that spoil the board experience.

A system that would allow you to reward the good and deserving and simply not bother with the rest.

However, without providing any reasonable argument that I could establish within their posts they all said they didn't like the idea.

There will always be a far greater number of kids and people from less well off countries that will go to extreme lengths for a couple of bucks than those not financially/morally motivated to stop them.

In a place like this in the situation we are in now you can not assume everyone is an honest enthusiast that wants to discuss/learn about cc in a reasonable way. It is better to let them prove or at least demonstrate they are capable of such before letting them drive genuine enthusiasts away.

Of course it would boost the reporting ratio. That's the exact purpose.

I mean, why should we even have a "Report to moderator" button altogether, if we don't want to get rid of ALL spam? Is the "Report" link only there to report "some" spam "now and then"? We could as well remove the report function then and get the mods out.

Can you imagine how much mod have to recruited only for checking the reports?
People specially the people who aims to have merit onoy and rank up will start to report a lot of posts daily. If 500 users do that, at least 50 mods will be needed to check those only, IMO.
I believe it will boost up the ratio of reporting useless posts but the ultimate output will be worse than ever.

As I have reported before in this thread, I've continued to report spam posts on a daily basis. It sucks. You feel like cleaning other people's houses, but without being paid for it. It also feels like you're losing the battle cuz every time you clean out a thread, there's new spam the day after. My respect for the mods who do this constantly has been grown even huger since.

Keeping in mind how many - if not all - spammers only do this only for the signature bounty campaigns, I (modestly) think I might have found a way of using the Merit system to actually get rid of new spammers as well as to clean the threads from the spam that's already there, and I believe it might even be quite simple to implement.

This idea no doubt needs to be refined, and I am quite curious to hear the other members' opinion about this.


1. REWARD PEOPLE FOR REPORTING SPAM

For every 500 reported posts, which are evaluated and confirmed as "Good" spam by the mods, users get 1 Merit.

To avoid inaccurate reports (meaning posts that are not actual spam and are qualified as "Bad" non-spam posts), the user only receives this if his accuracy is at least at 99%. If he goes lower than 99%, he loses his number of reported posts and firstly has to continue reporting to get back to 99% from which the counting to 500 restarts from zero.

At the end of this post, I explain why I believe the system should be so severe.


2. PUNISH PEOPLE WHO SPAM

You know those 1 Merit Junior Members? You know those long-membership Full and Senior Members who post nothing but shit? Does "You sir project very unique I follow" ring a bell?

I say: hit them where it hurts most.

Every time 20 posts from a member have been rightfully reported (meaning 20 posts qualified as "Good" spam by the mods), those members lose 1 Merit.


3. ADVANTAGES OF THE SYSTEM

- It would be appreciated by those good-willed Newbies and Juniors who are actually trying to do something useful for the forum, even without necessarily posting rocket science or Nobel Prize in Literature quality, to get a little bit higher in rank. You just can't expect people who are new to crypto, to post HQ topics and replies but at least they can earn some Merits while they are growing and learning. The reward would be nice but not disproportional, because if they wish to grow in rank, they will actually need to report 500 posts which is A LOT. So they will be helping to keep the forums tidy whilst being discouraged to post spam for which they risk to lose Merit again.

- It would be appreciated by those good-willed higher ranked members who are always wondering if it wouldn't be better to get a life, instead of spending hours reporting spam on their favorite forum. At least you'd feel like you're not doing this for nothing. Yes, that includes myself, too . (don't worry, I will continue to actively report even without Merit )

I believe nonetheless that it would especially help newer members, as the reward decreases "relatively" while your rank grows.

Let me use an example to make myself clear:

I have now over 1000 reported posts with 100% accuracy. To me, this would mean 2 Merits, which is nice but modest for a Full Member and even more modest for higher ranks. To a Newbie or Junior Member, however, this is huge, and their participation and involvement in the forums would increase.

- It would be appreciated by those good-willed higher ranked members (this also includes myself), who have been searching endlessly for those lower-ranked good-willed members "who most certainly are out there and deserve to receive sMerits but can't seem to be found nonetheless". Of course, these low-ranks will still be able to receive sMerits for their high-quality posts, but this extra "Spam Reporting Merits" will at least guarantee them a bit more visibility and credibility.

- It would be appreciated by those good-willed mods who do not like to ban people easily. The system would not "kill" or "ban" members but these members would be forced to respect the very minimum low-level requirement of participating in the conversations in a normal people's way to be able to receive Merit and participate in bounty campaigns.

- It would be appreciated by those good-willed members who do not want bounty campaigns to disappear but hate spam nonetheless. Indeed, you've guessed it: this also includes myself. This system would not only clean the existing spam posts, as these would be reported and deleted by the mods. It would also avoid new spam as you risk losing Merits every time 20 of your posts are accurately reported as spam.

- It would be appreciated by those good-willed members who do want to learn more about crypto or other subjects on the forums: by reading, scrolling and reporting spam, you also get to see interesting replies and OP's.

- And to those goldseekers who don't care about interesting topics, involvement or participation, and who came here only to get bounty signature money we now could say: you are most welcome to this forum and can stay a Newbie forever, but if you want to get a higher rank, you'll have to get your hands dirty and work for the forum by reporting spam.

- Keeping the numbers high and the accuracy demands very strict will avoid making a whole new level of Merit accumulation by members who are trying to report posts untruthfully.