Topic: Merited Banned Account (Read 430 times)

Thanks for sharing, Loyce! I wasn't aware that stats like that were part of the forum.

Sorry for the slight off-topic, but in case anybody else finds them interesting, there are more merit stats here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats

Plenty of abandoned and banned accounts still get their posts merited..

It shows how sad it is that those users aren't here anymore..

I am perhaps new but why is there such a fuss about a couple when it doesn't change at all the status on the forum nor his life?

I believe it’s more in line with the latter. I checked some of my 6 merits as per the Top senders to permabanned users, last 180 days, and they were sent before the account was banned.

Actually, I’m pretty certain it’s really adding merits sent over the last 180 days to profiles that, at some point (before or after) became permanently banned. I’ve checked this with a bunch of profiles on the list and it adds-up in all cases.

These are your cases:

Crap. I have 10 merits to my name according to that list. But I am not the worst one.
Btw, does that mean 10 users who received merits and got banned, or 10 merits sent to unknown number of users who then got banned? I think it's the latter.

Merits are not limited as bitcoins   
Thanks to Theymos.



This is nothing new as it happened previously too. I was seeing an account galambo who was banned due to this reason. However the next day he was given 10 merits on the WO thread on this post.

Even worse: third-party data on banned users is incomplete.

Now imagine being on top of Top senders to permabanned users, last 180 days

I don't think it's too difficult when they want to post merit on posts they meet while discussing in a thread, for example the latest posts. Then something I believe is that many merit source will not send merits to currently banned users especially on their past posts, but they may have sent them before the user was banned. Lots of examples of that.

I'm sure you'll never get a review request from them again because they've been blocked, so maybe they'll be ignored especially since their posts have been sunk by dozens of pages (if any in megathread).

Yes it's extremely hard task for merit sources who are handing out huge merits in each Tx to different users on the forum to check for them if they are banned or not because first they have to check for quality post made by members,then also make their own post and also have IRL jobs to perform so it's time consuming task for them being merit sources to check before meriting any post.But if they have BPIP extensions installed then they would have the status of the users before hand which could help a lot.

Yeah have seen that in past two days you have helped 6 members to reach close to their next rank with handing out smerits to them but if someone out of them gets banned your smerits wasted but it's their mistake of violating the forum rules.But your merits were awarded for the quality post they have made so it make certain type of balance situation.Speaking for your smerits then you will soon gain it for distributing it on the forum and will earn them also meanwhile.

Sure have seen some users who were making lot of quality post before hand but all efforts went into vain because they were banned for some reasons afterwards but this doesn't mean the post they have made were not merit worthy.So this is completely fine for members.

I merit posts as I come across them in the threads I read and write in. Chances are that some of the users I have merited have been banned at the time the merits were given or were banned after that. I don't check their status because it's surely not something that happens that often. If a user has been banned for a few weeks, his posts won't be the most recent ones I see and come across.

But nevertheless, a person that got banned for whatever reason can still have posts that are worthy of merits. I like PowerGlove's suggestion of adding a note on the merit tab that informs the sender that the profile you are about to send merits to has been banned. That way they can make up their own mind whether to proceed or not.

The purpose of merit is to highlight posts that others should pay closer attention to. If a post meets this criteria, it should receive a merit. The sMerit that merit sources are allocated takes into consideration that some people will not spend their sMerit for various reasons, including being banned. Further, it is also possible that someone banned will eventually get their ban lifted.

When you want to merit a good post, you don't have to check that account was banned or not. It's unnecessary because basically merit is to highlight good post.

You can use modlog or BPIP to check ban status but it takes a little bit of time. If you don't use these pages, you will have to rely on a combination of avatar and no signature that is a good signal of potentially banned account.

However, for many reasons, some accounts do neither wear avatar nor signature (even their rank can wear avatar/ signature) or their account rank is not enough to wear such things.

I am puzzled what you mean by this, so I searched it in this forum and now I know what you said mean.


Thank all you for your opinion, if we talk about data it seems that the merits sent to banned account is small to worry about and will not affect the flow of merits circulating in this forum as we can create merit as much as we want. So, i guess this solved my concern and thank you guys.

It's rare to get merit for old posts that have sunk into our dozens of post history pages, it really made me think that people wouldn't bother checking a number of banned account profiles just to send them merit. A user who consistently posts daily has a better chance of getting merit especially if the posts are of high quality. This will obviously leave the banned user not having a better chance of getting merit because he or she is no longer actively posting.

I can confirm that I rarely get merit due to my ability to post gambling as this is a board that is ignored a lot. I don't expect to get much merit there, but always hope to be able to maintain a reasonable position.

The amount of merits being given out to banned accounts is small to worry about. Once an account stops being active for a while it will be difficult to recieve merits. I noticed this when I was hugely involved in gambling section of the forum, merits stopped coming. So, a banned account's name will definitely fade off and the forum would forget about it.

While I would not support for a banned account to stop receiving merits, I have my reasons;

I am always happy to be a member of this prestigious forum, once a while I will like to send 1 merit to Satoshi post, maybe the pizza guy, the HODLING man and so on in order to be part of the history. A quality post remains quality even when the auto is banned, left or dead.

Yep, that's my position too.

In my opinion, meriting inactive users is a bit different from meriting banned ones because of the (much higher) chance of meriting plagiarism.

Thanks, that looks really useful! I'll check it out, but I'm probably a little too security conscious to feel comfortable installing it...

OP's grouse with the smerit that can't be sent out because an account is banned should equally be against accounts that are inactive. An inactive account as a result of death isn't likely to come back online but that shouldn't stop anyone meriting constructive posts from  deceased members. I tend to see posts merited by reputable members in this forum as simply saying thumbs up. This is why these members won't dare merit posts they feel are substandard because they're to protect their reputation.

In a related development, do we also say posts from banned members should be deleted? That would seem the same argument with stopping merits sent to banned accounts.

It'd be an impossible expectation, in fact, especially if the merit source gives out a ton of merits.  Can you imagine if a merit source like Ratimov or someone else at the top of the most generous merit-giving list decided they were going to check the status of each member they were going to merit?  It'd cut their sent merits in half at least, unless they wanted to spend all day every day on being a merit source.

Personally, I wouldn't knowingly merit a banned member, and not because they might have made a decent post.  It's because of the utility merits have in the ranking up process.  Right now I have zero source sMerits and zero earned ones because I gave them all out this morning.  If I handed out merits to someone who could never rank up, I'd consider them wasted. 

But that's just my humble opinion; every merit source and non-merit source member has his own philosophy about the system and how it should be used.

I am glad you understand the concept and as much as I try to see reasons why your argument might come with some value, I would say, it doesn't make a lot of sense to note merit a post based on the fact that, the user has been banned. Arguably, you could say the same for inactive users like Satoshi and users that have left us permanently like Lauda and there are a host of them out there.

They might have left us but there posts didn't and could still offer directives to some users still in the forum.
Of course yes, merit helps users grow in ranks but it's also an encouraging factor for good/quality posters and shit/spam posters alike.

Meriting a post is also a directive unto others on the type of posts that could be seen as quality. It doesn't matter either a user is banned or not. We don't have any clear definition of quality on the forum and one way to show quality is by meriting it and that would give other low ranked users an insight to what could be seen as a quality post.

From your perspective, Merit may look scarce. But from the forum's perspective, it can be created as much as needed.

The [β] BPIP Extension: user info & extra features add-on/extension, Firefox/Chrome can show this under the username.

One of the main purposes of introducing merit system is to identify the high quality posts so that readers can avoid wasting their time by reading all the posts. Merited posts are sign of high quality post. So, there's nothing wrong if a banned user gets a merit if the post is high quality.

The only problem with meriting a banned user's post is the circulation of merits. It's going to be decreased if shared with banned user but the ratio is too small as shared above.

Yep, it seems a waste to send merit to banned users.

With so few ways to get banned, there's also a pretty good chance of accidentally meriting plagiarism.

I know I would appreciate a heads-up, maybe something like this:

I figure that, were the banned status to be explicitly shown on the account’s profile summary by his posts, I might have pondered not meriting the post I merited, although the question he formulated was interesting and I might have do so regardless. I wouldn’t mind being able to decide after seeing a visual cue within the forum itself, but alas, that is not the case (I know there are useful extension to that effect, which I’m not inclined to use).

My remeriting sprees are more picky though, and they don’t remerit posts for banned users to the extend it can avoid doing so. Thus the post I merited on the sixth was not remerited on the fifteenth.


Note (messing around with data):

There is a forum stat that shows Merits sent to permanently banned members in the last 180 days (this one). Whilst the list is incomplete, showing only top senders to permanently banned users, it accounts for 729 sMerits sent to them. Of course this is also a superset of the case depicted in the OP, since it accounts (I believe) for merits sent both before and after the affected accounts were banned.

Even so, and using this therefore subset/superset and incomplete stat as a deliberately exaggerated worst case scenario, that would give an average of around 4,05 sMerits per day given to banned accounts, which is pretty small forumwide. Bearing in mind that we’ve sent around 151K sMerits in the last 6 months, the figure in this worst case scenario would be of around 0,48% of all sent sMerits in a 180 day window. Small enough for it to not be statistically significant.

I will disappoint you. This account has not created a single quality post. And perhaps you will be very upset that even the post that seemed to you of high quality was not written by him personally. Therefore, just get used to the fact that not all people see plagiarism and rush to check it. Because of this, such posts are marked with merit. 
But you don't have to worry that your posts will be invaluable at a time when such bad guys, just by copying, earn merit faster than everyone else. Enough merits for everyone.
As you can see, this account regrets its actions. I think that he will deserve his ban with dignity, and he will realize that, in fact, he only deceived himself.

Do you know one thing about plagiarised content? they are nice to read, it was a pure copy and paste, but of course, it is not everyone that will notice the act. It is possible that at the time those posts were merited, the users weren't aware that the user has been banned, and the post that was merited obviously deserved merit as a beginner to encourage them.



Again, by SMF default template, the forum doesn't show banned on profiles except when you used a third party extension such as the forum BPIP extension to see something like the above, if any user should view Feeling sound profile, they wouldn't know that he was banned.

People are banned for a variety of reasons. Being banned does not mean that they have not made other posts which are merit worthy. Further, it is unreasonable to expect merit sources to check the status of every user they want to merit using third party tools.

The amount of merit being sent to banned accounts and therefore not recirculated is minuscule and not worth worrying about. Most merit sources are sitting with significantly more than this in their stash, not mentioning all the merit sent to inactive accounts (like the 4.5k to Satoshi) or other users who simply don't hand it all back out again.

If you think there are good posts going unmerited, then link to them in this thread: [self-moderated] Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source

I don't see any problem if someone want to meriting a high quality post of a banned account, why should someone only meriting a not banned user? maybe some users doesn't want due to it will make the account can't send sMerit to other users (CMIIW).

If Satoshi said a dying Bitcoin is a donation and make the Bitcoin price slightly increase, then we also say it's will become dying sMerit and it will make Merit slightly valuable due to lesser circulation.

I just found out that some user still got merited after he was banned. Though we know that merit was based on quality post shared to this forum, but I believe that the merit should be sent to another qualified member with good quality posts than being sent it to banned account. I have no problem about being merited if that account is banned because of his/her quality posts, its just like we are throwing merit away to banned account where it can never be sent to anyone.

For example :

This user feeling sound was reported due to Plagiarism last Aug 4 https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.60685684 and got 7 merit after he was banned last Aug 5, 2022. See below images.





So, I would like to suggest if possible, we can disable this "merit +" sign beside "quote" button after user was banned to avoid getting merited? I believe that in anyway somehow this can maintain the good flow of merits? What do you think?