Topic: Meriting Your Alt is allowed? (Read 580 times)

This thread was to check whether the forum allows meriting alts to be permitted. Because I saw people negatively reply if someone merits their alt. I guess people reply negatively because most of them get caught by others. In my opinion, It should vary from case to case. Of course, philipma1957 didn't do that. He himself always admitted that this is my account.

I wanted to see the reaction from the community when it comes to a trusted well, known member.
Of course, it was a healthy discussion, so I don't see any problem here. Still, @philipma1957 if you believe it hampered your reputation or it's pissed off you. I apologize because I have respected your contribution over the years.

Looking if I can find ported cell phone I may get into the cellphone account.

I did remove the cellphone account from trust list.

 I been here a long time and years ago in a now deleted thread on this section people complained that i gave too many trusts to buyers and sellers I used.

Trust has altered over the years

trusting good buyers and sellers was fine.

In an effort to not make the philipma1957 account get new trusts.

I stopped using it for trusts and set up the cellphone account to handle trusts.

It was all discussed and shown on the forum in multiple posts and threads.

I let the cellphone do trusts for a while essentially it was my opinion the cellphone account = the main account. Which in effect means they are one and the same. Nothing was hidden.

When I lost access due to the porting issue I could not shut the account.

Well, I reckon your accountant knows way more about your tax situation than I do.  I'm just going by my (meager) knowledge of California LLC laws.  I had one some years ago when I owned a gun-shop.  The LLC and the gunshop had different names (one was a DBA,) and I made a bunch of on-line sales on GunBroker with my personal account.  Of course firearms are tracked by serial numbers so if there was ever an issue (there wasn't) I could have used my bound-book to retrace personal vs. business sales.



I'm sure it's fine, I don't think anyone here believes you're trying to cheat.  If it's for posting photos and such, you can always buy a copper membership.  That will allow you to have the same signature as a "Member" rank (IIRC) and post photos.  Here's the link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=credit;promote

I will pm him.

My tax situation goes beyond llc and schedule c.

 My accountant wanted  me to have a separate account here if and when I sell gear this year.

I rather not go into a full explanation of my reasons but at 65 medicare becomes involved and I need to keep my records more separated thus a new alt.

My 1 merit to  my alt is allowed and If you go back and look I specifically discussed it when merits were started.

I will attempt to find the post.

Kind of off topic, so I'll be brief; I don't think that's necessary; you can have an LLC and a DBA (doing business as) at the same time, and they don't need to named identically.  As far the IRS is concerned they just want to make sure that you've accounted for (and paid tax on) all of the proceeds generated by your business.  If they see lots and lots of money flowing through your accounts that have not been disclosed on your tax forms, they start to get suspicious.  As long as you're paying taxes on the money that's claimed as taxable income, they don't care about much else.

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There's no way to delete or remove those accounts, and if you don't have the login credentials any longer then they are effectively shutdown.  If you're concerned that someone may be able to hack the accounts at some point, it may be a good idea to use your philipma1957 account to tag them with a neutral or even a red tag to warn others that they were your accounts and aren't being use any longer.

ETA:  To this point: You can ask theymos to lock the accounts to prevent any login.  If I'm not mistaken he's done this before.

So am I now in trouble for back to back posts with a main account and an alt account?

I live in a country that has thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of tax laws. (USA)

I turned 65 this year and tax laws favor me to run an LLC not a schedule  c  which is what I did with mining and selling gear.

So I formed an LLC and I want to be able to show the USA government  that I exist as an LLC. This means I do not want to do all my posts here as philipma1957

I also did this with ebay.


my very old ebay account

https://www.ebay.com/fdbk/feedback_profile/philipma1957

my new ebay account


https://www.ebay.com/usr/a1hashratellc


I apologize if my efforts to comply with USA Tax laws have caused an issue.



I also would love to shut the cellphone and vacation  accounts down as I can't access them anyway.


Actually it would be nice to simply  get this account to 10 or 60 merits which I will do via using it much more often.

I want to understand where the merit rules changed to make it illegal to merit an alt account. Especially since I was transparent about what I did.
It has no profit motif for a signature campaign.
It simply helps me with my Federal tax compliance laws in 2022 and the future.



edit:

I asked how to shut the 2 old account down.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.60310384


waiting on an answer.


this would mean

I would have main account https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/philipma1957-64507 philipma1957


Mobile laptop account       https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/philipma1957onvacation-537107     philipma1957laptop

new LLC for business account. https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/a1-hashrate-llc2022-3482040 a1 Hashrate LLC2022

If the thread and post exists once upon a time merit system was started and  I asked theymos if meriting an alt was possible and if possible was permitted.

The answer was yes. IIRC

As for why there are multiple alt accounts. I lost access to more than 2 or 3 of them.

Now maybe the rules changed and no-one is allowed 2 accounts.

But if that is true this thread should be deleted as it is obvious the op is an alt.


philipma1957 DT1

Philipma1957cellphone DT2 lost access when my cell phone was ported away from me. I have zero problem ending this but I have no access to end it.

Philipma1957onvacation lost access years ago don't know what email created it. I have zero problem ending this but have no access to end it.

philipma1957laptop I had to create this  when on the road and needed to talk on bitcointalk I will keep this.

I just formed a company with buysolar (forum member) and wanted an official 'business' bitcointalk account to match it.

I am transparent and in rules have changed from when merit was first started fine. I have zero issues with rule changes.

I will sign on with what is to become my main account. a1 Hashrate LLC2022

He has recently posted in this section, so what you say does not hold, unless he has removed from ignore the reputation section to post that, and as soon as he has finished posting he has put it back on ignore, which seems quite unlikely.


I don't know what you say that to me. I'm not going to do anything and I've already said that I think it's a minor issue. Besides, with what DireWolfM14 says, this is nothing.

I want to preface this post by saying that I think it's wrong to send merit to your own alt account.  We can't merit our own posts (I think, I've never tried) so we shouldn't be meriting our own posts regardless of how many accounts we use to make posts.

But, is this really merit abuse?  I haven't spent any time digging into the post that was sent 2 merits (it's been deleted and I don't have the time right now,) but I found something interesting about this post that was sent one merit:

Two days after philipma1957 made that post using his alt account, someone made a post questioning whether that was really philipma1957 or a scammer:


In the matter of 1 minute and 50 seconds philipma1957 sent 4 merits in that thread, one each to 4 posts, as you can see here:




And this post in the same thread confirms what I originally suspected:


Again, I'm not condoning this as a way to confirm your alts, but it seems rather obvious that is what philipma1957 meant to do.  It also seems rather obvious that philipma1957 is not trying to game the system.  Abuse of the merit system doesn't seem to be happing here.  Misuse maybe, but that can easily be solved by educating philipma1957 that this use of the merit system is frowned upon.

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Maybe he's legitimately curious if it's safe to use his previous account to merit his newbie account...  

Possibly he ignored this part of the forum. I have certain sub-forums on ignore too. Since I am not interested whatever posted in those sub-forums; to me, those parts simply don't exist. If that's the case, he may never post in this topic even though you sent a PM because he is probably not interested in what anybody says here. Since nobody is going to do anything about this, why should he even care?

Let's say, he showed up and said:

"I did it, so what?"

What's you gonna do? Nothing...

And you decided to make some more!


So, Philip got caught with anything?
He came out in the open, told everyone those are his alts, never enlisted them in a signature campaign, he has only his own account on his trust list and I'm sure there is nobody who would claim here he is doing this to get more DT power.

The only thing you could accuse philipma1957 is of not really liking exaggerated rules and getting bored with the whole forum drama over petty rules, and yeah this applies to this case too.

Anyhow, what do you want to see? People distrusting phil because he created an alt and merited it?
Go watch the grass growing, at least in that case something will indeed happen!

And btw, just the thought of you actually trying to compare a cheating bounty hunter with philipma1957 simply pisses me off, just to let you know how members raelly feel about this case!

I just sent a PM to philipma1957 to let him know about the existence of this thread in case he wants to comment.

I think it's quite likely that he didn't even realize that this thread is about him, especially when his nickname is not in the title, because although he came to the reputation section to post his last alt in Timelord2067's thread, he spends a lot of time in the WO thread and in the mining section but I don't remember once seeing him comment here.

I agree with the first statement above, and as to the second....eh, maybe.  In the end, I doubt there's anyone on DT who knows Philipma1957 that would tag him for giving a few merits to his alt accounts--regardless of the reasons for which he did so.  It's not a good standard to set for newcomers, though, because when they (or anyone else for that matter) see a long time member getting away with something that they themselves might get tagged for, it just gives the impression that there's a class of members that's above the rules.

And it shouldn't be that way.  Everyone ought to be held to the same standards, with the caveat that each case should be dealt with individually and all factors taken into account.  Come to think of it, when was the last time DT members tagged anyone for merit abuse?  I thought that was kind of a thing of the past.

Nope.

Meriting the wrong post has happened too Luckily, it wasn't a bad post, and it wasn't mine. It happened when I scrolled back up while reading, and didn't check carefully enough.

Lol. I've seen many topics about insignificant subjects

You sent that to your alt LoyceMobile?  
I am not saying just entering wrong number or zero, that can happen to anyone and it happened to me as well.

It's obviously not insignificant when we have a topic about this, and he is giving bad example to newbies and lower ranked members.

Check out my merit history, and you will see that I can send lot's of merit, so it's no misunderstanding.

I've made mistakes, like sending 40 instead of 4 sMerit. Twice.
It happens.

I'd say theymos' "I'm not going to lose sleep over people" more or less applies here. My own personal opinion: it's 3 Merit, it doesn't matter. The Legendary user has earned a thousand times more than that already, and he's not even using an avatar or longer signature on his cellphone account. I don't know the reason why he Merited his own alt, and in my opinion it's better not to do that, but in the grand scheme of things, it's insignificant.

Agreed. Nobody should bump someone's feedback score by more than one point (up or down).

OP, actually you don't need to create a new account to create an accusation thread like this. with your main account, I believe you will be more appreciated.

I don't understand the mindset of @philipma1957, it does look weird when he publishes ALT accounts, tags, and share merit. as I see, he is not using the ALT of the account he has to cheat in the signature campaign.
I think, @philipma1957 is a very discussion person and loves forums. what is clear is that he always publishes his ALT account. like the latest, @a1 Hashrate LLC2022

Well, aside from all that has been said, let's remember that theymos only cares about whether merit has been bought/sold. I too would like Phillip to give some explanation, as I think he most likely did it so he could post images with his alts, or something, but his contribution to the forum is more than positive and this is a minor issue.

The most Phillip could get would be a neutral tag, and in the unlikely event that some DT let him get a red tag as sometimes happens, it wouldn't affect him, as AFAIK he has never joined a signature campaign, and being the 21st most trusted of all the forum, I don't think people who trust him are going to distrust him because of this.

It's obvious that some of the account merited each other and it's unethical for the forum, but the factor we have to consider is the life existence of those of the accounts, some of them is really inactive so therefore i dont think since they are inactive any penalty is holding any of them, if you cross check the differences of the activeness of the accounts and you will understand that some of them has stopped operating for injuries of time. And we should remember this op account used to prosecute these, is a someone alt...so in summary i will say it's a mistake that occurs when it doesn't know fully the doctrine of the forum.

Seriously?!
We are not talking about trained monkey who is using keyboard to make multiple ''mistakes'' like this to his alt accounts, and add them to his trust list.



Meriting your alt accounts and including them in your trust list is crazy and immoral behavior, but OP why don't you use your main account if you wanted to talk about this?
Most of philipma1957 alt accounts are inactive for years, however, problem is that he continues to do the same thing with his new alt accounts now.
I see no reason why DT member in his position should be able to do something like this all the time without any explanation.

@philipma1957 you have something to say about this?

I dislike users making accusations or trying to sling mud from a newbie account. Basically a chickenshit scared they will get tagged. Have some balls, it's not illegal to ask a question even if it might piss off a DT user.

With that being said, I do not think it's right to merit am alt account. If the OP were to do it, I'm sure some DT would tag him/her for it. I don't feel like Philipma sent merit to abuse the system as it was only 1 merit. Maybe so when he hit Jr he could post images, who knows.

I also think it's wrong to include your alt in DT/trust lists but there are multiple DT users that have done so I think. Hilariousandco is the only 1 I specifically remember.

Whether I feel any of these actions are right or wrong, it does come down to a case by case thing. Older established members with nothing to gain will not get tagged, whereas newbie or lower ranked members will likely not get the benefit of doubt.

Well, you did create this topic and have tried to put some sort of "guilty" tag on his back.
So no matter what you claim/declare afterwards, some harm (and drama) is done.

Even more, I find your "innocent" (lol) question rather insulting. You have too much of politician material.

Why do you think I created this drama while I already said:

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No, I didn't check. It's not the point here. I just wanted to see the community reaction.


Where did I say five Active accounts? No matter if they are active or not. The accounts are counted.

Have you looked at the latest activity?
Can this be called five active accounts?

When a newbie does this, he's doing it for farming accounts, for using multiple users in whatever bounties or campaigns (usually against their rules) or for conducting scams.
Also in most cases those are not newbies, are established users' new accounts (btw, I guess that this is not your main account also, so you should know this kind of details).

On the other hand philipma1957 has proven already well enough that he's not interested in scams and these accounts have a clear purpose (you will see that at least Philipma1957cellphone is inactive now).
Plus his alts are clearly stated they're alts.


So it's by far an exception, in the good way. I would have not done that in his place (and if I would have had alts) even if that would have been meaning that for example I would not be able to post images, but being harsh on him for this would be really silly.
Hence I don't know why you are so keen to create this unnecessary drama.

I agree with that.


Well, While some reputed well-known members used their alt and they informed the community that- This is my alt, At the same time a lot more people using their alt and maybe they also meriting their alts. But we don't know until they get exposed. I am not accusing him of merit abuse, and I am not expecting a harsh reply. I want to see how the community react when it varies from person to person.

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I guess most of them are exposed by others.

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While I am not accusing him of merit abuse, I also don't understand why he needs to merit his alts since he is not participating in any signature campaign.

Show me the account of the person who gave merit to their alt and, in the meantime, told everyone that it was his alternate account.

Everyone probably understands this. Someone who passes merit to their alt is unlikely to admit to managing two or more accounts. And it immediately becomes clear that a person is lying for some personal purpose.

Your example is a completely different case. I think that Philipma1957 is often in different places, but because of his love of the forum, he tries to always be in touch with different devices. For me, this is normal. I don't see a problem here.

No matter what your excuse is (which is likely going to be a bullshit excuse), you shouldn't merit your own alts imo. Maybe he didn't get any benefits from doing so but it is still not right.

On the other hand, who knows how many others lurking around with multiple accounts, creating fake threads, boosting his army of shills... When you think about it, Philip's mistake looks innocent. It is only 3 merits if I see it right, pretty much nothing.

On a few occasions I forgot which page I am on, and merited the wrong post/user. Maybe he did that.

This should be handled case by case and not only looking by "merit sharing" only, you're correct meriting your own alt is merit abuse, but you need to look more deeper, does he got benefit after meriting his own alt? I find nothing.

1. AFAIK he's never joining any signature campaign, usually most users meriting his own alt to make his alt merit history is high, so his alt will high likely to get accepted.
2. He's also not a scammer and high likely wouldn't become a scammer based on his record.
3. He didn't give merit to his newbie alt to rank up to jr.member to avoid cost of copper membership.

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However what I find interesting he's "self scratching" his own alt


Although he did on a purpose

But he is still using his main account to give positive feedback, this user got three positive feedbacks from his main account and his alt. I don't think this is correct use of trustlist and trust feedback from my understanding so far.

I saw a lot of drama in this forum regarding meriting alt accounts. I saw some people also got tagged because they merited their alt accounts. Forum members believe this is not a good practice. I can gather up a lot of harsh replies from the community when someone merited their alt account. But, I will not spend my time there since almost everyone thinks the same. As I also noticed, Meriting alt is not a merit abuse according to forum rules. But, Moderators discourage users not to doing this.

When you check Bitcointalk Stats From Here,

You will see that philipma1957 Is the Number 1 Top poster on this forum. He has made over 39241+ Posts in this forum since his registration date (With this account only). He is an DT1 Member. He is Top 2 in the Most Recognized Member. He is Number 21 On the Most Trusted Member list. He is number 17 in both Most Activity and Most Merited members.

He already has four accounts (5 from now)

• philipma1957 DT1
• Philipma1957cellphone DT2
• Philipma1957onvacation
• philipma1957laptop
  

With the philipma1957 account, He included his cellphone account on his trust list which makes his cellphone account DT2 (I guess it's allowed).

philipma1957 Trusts these users' judgement:
26. Philipma1957cellphone (Trust: neutral) (125 Merit earned) (Trust list) (BPIP)

He also merited his cellphone account from his main account.

Merit received by Philipma1957cellphone (Trust list) from January 24, 2018 until May 27, 2022 (source)

   21. Fri Aug 28 14:51:58 2020: 1 (44) from philipma1957 (Trust list) (history) for Re: WTS S 17 pro ASIC -
   10. Tue Nov 26 19:00:45 2019: 2 (28) from philipma1957 (Trust list) (history) for Re: Well the 2018 btc diff jumps are over so what will 2019 bring us?

That was too old Story.
Today, I noticed he created another account named: a1 Hashrate LLC2022 and self-verified -


A few minutes later he made another post and Merited his this alts too.

With due respect, I know He is a great contributor to this forum. Almost 40K posts are no joke.
But, My question is- When a low ranked user gets caught by others meriting his alts, I see DT members give harsh replies and expose them in a toxic way. Some of them Added them to the Distrust list and also some DT members tag them.

No offence to philipma1957. But, I want to see how they react when it comes to the Top Contributor of this forum.