Topic: Policy on users like this guy? (Read 1126 times)

The problem is almost 90% of ICOs here are mere startups, they aren't companies or Organizations at all except for a few. Bitcointalk has more to offer them than they have to offer bitcointalk. To put things into perspective, there are forums which ask upwards of $1K for HYIPs to get their post pinned for a week, something which is a scam altogether. Imagine what bitcointalk is offering to these ICOs for free. They can create free threads run advertisements and all sort of good stuff without paying a penny to bitcointalk and since it's free for all, We see services like paid bumping get traction, You can't officially get your post pinned so the only way to get your post on the 1st page is by paying for bumping services.

I do agree with what you said in your DOs and DON'Ts but the problem is there is no one who will enforce these, nor do they have the budgets to hire experienced campaign managers. IMO, the first step should be to not allow these ICOs to run Signature campaigns for just their worthless tokens. This should reduce spam dramatically. As to reduce paid bumping many things have been proposed, from more rigorous moderating to new replies not bringing the threads to the 1st page. Each of them has its pros and cons which have been discussed countless times before. I still believe we need more moderating than what we currently have...

In my personal opinion, it's good to bring such cases to the spotlight because it's not that much of a clear cut case always.
Copy-pasting content isn't allowed and for sure when all of a user's posts are plagiarized its ban worthy.

But I think that organizations and companies that seek to promote their activities or even build backings CAN have a place in bitcointalk while also contributing positively. Other than ousting them away and being hostile from the beginning, I would recommend that we also try to propose ways for those companies to improve their marketing efforts in this forum.

I'll put my money where my mouth is and try my best to provide some guidelines:

For anyone looking to market a project/publication/website etc. in bitcointalk; DOs and DON'Ts:

NEVER:

• Create more than one topic about the same thing (article/website/campaign etc.)
• Create posts (be it topics or replies) that are 100% non-original. Whatever you post, even if your intent is to post a link to content you own, it should include some original content that will fit in the context of bitcointalk. Half-assed attempts to create filler context are also not welcome.
• Be out of context. Respond to topics of others with out of context replies for promotion is a double sin. 
• Post in the wrong board. 
• Create more than one topic for your organization. 
• Bump your thread more than once every 24h.
• Provide incentives for others to bump your threads.
• Promote a referral campaign via bitcointalk posts.

Not strictly forbidden but considered a dick move:

• Never interacting with the community. If your organization has a marketer on the payroll and he simply re-posts content on bitcointalk without having a grasp of the community, in the worst case it can damage your reputation or in the best case your campaigns will get minimum clicks.*
• Linking to non-bitcointalk content constantly without giving anything back to the forum
• Fighting with respected community members over disputed trust ratings (oh boy).
• Promoting articles inappropriately. The press board should be used for news, and if you're a news publication it should be the only place where you create topics for your articles. Other than that, there are very few topics where the context would permit for an article being promoted as a response, so unless the subject fits 100% and you have exclusive updates, don't do it.
• Not sticking to your own thread. If you have an Announcement thread for your project/service etc., you should post your press releases and promotions only under it. Unless we're talking about a campaign that'll be running specifically on bitcointalk like signature campaign.

DOs:

• Running bitcointalk-specific campaigns like Signature/avatar campaigns, raffles, giveaways, contents, bounty campaigns etc. These are guaranteed to capture the interest of bitcointalkers, which are by default experienced with cryptocurrency and a highly specialized crown worth to target with specializedmarketing.
• Use escrow. Is there money on the table for your campaign? Hire a trusted bitcointalk member to hold it.
• Familiarize yourself with the trust system and bitcointalk ranks. These are important features to get an understanding of how the forum works.
• Read the (unofficial) rules and make sure you fall within the guidelines.
• Hire experienced bitcointalk members to represent you. Using escrow, community managers, coordinators or even advisors that have an established profile in bitcointalk can help you better communicate with the community, without having to spend too much time getting familiar with the details.

* This is especially tricky. If you try to produce makeshift interaction with the community, it has a high likelihood to look forced. But get this, if you came through with some genuinely interesting information exclusive to bitcointalk, it'll also open up the way to your marketing efforts fitting better among your posts. It's ideal to keep a balance between promotion and community interaction, because having your account rifled with only marketing decreases the effectiveness of the campaign in the forum. So, make sure that if you run any campaign in the forum, you'd also be ready to respond to inquiries, address issues forum members can face, etc. What's worthy of huge props would be if high ranking members within an organization are shown to be capable of organic participation in the community. Similar to how Mark Karpelès, manager of the biggest BTC exchange at the time, was capable to browse bitcoin communities daily, interact and crack jokes with simple users whenever he saw an interesting. Before the crash he was an old school cool 'bitcoin CEO'.

this is a very special one.
because the user is moving in the range of what is allowed and a source is given, there is no handling. so a system is simply used that offers these possibilities.



The only thing to accuse here would be if the BM would do something.
That should be noticed and have consequences. in the end it is only zero value posts or a link collection that fills up the threads. as I said, I don't know any rule that is violated here and that's why it works for such a long time

mich joined Bitcasino signature campaign on January 01, 2019 [Ref.], although he had received a negative feedback before that time on 20 February, 2018.
After joining the campaign he received the second feedback and the third one on February 19, 2019 and 05 November 2019 respectively, but he is still a part of the campaign.

This user is copy-pasting from news websites and add their links to his posts (So not accused of plagiarism) and increases the post count in this way and earns 0.018 BTC per week (0.00072 BTC for each post) without earning a single merit in the last 120 days.
Yesterday (January 22, GMT) he made 10 posts only in 70 minutes. All posts are from other websites (with links to the source off course). Archived (1), Archived (2)
In Bitcasino signature campaign topic, there isn't any rule regarding negative trusts and as this user hasn't been removed from the campaign, seems that the posts this user makes are helpful to Bitcasino.

The site Cheezcarls was promoting doesn't want to give up this forum so easily, they appear to have several alt accounts to continue their promotion. The profile I showed yesterday he also has his twin brother and now they are playing a fake conversation in this thread. If one looks at post history of fridacrypto there is no doubt that it is the same person, or more than one who works together.

I suppose as long as they stay in Alternate cryptocurrencies it won't bother anyone too much.


He does something similar but does not post links from the same source, and the links are not for the purpose of the campaign. However, it amazes me that with this type of posting and negative DT feedbacks, he is still in the signature campaign or maybe not when I check who is campaign manager. It's amazing that someone pays for this kind of shitposting

How about this guy? He's doing the same thing https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/mich-9645

I'm not against this actually, as long as the OP is actually involved with the conversation and not just do some cheesy lines after posting the source link I think that is allowable an can't be counted as illegal advertising. It's just like how a normal member will be posting an article they found and actually got curious with some questions and need to find out more about it. However this cheezcarls guy isn't interested into having any conversation, he just wants to post the source link and ask maybe a question or your opinion in that matter but after that you won't see him replying to his thread. This is something commonly done in the Press section buy news promoters and they aren't really contributing anything to BCT, in fact they are just taking advantage of the forum for illegally promoting their website.

Oh my. Reached his 420th post from most recent and the page is still only filled up with links and quotes.
mich has been doing this for a LONG time now. No merit earned in the last 120 days.

If anyone believes what mich has been doing in the past months is fine for the forum and breaks no rule, please let me know and I will stop posting any link to the profile of an user who only posts links & quotes from articles and is on a streak of it of so many days, is benefiting from a signature campaign and is a Legendary rank too. His 0 earned merit in the past 120 days + his negative trust makes his account worthless though.


Thanks for taking action!


Great article, thanks for sharing. Shows how much of an asset these users are to our community. /s

His username fits his posts to be honest Seriously though, this guy's profile is a joke. He literally has a bunch of posts COPY-PASTED from one thread to another. Here are a few examples (I will only post links instead of quotes because I don't want this post to become a wall on this thread):

• This post has been copied here and here.
• This post has been carried as a copy-paste onto this thread.
• This post has been copied to this, this, this and this thread.

I'll stop with the research for this user here. Being copy-pasted posts, counting how many places he's copied them to gives me a big headache. By the way, the bullets above are taken out of his most recent 20 posts.

This is certainly good news, and at least for the time being, the user has stopped their activities. I am not of those who believe in coincidences, so I believe that after someone is warned not to do something, someone else shows up and starts doing the same. We definitely need to pay attention to the user repetecrypto

I'll give Cheezcarls a warning about it. If he continues I'll give him a ban.

I just notice this Legendary account doing the same thing: https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/mich-9645

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.53670104

Report the posts, they are of low-quality. The user is definitely spamming. If they wanted to share it for a discussion it would have been acceptable but the posts are basically one-liners except for the text copied from the articles... 


Try here: [CLUB] The SpamBusters! Busting rule-breakers for more than a year.

Just found another account posting threads the same way cheezcarl does. Newbie with 6 posts. 4 threads already, same structure. As I said before, I just hope this doesn't become a forum trend.

By the way, just so I can avoid spamming this thread with these kind of findings, is there any thread where I could post them?

EDIT: I'm not necessarily accusing this new account of spamming & publishing posts to generate free traffic for these websites, although it looks suspicious to have 4 new threads already with the same structure in different boards of the forum as a new account. Just wanted to put this out here on the radar. Will check it periodically to see how the account's posts are developing.

Thank you. I will possibly leave a neutral trust then, I'm not sure yet.

I'm thinking right now about creating some kind of a list (thread-based, SMAS-like but the purpose of it being to encourage higher quality posts and less signature campaign-focused ones) in order to help combat low quality users. I believe I'm going off topic right now though, so my post ends here.

Hopefully something is going to be done against this guy.

Trust isn't moderated, so you are "allowed" to leave any rating for any reason you so choose. Most users would agree, however, that leaving negative trust for being a spammer is an inappropriate use of the system, which is why he hasn't already been tagged. Being a spammer doesn't necessarily mean he is high risk to trade with. If you were to leave any rating, I would suggest leaving a neutral rating simply stating that he is a paid shill.

Agreed. And since he is ignoring the warning, he should receive a longer ban. I think three warning bans of 7/14/28 days is fair, followed by a permaban.

I don't think merit plays any role in his behavior. With zero or a thousand earned merit, as long as he is being paid and we don't intervene, the behavior will continue.

It just confirms everything that has already been written about him, can anyone have any doubts about what this is when it comes to the user in question? Just look at the link he is posting in every thread, it is pay campaign with its initials at the end (Jeff Caceres).



So far, they have taken nothing in terms of some punishment, except for the temporary ban which has nothing to do with the activity we are discussing. As I wrote before, it's not just him, it's at least 4-5 more people doing the same thing, but hiding in some less-visited parts of the forum. If they perma-ban one user, they need to ban them all.


I don't think he's warned, and even if this is the case I think he can just change his bad habits, he will go to the end no matter what's going to happen to that end.

I am not the person who thinks I should interfere with the merit assignment policy, but I think part of the responsibility for this kind of behavior lies in the encouragement that comes through the merits.

Merit summary for cheezcarls

I stand corrected...

Only newbies can get nuked. This user will likely be banned. But won't be nuked.
The user hasn't even thought about the reason of ban. He/She should have considered the ban as a warning. But nothing changed and he/she is advertising that website everywhere in the forum again.

Thank you. This is my first investigation and it seems fun to do, so if it serves for the good of this community, I'll continue to do these.

Paid posts and threads should be forbidden here. Haven't checked the Rules page yet to see if what he's doing is directly against the rules, but I believe it is an unhealthy kind of activity for the forum. I'm sure this isn't the first member who posts threads & replies for money, and he won't be the last either. But this has to be prevented before they multiply and this forum becomes a mixture of sh*tposting and paid marketing.


The domain idea is good, there could be a list of suspicious accounts with the status of each next to them so we could keep a record. It has to be manually updated though, and that's work to do.

Members will always try their luck before even thinking whether they actually have a chance to join the campaign or not.

EDIT: This guy is ruthless. He just posted another thread about an hour ago. I have a question: am I allowed to give these spammy members a negative trust rating on their profile, or am I only allowed to do so if a trade goes wrong?

It's only a matter of time before the guy gets nuked I believe... On a lighter note, I guess we need a loyceV domain for checking this guys status I suggest IsCheezCarlsNukedYet.tk?

Update: This guy has the audacity to apply in Chipmixer campaign OMEGALUL!

Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20200121095519/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1935179.msg53662515