Topic: Require a small amount of merit to become a Junior Member (Read 1838 times)

What about disabling signature for junior members so that they need to get 10 merits (become a member) to enable it?
In my opinion, one merit is just too little to have an impact.
Also, this method will affect current juniors, not only the new one and no need to airdropped 1 merit.

Friendly bump for pay attention of admin & for fair discussion. I think it's a useful suggestion to prevent spam.

I think it will be a huge restriction. At the moment, spam bots can rank up thousands of Jr. Members, and thousands of Newbies are registered each day.  A Merit requirement will reduce those numbers: even if they buy Merit, eventually the sellers will run out of it. It reduces a potentially unlimited problem to maybe a few thousand new Jr. Members.

In the past few days, I got many more than 50 Newbies nuked. I'm currently experimenting on scraping user histories instead of just patrol. If that works out, I can filter out higher level spam accounts too.

99.9% of suggestions are never implemented, whether they're good or bad ideas and theymos is slow to act on most things. It's good in the respect that drastic changes aren't rushed into, but on the other hand basic issues just don't ever get sorted and the forum continues to circle the drain in the meantime. I've been making numerous suggestion for improvements to the forum for years and even simple things like locking/archiving the Press forum (or at the least sticking some guidelines in there) or assigning dedicated mods to big subs that have no moderator don't happen nor rarely get commented on by the admins so we never know where theymos stands or whether he thinks it's a good or bad idea. Spreading out the workload by assigning mods to subs that don't have them is logical and would take minutes to apply by theymos. Changes to the merit system and signatures etc are a bit more work and require further thought about how it will effect the forum, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't happen or at least be discussed and the longer we leave it the worse things get.


Well we have no control over that. If there's space there to be advertised then ICOs will pay for it because all they care about is getting as many people as possible regardless of quality, so that's why we need to force their hand and remove it completely so they don't have this option.

Well, it could be even simpler. Simply don't accept newbies or Jr. members into campaigns of any sort, and they'll have no choice but to either step up and level up, or gtfo.

You need to see the bigger picture. One merit is better then nothing which it currently is, but most people who come here don't have any bitcoin nor likely the money to buy merit or an account. Even if they have to go to the trouble of buying it then it's one more hoop to jump through for them. One merit isn't a lot and I wouldn't be against it being more or just making it so only Members can have a signature at ten merit, but it's more about just stopping the completely clueless kids who come here with the sole intention or making generic one/two liners or copy and pasting content. Those people will get nowhere and will never be able to join a signature campaign unless they get the merit in whatever way possible.

I personally think a single merit is not sufficient, as it's very easy to buy merit from a hero member with 50 merit, producing 50 new Jr. member accounts. Sure, it's definitely a roadblock, but it's probably not enough to adequately curb the bot accounts.

There could be a sliding scale of how much merit is needed based on the age of the account, e.g:

< 1 month old = 5 merit
1-6 months old = 3 merit
> 6 months old = 2 merit

Obviously, this would just delay the more persistent multi-accounters, but it should do something to stop the novices.

We have been discussing this topic from 21 days. Lots of suggestion have been come by the members.
 
Is there any final out come of this discussion    how much time it will take to implement ??

I have six total posts in the Off-Topic section, last one being from March 9th, and four posts from Politics and Society, the last one being on January 18. Back when I was new and I was getting my feet wet in here, and you want to make it seem as though I post there. Remember, I said that the majority of Bitcointalk posts are spam and forced. And as I read my history I saw a comment from myself complaining about the spam and forced comments.

The reason why I'm commenting about merits is because it's an interesting game theory kind of concept, and how it's a disadvantage for new, normal legit users, versus bots and spammers who don't even read the OP and post one liners. I couldn't care one iota about merits. You're never going to see me begging for merits.

But I'm done discussing this with you, because you really don't seem capable of understanding my very, very, very simple point. I decided to use Bitcoin as an example for this point, but instead of acknowledging the point that I tried to make, you deflect by saying that I'm only here to make money.

I think it's bad idea. I'm not sure that it would kill account sales market, but it would definitely stop legitimate newbies from cresting account here when they will see that payment is needed to join forum.
Maybe it would be better to make signatures as paid privillege - users would have to pay some BTC to enable signatures in their profiles.

I’ve checked through your posting history briefly and your posts tend to be one-liners that lack deeper content to be meritable.
I believe you mentioned you’re Philippine.  If so, I would suggest looking through the posts from theyoungmillionaire, who posts both in the English boards and in the local Philippine section. He is I believe one of the best examples I can provide from your local board.  Check through his posts to get a glimpse of the idea as to why he is an example.

honestly. merits make me a hard time to rank up. i have a lot of good quality post and ended up no merit gain, but its ok because i think that the merit givers also think that my post is not that good enough to be rewarded by a merit and still i am doing all my hard works so that one day i will be rewarded by a lot of merits.

and for the jr member out there that experiencing the same kind of struggle. level up of knowledge and gain experiencing for those who are knowledgeable in this kind of work.

Also, it would be nice to require some payment (very small) to start an account here. Currently, many create accounts and let is age to sell later.

No, I didn't say that. But you can't expect to rank up if you're not willing to learn and just keep posting generic useless posts.


You're right on one thing: this is something I see a lot, just not how you imagined it. Whenever a user with zero Merit complains about it, I check their post history. I checked yours yesterday, and saw nothing worth meriting.
You're not the first one to pull the "you're at the top so you don't care"-card, and all it does is prove you didn't check my post history.
I care a lot about new users who make decent posts, and I have given 566 merit 532 times, to 291 profiles.
But I've gotten thousands of posts deleted and accounts banned too. I don't merit you because I care about the forum, not the other way around.

There's your problem, you're here only to make money. That's why you spammed your way into being a Jr. Member.

As you've discussed this before, I agreed to this too that Jr.members and newbies should stay first at the stated boards until they got reviewed and got merited. That will prevent them from spamming different boards with useless threads and replies and for members that are already ranked up to Jr before more restrictions will be implemented, bounty managers should be strict in accepting participants in their campaign.

This would be too easy:


Newbies would begin to target merit sources and begin their holocaust campaign for merits. 1 merit to Jr. Member is not a bad idea at all. Only if there was a way to gather all the spambot accounts and nuke them, then dealing with the real accounts who have a poor understanding on how BTT works should be an entirely different yet simple problem.

Even a funny joke can award you a merit. Actually, it probably will award you a merit.

If you read all comments before posting you are half way to receive a merit.
If you read and research, you will get one very soon.

And why do you need to rank up? To join a signature/bounty campaign.
Well, if you have nothing to contribute to the forum why do you want to get paid to post?


I think 1 merit to Jr. Member would be nice.
Or maybe, what if 1 merit is needed to have a signature?

No. Its not like that. Anybody can rank up if they want to. I am no expert when it comes to bitcoin, I am far worse than a newb, but that is not the point to be focused on. Expert or no expert, you can still rank up, how? Use proper language, be a little unique and be relevant to the topic and make your post make sense. You have made good points on how legendary or other high ranked members don't care much on newbies ranking up. Its good that they don't, for, rank has nothing to do with you. I mean, I get that ranking up boosts your morale, but if you make good posts, you can rank up. At least normal understandable posts with some new information.

You can't expect to get merit for like agreeing with someone on some topic, or repeating what has been said before. I would have merited you for this post, but this has already been discussed in the past.

So people new to crypto should never rank up? Or wait for years until they become experts? Regular, average, normal people should rank up, not spammers. That's the point.

It's something that I see so much, how when people are on the top, they're basically like, "Who cares, I'm on top." Without even noticing that they're doing that. You're a Legendary member for no other reason that you've been here for many,many, many years. So your attitude is more of "Oh they can't rank up, oh well." Since you don't have to deal with it.

And I've also seen in so many other situations. "I have 15,000 Bitcoins because I mined it in 2009. How dare these people want to make money off of crypto instead of use it as a currency because the banking system is evil."

Very easy for a person with 15,000 Bitcoins to say when they don't have to worry about money. Not realizing that if they didn't have those 15,000 Bitcoins, they wouldn't be complaining that others are more concerned with making money than the a Utopian future without banks.

I think it has to do with their large numbers. Many get banned, but many more get created. And real users shouldn't be banned as collateral damage, which means Mods can't just ban 99% of the users.

You make it sound as if it is a bad thing that people who don't have knowledge on the subject they're "discussing" can't rank up.

I do not think it's necessary to require for merit just to ask how many posts need to have at least a few words and write down which threads are counted.

It doesn't matter really, but it should be at least one. The amounts should be staggered and get progressively higher (and harder) to get as you move up ranks. Ten merit to become a Member isn't much at all, and Junior could be between 1-5, but one is better than nothing and is at least some encouragement in that all you need is one meritable post to move up a rank. Member is then ten times more difficult. My suggestion is more about just stopping the truly terrible posters and bots from being able to achieve this rank by doing nothing other than making 30 posts over two activity periods.

In case this is implemented, how much merits are we talking about ? Less than 5 seems quite less and then member rank will need an increase for merit as well.

From what I see there are three types of possible posts.

1. Spam, forced. This is the majority on bitcointalk.
2. Normal. What you would see on your average website. Say on YouTube. Legit comment about the video they saw. MEANINGFUL to the subject/video.
3. All time great posts. John Carmack going in depth about computer programming. A subject he's an expert in.

What I'm saying that in the hopes of getting a merit one cannot be normal, but rather spend an expensive amount of mental energy for number three in hopes that maybe they'll get a merit. And something that the majority of people will not be able to do. Due to lack of knowledge on most of the topics, particularly if they're new. Or because they simply do not have the IQ. Or not being a native English speaker.

That was my point.

How does it mess people up? People should earn their ranks. If you can't contribute anything merit worthy then you should remain at a Newbie rank. Asking for one merit to become a Junior is not a ridiculous proposition. The other ranks are much higher.


Above and beyond?  . I'm really sorry that you now have to put a little effort into your posts and can't just rise through the ranks with generic one/two line posts. People are tired of having to read nonsense by lazy idiots who are only here to earn and do so by posting crap all over until they get the rank they want. If you can't get merit then you shouldn't move up ranks. People shouldn't be allowed to just come here and write "I like bitcoin because it helps me with my daily needs" 30 times and then become a Junior Member. Earn that title by posting something worthwhile, but if you don't then you should remain a Newbie.


Well maybe this is the problem here. Laziness or 'lack of energy' shouldn't be rewarded. If you lack energy to post on a message board then I wouldn't suggest finding something less tiring to do or just stick to collecting bounties until you've earned the right to move up ranks.


Bots are banned once spotted or reported, but their accounts still remain in the database, they just can't do anything with them. Alts are allowed by the forum as long as it's not to evade a ban or something else malicious.

Why are they not banned then ? Is it because the forum needs them for some reason or another ?

Correct. Out of more than 2 million accounts, less than 1% has received 1 or more Merit points.
The majority of users are either spambots or bounty hunters/account farmers with dozens of accounts.

So the one who gets merits is an irregular/divergent? That means the majority of this forum can't write meaningful posts, isn't it?

Come on Quade, don't be too pessimistic.

I understand the logic and it makes sense. I was just trying to point out how much more difficult it all makes it for the regular people. Just wish there was a better solution to prevent people from spamming and selling such accounts.

I understand that the spammers and bot are a bigger issue than a regular person getting a merit to be a Jr. member. But what I'm saying is that I'm a regular person, having regular conversations, posts, and so on. Even though I understand that the spammers and bot are a major  issue, I'm just trying to bring light how this really messes up a regular person.

The difficulty is such now that instead of developing through natural conversations, I have to go above and beyond and create really amazing posts. Most regular people are not going to have that ability. So you can see how it hurts the regular person the most.

I am fine with all of it.

Like I know I can go back and improved what I just said if I spend a lot more mental effort and time going over and looking at how I can better express my point. But now instead of being natural and a regular person, I'm forcing myself, using more mental energy, for the hope of getting a merit.

The cost, energy that one has to use for hopefully getting a merit puts us at a disadvantage.

I'm really amazed people are offering for sale and they also have buyers for Jr Members...

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--4655720
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--2962770
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/wts-jr-member-and-member-account-escrow-accepted-4693792

Really? Probably half of the "buyers' are alts of the seller but still..
1 Jr Member- $22 

This is just insane, if indeed there is going to be 1-5 merit requirement what's going to happen?
The price for newbie accounts hits 10$ and for jr 100$?


Let's add Mod bots to this.
Farming bots will make mistakes, they don't give a damn, Mod bots making mistakes might damage the forum and hurt real users.
In the end...the evil bots will win this round also. 

Basically, what the bot does is -> Logins into my account -> checks for recent posts by the newbies, and if the length of the post is lesser than say 5 words, or just have a link, it reports them. Now, the bot can be programmed to do whatever we want after it logs in. I'm not sure what you mean by feeding the reports.

If you can establish a sort of pattern common to all of the newly created accounts, we can program the bot to act on those defined conditions. It would really automate the manual reporting process.

Need to ask Mitchell!

If you are a normal poster, meaning that you spend some time outside the Altcoin board and join debates, it shouldn't be difficult to get one merit. In fact, that should be quite easy and in no time.

The problem we have in the forum is a situation like this one, for instance: https://www.seoclerk.com/Traffic/611690/Create-Bitcointalk-Account


Low-life guys spamming the forum as a work.


Precisely. It is not only about bots, but about spamming.
As you can see in the example I posted, the guy is offering to create Jr accounts for $50, and it is allowed to ask if you want an account with more activity.
I bet that the posting activity of any of these accounts is nothing but shit.

By implementing the 1 merit requirement for juniors, we will get rid of those, and his "business" will become somehow difficult to achieve.
But I truly believe it will be needed more than a single merit, maybe 5, for the merit market is actually happening, and it can be easy to buy one or to transfer one merit from an account to another.

I don't think the userID is needed, right?

Example:
3205950.msg42165412#msg42165412; posted only "good"
3279292.msg41816885#msg41816885; posted only "good"
3279292.msg41917949#msg41917949; posted only "good"
3279292.msg41942536#msg41942536; posted only "good"
3799562.msg41826741#msg41826741; posted only "good"
4261044.msg42184284#msg42184284; posted only "good"
4266620.msg41874493#msg41874493; posted only "good"
4476057.msg41869138#msg41869138; posted only "good"
4476057.msg41886683#msg41886683; posted only "good"
4481864.msg42030125#msg42030125; posted only "good"
4525894.msg41831069#msg41831069; posted only "good"
4529623.msg42214245#msg42214245; posted only "good"
4541512.msg42116144#msg42116144; posted only "good"
4561885.msg41888140#msg41888140; posted only "good"
4565056.msg42035839#msg42035839; posted only "good"
4583185.msg41803171#msg41803171; posted only "good"
4596710.msg42023624#msg42023624; posted only "good"
4605531.msg41975274#msg41975274; posted only "good"
4611692.msg42275570#msg42275570; posted only "good"
4611692.msg42275772#msg42275772; posted only "good"
4659238.msg42118638#msg42118638; posted only "good"
4659238.msg42128582#msg42128582; posted only "good"
4671938.msg42193692#msg42193692; posted only "good"
4671938.msg42219215#msg42219215; posted only "good"
4677962.msg42223935#msg42223935; posted only "good"
4677962.msg42224524#msg42224524; posted only "good"
4566542.msg42365709#msg42365709; posted only "good"
4685398.msg42344600#msg42344600; posted only "good"
4692708.msg42405265#msg42405265; posted only "good"
4692793.msg42367317#msg42367317; posted only "good"

This was just a quick check from 10 days of Patrol data. I don't think there's any doubt these posts are Insubstantial and should be deleted. Some of them are gone already.
I can quite easily extend this search to many more keywords.

What about this:
Joel_Jantsen: try to write a bot that imports .csv file with 3 columns: UserID;PostID;Reason
LoyceV: If you can feed Joel_Jantsen's bot with the above mentioned .csv file, that would make the report based on your data
Just make sure that it's not available for the public, because spammers would start to use it to generate false reports....

If you can pull this off, can I feed your bot reports too?

The criteria will have to change a lot.
I can quite easily list thousands of Newbie posts that could be reported as "Insubstantial post", and thus deleted. But doing this manually would drive me crazy, so I only dump lists of spamming accounts once in a while.

There's MindlessElectron, although I don't know what it does exactly.

Correct. Only bots can combat spam at that pace. I'm trying to code a bot which automates my daily reporting tasks. The only problem is, there are no set of steps that I could establish which will be performed repeatedly by the bot. Considering I somehow manage to create a bot that does mass accounts reporting on basis of any set of criteria that I define, mods would still need an automation from there side to handle say daily 500 reports generated by the bot.

Assuming they're bots, and Mods are human, Mods can't win this

They are banned when spotted. The trouble is they have hundreds if not thousands of accounts stockpiled and ready to use, and as Loyce said bellow you can't really win a war against automation. The biggest weapon we have against them is a simple captcha and that can obviously be bypassed very easily. Without putting in more hurdles to jump through you can't really do anything about it, but that just annoys or penalises everybody else in the process (and bots don't get annoyed).

Why such users cannot be banished without the right to restore accounts. There are rules of the forum-it's like a Constitution. Who its violates the ban. Social networks don't stand on ceremony - broke rules - have a rest. Here it is time to enter such system long ago-users arrive every day to garbage becomes more and more.

You don't have to be a bot or an obvious spammer. There are many users who just write 30 one liners over the required time and then they become a Junior Member with no effort whatsoever. People are farming accounts in their hundreds if not thousands this way. Requiring one merit is not outrageous, but it certainly makes farming Junior accounts much more harder and doesn't really effect those others who are here to contribute something as they will likely get the merit pretty fast. I've just looked over your few pages of posts and whilst I wouldn't call you a spammer you haven't really contributed anything substantial either, but I doubt you'd have much issue in getting one merit if you put some more effort in. Requiring one merit to move up a rank really shouldn't be an issue, and if people can't even achieve one merit I would say the problem lies with them.

One idea could be to change the registration process in a way cannot be easily automated. Limiting posting ability was already discussed and dismissed. There is no perfect solution.

Otherwise we would need some machine learning magic in the forum that takes care of detecting bots  

I think the people from the post you posted should be penalized in different ways. I have yet to get a merit, and as far as I can tell other legit JR. members also. It's not fair that we should be penalized because of obvious spammers.

A daily dump of all usernames would be a great help. Just 3 days ago, I've identified 874 likely bot accounts, out of the 11000 profiles I downloaded. Earlier, 227 of those were caught spamming and nuked already, yesterday they continued spamming with accounts that I identified already.

There are 2 problems though:
-I don't think Mods are willing to nuke accounts that didn't spam yet
-And even if they do, spambots will quickly change their pattern so that it can't be identified anymore.

I think a single merit requirement would be quite good. It means that multiple bots can probably get detected by simply tracking their merit sources using Ddmrddmr s tools. Patterns would be easy to identify.

It might take some time but eventually their sources for merits will be exhausted and it will become more difficult for them.





https://fusiontables.google.com/DataSource?docid=1wM2Op6_ol8_0iP0sDEemIGr9weKvIeLPvKsKMpFy#chartnew:id=3


Perhaps something that some of the data gurus probably would love. Release the new account registrations data. This would allow pattern matching to bulk bot registrations.

No, it seems to me that it is difficult or impossible at all... Thank you for the interesting information that you provided, I now study it with pleasure.

Did you forget? It was created to be the future world’s reserve currency controlled surreptitiously (with centralized anonymous mining) behind the curtain by the global elite who ostensibly created Bitcoin:

https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@anonymint/bitcoin-rises-because-land-is-becoming-worthless

https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@anonymint/re-anonymint-bitcoin-rises-because-land-is-becoming-worthless-20180519t120410615z

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.42147879

Also I’m not against anonymity, but until we have decentralized moderation as I explained it (click the link I provided in my prior post and read the entire thread), then Verified Identity is the only sane design I can imagine. Do you have a better idea for how to repair this clusterfucked bitcointalk.org insane asylum of anonymous trolls?

Dear friend, did you not forget why and for what purpose was the bitcoin created?

In addition to the suggested idea of requiring some Merit before ascending to non-Newbie status, I would also like to propose that this forum offer a Verified Identity badge for those who are willing to not be anonymous fucking trolls.

And then offer us a subforum for ourselves where only Verified Identity members can post and send merit!

I am so fucking tired of you anonymous trolls and that includes you @Foxpup.

If you’re not man enough to put your real life reputation at risk when you post your BS, then I am not interested to talk with[be trolled incessantly by] you.

The so called "junk" comes from the junk mentality of shitposting paje**s (nevermind I had to say it.)

It does spill out - the best example is what happened to the meta section a few months back. Newbies were making threads every day about merit and spamming here trying to ass-lick merit sources. Since they are bottlenecked by merit their only chance to get merit is to start spamming here about it.

However I would like to know what you consider as crapcoin and what as "goodcoin" (LOL) - Because to me they are all shitcoins being begged by beggar shitposters.

Ummm... I don't totally agree with that. Since bounties are the very first motivation of many shitposters joining the forum, they soon get tired of receiving nothing but some cents and come in here and cry about their ranks, or try to cheat the system to earn more. Also, Recently we have seen cases like this one: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/edit-my-hacked-account-was-used-for-merit-abuse-by-this-user-bgpsq-4642710
This is a really clear merit abuse and, by doing so, all the accounts implied already have joined a signature.

Now, if you have some flies problem in your house, just don't leave the food on the table.

The forum is a cancerous cesspool of jr. members now; all praise the grand benefits of the merit system!

Bots. It's automatic posting so it takes little-to-no effort once they're set up. Most of the bumping services I've seen their posts are just complete generic garbage reworded slightly over their dozens-to-hundreds of accounts so they just load the bots up with whatever crap they can be bothered making and just set it to whatever intervals they want. The previous bots were just posting the same one liners over dozens of accounts and then removing them before they were re-posted.


Bounties are the least of ours concerns. At least the junk is confined to it's own board an nobody else outside if there has to see it. it's the stuff that spills out of the alt coin section like crapcoin campaigns that are the issue.

I think the only way to get rid of the massive spam is banning bounties. On the one hand we will lose attractiveness for those spamming bots but on the other hand a lot of good (in terms of helpfulness, posting quality, ...) posters will be lost, too.

a) Ok fair enough
b) Ok for newbies in some sections like bounties and altcoin announcements
c) No need to disable it, it is one's back garden, a private property!

To be honest, I think this is one of the small guys.

But the irony:
https://www.seoclerk.com/Traffic/611685/Bump-Up-Your-Bitcointalk-Thread


This is probably the most requested feature lately and the only one that will really cut through the spam on the forum without any drawbacks.

But I would really love to hear theymos saying what he thinks about all the stuff that is proposed.
We know that newbie jail will not come back, that's a certain, so maybe if he would just tell us this will never get implemented or that he will give it a try it would stop this endless discussion on what should be done.

Maybe a highly trusted member or moderator from the forum could collect all the ideas that are spread over the meta section in a topic and with a bit of luck theymos will reply:

a) jr member level to require 3 merit  ----                         I'll implement it
b) newbies and jr members can't bump topic -                   Never
c) disable signatures for jr members  -                              When hell freezes over
d) a 55-gallon drum of WD-40 when reaching 1000 merit    ...theymos logged out

After taking a look at the services offered on several internet websites, I do agree with the merit requirement for juniors will be a great step ahead against the spamming problem.
Take a look at this one, for example:


This guy is offering "bumping" services on your ann thread. In fact, it seems to be profitable for him, for he has managed to get some clients. If you pay attention to the description, the guy claims to have more than 200 JR Member accounts.
Now, if all those juniors accounts had needed 5 merits (or at least one) to become junior, then he will manage 200 Newbies accounts and be able to do the same.
So, maybe implementing a merit to become Newbie and 5 Merits to become Jr is the solution.
In addition, if newbies and Juniors CAN'T bump a thread, this guy "enterprise" will be pointless.
I don't think that guys like this one are rare. In fact, one of the most troubling information is how he manages to have 200 accounts
The link to his "services" (he has many different offers):
- ICO marketing for $100: https://www.seoclerk.com/content-writing/602427/Cryptocurrency-ICO-marketing-on-Bitcointalk-and-other-crypto-forums
- Bump your thread for $100: https://www.seoclerk.com/Traffic/611685/Bump-Up-Your-Bitcointalk-Thread

So, do you think that by asking for merits to this kind of accounts will be a good solution?
To me, it is. It will be difficult for this guys to sell the services, I hope.

Having bots spamming almost every thread is undesirable and it will be nice to get rid of them.I think moderators are already a nice job getting rid of them.On the other hand,get merits these days seem very difficult and placing restriction will discourage a lot of persons,including me.

How is this more workload?
The moment a report is made a mod will have to read that report and either give it a green light or trash it, there is no extra work involved here.

My solution will just cut the time the topic is visible to other users if no mod is active as I've seen some of my reports being handled only after 24 hours during which a shit topic/post was gaining views.
And by hiding a stupid topic you also get rid of possible spam posts in it which would trigger more reporting.

Most of my reports are about stupid topics in Bitcoin Discussion where I try to cut the avalanche of ICOs and Telegram
channels spam as well "Belif Moisturizing Eye Bomb" ..... the last garbage posted and reported.

You are talking about more workloads for the mods. We need a solution which also does not require more works for the mods.

If you look around then it's pretty clear that (possibly) we do not have enough mods to control these spammers. It's the number battle in-between the spammers and the mods. And because of not having enough resources and numbers for the mods,  unfortunately they are losing.

There is a solution to everything, but there is no solution that everyone will agree with.

Topic bumping could be stopped if bumps for members under x activity or y merit or both won't be considered as LoyceV and others have proposed a hundred times
Topic spamming could be done with a system that once a topic hits 5 (or whatever in x time from the post date) reports it gets invisible for the normal users until a moderator takes action and either sends it to the garbage bin or reinstates it.


There are two problems with that idea
a) that is was posted in May and it's July and nothing came out of it
b) it only splits the users till Jr Member which as discussed in this thread is an easy thing to achieve.

Not a bad idea, especially when the hot-selling new autoreplybot has arrived.
Dude. Let the merit requirements be as is. There are still loopholes to ranking up, like account sales,merit sales, merit abuse et al. The merit requirement is the basics of an hierarchy. Higher the rank,higher the amount of merit required.

I'm not sure what you mean? But, higher requirements absolutely make sense. Higher ranked accounts have certain benefits such as higher PM limits, cooldowns on actions are reduced, and their signature is larger. It makes sense to have some sort of progression. Lowering the requirements would just mean they would need to get x amount, and then freely spam from there onward.

Most of the times I noticed these bot/spammer accounts are not caring about ranking up. They are posting to bump a topic or creating same topic to advertise whatever they are trying to promote here. So I do not think adding x amount of merit for whatever rank you don't want them to rank up is going to work. I hope you did not miss to read this reply.

Well I have never really understood why the amount of Merit needed to level up, increases along the way. Maybe I am missing something but I'd say that in a way it's more logical to decrease the Merit requirements along the way up, as I'd assume that people who are here, stay here and - as a consequence of quality posting - level up, have proven their "qualities" to the forum.

At the same time, bots, spammers and scammers will give up if they need to have for example 75 Merits to move from Junior to Member (while Activity and Time also remain taken in account).

If you set the bar high from the beginning, you will have guaranteed high-quality members on this forum, starting already as low as from Junior or Member ranking.

This can be applied only on the problematic sections - the ones we already have the 12 hours rule.

This is a completely new idea and seems like it WILL be a good one to experiment. Since these Newbies and Jr's can't make the bump happen eventually they will stop however this is not going to stop them creating the same topic from different accounts. They do very good job, just look at their timing...


Allowing x amount (1 like hilariousetc is thinking or 5 like seoincorporation is thinking or whatever) to become a Jr - could also work but again since the number will be very less (<10), the farmers can easily manage it.

Déjà vu, but it deserves it's own thread indeed. Please implement this!

Earlier today, I was listing spam accounts that post similar patterns. It think it's mainly bump bots that randomly select some phrases, and turn them into a sentence. Some of them could be humans who don't speak English and just copy text.
The worst bots include synonyms and homograph attacks in their posts, and I've seen similar spambots quickly adjust their spam when they get caught. They'll just become harder to find in an automated process.

While just banning "a few" of the Newbie spammers I listed, BitRentX ran out of nukes:
I didn't know there is such a limit for Mods. That means I can entertain more than one Mod, just nuking Newbies.
It doesn't feel right that a spammer can create more accounts than a Mod can ban. That means it's a lost cause.

I think 3 things are needed
1. A minimum of even 1 Merit for Jr. Members. There will be some Merit trading, but at least it puts a limit on the current unlimited number of accounts that can reach this level. 5 Merit would probably be more effective in restricting their numbers.
2. No more signature for Newbies, so they can't just spam for some ICO tokens.
3. Newbies and probably Jr. Members too should no longer be able to bump threads. They can post, but the thread won't move to the top.
I think #3 is the most important one, as the bump bots are the worst spammers.

---

---

I just checked only a few phrases from the OP. These phrases were posted by the following Newbies in the past 4 days (note that it includes quotes and they shouldn't all be nuked without manual checking):
nice and nice
     1. Green Brandon
     2. FunkKeith
     3. Kelly Niwa
     4. Ward Bechma
     5. Enzfesmiddtim
     6. David-Powell
     7. Jerry Aguilera

Waiting for something more amusing
     1. Kazhama-Sinrie
     2. TsacSonjea
     3. Keyprovynsea
     4. Cysgicessscor
     5. JoannFen
     6. Lingrigeto
     7. StephensKatie
     8. JerardoSh
     9. Schorfheide-Terry
    10. Restringprollu

I wish you success
     1. dhon19
     2. lexx8217
     3. Hacivat
     4. Xanaxer
     5. kalamiotis
     6. Pirani93T
     7. vidy
     8. smiletoken
     9. polok1234
    10. goga69
    11. ClanPartisan
    12. buicong1996
    13. aboali2020
    14. polat M
    15. jamee03
    16. mnusdoh
    17. Djon64
    18. zzmb61
    19. khrishh74
    20. thomasdra
    21. PhillipTh
    22. ShashiMil
    23. Collins Jessica
    24. Songz Muri
    25. NickRo
    26. Luiporpieper
    27. NygelGoto
    28. paydifi
    29. StephanieAsh
    30. yazanyazoon
    31. taymen
    32. Marta Steczkowska
    33. JohnnyLeGrand
    34. CryptoJuan08
    35. evgenij69302
    36. canibor
    37. bluebkdn
    38. Mr.Shahab
    39. wenxue1988
    40. icosbull
    41. ntinakarras

remarkable trading fees
     1. arrado
     2. Songz Muri
     3. Anlachinald

I would fully support that, things are really out of hand.

No such luck I’m afraid. The core information included in practically every analysis on this forum has Merit as the driver. This is due both to interest, and to practical reasons (limited scope): the official data files provided by the forum are the merit.txt file and the trust.txt files. Anything else has to be scraped from the forum webpages themselves.

In order to analyse accounts heavily related to bounties and airdrops, we would need to study the whole set of forum active accounts (not just the merited subset), and then for each account go through their posts. Scraping all this data is an immense task and non-trivial. Recently @mazdafunsun has scraped 2M profiles and vod does too in his BPIP project, but I don’t know anyone who downloads all the messages for all active users (I did download once all merited message content, but that is obviously non coincidental with bounties and airdrops, and was rather a pain with the software I’m using).

Some sites that clone Bitcointalk have managed to download a lot of our messages to give them a solid appearance, so it’s not impossible.

Note: Once upon a time (not too long ago) theymos opened a thread on other raw files that we would like to have ( Additional data dumps? ). That is really the key for moving further and being able to concentrate on providing information and not scraping data from the website (at least from the outside).

I think everything is comparative and there is no such a ideal system. If we look into few months back, we all know how much spamming and how much of new accounts have been created only for Bounties and Airdrops( actually I don't have that data at the moment  but hoping "DdmrDdmr" have those numbers). So instead of all banning things which everyone talked, what "Theymos" suggested was introduction of "Merit system". I think now most of the members are getting agreed with this new system and what impact it has been done to the forum when it comes to the spamming and shitposting. But that system also need few tweaks too like getting strong actions regarding Merit abuse scenarios.

The thing I didn't get is why admins allowing to create Alt accounts which I believed one of the major reason for spammers and shitposters to allowing to spam-fest with  numbers game(most of the time bots) So I think time has came to review that decision again.

Finally we can't create a ideal system for even Bitcointalk. But it's about how much and how far we can go for controlling the spam issue. It is better if admins can do some periodical review regarding spam statistics of forum posts, accounts and introducing new regulations or amedments accordingly.

I already opened a topic in meta 2 months ago https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/request-1-merit-to-become-junior-member-and-access-to-bounties-sub-3775593 and theymos made a comment in it https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/request-1-merit-to-become-junior-member-and-access-to-bounties-sub-3775593.msg37201114#msg37201114

I don't know how much of a barrier it'll throw up in practical terms, but getting even a single merit for a lot of these shitposters has proven to be extremely difficult and it would at least be some sort of barrier.  For that reason, I support hilariousandco's suggestion.  He suggested it in another thread and I found it to be a decent idea, since Theymos has ruled out bringing back the newbie jail. 

If it was 5 merits, that'd be damn near impossible for most noobs, but then again ranking up shouldn't be easy anymore, nor should people be obsessing about it.  But they are, and we all know the reason why.

It would be very difficult to bot this given the nature of the scarceness of merit, not to mention not worth it for them.


I don't necessarily disagree with some restrictions being put in place on where and what newbies can post, but theymos seems dead against this, and I understand his reasoning. 


I agree with this. It seems some people are even deleting their posts once they've been merited. This could be done to cover up abuse. If a post is deleted for whatever reason then the merit should go with it.


As I mentioned in another thread recently, I don't think excluding bounty threads from being able to receive merit would be bad thing.

For telegram, Facebook, twitter, article writing, video creating, blog writing I think it is okay if he/she is brand new or newbie. Because they will not make any marketing on the forum they will do their marketing out of forum. And also same for airdrop. I think only signature should have restrictions nothing else. As only signature has limitation regarding membership ranks. And for your kind information signature cant be considered if they post report or joining. I this case newbie and brand new members are necessary. Because there are not too high number of higher rank member. If there is any more restriction on newbie and jr. member then that will be harmful for bitcointalk.org Already decreasing number of participant on bitcointalk. I want to say if you post bounty on bitcointalk then if you get 100 participant then you will get 1000 if out of bitcointalk. For example bountyhive, bountyportal etc. So, more restriction mans to loose users as a result lose projects. SO no need to make restrictions any more.

Update:
If any more restrictions then existing higher rank members will be benefited for a short time. But for long time all will be looser.

I would go for the raising of the merit requirement for the juniors AND to let them nuked if needed.
This would solve the merit and the spam problem, parallel. Spammers would need more merits to become juniors (they have to trade/buy/etc. more merits, which costs them money) and those merits would lose if they are nuked when they are juniors. So in the end, farming a spambot army from juniors would cost way much more money than now.

I don't know what you mean exactly that 2 month backed I joined. But even I joined today I will be able to read 5 years back post. If not deleted. Btw once daily I visit patrol to report spam that time I found there is maximum spaming by Jr. and newbie. So I can say there are joined recently and making very poor thus forum. Even I am not an established member but as a genaral member I share my thought to reduce spam. Actually I always try to prevent spam. Due to spammer sometime we missed some good comments or post.

If you have a business selling holiday homes, and you decide to provide a free lunch for marketing, you need to restrict the people attending. If you allow the room to be filled with people with no money, and who throw the food around and insult the prospective buyers, then you need to get rid of the free loaders, and prevent them returning. Bitcoin Talk is in much the same situation at the moment.

Jajaja, you are absolutely right. Maybe it just desperation, but you know, this is terrible to spend some time in here and to find more and more difficult to engage in a real discussion due to the state of the forum.
The merit system is working, from my point of view, for it absolutely encourages some good members to rank-up and do their best. But, also, there is the well-known spam problem having place, each day worse than the previous one.
We have an average of 500 new users per day. Probably the 90% of them are only seeking to earn some (some others just bots), not to learn or discuss the forum or the crypto world. I agree with some kind of "effort" is necessary for them to can earn something, for actually, the system is out of control, and mostly all the new users are just trying to post whatever, even if they are unable to speak the language.

Now, I don't like "social classes", I don't believe that a new one is strictly worst than and senior member: they are some good new users. But maybe it is time to be realistic. We can try to encourage others to become a good "citizen" in here, to contribute to the forum, and we are doing it by meriting those who try their best. But there is a reality in here: they are few. The ones willing to give a shit are few in comparison with the ones with no interest in the forum but in their "earnings".
As a product, we are all seeing how the boards are getting lost in between bumping-nonsense quotes, and to enroll a good debate is impossible by now in some of them.
So, if by encouraging and meriting the people we have achieved nothing, what can we do? I would like to see a good forum with clean boards with a nice debate, discussion, information, et all in there. But it is not happening (maybe utopic, but why it should be utopic?)
So, what to do, then? I don't like prohibitions too, truly, I don't. But what can be done? To leave the forum to die in between all the crap we have to read every single day?

Why "restricting things" and "banning stuff" are the only solutions everyone thinks is perfect? Theymos should start a sub-forum under the domain www.elite.bitcointalk.com where there would be no signatures,no bounties,no marketplaces , just elite posters discussing stuff. Also the sign-up process would be invite basis only.

Condition was always this bad since a few years. You happened to the forum what 2 months back?

If I am correct I hope some one have discuss about it. Any it's better to discuse new topic so admin will able see easily.
Yes there should be require minimum merit to become Jr. Members. Because once people become Jr member's he join signeture campaign and start spamming. There is one more option, should be disable signeture for newbie & Jr. Member or there should be require minimum merit to become Jr. Member. I strongly believe that if implement this than spaming will reduce 80%.
Theymos should consider it asap. Condition is very bad now.

That's why you need to introduce posting restrictions, or to ban bounties.

Yep, I've already proposed to need 5 merits to become Jr Member, for it will ease the number of shitposter or bots joining bounties and spamming all over the forum.


Yeh, we talked about something similar weeks ago, in my case the proposal was about a newbie jail in where they need some number of merits to become junior and leave the jail. Since Theymos doesn't seem to like the idea (probably because the last time it was a total failure), maybe the jail is not necessary.
Even if the jail is too much, by asking for some merits to become junior probably it will be easy to get rid of many shitposters, at least on the bounties. The issue also is that many bounties are accepting newbies, even brand new users, in their campaigns. So, in addition to the merit implementation for newbies to become junior, I would suggest that the bounties maybe should stop accepting brand new and newbies.
5 merits is a bit of effort, and if you are a "normal" user (considering normal as someone interested in grow-up in here, or at least, interest on the crypto world), you should be able to have them in less than a month. Of course, newbies in a need of merits will create a whole new specimen., the "forever newbie", in substitution of the actuals "forever juniors". So, as far as newbies can join airdrops and bounties, it doesn't have any sense, it is only going to change the name of the specimens.

I don't think a single merit requirement is of any significance, it's too easy to feed into an alt and bot network. I've mad a number of suggestions in the past, and some of them are.

- Newby thread starting restricted to an intro and an account recovery board. Newbies and juniors restricted to beginners and associated boards.
- Merits associated with posts deleted by a mod, or by  the poster should be removed.
- No merits for trading, bounty, ICO or similar posts.

I think there were a load more, but that will do for the moment.

Just to get some perspective on current numbers, both of current Jr. Members and Newbies (Jr. Members to be), the merit they have been awarded is:

Number of Jr. Members with sMerit awarded: 4.256
Number of Newbies with sMerit awarded: 1.688

So with the current available data, the above would be the potential Jr. Base. Drastic reduction as it may be, requiring 1 sMerit for a Jr. Member is not that difficult to obtain by legit methods conceptually, but not that many do yet. If would also have a side-effect on the black-market and merit abuse/merit begging areas, boosting their activity.

The resulting Jr. Member base would really be minute though. If we take a look at the data provided by @mazdafunsun (see Truth about bitcointalk users 2.0 + Bitcointalk user analysis), the Newbie base is of over 400k users, and the Jr Member base of 78k users. That is taking into account the first 2M users (there are nearly 2,26M users currently), but not distinguishing between active and inactive users. The merited proportion is minute in comparison, so it would be virtually redefining value and volume of the Jr. Member level and swamping the newbie rank.

Perhaps it would be easier to ask for a change in nuking capabilities and extend it to Jr. Members too.

It has been discussed earlier one or two times*, but since the situation has changed the last few months, it OK to open the subject once again.

*reference >
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/merit-requirement-for-jrmember-3307636

Most of the spammers and bots has advanced to Jr. members. Bots are still spamming with meaningless posts all the time. Thanks to LoyceV and the Mods, we have reported just yesterday more than 50 accounts related to the РrіmeCorеICO spam case.

Cases like this pop-up every week.

Not sure if anyone has requested this or not before, but I think we should consider adding a small merit requirement to become a Junior Member. Even if it was just a one merit requirement I think it would help a lot, because far too many spammers and spambots are getting the rank and once they hit that they can't be nuked. We're getting hit by a lot of these 'haiku' bots as people keep calling them (though I think they're more like doge bots: riveting business, spotless design, much wow):












Those are all Junior Members and their posts all follow the same format. There's also hundreds of them. They should be nuked as deleting their posts one by one is incredibly time consuming. Alternatively, allowing Globals or something to nuke Juniors would also help.