Topic: Should the Scam Accusations & Reputation sections be more restricted/moderated? (Read 327 times)

It is pretty rare, but sometimes scammers will return some or all of the money they owe their victims. I think this is most common in cases involving late/defaulted loans.

If a scammer has a conscience, feedback from other community members in the thread may persuade them to return the stolen money.

Strict moderations doesn't means more restrictions, people are free to post what they want as long as they add some value to the discussion on the thread they are writing which seems missing on the discussion boards like Altcoin discussion,etc.

Its difficult to impose more restrictions as then it will harm the freedom of speech and also forum admins does not make the forum a jail for the posters.

There are already many ways available to stop the spam and one of them is to report the post. The mods are doing good job as most of  the reported posts, which are not up to the mark gets deleted.

Exactly this. Majority of boards are swamped with useless/poorly constructed threads and those Scam accusation & Reputation boards are not really exception here.

That of course doesn't mean that there shouldn't be some order there, but if mods gonna enforce stricter rules, why not then do the same for rest of the forum, like Bitcoin Discussion and Altcoin board which are complete mess.

You can try and report them. They will most probably be moved. There was another user who had a similar thread on Meta about 1-2 months ago where he asked the same thing. He showed examples of several altcoin discussions from the B&H sub and all were later moved. When it comes to your list, the first two threads have been moved to Alternate cryptocurrencies, the last two are still in B&H.

I understand why some members decide to post their threads in B&H and not in the altcoin boards. Maus0728 offered some insights about his reasons:
He probably tried posting it in the Alt sub, but he didn't get the help he needed. Considering how much spam is posted there, I understand his decision. If it were up to me whether or not to move threads where members need help and guidance from experienced users, even if the topic is not bitcoin-related, I wouldn't move them. That goes only for threads were members need help with a certain problem. If it's a tutorial or guide about an altcoin or altcoin-related service, I agree with you that such threads shouldn't be in the B&H sub.  

I actually urge members to post in the scam accusation board websites that may be ponzi-schemes even if they are not listed on the forum. There is high-traffic in this forum from people who are non-members and stumbling upon a post may warn them before they invest.

However, I do actually agree that there are some newbies that do not follow the prescribe format of reporting. In addition, there are also some posts which contain an accusation but without substantiating it with proof. I guess those are the kinds of posts that should be moderated.

I think on matters pertaining to scam accusations and investigating should be all but unmoderated.
It's imperative all parties are heard out and not muted in order to fully understand the situation most the time.

I think we also need to mention the case of Beginners & Help section.
Is it just me or it looks more and more like some Mini-Altcoins Talk section with topic examples like this:

- What happens if a stable coin fails.
- Earning interest on coins through DeFi. Is it Safe/Legit?
- Non Fungible Token (NFT) questions
- Pangolin Avax Swap Problem
... and more

Should we report topics like this or not?

True, but there are tiny chances that threads like that can make the scammers return any money or property involved; and it's even worst if the transaction didn't take place within the forum.

The only good those threads does is to warn others or new investors, especially if the said company open up similar project or stuffs related. Searching in Google will link back to the post, therefore preventing another person from getting scammed.

So, instead of preventing newbies or users from posting, every scam accusation post should pass through series of scrutiny by a moderator before it is made public. The only disadvantage to this is that it is tedious, especially for the moderators.

Blaming newbies for not following the Scam format is not a valid excuse to make the board more restricted, there are users that have the due diligence to remind them to follow the Scam format. I think that it is not their fault that they have fallen for a flagged scam because they are newbies which means that they never knew of this forum before they got scammed or they do not know that they have to check the other party first in this forum before doing any transactions. If we were to make it more restricted/moderated, that would mean that we are disregarding the people that are genuine scam victims because they do not have quality in their post.

This I think is actually a good thing. It is a good practice to search for scam accusations before trusting someone with your coin. If there are many threads about abc scammer/scam company, it should be more difficult for that scammer to continue scamming other people.

This has less value. If a company is no longer in business, absent any news about repayment, litigation or the like, I don't see much value in discussing what happened years ago when the company is no longer relevant. There is an argument to consolidate these types of threads.

I also don't think scam accusation threads are intended for casual reading. The purpose of these threads is to warn others and to put pressure on scammers to return stolen coin/property.

I agreed with the certain restriction or moderated in the currency exchange and lending section due to the unreasonable things done in the section by some newbies and jr member account holders.
LoyceV, was right when he/she said the creation of random site scam accusation was to attract merit (which I have also done before) but it will still save some naive members that are willing to whatever they see online to quick ROI. I don't think restrictions in the reputation/ accusation will be good cause it will a version of newbies jailed and they won't be able to report high-rank member or company that scam them just like we see 1xbit

I think the Reputation section should be reserved for issues regarding members of this forum that don't include formal scam accusations, and there shouldn't be threads in that section about external websites and all that crap.

Scam Accusations is definitely a bloated mess right now, and I agree that there are a lot of topics worthy of simply ignoring (which I frequently do).  If you're not filling out a formal scam accusation form against someone or pointing out a scam that's going on on bitcointalk itself, it probably doesn't belong in Scam Accusations.

Unfortunately, those two sections are what everyone has got to work with, so those threads that we all ignore probably don't have a better place to be (that I know of; maybe moderators have a different opinion).  I'm against restricting either section based on rank, because I don't think it's bad enough that such drastic measures need to be taken.  As LoyceV pointed out, this forum should be as free as possible.

Kind of agree, kind of don't. I think the way you're asking for boards to be moderated is similar to how strict the Hardware/Mining board is. And we have seen endless rants on why the threads get threads there, and how the moderators there are basically modernized-nazis.

I think at this point, reputation has become a section about users(and their reputation, alive or not). Reputation is no longer just related to an individual's trade or trust history, but instead much expanded to the user's experience on bitcointalk. Its not really a bad thing, it brings life to the forum.

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Overall, the moderation would be better if there are more mods and even global mods. Would solve a great deal of things across the boards.

Exactly how you suggest moderating these two boards? It would more nice if you add some points on how could prevent the worst post. Which boards do you think no worst post there? I can't find anything except where the signature isn't visible. Although users are making useless topics but there are few topics that should discuss. We have a few unofficial forum rules, if someone not breaking these rules, a thread wouldn't be removed by moderators. In the end, you are suggesting upgrade the forum rules. So adding some ideas would help to short out how it should be implemented.

Boards like Reputation, Scam Accusations and Meta are not moderated as strictly as other boards on the forum; probably cause they are meant for discussions about forum and scam issues. Trolls usually abuse the freedom on these boards to spam the forum, but stricter moderation would likely aftect other members.

"Reputation" isn't only scam-related, so I think those 2 topics fit there.

I click the Ignore button a bit faster lately. If someone posts BS, ignore them!

I put my own view in that thread too. Saw you reported the duplicate just before I was going to.

You also have things like the RIP TecShare thread.
Not saying it's not good to have, I miss him a bit too. But it's in reputation, it's not a reputation thing. He didn't rip anyone off, he didn't steal funds, etc.
Same with Lauda leaving, not a reputation thing.


Good thoughts, not sure what it is, but there has to be a better way.
I violated the rule of don't present a problem without presenting a possible solution with it when I stared this thread.


It's not that they are trolling or OT but the fact that the issue no longer exists or will never be resolved. Cryptsy is dead, BigVern ran off with the coins a 500+ page thread that is still being added to at this point is not accomplishing anything. Not saying that it should be removed, just put elsewhere, because if you are searching for it you will find it, but it's not bumping something more important off the 1st page or 2.

Part of it might be me too. New users showing up claiming that they lost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars because exchange "X" did "Y" or that they sent coins to the wrong address or sent their BTC to a BCH address and now we should all help them out, etc. I know I have said it before but "We are not your mom, we will help you out but it's not up to us to bail you out when you do something stupid" I am getting less tolerant about it.

-Dave

Because obviously users under hero rank never get scammed

Maybe instead we should close off meta for people who haven't made at least 1000000 good reports.

Yeah, I would agree with OP here, but it is not problem only with Scam Accusations and Reputation section but with other sections also, however this two have been heavily affected so I don't post much there anymore.
There is a thin line between strict moderation and no moderation at all and I am not sure how or if we can fix this, but I am using a lot more ignore option and big part of my screen is not seen in that category.
Second thing is report option but that is not always working like it should be.

I couldn't agree more that the reputation and scam accusation sections should be "read only" until a user gets to about Hero Member status.  There are plenty of other sections that could also do with a little bit of tightening up - either as "read only", or, as hidden until you have progressed through the ranks.

Currency Exchange and Lending should be hidden until you reach member, if not senior member status while any of the "services" sections should be off limits (read only Vs hidden" until a user is at least member, or senior member to ward off the newbies wanting to join Signature Campaigns.

In my opinion those few posts are not big issues when we consider the amount of spam on other sections. I would like to have strict moderation on all over the forum because it is like we are again flooded with spam threads all over the forum due to the bull run?!

There seems to be more chaos in the last few months, as one might expect during a bull-run.  Moderators will mod, all we can do is lend a hand when we see them overwhelmed.  Report any post or thread that you think is off topic, or trolling without adding any value to the discussion.

It does look like one of those sections without much order to it.

Maybe a "dealt with already by community" and a "no longer active" section should be added on top of the current section..
The first being for a user who already has a trust flag and the second being for companies, groups or users to be tainted and searchable but aren't a threat on their accused account/website.

I usually ignore the topics about random websites, it makes me think they're hoping to earn Merit.

Earlier today I reported a topic, asking for it to be merged. My report is still Unhandled. If it gets merged, I'd say moderation works fine.

I don't expect it to become stricter though, as this forum's mission is to be "as free as possible".

Ugh, I hate saying this but it's getting to the point of not being worth reading.

For every good useful thread about something there are 5 worthless ones with people bickering, or newbies coming in saying some service, that is a known scam, that already had flags against them and 7 similar posts took their life savings.

Or new users coming in and doing stupid stuff and then wanting to blame the world (or just scamming / trying to hurt the reputation of others)

Or the endless discussions about how "XYZ" is a scam but the service shut down in 2017 and now it's just people complaining about funds they lost back in the day.

I dislike moderating things like this but I am starting to think good info is getting buried under crap and it's not doing anyone any good.

--end rant--

-Dave