Topic: Staff Dabs abusing merit? (Read 2434 times)

Feel free to report unsolicited PMs if they annoy you, the more people report someone, the higher the likelihood that something will be done about them sending unsolicited messages. You can also add them to your ignorelist in 'Personal Message Options' in your profile settings.

Actually, you have complete discretion regarding how to report your PMs, and if you have any doubts, report ever single one.  On the inside, you likely already know that some of them are not really worthy of reporting because they don't really rise to any level of harm. 

So, in your own personal judgement, you should really already have sufficient common sense tools to understand when there is any kind of justification for the PM that you received, for example, if the member is responding via PM to some kind of idea that you brought up in your post, and maybe you have had some interaction with the member previously, then you would likely consider messages like that to be more worthy of leeway (in your not reporting them). 

Even if a you had never ever heard from a member, but the member solicits some kind of value or conduct from you (like asking you to join some club or group or to review some of their post contents), you might also give them some leeway if you believe that it is less strong of a solicitation (surely the discretion and common sense of members is going to vary to the extent that they believe a PM crosses the line and is worthy of reporting, and probably, like I mentioned in my NewAnon response above, if there are any doubts, then it is probably better to be safe than sorry and to report the post, especially because you know that admin members are going to have more tools in their quiver (I love mixing metaphors  ) to be able to figure out if there might be some pattern or behavior that you are not readily capable of assessing.

Thanks for the update, NewAnon.  I have reported a lot of posts in the past and even a PM or two (not necessarily referring to Dabs in this regard), and I don't recall ever receiving any response from Admin regarding the nature of my report, even though there had been times when I thought that the reported content was fairly egregious and worthy of a response.  In the situation that you mentioned, NewAnon, I would think that there would have been a little bit of looking into the matter, beyond your more narrow suspicion that Dabs's account had potentially been compromised.  I have personally interacted with Dabs quite a bit over the years, so I understand why you might have considered a kind of unsolicited request for money or any thing of value might have come off as out of character for him... and reporting does seem to be like a better practice maneuver.... seems like a better safe than sorry kind of situation, in case you had not been the only member contacted in such a manner.


hahahahaha...... I like this response.  


That is completely true, Loyce.  Longer term contributory members are going to get a decent amount more leeway in matters because ultimately we (and I am even hesitant to put myself even in the same semblance of the level of your technical and substantive informational compilation category) don't tend to violate too many of the forum's rules (only in small ways, from time to time).

Don't worry too much about it. If you think it violates the rules (such as spam or malware): report it. That's it. Leave it to the Admins to decide.

This selectivity of the rules confuses me. About 100% of all my incoming PMs are unsolicited by me. I perceive each of them to one degree or another, depending on the content, as an invasion of my personal space. I thought the rules of the forum protect me from this, but it turned out that this is not so. I would like to know better in what cases I should report to the administrator, and in which not to do. Please tell how you solve such collisions, so that I can take an example from your strategy as a guide. Thanks.

There's also this:
I don't mind that a veteran user (or even Staff member) who has contributed to this forum gets away with more than a spammer who creates a Newbie account and starts asking for money.

Just like I appreciate that I get away with posting more than once in a row once in a while. It's always at a Mod's discretion what to do.

I can’t say that I am surprised, but slightly disappointed. Violation of the rules was obvious and no punishment followed. Interesting story.


Apparently, I do not fully understand this rule.

I received a reply saying that the account wasn't compromised and that he wasn't sending the PM to masses of people, thus not breaking the 'unsolicited spam' rule.

I haven't seen the message and it is not up to me to decide. At least one user has reported the PM, so all Global Moderators and Administrators should have seen it by now — if the admins didn't act on the report then I can only assume Dabs didn't break any rules. (or they may have well acted on it but aren't sharing any info.) There's nothing more for me to add here, really.

Got it. Any news? I would like to know how this story will end, because regardless of the content of the PM, the fact of its mass sending to the list of recipients who did not request it is a violation of the forum rules. The severity of punishment depends on the content of the PM. I hope you consider the issue and make a fair decision. Thanks.

I don't know how the message looked like, so I don't know if it was begging, or a business offer, a misunderstanding, or something else. But TheNewAnon135246 above says he has reported the message so perhaps it shouldn't have been sent...

P.S. No need to call me 'sir'

I reported his PM to make sure his account wasn't compromised.

Sir, is this not enough for a clear understanding of what happened?


I agree that this is already far beyond the scope of the topic, but I do not see a more suitable topic and it seems wrong to let it go on the brakes. To the merit source there are complaints about the correct distribution of merit. To the member of the DT1 list there are complaints about self-scratching. To the Staff there are complaints about the violation of the rules of the forum. And all these claims are to one person. To the outside disinterested observer, whom I am, this looks at least worthy of a thorough investigation, as minimum. Thanks.

Depends on the context, but generally speaking if you started PMing random people asking them for money, I think you'd be temp banned at best.

Anyone can report a PM, either whoever received those PMs didn't think it warranted reporting, or Admins didn't think it warranted taking any actions against Dabs.


Self-scratching as a whole has been already discussed in other thread(s?), but the alleged begging is a new thing.

I am not sure regarding how related the topic of asking people for money and accusations of abusing merits, because we are not likely going to hear about all of the stories of approaches in a public thread like this.  

Surely higher ranking members are going to feel more comfortable than newer members to share some details, but really there can be a lot of reservations, and it is not merely about retaliation, but NOT knowing about patterns of behavior or even how egregious is the conduct - which other members do have a right to defend such conduct if they believe it to be acceptable - which seems like a bold stance.  Surely, Dabs has already acknowledged that he contacts "friends" for money, and what is a "friend" exactly on the interwebs?

There are also going to be various reactions when one member asks another for money, and if the member is highly regarded in the forum, with various titles and various kinds of recognition, that is going to cause credibility impressions... which could also be connected with how merits are being spent, which relates back to the more narrow OP assertions.

Furthermore, theymos has both put Dabs on his trust list and has also appointed dabs as staff, which causes additional credibility towards the asking of money - depending on how the asking is done, how often it is done, and which members are being approached.  This related topic has come up in this thread has been fairly clearly shown to have some connections with the OP, yet maybe the subject matter of the thread needs to be tweaked in order to be able to air the possible problematic nature of what seems to be going on and what is being discussed, which may not be resolved by a mere "I am sorry", even if "I am sorry" (if it even sufficiently happened?) could be a step in the right direction.

I understand your desire to close the topic, the questions raised are pretty sensitive and delicate. People are afraid to speak, fearing persecution and revenge. I guess I'm also a little afraid, although inside myself I laugh in the face of my fear. When you pour a glass of red wine on your uniform, it’s not enough to say “Oops, I'm sorry,” the stain on the uniform will not go away by itself. But I think no one will open a new topic, each stroke in itself is not something significant, but all together they add up to the picture, and unfortunately this is not a masterpiece. Sad.

You guys diverting the topic on another way. No one bothered to open thread about begging coin or DT1 manipulations. You should open another thread regarding another issue. But this thread should serve as merit abuse.

Since Dabs already said sorry about merit distribution so we might stop now, because merit transaction was not very big amount. I am hopping that Dabs already understood how he should deal with his merit.

But I noticed most of people's just pumping Dabs and said "Dabs did nothing wrong". This is the total wrong sentence. Why should you guys worry to say true, why not try to drive him on right direction? If you say he was right then he will continue meriting on spam post.

For me, still I believe Dabs did wrong about his merit distribution and he should change his mind during merit distribution. But he doesn't deserve any punishment for just for small merit transaction. Nothing more to say since Dabs already said sorry, I believe he realised his mistakes.

Your presumption is not true and I have no relation to the local staff. However, I can not only write, but also read, and I read the rules of the forum and do not find anything super complicated in them to justify their ignorance even by ordinary members of the forum, especially staff. Moreover, in my opinion, staff should adhere to the forum rules more carefully and staff errors are less excusable, because their consequences can be more dramatic for the normal functioning of the system.

In other words, not "quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi", but "quod licet bovi, non licet Iovi".

I'm presuming you get appointed to be a local board staff due to the need of someone to keep an eye on that area and probably because of your activities on that board. I have seen lower ranked users been appointed staff (which technically means) they're less experience when it come to the activities of the forum in general but might have the experience on their local board to qualified them for such position or the forum just need someone to monitor that area.

All I'm trying to say is, they shouldn't be judged as some mini god with the mindset, they should be immune to mistakes just because they're wearing a tagged on their profile. They're humans and bond to make mistakes so unless they're abusing those special privileges they should been judged as regular forum users.

I think this is the most important part of the "gist". As I would love to know if sending private messages to beg for money, without any intention to scam or extort the user is against the rules. I know begging in general is likely not acceptable on the forum, most especially when it's to cajole the other user probably because of your position or probably because you want to scam the user, or exchange the money for merits etc.

I do not think dabs has done too much wrong here, though clarifications is needed in this case, is any random begging for money against the rules? If i pm'd any random user asking them for money for X or Y reasons and I get reported, what punishment would I face?