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?

Do you mean someone specific, or just unfoundedly cast a shadow over all local staffs, claiming that they do not know the rules of the forum? Or should your words be understood as "Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi"?

All this new evidence just goes to show nobody is perfect here. Some staff especially local board moderators aren't that informed about the general rules as we think. Most of them were made moderators just to keep their local boards in order to some extent. The messages you guys speak off, what was the vibe behind the PMs, was it some extortion, system abuse (get merit/trust for your money), bribe attempt or just a regular forum user begging for money to bypass some hard times. If the PM weren't harmful per se but there's a punishment for such actions I won't oppose the right punishment been given.

For the trust aspect, the message about how the trust system should be used isn't that clear to some individuals. Many users are still misunderstanding the concept. Have anyone tried correcting him and he refused to take the corrections? If no then lets not come to a conclusion yet until he get corrected and refuse to take corrections. Although still not a fan of the manipulation ongoing at the local board level😁.

You want to say that all these cases of abuse are okay, because Theymos has included Dabs in his trust list?  I hope you understand that this can completely discredit the entire trust system existing on the forum, if the Staff will allow itself such actions, while remaining unpunished?

what is your position here? Staff? Is that true? it feels ridiculous if you are a staff member and don't know such rules, you should not be a staff member, the knowledge of bitcointalk rules is better known by the members than the staff, it's really a shameful irony, hopefully not many people know that there are staff like this.

I'm sorry for giving you all, and anyone else merits, and I can't take it back. (I tried to see if the post was considered high quality, almost everything here is.)

No one sent me dust.

It was a short lapse in judgement, and I hope the people I bothered can forgive me. Most of my life, I don't intentionally break any rules. Comes with the training and conditioning I guess.

Best to keep to topic since it seems to be becoming a bit of a witch hunt and verging on some double standards.

We do not think dabs is perhaps the best selection for merit source nor perhaps staff. However, from the evidence presented in the thread there seems to be some glaring issues with singling him out for some kind of punishment.

1. those posts are pretty low value in our opinion BUT they are not as low value or as net negative as many posts that receive merit on meta board. Therefore the abuse there seems to fall short of any required action if we are not going to act against most merit sources.

2. his asking for bitcoins seems completely out of character to what you would expect from staff here, HOWEVER at least this is just some honest if distasteful approach to gaining some extra bitcoins or bitcoin dust. This does not seem as bad to us members and staff gaming the systems of control to ensure they have unfair advantage over other members with regards the rev streams here.

What is more strange is that dabs seems to see nothing wrong with it and mentions leaving him some bitcoins even in this thread. Just seems like a person that thinks it is fine to openly ask people for money even those he does not know or have any connection with. That is kind of weird but in some cultures they do this. I guess it is at least open and honest if there is no kind of threat or punishment for not sending btc to him.

At the end of the day. I would rather members just ask others outright " hey I'm broke can you give me some bitcoin dust" than I would see the systematic gaming and manipulation of merit/trust to ensure unfair advantage of the available rev streams here. Most of that gaming and manipulation is conducted by people frequenting meta board.

Better that nobody asks others for money or games the systems of control for unfair access to money. However that is likely asking too much. The asking for money is at least fair and open and honest.

Do we honestly believe dabs is the only person giving merits to low value shit posts?

It is quite fucking  simple. Whilst merit has huge financial incentive to abuse (in terms of not really giving it to objectively high value posts) and it is wide open to abuse to the point where abuse is impossible to prove  THEN GUESS WHAT WILL KEEP FUCKING HAPPENING?....answers on a postcard to....

Imagine we have one of these threads every time we locate merits going to people for low value garbage.....haha

Let's fix that.

What is even more funny in a way. Is the post saying:  Well, we can not introduce any kind of criteria or definitive guide for allocating merit, because it is all so subjective.  

Well, that is kind of the point, if you drill it down hard enough and only allow merit sources that have the capacity to measure all output against those requirements then you will REDUCE the subjectivity to a huge degree. Reduce the subjectivity reduce the room to abuse. You are correct about one thing that DT can not moderate it since merit=DT

Dabs may be abusing merit , but he is not abusing any more than most of the merit sources here.  End of story.

I mean even if you could prove a perfect correlation between those that sent him bitcoin dust and merits he gave out, he can still say well I just thought they were good posts and there is nothing you can say about it.
Honestly, we favor merit sources selling merit to those that can not get it, above cycling to their fav 20 pals who cycle it back to them.  At least the collusion and control of systems of control will be more decentralized. Can you sell in blocks of 250 so we can get some kind of real decentralization going on DT and also force theymos to realize the merit metric for DT is totally retarded.

I mean both selling and cycling are wrong and have no connection to real merit. Still if we have to choose one....

Just dump merit theymos it was broken from day one.  Noob jail being removed was probably the worst move ever (apart from introducing merit)

Of course if it is found that he crosses the threshold of merit abuse or any other abuse then it is down to theymos to decide. However far better to tackle this at a design level or it will open the flood gates if you want to hold to the same standards.

Judging posts that have received merit on criteria set out by a member/admin is not going to work because merit awarding is largely subjective which means what I think deserves merit you might not. Moderating that from a DefaultTrust point of view is almost impossible and would create large divides between the community. This is the reason why the merit system is at your discretion.

I just connected some dots:
Dabs is the #1 Trust Selfscratcher. His "natural" Trust score is +7 / =0 / -0, but when he's on DT1 his Trust score is +42 / =0 / -0. This means he has bumped 35 accounts that left him positive feedback up to DT2. That on it's own is questionable and certainly not the correct use of DT1-powers, but as long Admin includes this Staff member on his Trust list, I see no reason to exclude him:

However, the combination of inflating his own Trust score from +7 to +42, and at the same time asking for money, makes it look much worse.

I was asked for money and I don't know Dabs so it could be op is connecting some dots.
I told Dabs I would like a btc addy to send to. I then spent a few hours for a few days reading his posts. I decided to not send coin.
I think Dabs should not ask me or anyone else such as thenewanon135246 for coin via pm.
I think no staff admin mod or even theymos should ask for coin via pm.

By this I mean rule 29 as stated by LoyceV

I am not looking to report staff, admin, mod or theymos for breaking rules simply because I do fear retaliation.  Why do I fear retaliation I was fully doxxed this year on  the following website.

https://badbuyerlist.org/

The reason was a lie , but the name and phone number are accurate.
So I have already suffered retaliation and since 95% of my internet footprint is this site most likely someone from here did this to me.
So now that staff starts asking me for money does it mean I show up on that list with more falsehoods spoken if I say no to sending coin?

I realize most likely that a scammer on marketplace tagged me and that Dabs asking for money is just that he is broke and desperate for money.

Now it looks like he asked at least 2 legends that don't know him.  I would have left this all alone until I saw this thread.

By asking me a person that is suffering from a doxxing already it caused me a lot of grief.

So now I fear a new dox lie getting reported on badbuyerlist.org   because I posted here in this thread.  

My thoughts are Dabs has nothing to do with the dox, but that someone on this site (most likely a marketplace scammer) did the false dox.


It is simply not a good idea for staff to ask for money via pm. As it can put the person asked for the money in a funny state of mind. Which is where I am at right now.

You should really stop doing that. You sent me the same PM because I donate to a charity years ago. I don't know you and out of the blue you asked me for money, making me think that your account was compromised. I think it's really inappropriate for a staff member to send (unsolicited) begging for money.

No. See the Unofficial rules:

You're wrong here. It would be very easy to click "Report To Admin". This isn't difficult for the innocent user, but very risky for the Staff member. I haven't seen any cases where this actually happened.

No, I have no reason to fear Staff.

Also put into consideration, we're all (or mostly) humans here so sometimes our emotions can overshadow our decision making. True sometimes those you mention above do this things but since it's not a regular occurrence (like in the case of the OP), you just have to let it go. Remember theymos encouraged, he didn't mandate so it left in the hands of the meriters. No system is flawless.

If the intentions of the meriter is clearly to abuse the system (which could be identified by large amounts of merits) and the attention of theymos is called towards such scenario, the merit will reversed just as he has previously done. For minor case, lets not make it a big deal as there are other matters we should be focusing our attention on.

That's how any merit abuse should be judged. But then again when the very people that are admins and/or in DT and/or are merit sources can be shown to hand out merit for "likes", especially when it comes to forum "fights", it sort of makes it all a moot point. No one cares what Theymos wanted it to be and shows a complete lack of respect for his goals with it.

It should also mention that there is no point in meriting shitposts such as


I have no problem with how members like to spend their merit, but if we start to think that all of this is an "okay" way of dealing with merit, we get to the point where we all think the whole merit system is completely useless.

If you check the OP's posts and compare it to MichaelX's it actually makes more sense that OP "should" have earned more merit , I know the merit system isn't exactly perfect and things don't work that way, I have probably gotten more merit that I thought I would get in 5 years , so it's kind of irrelevant to me at this point, and I am sure it's the same to many others, but to Newbies it makes a lot of difference, someone who posts some quality posts and don't get half the merit MichaelX "or anybody else for that matter" get ,might be discouraged and leave the forum for good.

it's not about the 18 merit Dabs sent, it's the whole future of the forum overall content quality, we either take the merit system a little more seriously, or watch it slowly fall.
 

I think you've misinterpreted the parables completely; or taken it out of context. If a post has some sort of merit (as in the real meaning of the word), then it may be given merit (points) by anyone who sees it that has sMerits to give. On average, posts that deserve merit do get more merit, than posts that shouldn't be.

That is not to say everyone else sees the same thing or can do something about it. The world isn't perfect. The forum isn't perfect. The ranking and activity system isn't perfect. This merit system, combined with all the other variables, does provide a small measure of going in the right direction.

A good post will probably get more merits. It's possible it may get none.
A bad post will probably get less or no merits. It's possible it may get some.


I've asked personal friends for coins. Some said yes. Some said no. Got nothing to do with the forum although I understand you feel it may. None of them got any merits from me, except those who posted and I thought the post deserved merits.

Most staff here don't have any other powers than to delete posts in the sections they moderate, or move around threads to more appropriate places. Almost all staff here do a thankless job of trying to keep this forum clean. We get paid a token amount (some get paid more, some get paid less).

I also keep personal funds separate from any other coins or tokens I hold in escrow for someone else.


Honest legends have nothing to fear from any staff. They can just say no.
Honest newbie accounts like yourself, likewise. I'll ask you publicly to please kindly send me some coins so I can feed my family. But I'm almost sure you'll say no. Nothing will happen. But then you're posting from a throw-away or disposable looking account, we have no idea who you really are.

Now, if you're some sort of Good Samaritan (I think I've talked enough about religious parables), then my address is in my profile.


Cheers everyone, let's stop fighting over ... stuff. I tend to send merits to newbies more often than to legendaries, primarily because the latter do not need them and I'd rather send it directly to those who do.


Dabs

If a staff member such as Dabs sent a pm to anyone asking for money and then rewarded merits to  the people that gave him money it would be an abuse.
In fact are staff members allowed to ask members for money via pm?
It would be very difficult to say no for fear of retaliation from staff.
I don't read every rule in every spot on bitcointalk,but if I was asked for money or coins from any staff member I would feel frightened to talk about it.
Look at all the names of staff that posted here. I ask any non staff person to reply what would you do if asked for coins from them?

I see a lot of legends  

actmyname
suchmoon
yahoo62278
Pamoldar
The Pharmacist
Jet Cash
philipma1957
LoyceV
Lucius


I see staff

Dabs
malevolent
Welsh

So if any of them ask a legend for coin 

the legend says yes or no

Does an honest legend fear being asked for coins from staff?   Plenty  are on the thread what would you do?

Pay up
Pm theymos
Just say no

This is quite an insightful post.

Via these nice parables you describe merit as it is now: meaningless, unfair and totally unrelated to the value/effort of the contribution. Also if you dare to complain how unfair and crazy merit allocation is in meta board... you are off the vineyard immediately.

The strange thing is since most here are totally advocating it is fine to just give merit to any post you like, even perhaps 50 for a 5 year old one word post and nobody disputes that mods and dt's often merit one liner off topic derailing garbage or even posts that have been debunked clearly right there in the next post ... THEN IT IS VERY STRANGE that we should have a meta board stocked full of people that also believe this merit score SHOULD be the basis for TRUST, ability to be paid2post, your rates of paid2post, your ability to trade, and now your volume.

It is like admitting the merit score is meaningless and then demanding it should have meaning LOL

The very notion you can build on top of such a meaningless score AT ALL is laughable. Where is theymos to detail the reasoning behind giving MERIT such meaning and influence when clearly everyone knows  IT HAS NO SOLID MEANING AT ALL, it is practically impossible to demonstrate abuse because it is so wide open to abuse??

I mean imagine providing SUCH POWER and INCENTIVE to game and abuse a metric and then leave it so wide open to ABUSE AND GAMING .... hehe

This thread and the replies given demonstrate clearly that which is UNDENIABLE from the start. MERIT is totally meaningless and unreliable dirt. It is a cancer that turns an otherwise level playing field into a guaranteed 2 tier system where control of nearly every aspect is handed to the most successful manipulators and ruthless gamers for selfish reward.

The results demonstrate this quite clearly. You just need to think about it. Well if you are stupid you do. I mean anyone else can just look at how it works and immediately observe it is broken.

Dabs answer is clearly... You can fuck off and if I want to give merits to someone for simply saying they collected their shit tokens he will. WHY because that is what merit is for. You just give it to any post you like and nobody can say anything about it. You just say well I think it is a GOOD post and deserves some merit. That's the end of it. Or if that does not work you can say, well he made some other post I thought was good and I think he needs to power up so I sprinkle some over this other posts when I feel like it. So what?

I mean why is someone saying they collected their shit tokens ANY WORSE than DT members screaming trolling at posts that when challenged they can not debunk or even deny because observable instances can not be denied. Or how is it worse than offering a faux specious rebuttal to an undeniable description of how things observably function? well go ask theymos himself. He gives merit to faux rebuttals and specious arguments and he designed merit right? this is leading by example.

If dabs has abused merit for giving it to a seemingly low value statement ( i mean one could view it as valuable if others were asking, hey has anyone got their shit tokens yet? or their incent bonus yet perhaps all worrying they were going to be scammed or worrying where their next bowl of rice was coming from then that post could have presented them with a lot of value) then you can pretty much say nearly EVERYONE of DT1 have abused merit here in meta (a couple of exceptions).

The OP is totally within his right to bring up what he believes are abuses or inconsistencies. If only he had read meta board before posting he would have know it is futile to present even undeniable evidence that merit is garbage and abused. Theymos does not care at all. The more you demonstrate his merit baby is destroying free speech and creating a 2 tier system for members , the more he digs his heels in and gives MORE incentive to game and manipulate it harder.

Merit can not be abused until there is strict criteria set in place to set a minimum value threshold to each post. Giving merit to misleading and specious well written arguments, or meriting 1 liner off topic derailing insults and allegations that have been debunked many times,  is worse than giving it to those that are telling others they got their shit tokens paid out so don't worry.

Well done to dabs, well done to everyone who is saying you can give merit for any shit you want. Let's be honest about merit. You can give it to any crap you want if you feel like it. If people demonstrate you gave it to debunked garbage, one liner off topic derailing debunked allegations, specious misleading arguments, or just for posting I want some merits......tell them fuck off I can give it for any reason I want. Nothing will be done.

Well done to the OP. It has helped serve as a thread we will reference to demonstrate clearly most peoples reasoning and understanding of merit allocation. You have every right to highlight issues if you think it will help this movement.

Merit sent by yourself isn't counted towards voting you onto DT1, and I've actually excluded those on the link you posted.

New non-existent problem: CoinJoin for Merits in multiple rounds.

Or a solution looking for a problem.

New company: Meritnalysis. We trace all your merits are belong to us for KYC-AML purposes.

Anyway, I don't think that newbie is going to sell whatever I sent him.

If a merit source sends a non-merit source merits with the knowledge that this user will sell their sMerits, I think that should (and probably would if discovered) be treated the same as selling merits directly. The more hops there are, the less of a concern this is, obviously.

To me, I see the irony in not allowing to sell merits, while allowing accounts to be sold. Actually, it is not allowed for merit sources to sell their merits. Maybe non-sources are allowed to sell their merits, since they don't have a constant supply but have to get it from others.

That opens up a category of users or accounts who are not merit sources which sell their merits, then get merited by sources. Or even two or more hops away. So if a merit source sends the non-merit source 2 merits, that user can sell the 1 sMerit they can send? It boggles the mind. There's probably already a black market for this, some site called meritroad.onion or silkmerit.onion. Ha, I'd like to be the middle man for all those trades.

Come to think of it, I maybe read something about an ERC-20 token ... but can't find it now, probably dead.

I wouldn't really know as no one has offered more than a satoshi for merits and I'm in the category of those people not allowed to sell them, so it's not worth even the time to consider it.

Merit sources aren't supposed to be selling their allocated merits, so if someone's old (no problem at all by itself, I also sometimes merit older posts) and average posts no one else would merit are suddenly being merited, to some people this will look like selling merits or self-meriting an alt account (I'm not saying this has to be the case here, just saying how it may be seen).

I'll also leave these quotes from theymos:



emphasis mine

Of course just the act of distributing merits can be useful if the next user now has sMerits of their own to merit useful/constructive posts of low-rank users.

post edited to add the 1st quote

I don't look in this area often, or at all. But somehow I got mentioned and it popped up. I don't really have anything to say. sMerits can decay (or so it says)


I joined this forum long before there were Legendary members, before Activity was a thing, and before Merits or sMerits existed.

Let me tell you a parable:



... if that doesn't make you think, let me tell you another story:


I am not God, I never claimed to be. Whatever act of injustice you perceive, why not think of it as mercy. Merit being given to you does not depend on your desire or effort but on the will of whoever gives it.

Would you despise someone for offering the kingdom to poor, oppressed, weak sinners because they were made equal to you?

Again, I am not God, so don't nail me to any cross. If you do, please, let me be the good thief. At least today, I will be in paradise.

The dude probably doesn't even know what merit is. Or could care less.

In this thread alone, 20 of the posts have signatures (from campaigns). I don't care about that either. But maybe someone who only got 17 merits is complaining because someone else got 18 merits. I'm not sure.

But I'll err on the side of caution and give the OP a merit to make him equal to the one he's complaining about. The post is otherwise "high-quality" even if I disagree with it.

Agree 100%. I am very stingy with merit. Yeah I know I should not be. I never really thought about it but now I have to go back and check to see if I gave more merit to people with higher or lower ranks and how much merit they have. I know I have not given at times when I look at the 1st post in the thread and see 30 people have given merit and I'm just thinking why bother sending one more.

Have to spend some time this week and see where and who I should send some merit to.

Which loops around to the 1st post in the thread. If I dump a bunch of merit on 2 or 3 people who threads I now look at again am I doing anything wrong? No I'm actually just fixing an oversight.

-Dave

Coolcryptovator, I think its completely free to ask a question on this forum and I agree that OP did nothing wrong by opening this thread. I personally noticed this merit distribution, same as many others that not have too much sense, but most forum users still think that merits are being given only for quality posts, which of course is not the case.

Many users try to post best they can, but they very often remain unrewarded with merit, which certainly discourages them to try to be even better. Merit distribution is not perfect, neither will ever be - but merits distribution is not moderated (except in very rare cases).

I'm not sure that I fully understand how the list of DT is formed, but can this somehow be connected with this? It seems there, among other conditions, a sufficient number of users with a merit in the range of 10-250 is needed. Sorry if this looks stupid. I’m even sure that this has nothing to do with reality, I just don’t understand why to reward several old messages, if you can reward one with any amount of merit less than 50.

ps Taking this opportunity, I want to congratulate Dabs with adding to the DT list today, and express the hope that this will make the forum better.

So what? He is not God by the way.
Although this matter isn't much alarming but it doesn't mean OP should get punished. It should not handle like that you are showing. I think OP became afraid and that's why keep silent. I wouldn't like to discourage anyone there is that kind of case. Same on the other hand I don't like to involved to tag merit abuser if they are not related with sells.

No, he can't. Rules is same for everyone. If someone continue meriting on spam post like 3/4 word then likely he will no longer on merit source.

Same for you.


Seems everyone saying "Dabs" doesn't made mistake since he is a staff (I can understand). But you are all encouraging him sending merit on spam post. Lern to say which is good which is bad, you don't need take action or no need tag for that. But guid him where he should spend his merits.

Again although I am agree with you all that "Dabs" doesn't abuse merit but still I believe he should be more bit careful about his merit distribution.

I commonly see one good post from a user, and then go through their history to merit even more of their posts, because if they have made one constructive post then they've likely made more. You can go through my merit history, and you'll see that I've done this a lot for multiple users of all kinds of ranks. Even, some of the highest merited users on the forum.

Especially when it comes to newbies. I think users are a little more willing to give merits to newbies who have made an effort with their post even if lets say a hero member made the same post, and they wouldn't have got merited for it. I think its in the nature of a lot of users to encourage newbies as much as possible.

MichaelX is a 4 year old user who's still a Newbie. He's not a spammer, so there's no damage to the forum by Meriting him. There's also nothing gained by MichaelX.
I sometimes send a lot of Merit to one user, and I don't think that's Merit abuse.

I guess it's only a Merit source thing to have to search for good posts. I'm happy when I can "unload" a bunch of sMerit, and I'm happy to see new users who aren't spammers. They're the future of this forum (and Bitcoin)!

Base on our merit source @cabalism13, Dabs is a merit source in our local section but I rarely see him sending merits to our section.

Well, this is something suspicious. There are more merit worthy posts than this post and yet it receives 4 merits

Merit can be send to anybody even a spammer and a shitposter. I believe that every sMerit holder has the right to send their sMerit to anybody and there is nothing we can do about it unless we will tweak the rules about sending merits.

---

Overall, I find it suspicious but like I said there is nothing we can do about it as they have rights to send it into every user they want.

Oh please!

He is Dabs!, don't you know who you dare to accuse with such poor arguments?

If he wants to give his Merits 1,2,9,10,30, he can do it, I don't see any abuse there ...


 I'm sorry for you.

Who cares how Dabs is using his merit? If he wants to give 100 merit to a 5 year old one word post, why can't he? Pretty sure we are all free to do with our merit what we want.

The fact that there are even threads about this is irritating. I can understand if it's some guy meriting up a bunch of multi-accounts or something like that, but this clearly isn't the case here.

Why not ask him in PM before defaming him with an entire thread?

I am not sure he is a merit source but if he send the merit from source merit and the post may not be merit deserving then all you can do is appeal this to admin and he can review this and can remove the merit if its unnecessary.After seeing the other's replies this may not be considered as abusing but the user spending merit should spend in the right way.

Basically merit sending completely depends on senders own mind and every single person have their own choice for meriting someone or not. OP if you think that every merit sender will appreciate all in a similar way then its not gonna be fair IMO. Giving merit is a great way of encouraging forum users to continue their best works for the community and in that purpose every merit sender have their personal tastes. Most interesting thing is that we can easily raise our finger against someone for giving merits on relatively lower quality post but we can't say anything for lots of unmerited good posts

I am not saying that its looking good to see merit on unnecessary post but in some cases senders give priority to encouragement rather than just giving.

Here's where the problem is coming from, you see a user putting in efforts, contributing positively to the forum instead of putting aside 1-5 minutes of your time to go through his post history to merit well deserving posts, most meriters decide to merit any post they see, same scenario can be observed with giveaway threads, instead of meriting the threads highlighted they merit the links submitted.

In this case I won't considered it to be an abuse maybe, he just didn't have time to review post to post quality but felt the users deserve recieving some merit for his previous efforts (quality contributions) and for starters he's a staff and probably a merit source so I don't think he'll be putting those privilege into jeopardy for just some few merit and not forgetting, merit abuse is a very subjective matter which DT users are advice to abstain from debating on (tagging users).

BINGO

It is meaningless garbage, and impossible to abuse really.

Dabs can give merit to garbage (not that those posts are especially garbage in the context of meta board) and nobody can say anything about it. It can not be abused by DT or mods. Theymos may remove merit sources if they give merit to excellent high value posts if the merit source has said he will focus on giving merit to those persons his political views align with. So merit is meaningless dirt. There can be no other way of seeing it.

I mean some mods here merit derailing off topic one liner insults and it is fine. Or some mods , DTs and merit sources will merit DEBUNKED false accusations just because they can and find it fun to do so. Theymos does not mind about that at all.

Meantime theymos is happy to allow the merit cancer to determine nearly all aspects of governance and control. You can imagine how that is working out.

If you have time pull up all DT1's top 20 merit fans and recipients. You may find that rather interesting. Then look at who includes who on DT and cross reference that with the dirty turds thread.

If you are not on the merit merry go round and actually want some merits (not that you probably do now that we have explained it is meaningless garbage) certainly do NOT mention it is clearly abused in the sense it is not given to merit worthy posts.

Dabs is nowhere near abusing compared to what you will find if you start poking into some meta board threads and have the capacity to determine real value from clearly incorrect debunked low functioning spew.

Challenging the governing group regarding their merit giving habits will never meet with any support. The merit system DIRECTLY ensures a two tier system they themselves control and ensures they get on chipmixer and other high paying sig spots, take the escrow positions , your right to trade or be paid2post and now if your post will be seen.

I hope that helps the OP see the futility of any merit complaints in meta.

There have been so many users trying to burst merit abusers and it's not being working, I wonder why users still bother. I must say I've seen far worse cases than this, and they've all happened with no one complaining or raising an eyebrow, so if those did, there is no need bringing up any of such related cases.

The thing is dabs would not be tagged, nor would the merited user be, it's almost impossible to prove a case of merit abuse, and if we started to look into it, then you'll be restricting users to how they spend their Smerits, which makes no sense imho. It's best if this sort of cases stop coming up.

Why do we have to care about how others use their merits? They have rights to hold their merits or send them to any posts of any user they want. There is no official guide or rule on how to send merits. Ideally, merits should be sent to good posts, but it does not matter if someone sends merits to a funny one.

For one post, I can agree with it, or like it, and send my merit to it, but others can disagree or don't like it, and of course, they don't send their merits to it.

That topic was locked weeks ago, but I think it contains some useful and valuable ideas.
Sendable merit, how to use it? Send it when agree/ disagree with posts?

For your info, DTs are not involving about merit abuse because of below quote,


Means admin isn't encourage to tag someone for merit abuse if there nothing related sells. I don't think a staff will involved with merit sells or like abuse.

I don't know if Dabs is a merit source, but I believe he/she should be more careful during spend merit. To be honest below post doesn't deserve even single merit from me even I am a merit source and I don't see how this post could consider even good post,


Which angle this post deserve merit ? If so then all post of this forum should merited. So I believe Dabs should refresh his judgment although I believe he had not abuse merit system.



MichaelX even didn't earned single merit from any other forum member and suddenly got 18 merit from Dabs, is it not something suspicious?

I've given up on politics and economics. I keep getting posts deleted, and one gets tired of the same mass media stuff being trotted out, and I'm mainly interested in the supra-national activities of the elite. I did dip into speculation, but my level of knowledge is fairly low, and I'm really confined to speculative trading of the wicks on Coin Base, and there isn't really much you can say about that, you just have to do it. I do want to create a tokenised security for an investment club, and also to fund a woodland conservation project, but I haven't got much further that talking about them over coffee.

Once I can sort out my van, I'll start to discuss Bitcoin for digital nomads, but right now I'm trying to claim compensation for £5,000 worth of goods that were removed from one of my garages as a result of an admin error. So far they have admitted liability, and offered £600, so there is a long way to go.

Re: the OP. Being a merit source is becoming a bit of a thankless task, and I did send you a PM about this. I didn't look at the posts in question, but the amounts seem to be fairly small, and the awards may well fit in with the request by Theymos to encourage new members with merit awards.

MichaelX has made some pretty decent posts, maybe not the ones that were merited by Dabs, but in general.  I've seen some members give a lot of merit to one post that may not seem deserving, but it may be due to the merit giver not wanting to spend a lot of time clicking on other posts that should have received merit.

I don't see anything malicious going on here, but I also don't think anyone should be discouraging the OP from bringing up these issues if he feels there is something malicious going on.  This is a discussion board, after all.  And here we are discussing an issue, real or perceived.  

He is an newbie but he has been here since 2015. Definitley, earning merits is not one of his concerns.

I think what made Dabs go through the user's last posts is this:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.52639023

You may disagree with Dabs on this but it can't be considered as abuse in any way.

There are so many scams being perpetrated not only in crypto in general but on bitcointalk in particular that I wouldn't discourage anyone from trying to expose them.  That said, this isn't a valid accusation IMO, nor would I concentrate my efforts on merit abuse if I was a newcomer to the scambusting world.  Theymos has pretty much said to leave it alone, so it's just wasted time and energy.

Maybe you're frequenting the wrong sections.  There's always petty bitching going on, but threads in Economics, Speculation, and a few others seem to be free of that nowadays.  Meta and Reputation are always rife with squabbling and I doubt that's going to change anytime soon. 

Not sure what the problem is with formatting.  Nothing seems to be different to my eyes, though I did see your thread about not using bold text in posts.  I agree with that, along with not using caps and symbols in thread titles.

I would advise likewise--except that I would only start up a thread if there's good evidence of a scam or other wrongdoing, and I'd probably stay away from merit issues.  It'd be nice to hear from Dabs, but he probably thought he found a newbie who was undermerited and thought he'd do him a favor.  Nothing wrong with that.

At op keep looking for patterns like this. It is a good catch even if it means nothing at all.

I'm in that position, and I'm finding it harder to fast scan threads with all the formatting, and petty bitching that is going on.

Sending or receiving merits is not proof of anything. Do you have actual proof or at least a reasonable suspicion that something is not "normal" here, e.g. merit being sold, or the accounts being alts of each other?

I'm sure you can find greater amounts of merits spent in a shorter period of time for posts that (to you) may seem not deserving. Merit sources and other merit senders are encouraged to try to send out as many merits as possible and put the halved merits back into circulation. In fact it says right there on the merit page: "There is no point in hoarding sMerit; keeping it yourself does not benefit you".

sometimes people who have large number of merits to spend find someone who has a lower rank and deserves receiving merits but hasn't received that much from others. they go through their history and give a bunch to the posts they think deserve that merit. it is actually more common than you'd think specially among merit sources (don't know if dabs is one or not).
i checked some of these posts, i think they did deserve the merits they received.

This forum has way too many wanna be scambusters. Everyone thinks that's how you get respect around here or something. I like people busting scammers but I also think starting bad accusations should get users held accountable.

Not saying this is a good or bad accusation, just my opinion overall.

I am not saying that either. Everyone should be questioned if thing looks wrong but in this case I do not see much wrong here. I tell you what I have even given merit to only an image that was posted or a gif coz I thought it was merit worthy. I liked the joke and the humor presented on that. I am sure a lot of users will disagree but sending merit really is very much depending on someone's own view.

I have done this too several times and in regular eyes it may look odd but the one who awarded it he/she must have an explanation and they are right in their point of view.
In Dabs case, I am sure he has some good intention and logic and looking at the merit sent in two WO posts, I would say that I would do the same if I had sMerits and spotted it when I was in a good mood.

Eh, I don't think this constitutes merit abuse.  Was it a lot of merits to give a newbie?  Yeah.  But those posts were actually pretty decent, and they were written in good English.  And my guess is that Dabs also agreed with what MichaelX wrote.  I don't have a problem with any of this personally. 

It's not "normal" necessarily (especially with a newbie account involved), but that doesn't mean something shady was going on.  My advice to you is to stop worrying about non-issues like this and focus on earning your own merits and rewarding posts you think are worthy.  If Dabs ever did show a sustained pattern of merit abuse, it'll come to light eventually. 

I've done it, too.  There are some members who are glaringly under-merited and sometimes I've looked back into their post histories and sought out posts to merit.  Not saying that's what Dabs did, but who knows.  All I know is there's not anything about what he did that would lead me to think he's a merit abuser.

I respect Dabs and would agree that he has proven to be a benefit to the forum however no one is immune to criticism or being questioned and I would agree with the op that some of these posts don't deserve either merit or the amount that was rewarded. I do see how Dabs could reward some of them with a little merit though.

I'm not accusing Dabs of merit abuse here and I don't think that is the case considering his position on the forum but he probably does not have the same standards when sending merit as others on this forum might have and that's fine as long as its not taking the piss too much.

Can we just stop policing in giving merit by the users who have long history of contributing to this community? Dabs is one of the old timer here and he proved himself a man to respect.

If sending merit to one guy repeatedly is something considered to abuse merit then I am also guilty of that. I have sent merits to several of WO users several time and I do not feel that I have misused it at all. They deserved it and I feel happy to share my sMerits with them.

Within 2 minutes, Dabs gave to MichaelX a total of 18 merits( Including 2 years old posts). I didn't think it was normal in anyway.
The posts that have been given merit, are those posts really deserve getting so much merit within 2 minutes ?
I just want to know is this really normal activity?

I got some information

Profile :-
Dabs

MichaelX

Merit history MichaelX

Merit post links