Topic: [Suggestions] - Copper Membership requires some tweaking || Restrictions in Meta (Read 171 times)

I do, and we call them "genuine users". I pointed this thing out too, in my post. Here:


As mentioned there, a "genuine user" as like of you, should have no problem in coming out from a restriction like that.


You shouldn't. A person always knows if the thing being said is about him or not, even if he is a part of the group that is being generally mentioned in it. We all joined the forum as Newbies, but not all of us let the community categorize us as spammers, because we weren't, and we knew it. I'm a Member in rank, but I don't feel bad when someone says that Members spam the forum, because I know I'm not guilty of doing that.


Mods cannot ban someone for only writing something useless or for creating a useless thread with a repeated issue. If that was possible, there wouldn't have been any implementations to stop the spammers.
Besides, they are not only 10, or a 100, or a 1000 who could have been easily dealt with, but almost every single one of them has a hundred or more descendants. It is just like an endless chain that can only be restricted, but cannot be eradicated.

I understand that there are people who are misusing the forum. They are creating new accounts and spamming the forum. There could be automated bots as well. People are trying to make money with signature spamming, bounty spamming etc etc, I understand all these, honestly I do.

But...

I also feel that the forum is behaving very hard on newbies. Think about people like me... I joined this forum out of curiosity.  

I have no intention to spam here and there (you are welcome to visit my post history), I have no time for that. I had conversations with some forum members and I found them very friendly, helpful that gave a good impression. I do not post very often like you guys but when I find some spare time I like to make comments here and there with no intention of spamming. Don't you think there are many users like me?

I am lucky that I earned some merit and no more a newbie but if I would not earn those merit and stayed as a newbie then I do not think I would even bother to comeback to this forum. Often times, a person can feel they are being treated disrespectfully. I would feel the same.

Please do be too hard to a group of people just because some spammers has intentions to spam the forum. The forum might lose future good forum members. You never know what's hidden inside a person. If someone turns out a spammer then there should be mods who can ban them but don't just stop everyone.

I hope this will not upset anyone. It's an opinion and I absolutely understand that my philosophy and someone else's philosophy will not be the same.

Greetings!

So I had two things to say, but since I didn't want to spam the board, I decided to put them both in the same thread.
Here they are.

1 - Copper Membership Requires some tweaking (Suggested here as well by Vod)
After the recent changes/restrictions in lower ranks, people have started to buy Copper Membership in order to be able to wear signature and take part in Bounty/Signature campaigns. Since the user with Copper Membership can wear the signature assigned to him/her, he is not subjected to acquire the rank required to join some Bounties/Signature Campaigns. Therefore, they simply buy the membership in a few bucks to spam the shit out of the forum and earn way more than what they spent on it.

The basic reason for introducing the Copper Membership was to allow lower ranks to post images and reduce some other restrictions, like the time interval between PMs or such, but the usage of it today is totally abusive. Look at this user, who doesn't even know how to reply to a quote properly, but he has bought a Copper Membership and is now a participate of a Bounty Campaign named Apollox (whose manager is also a Newbie with Copper Membership and zero Merits). I, and everyone else as well, I'm sure, would definitely not like to see this happening. That is why I wanted to suggest a little tweaking with it.

Since a Newbie cannot wear a signature after the recent changes, I suggest that a Newbie should not be able to wear it even after buying Copper Membership. A Newbie who buys Copper Membership should only be able to post images and it should remove the other restrictions associated with it, but their signature space should still be restricted for as long as they don't earn a Merit and rank up to Jr. member. This way, they won't be able to buy a Copper Membership and use that as a way of participating in those Bounties/Signature Campaigns again which is what the changes have been implemented to stop.

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2 - Posting restriction for Newbies in "Meta"
Every time when there is a change, we see the amount of spam increasing for a few days in almost every section, but mostly in "Meta". There are numerous reasons behind that, and we know them all. But, the recent changes have given everyone a new reasoning to post in "Meta", that is: they think posting in "Meta" would undoubtedly earn them Merits, which is a misconception, but they believe so. This thinking has almost turned "Meta" into a new "Bitcoin Discussion" because of the amount of spam every threads posted here is receiving, and the useless threads that are being made every hour. I know these things mostly calm down after some time, but this wouldn't, because the new changes have demoted all the Jr. members to Newbie, and now they all, plus every other Newbie, require at least one Merit to rank up, and they would keep trying to get it, even in this section.

I think restricting Newbies from posting in "Meta" would reduce this from happening to a large extent. A Newbie should only be able to read everything in "Meta" but should not be allowed to post in here. Once they earn 1 Merit, they would have no such restrictions put on them. If someone says, "This would be injustice to genuine users" then I would simply answer it with: A genuine user should have no problems earning at least one Merit outside "Meta", which would lift the restriction.
In addition, Copper Membership should also lift this restriction, since "Meta" is also used for hacked accounts and stuff. So if a user's account gets hacked, they should simply buy Copper Membership with the account (Since the accounts used for recovery requests are mostly Newbies, and they would not wait to earn a Merit to post their request) they want to request a recovery with, and then post that in "Meta".
I don't think that anyone would not be able to afford buying a $10 (or even $20, or more, if the price of Bitcoin increases) membership in order to recover their precious accounts. And such cases anyways are a rarity, so that should not be a problem.

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I would love to know the viewpoints of people on these two issues.
Questions and arguments are welcome too.