Topic: Suggestions to improve bitcointalk.org (Read 370 times)

Actually I put this theory long time, limit Merits per post but forum agrees on there should be no limit on merits on quality post.





I agree with pugman. Forum created the trust policy and now its up to user how to use the Signature space. Actually for these kind of scam project, the user who are advertising should be red tagged. Marlbooza already started a thread and and tagging participants.


Until a ANN thread is not created here, how the forum will know it is shady or not.
Creation of ANN thread here does not implying any kind of credibility  to the project nor do forum officially endorse any ANN (except Howey Coins, I guess) . Investor is always supposed to do DYOR



I think forum is biased heavily when it say about rank of "Jr. Member" or "Member" etc.
What do you think about atriz, Wapinter and needmoney (not sure but I think needmoney was in DT too)

Not new at all, Already nullius, Invoking, Hilariousetc suggested it.

It is simple if forum indroduce some kind of sort function with Merit instead of doubling the number of boards.


Actually I made this suggestion sometime back


Yes , sure
13. We should stop discussing in how to improve forum  or some action items that require Theymos to act upon it unless Theymos himself asking for suggestion. I have completed more than 6 month in this forum and I saw people really brainstorming in this forum and coming up good suggestion and nothing got implemented or even explained by Theymos for not picking up suggestion.

We can use our energy to discuss what we can do in this forum to make our experience more pleasant in this forum without any action items required from Theymos.

Why hard? I think it would be fine if they are simply put into the list of rules for signature campaigns.
Well, my suggestion is that one person can only send a max of 5 merits once for one post, so multiple sending can only occur when a person is sending merits to someone for different posts.

This would not solve anything. Abusers would just send fewer merits multiple times. Legitimate senders would be inconvenienced. You still wouldn't be getting those merits unless you otherwise deserve them - you realize that, right?

Merits are not scarce. Theymos can produce any number of them at any time. Meritorious posts are hard to find. That's what we should focus on - create and share quality content.

Someone wasting their airdrop merits on their alts is an evolutionary dead end. Let them die in peace.

Definately a good idea I support. Reduce max merits that users can give to 1-2, maybe 5.

It will be very hard to enforce these rules. But I also think that you need way stricter rules to address all the issues from scammy ICOs that inflate the spamm with coins that they produce from thin air. Here is my suggestion: (12?) All signature campaigns should be paid in Bitcoin. All promotions should be awarded and should cost the same. To the companies as to the promoters. This would reduce spam a lot and improve overall quality in the forum.

They shouldn't necessarily do their research. It might just be added to bitcointalk rules and then when someone notices a violation he/she reports it to forum moderators.
I guess you are right, 5 smerits to send for one post is a fine requirement regardless to the language of the post. It will stop insane merit trading enough anyway. Plus, a lot of people say it is discriminatory and I agree that it surely looks like that.
Well, if we come to a reasonable decision here, perhaps we could send a message to theymos, requesting to analyze our offers. Maybe forum moderators will read this thread even without us asking them to do so. I think a lot of respected members read discussions in Meta.

Could you guys also quote some suggestions from the previous threads where people discussed innovations? Please quote those with which people mainly agreed. I'll edit the op and add them as well, so that we have everything organized.

I tried to include all of the mentioned above in the op.

Those are mainly alts in my opinions. Someone mentioned that it is low rank members involved in merit abuse the most. But where are those merits coming from ? Basically, those who got merits by default can make new accounts and promote them to higher ranks easily.

Most of the suggestions are laudable, but they don't address the root problems. These are lack of moderation, and misdirected moderation, and also the way bot and new alts are allowed to pollute the main boards. Much as it goes against published policy, the forum is going to have to limit new members ability to pollute the boards. Failure to do this will result in the loss of more moderators and decent posters.

I am having extreme difficulty in understanding the moderation policy here. I have had threads locked or moved, and posts deleted, and in most cases, they were attempts to raise the quality of the general boards, or to help members improve their English. At the same time bounty, Twitbook, ICOs and other low grade projects are promoted on many of the boards. It's getting to the stage where one is almost embarrassed to admit that one is an active member of Bitcoin Talk. For example, I fail to understand the locking of my thread about threads to improve the perceived quality of the beginners board, and to encourage new members  to research more about Bitcoin.

Well, 3,5 and 6 seems like a good idea for me. However, I already tackled the same proposal about number 3 in here where I suggest that a manager should hire a trusted escrow first as a requirement of running a campaign. Although some people agreed, the idea was still ignored.

About number 2, I think it would be a little unfair. Even though a post is not written in English, we should Merit it as long as it is constructive and deserving to receive more than 10 Merits from a single person. Language is not the problem here IMHO.

Just like my posted thread in our local board. It's Tagalog but I believed that it deserved more than 10 Merits IMHO again. But unfortunately, it only got 1, but it doesn't matter anymore. What matters for now is, I hope some of my fellow citizens learned something from it.
Yeah, this really is a big problem about escrows. That's why it should be only trusted escrows are required like Yahoo62278, LoyceV, actmyname, Lauda and etc. to be hired. What do you think? But it will be a lot of work for sure as there are lot of running campaign.

The forum would be a much better place if this proposal would be implemented. Especially the limiting of merits. So frustrated to see that abusers got promoted from Jr. to Full member in 2 days with merits that sender didn't even earn but got by default.

Nah, not required. There are posts that deserve way more than just 15-20 merits. And this can also be abused by giving merits to different posts of the same topic,thus nullifying the restriction.

Please no. There are a few merit sources in the local boards, and there are a few good posts there that deserve more than just 2 merits, and it would injustice, for discriminating against local boards.

Not required either, a few campaigns pay directly from their website to its users. Escrows have known to flee away, trust no one.

Again no. Its up to the people to decide which campaign they are to join.

You can't determine between a shady ICO , almost every single ICO is shady. Though this might help to weed out the spammers, no one has the time to give a proper check.

You don't have to force members to be high ranked,inorder to manage campaigns. Some ICOs manage their own campaigns. They can manage campaigns, so long as they don't just let their participants to spam all across the forum.

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7. theymos introduces official set of rules for the forum and guidelines for signature campaign managers. That's all we need. And fuck cloudfare.

My opinion on #5 and 6; It'll be much better if only bounty managers with good reputations(never been accused of posting any scam ico) are the only one allowed to post on bounty, and altcoins ann board.

7. Add separate board on each sections dedicated only to merited topics. So we can find a quality topic, which was given any amount of merit, much easier. Please don't tell me that this already exists; Top-merited recent topics, Top-merited topics, all-time, I can't find any topic that could educate me.

Apologies for posting this image again.

Many of the suggestions above have been made already in previous threads but mentioning them again in a constructive way might just get needed attention.  My suggestion to improve bitcointalk is "signing on" this forum.  The captcha thing is so labor intensive there are days folks abandon coming here after 4-5 boxes answering stupid repeat picture questions and still not getting in.  Why we don't have U2F or at least TOTP instead of goofy boxes is a mystery to me.  The site would NOT have to send anything using either mode, it would only respond to the sent information authenticating the member's login.  I would think those picture boxes have to be using more bandwidth than handshaking with a U2F element.  Please consider this and at the same time increase all members security!

I'll just add another point of view for this one the others have been pretty much covered by hilariousetc


Most of the problems here are caused by bounty hunters, that get paid in shitcoins or shittokens.
As those are basically useless, can be created with 3 clicks, and so an escrow would be also useless.

It would be a totally different story if there would be a rule about payments in BTC only but that is not going to happen.

There are some serious issues with signature campaigns.

I was seeing a campaign where the manager removed certain rank from 3rd week without making any announcement. So those members kept making posts and they were not paid for this. So, there are always people trying different loopholes to cheat members. Such projects should look into this but I do not think that it even goes to them as they have outsourced it.

I wouldn't necessarily be against limiting the amount of merit you can give a post, but on the flip-side it's much easier to spot abuse when 20-50 merits are given to shitposts.


It's already much more difficult to get merit in the local boards, but again, it's easier to spot abuse when huge amounts of merit are being given for mediocre posts.


What if the escrow then runs off with the funds? I doubt this is something theymos wants to get involved with directly and is better left to the community to police. If you think a campaign is shady  and there's no guarantee they will pay then leave them appropriate or a warning feedback.


Again, this is something for the community to police as the forum doesn't moderate scams. But who would get to decide what is a sufficiently bad reputation? There are worse casinos than Betcoin.AG, but if you feel people are advertising scams then leave them appropriate feedback.


Again, who get's to decide the shadiness of the ICO? Just because an ICO has a website and roadmap etc doesn't make them legit. I wouldn't be against some restrictions being placed on ICOs, and I think charging them to list their project here would help and at least cut down on those who spend absolutely zero on their ICOs so there's nothing for them to lose by scamming.


Rank means little here. Any rank can be bought and for a few hundred dollars you can robably get yourself a Hero account. A Newbie account could probably run a better campaign than some of the Legendary managers around here, but people who run bad campaigns should be tagged appropriately regardless of rank.

A bit discriminatory, from my perspective. Local boards are already struggling, I know most of the abuses are happening in there, but, the collateral damage is too big, as @DdmrDdmr pointed.


Totally agree.

7. As previously suggested, but in the aim of summarize: at least 1 merit to become JR.


Thanks, sounds interesting and enlightening. As said, locals are already struggling enough. No more collateral needed.
Same sentiment in here. Maybe is time to make a thread with the resume of all the last month proposals and see where it goes, but I'm afraid it is going to be forgotten quite fast, as usual.

I don’t think this is really necessary. Checking on the Merit Dashboard, 81,40% of all posts are merited once and an additional 11,36% twice. The Merit TXs themselves are basically for 1 sMerit (68,83%) or 2 sMerits (14,42%), and that is considering the whole history of data.
Perhaps there is a scarcity of overall sMerit, but cases of post being awarded over 20 on aggregate are rather scarce and even more overtime, to the point that it cannot be an issue by any means in the overall scheme of things.

On my local board (I just posted an OP on the matter a few minutes ago in the Spanish Section), the average sMerit per TX is 1,7 and per post 1,95. 88,17% of all merited posts in the Spanish local boards have either receives 1 or 2 sMerits, and only 28 posts above 5 sMerits. This local board is rather much scarce with merit. Nevertheless, no local board should be discriminated based on the fact that it is a local board, moderated or not. Besides, any Merit Abuse can just as easily outwit your proposal by posting double to triple the amount and getting merited 2 per post instead of 4 of 5.

The other points I can kind of see, specially those that are ICO scam related, but as usual we create threads full of wishful thinking, brainstorm for a few days, and then they eventually getting nowhere really. There could be some sort of forum delegates that scoop-up and summarize forum enhancement proposals that are then taken to theymos for consideration. This probably is something else that won’t see the light.

I agree with most of your suggestions. However, I don't agree that we should penalise responsible members because their first language is not English. Please note the use of the word "responsible", merit abuse on any boards should be penalised.

We already have talked about most of these proposals/suggestions however... It's nice to see that we are coming with different ideas to have a better experience for the forum.

Completely agree with the high merit transaction at one go. It looks really odd that someone needed 50 posts to get 50 merits on the other hand someone else received 50 merit in one go. There can be debates on how to determine a post that worth 1 or 50 but still - 50 merits (!) is too much comparing with the amount of merits needed to rank up for each rank. Maximum 5 is a reasonable number in my eyes.

It really is the ICO team and the bounty manager's call. Also in addition - the two party or precisely the sig bounty manager can add minimum merit requirements for the participants.  (<--- one additional suggestion you can add on your OP)

In other words, you are asking the mod/admin to do prior research and monitor the ICOs. We all know forum do not moderate these stuffs. It is not impossible for them even if they want to. 1. There are not many mods/staffs 2. Legally, the forum is not a regulator for an ICO.

Again, it is the call for the ICO team however the forum can easily make a rule that you need to have x rank to manage a bounty etc. The reason I have a positive indication on this - is: You are correct that a newbie (say with copper membership) really does not know much about forum environment.

I have been thinking for some time about the ways of making bitcointalk a more serious and strict forum than it is right now. I would like to share my suggestions with you and get some feedback. If they are good ones then maybe moderators could implement the necessary changes.
1. Smerit limit per post. Earning merits is generally hard, which makes them valuable on this forum. However, some people receive 15 or 20 merits for a single post, while others have only 15 merits, which they earned slowly from different people and for different posts. I think it would be better to make it impossible to send more than 5 merits for a specific post by one person. So, if the post is really good, then it can earn about 20 merits, but those merits must be sent by at least 4 different people. (questioned by hilariousetc and pugman)
2. Maximum 2 merits per post per merit sender in local boards. I think that people usually trade merits in small threads in local boards, because the moderation there is not as strict as in the English sections of this forum. If one can send 5 merits for a post written in English, I think it is fair that only 2 merits can be sent for a non-English post.
3. Offered by kryptqnick and silent26: No Signature campaigns without escrows. I know that scamming on signature campaigns is not common, but why not to make it impossible? Most of legit campaigns escrow the funds anyway, so I guess making it a must should not be a problem. (questioned by hilariousetc and pugman)
4. No Signature campaigns for projects with bad reputation. Betcoin.ag accounts had red trust on this forum due to the infamous jackpot scam, but they were still advertising themselves for at least a year after that incident. I think it would be fair to forbid scamming projects to advertise themselves on this forum. (questioned by hilariousetc and pugman)
5. No ANN threads for shady ICOs. We all know the statistics on ICOs. While I find the general idea very appealing, the fact that most of ICOs are scamming people harms the reputation of the crypto market. I think there should be some requirements every ICO has to meet to officially enter bitcointalk.org. Among such requirements I would name an official website with a whitepaper, team and roadmap listed on it. (questioned by hilariousetc and pugman)
6. Rank requirement for signature campaign managers. Sometimes people with zero trust on Member or perhaps even a Junior Member rank lead signature campaigns. I think that people need experience on the forum to be Signature campaign managers. They need to know what it considered good post quality and what is bad; in which topics participants should not be welcomed to post; which projects mainly prefer specific forum sections and childboards etc. It truly seems strange to me when a Member decides which Legendary members to accept to a specific campaign. From my experience they usually don't bother making hard decisions, so they simply accept the first ones who applied. Anyway, I suggest that only people with membership rank of Senior Member and higher are allowed to lead Signature campaigns. I guess we should exclude copper members here as well, but I am not sure about that. (questioned by hilariousetc and pugman)
7. Offered by seoincorporation: at least 1 merit is required to become a Junior Member of the forum.
8. Offered by mdayonliner: Signature campaign manager has the right to make the minimum merit requirements for the campaign participants.
9. Offered by Coin-Keeper: U2F authentification instead of captchas.
10. Offered by jonemil: Add separate board on each sections dedicated only to merited topics.
11. Offered by Jet Cash: reforming moderation policy, so that good posters don't have their topics locked and ICO promoters are limited in their activity.
12. Offered by joulion86 and r1s2g3: all signature campaigns should pay in bitcoin.
If you have other suggestions you'd like to add to these ones, please attach numbers (from 7 and higher), so that everyone can address the specific suggestions easily to create feedback. I will edit this post and add them here (I'll write down the names of those who offered them as well).
Thanks!