Topic: The new rule (1 Merit for Jr. Member) is already reducing spam - page 2. (Read 3931 times)

In one way this is true if we take price for parameter. On other hand many see that earning merit is not that simple, you cant get merit just for post something you need to pick the right time for it. This system is good and so far made results. Reading little and see that some suggest we have demerit maybe this could effect something as well. Or we will have on the other hand again new users complaining about unfair system (this is something that I have read here that most newbies and jr. members as well as demoted jr. member were complaining about).

No matter what happens this will be in one way another good solution for the forum to have some good post and another way to reduce spam, cuz think it could be good idea if someone goes to - merit he could be maybe restricted to post once every 2,3 or four hours difference.

It's obvious,what do you of expect of coins that are not established and lack a focal point of what the blockchain technology is all about,when the bitcoin that is king is declining daily,you should expect ICO's to crumble immediately,which is exactly what's happening at the moment
This ICO's need the bitcoin/market to improve,or else only the genuinely good ones would be able to survive

Initially the merit system might have had a significant effect in the drop in posts, as lots of demoted jr members had no reason to keep actively posting in the forum. We were left with those determined to earn merits and those complaining about the unfair system.

The bad market of the past month has reduced interest of most in bitcoin and cryptocurrency related content.
I also expect a rise is activity with that of bitcoin.

the main purpose for these bots is to spam on ico bounties and get free tokens = free $ ..  while this market is  doing so  bad  for btc and altcoins  . the data show that is doing terrible for icos as well .

also joining icos / bounties  is just waste of time in this market since it is not profitable with all these scam icos or legit icos that are not able to rise the soft cap ... even those who success in getting the soft cap .. get dumped in the first exchange  which leave bounties hunters  with very small profits  for alot of work and time spending for legit ones  or  for lot of spam and shitposting for those who don't care about the forum .

i expect the spam to return when the market situation  improve  and the bounty business return to be profitable again .

Update:

I don't think this large drop is still caused by the new Merit rules. I'll keep updating this list, because I expect the post count to go up once Bitcoin starts going up in price.

It is related to reduced bot activity mainly. For the telegram thing, it is related to altcoins price drop and the fear of investing in that community.

in addition to the new rule . i guess the reason why we may have  low number of posts is the current market situation ..  and that is because even telegram groups that used to be so active are now dying slowly :/

Update:
The number of posts keeps dropping hard.

The current (momentary) top 10: a gambling thread, [ICO], Russian, Turkish thread about Bitcoin, Turkish thread about KFC, another gambling thread, [BOUNTY], Altcoin Discussion, Beginners & Help and another [ICO].
It's a small improvement, that page used to be completely worthless.

Just noticed this thread now. Excellent thread and excellent results. I'm sure that we'd even have better results if the requirement further increased.

Update:
That's 50% less posts within 3 months! But when I look at Show unread posts since last visit. (without any boards on ignore), it's still only [ANN], [ICO], [BOUNTY] and [PRE-ICO] (and 2 Russian threads I can't read) in the first 10 topics.

You may be right. But whether it's profitability or Merit, less ICO spam is a good thing anyway.

I've updated the OP:

Although your post is slightly off-topic, you're clearly a real user who can add value to this forum. And indeed, new users must prove themselves, but when they do, they can quickly stand out by earning Merit.
Many high ranking users love seeing real new users (and hte future of this forum depends on it).

Many accounts get banned each day, but there's a fine line between censorship and banning shitposters. This forum offers more freedom than any other forum I've seen online, but it comes at a price.

Ok. I'm going to try something. I've never used this before.

TLDR;  Just institute martial law. Start executing shitposters without due process. They truly are insanely easy to identify. They approach it like a war or battle and so should you.


Damnit. I still have more to say. That's why I don't like the TLDR. Leave's too much open to ambiguity. Kinda like the merit system. Lol.

I just really think the merit system and the necessity for real people to prove their "realness"  is definitely deterring quality forum members from participating.  meanwhile, your forum is being invaded and overrun by an enemy that treats accomplishing their objective much more militantly than the forum does in deterring it. Why avoid attacking the real problem?  Because it also potentially allowing a vast number of "spies" to infect your forums, since having some merit probably gives people a shield of legitimacy and excuses them when maybe they shouldn't be.  I could write posts like this for one day, get a few merit points, and then be in like flint right? So am I excused if the quality of my posts suddenly turns to shit because I have a handful of merit points?  If merit becomes the accepted norm for legitimacy, then people will develop "merit blindness". Not to mention, if accounts with merit end up with value, it will just spawn a market around it. And then you have a whole new problem on your hands.

But if it is well known that the forum is enforced more militantly, where shitposters are executed without mercy or second thought, then People won't have a choice, and quality posts will simply become normal posts. Either post real content, or get merk'ed.

I think what I am trying to say is that the way this forum FEELS, makes it extremely unappealing for real, NEW members to become involved. It's almost as if you have to "prove" yourself because there is such a pandemic of fake shitposters. But the shitposters are allowed to continue being shitposters. Things seem to only be modified to make it HARDER for real people to become "worthy" of being considered valid (so to speak).


The common denominator is the same though. Greed. So if you are going to fight an enemy as difficult as greed, you have to be militant about it.

Sorry if that comes across rude, I'm not trying to be. I just see that you guys seem to really care about your forum, but it has a cancer. And rather than just grabbing a scalpel and cutting it out, it's like every holistic therapy is being tried first.

Just imagine the amount of quality that may show up if people knew that it wasn't going to be washed over by a sea of bullshit.

Just my 1 cent. (I had to pay the other one in gas to send this message JK)

Sep 10, $ 6,320.74
--------------------
Sep 17, 6,370.50
Sep 24, 6,634.65
Oct 1,   6,601.08
Oct 8,   6,639.74
Oct 15,  6,713.99
Oct 22,  6,490.82
Oct 29,  6,370.17
Nov 5,   6,451.78
Nov 12, 6,407.36
Nov 19, 5,154.91

I would probably blame it not so much on the price but on the drop in ICOs that really pay and the amount of reward claimed.
We might have hit a price where is more profitable to solve captchas than "doing bounty".

If you have the time, this could be interesting to do from the start of the Merit system. It's a bit of a pain to find the number of posts in a week, but it can be done by trial and error: Just select a spam thread on the Bounty board, browse to the date you're looking for, and you're likely to find a post close to the time needed. The post number gives you the number of posts per week, if you correct for the exact time of the post you'll get an accurate number of posts per week.

I would like to disclose one more thing, merit per post during the last 10 weeks.

My approach:
1) Total weekly merits: Calculated from real data.
2) Total weekly posts (weekposts): Calculated from real data, except the week #2018w37, which is only the assumed median/ mean from the continuous three weeks (2018w35, 2018w36, and 2018w37). I took it from the OP.
3) Merit per post (meritperpost): = round(merit/weekposts,0.001).

Real dataset is here:
Results:
Merit per post has fluctuated during the 10-week period, from 0.015 to 0.207 merit per post.
The shocking figure found here is that there is 80-percentage difference between the highest and the lowest compared to the lowest.

The last week (#2018w46) is incomplete one, with only half of the week collected in the dataset.

Here is the plot of the ten-week-period merit per post:

Notes:
It is better if having dataset on different ranks in the forum (for merits, posts), but I unfortunately have not had them so far.

It requires lots of skills to retrieve and/ or process from raw data.
I can't too, but I have plans to learn SQL for my interests.
I wanna sort raw data out and get my target variables for analysis.
It's better with the approach, rather than waiting for help if someone else. And worthy to spend my time to learn, for future use.

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Can you me data on forum posts since 14th December of 2017, please.
I will keep find them, but it's great if you already have it.
I made a graph based on data in your OP, but I think it might be better if we can have full forum post history (weekly/monthly).

Box plot
Basic statistics on central tendency of Weekly Newposts presented below:
1) Mean +/- Standard deviation: 247253 +/- 26716
2) Median (Interquartile range): 240339 (219774 - 263685).
3) Min - max: 215135 - 286408.
Compared to the median of the previous three weeks, based from @LoyceV resutls (simply asssumed it is the median to make comparision), at 353813; we can easily see the big difference.
---> The Percentage Difference Between Medians of the two period is calculated as:
(240339 - 353813)*100/353813 ~ -32.1% (nearly 32% decrease).

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Time series of Weekly Newposts, since Sep 17 06:27 (Dutch time)

In a nutshell, the median of weekly newposts over the recent 9 week since Sep 17 06:27 (Dutch time) has decreased about 32% compared to the 'assumed' median of previous period.
32% decrease in median over the 9-week period is significant impact, in my opinion.

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Importanly to note about the 'assumed median' of weekly posts for the period before 17th Sep. It is assumed median because I don't have enough datapoints to get real median.

Update:
I'm starting to be curious how much of this was the result of the new Merit requirements, and how much of the post reduction is caused by the crypto price drops. But I can't easily distinguish between posts made by higher or lower ranks, so I can't really answer my curiousity.

Hi,
I made it.
Time Series Analysis on Distributed Merits in the forum (daily, weekly, monthly)
More things to come later when I have spare time to make it.

By the way, I can do same things for new users registered, total daily postcounts, etc. if I can have data.  

Spamming is this forum has being a problem that we have been battling with. The new policy really reduced the spamming rate because all those junior members that join various bounty campaigns and spam the forum won't be able to do so again.