Topic: The new rule (1 Merit for Jr. Member) is already reducing spam - page 7. (Read 3909 times)

I hope your works can be done as soon as possible @mocacinno. I am sorry to say that and it sounds kinda annoying but if the works can be done as soon as possible, then people can really use it to mark that "lucky member" so they can not advance to upper rank. At least I would do that if no one doing it, with my ignore button.

If you want to get out those information, you can also run this query in this tool i made, once the data is coming out on Friday

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/tool-to-run-online-sql-queries-over-full-merit-data-4551881

maybe adjust it as you see fit but something like this should be more than enough(i'm finishing to update the user ranks as well):

The reductions are actually more in the other topics if you take into account the influx of merit related posts now in Meta.

Meta - one of the few safe harbors from spam has be decimated by threads about merit.

Don't report me for plagiarism! I came up with it independently, I swear!!! 

I saw it first used by MagicSmoker, but the oldest reference I can find is Omega0255 more than 7 years ago.

I'll update mine in about 48 hours. Theymos' original data will be a couple hours earlier.

No problem, I started it

Excellent idea! FWIW, I intentionally merited 4 newbies to jr. member in the wake of the bitcointalk snappening (c.f. - Avengers: Infinity War) and I'll admit that a couple of those posts were marginal, but I looked at their history and felt they were making a sincere effort rather than just spew crap in spam megathreads or post bounty reports (marginal because English clearly isn't their primary language). The posts in question are:

HappySun

NiklasFalk

b9ron

SpceGhst

This may help with context on some of the marginal cases; basically, some review of the merit receiver's post history might be necessary and that rapidly becomes too time-consuming to be practical.


EDIT - agree with LoyceV that you should make a new thread in meta about this.

Yeah, there are still a lot of loopholes (which i won't list), i was just going for a way to discourage this kind of behaviour by filtering out the bulk of the potential abusers and holding them responsible for what they've done... That way other people might think twice before buying or exchanging 1 merit to get out of the "newbie hell" (source needed for the expression "newbie hell"... I don't remember who came up with the term, but it's my new go-to expression)


I might make a thread as soon as friday's merit statistics become published (i don't want to make a thread for a script that can't be used right away)... Sorry to have hijacked your thread, i'll try not to do it again  

This leaves the possibility the shitposter received Merit without buying it. The sender on the other hand is for sure guilty in this scenario.

Your project deserves it's own thread!

I wasn't aware off this thread yesterday, but since i accidentally stumbled upon this thread today, i wanted to take the time to reply.

My script CAN and WILL find all users that:

• were junior members before theymos's rule change
• AND were demoted because of theymos's rule change
• AND received exactly 1 merit AFTER they were demoted in order to be promoted again

The only timestamp that's important is the exact unix timestamp on which Theymos made the code change... All other factors are unimportant. It doesn't matter if the newbie re-promotes the same day, or 3 days later... My script will filter them out.
The script works on LoyceV's full merit history to filter out potential abusers, after this step, it'll make 1 request per potential abuser. Even if 2000 people are filtered out, the script should still finish in about an hour  (2 seconds sleep every iteration in order not to overload bitcointalk's server).

Also, i wanted to mention that i never proposed to automise a gut feeling by automising neg repping or ignoring. My script will filter out all POTENTIAL abusers and that's it (nothing more, nothing less). Since i'm pretty sure that a lot of those POTENTIAL abusers are in fact false-positives (since i'm pretty sure a lot of demoted users will have re-promoted on legitimate grounds).
My proposition was to filter out potential abusers using my script, then manually verify the list and only punish those that received merits for posts that are complete garbage... If there is any doubt wether or not somebody received a merit legitimately, the user should be left alone (i'd even go as far as proposing we go trough his/her post history and see if there were other merit-worthy posts aswell).

Last but not least: catching the "big fishes" (the people that sent 1 merit to loads of demoted users) is also pretty easy to do... As a matter of fact, my script already keeps a list of the senders to potential abusers. It's just a matter of counting how many times each sender's uid pops up in the senders list... I haven't implemented this yet, but this implementation would just be 3 or 4 extra lines of code... No biggie...

It's reduced the amount of posts, doubt that the average quality has changed that much. I see just as much junk posted from high level accounts as from Jrs.
Giving old accounts a lot of merit when the system was released was a mistake, they've since mostly been giving merit out to eachother.

LOL. What are you talking about. Nobody does it by hand.
It is a matter of creating a script and using "snapshots" calculations from differences and some otputs, which is feasible for those with skills in this field. Nobody reads the profiles one by one manually. Once the script it's done is just press one botton.

This is a really hard work and a full time job right here. I cannot do like this and definitely I rather go home early and be with my kids and my wife.

This is what theymos has said that the brighter side on implementing the +1 merit requirement for every newbie rank to rank up to jr. member is equally fair and reasonable. Yet, it should remain +1 merit requirement since I had only 2 on my profile and for somehow I get scared so I should be serious this time taking my posts to next level.

what the fuck is this nonsense?

Short Answer: Yes, for a limited period.
It's only a temporary period, there have been a lot of posts because of wearing signatures. I expect members to be more engaged with campaign managers than posting in the forum.
Also, Jrmembers's accounts was sold, so many create more accounts to sell it "because it was rank-up based on activity."
Over time the number of posts will be reduced until those members find a way back to that rank and then post again.

I agree with you sir, This is not permanent solution because if their intention to be a Junior Member to participate in bounty then today or tomorrow they will achieve it. If anyone give 1 merit on a simple post we will not take it seriously. Now we observe it very seriously because of current situation, think 20 or 30 days ahead we people will forget it and they will get a merit easily with a good post or they will buy. After get 1 merit they (spammer) will never try to post to get another merit because they already achieve their goal. Their goal is to ware a signature to earn some money to participate in bounty.

I still believe that the best option would have been as follows. -

Brand new - no posting requirement and no merit. No signature
Newbie - one post and <10 merit - no signature
Junior - <30 posts and <10 merit - simple text sig with no URL or site reference
Member - >29 posts and >9 merit - basic signature.

This would encourage the better new members to become juniors by participating in the forum activities.

From your calculations, it is clear that after the announcement of new ranking system posts in the forum has slightly reduced. It will help reducing spam posts too in the upcoming days. Maximum Jr.Member will try to collect 1 Merit from now but we expect their merit collection will be improving post quality.

Scraping all accounts that received Merit isn't much work, especially if you only scrape the once that recently received their first Merit.

I think @mocacinno will be able to scraped all the newbies who ranked up to Jr. Member from yesterday to today, but he won't(at least take lot of scraping) catch up the Jr. members who demoted yesterday but ranked up again within the same day.

Another thing we can't take decisions just by trusting our gut feelings as mentioned by @mocacinno. I don't know why people so bothered about to find out those demoted users and try to make a relationship between that one merit they got assuming only from a merit abuser. Why people couldn't create any script to catch the big fishes who awarded Merits with big numbers in perticulary in ANN threads rather finding needle in a haystack. I know abuse is an abuse wether it's one or few but we are playing waiting game when it comes to the big numbers.

I'm totally agreed with that statement and those persons who gave sudden births to be banned if they found guilty.

You have to believe the real problem scammers will be able to obtain a single merit.  I feel like there may be a shelf life on this fix.  As they flip accounts 1 by 1 from Newbie to Jr. Member the shit posts will continue. 

I do believe the low intelligence spammer was just completely wrecked due to this new rule.  You can see it in the forum posts.  I think the rule was good.  Very abrupt for the unaware (I suck and never even knew about the META section until the new rule set off a massive posting glut and everyone was talking about it.)

I have a serious desire to see a 3 merit for Jr. Member limit set  (even though it will set me back).  A Jr. Member account will be much more valuable than previously so it seems like a good trade for the real posters and a disaster for the spammers. 

Glad to have found the META section as this is a fascinating situation being discussed. 

I'm a recovering semi shit poster that didn't even realize what was the score was concerning how or what to post.  I was just firing away opinions and answers.  Never been on a forum with money making tied in so I never imagined all the rules for posting.  I tried to be relevant but I'm now upping my contributions and elaborating on my ideas.