Topic: Theymos why should we use external script for find important data like ban/merit (Read 788 times)

It's most likely that theymos don't want to change how the things are. It is possible to get unbanned but it's unlikely to happen,you need to have strong evidence and good reputation.


One nice quote discussing the iamnotback ban, but also a bit of theymos' view of the forum and regulations.
I don't want to edit the quote so here is the full comment.

However administrators do not pay much attention to this problem for some reason.

It's even possible to merit their good posts after they've been banned.

Interesting indeed! Last Friday, I had merited a total of 721 profiles (since the beginning of time, not just the last 180 days).
If I combine this list with my (incomplete) data on banned accounts, it turns out I have merited 14 banned accounts (sorted: oldest accounts first):

From my Merit stats:

And from more of my Merit stats, these are the posts made by banned users, merited by me:
Sat Jan 5 17:12:49 2019: 3 to nuno12345 (history) for Re: We need some help to decode a hacker addon
Sat Oct 13 20:30:42 2018: 1 to ferall (history) for Re: [BUYING] Bitcoin. Have $7500 Paypal.
Tue Oct 16 14:16:52 2018: 2 to Sowik (history) for [Guide] Secure air-gapped crypto wallet storage method
Sat Sep 15 16:59:30 2018: 1 to ChiBitCTy (history) for How to sell Bitcoin on your Cell Phone from a Cold Storage Paper Wallet
Wed Jan 31 08:22:14 2018: 1 to ChiBitCTy (history) for How to sell Bitcoin on your Cell Phone from a Cold Storage Paper Wallet
Sat Feb 3 13:30:28 2018: 1 to sebinator (history) for Please ban "FB/Twitter Report" posts
Mon May 14 19:40:41 2018: 1 to zentdex (history) for 100 Days of Merit
Mon Sep 24 11:36:46 2018: 1 to meterse (history) for Re: 6 reasons why future ICOs will use Byteball instead of Ethereum (+screenshots)
Sat Aug 4 12:01:26 2018: 1 to meterse (history) for Re: BYTEBALL: Totally new consensus algorithm + private untraceable payments
Fri Oct 19 15:12:09 2018: 1 to first_user111 (history) for How Am Currently Being Scammed At Mercatox
Sat Jan 5 10:39:58 2019: 1 to reactorjuno (history) for Bitcoin, 2019 and next halving
Sat Aug 18 20:27:35 2018: 1 to reactorjuno (history) for Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
Tue Oct 30 19:05:42 2018: 1 to Marcel555 (history) for Re: Forum with continuous voting
Sat Sep 1 09:29:14 2018: 3 to vphasitha01 (history) for [RUPL] Ranking-Up Pipe Line of Forum Members
Mon Aug 20 22:25:54 2018: 1 to vphasitha01 (history) for Re: [GUIDES] on Bitcointalk. Index thread (until there is a dedicated subforum?)
Tue Aug 7 18:45:21 2018: 1 to vphasitha01 (history) for [RUPL] Ranking-Up Pipe Line of Forum Members
Wed Jul 4 09:41:39 2018: 1 to vphasitha01 (history) for Merit source applications of senior members....
Wed Jun 20 11:16:45 2018: 1 to anunymint (history) for Re: Why is it more profitable for a node with more than 51% computation power?
Wed Nov 21 10:59:59 2018: 1 to Fies7aa (history) for Buy high sell low! PRICE BTC 3800 eur. How?
Sun Dec 23 12:55:33 2018: 1 to Snowflower11 (history) for Re: Giving 4 Newbie Members a Chance to Rank Up To J. Member

I just checked the posts, and I'm not ashamed of meriting any of those. I am surprised by some of the names that got banned though, several of them were good posters.

The fact that they are banned doesn't make them automatically bad posters. I see LoyceV in this list and I'm sure he would not waste merit on meaningless comments/posts.
It is unfortunate that those merit are lost but we have enough merit generated per month so I don't see why we have to worry about it.

Here is the list how many merit sent to permabanned user. That means total 1501 merits has burned.

Top senders to permabanned users, last 180 days

Do you think that publicly displayed banned profile will arouse the interest of other user and scrutiny by everybody?
I guess it is helpful in finding the ban evasion too.

I actually made that exact point in another thread. For the same reasons that we don't show trust in all boards because it would prejudice you against what an untrusted user is saying, I can see the point behind not publicly showing which users are banned.

I still think the best solution here is to allow frequent reporters to see the banned status. It is already shown to mods, so would be fairly trivial to implement for all users with >5000 good reports (for example). Banned status doesn't matter to users who aren't reporting, but would be very beneficial for users who are wasting their time investigating plagiarism and similar for users who are already banned. Both the suggestion regarding showing only on their profile page and a check box to turn it on or off could work alongside my proposal, but I don't think either of them are necessary if we are only showing the status to frequent reporters anyway.

Why don't we ask for a new feature, like a checkbox in the profile if you want to see if members are banned or not. The default would be not to show if a member is banned and only those who are interested would tick that box to show them the banned status instead of the rank under the username in a post.
This way, average joes won't see any difference but those who care (and report) would get an extra help from the system to be more effective.
Just an idea

Someone told before that if people will able to see on the forum that the member is banned, they will be biased against everything written by him/her.
However, the "banned" status might be shown to registered users exclusively, on the personal page of the banned member.
Therefore, in order to see whether a member is banned or not, you will have to go to his/her page specifically, and this will help to avoid bias.



Pros:
- users will not send private messages to banned members;
- users will not send merit to banned members;
- the number of unnecessary reports will be reduced.

In addition, I would like to note that a significant part of banned members is not listed on third-party websites like bpip.org and loyce.club.

This questions isn't about responsibility, its important for reporters and merit sources. Lot of people's spending time here by report plagiarism, spam post. If the user already banned then no meaning make report again for plagiarism, single user might make multiple plagiarized post. So is it not better if known the status before report? Visit external script means extra time.

On the other hand may be banned user made meritable post. Send merit his post means you just lost it forever although merit deserve post, not a person but it's really waste.

Reporting spam post of banned user might be reduce forum spam but not much needed to report them.

Also it makes the site more secure. IMO this is paramount. Every new bell and whistle is a potential back door. In this specific case though I am sure it could easily and securely be done it is just a matter of other considerations.

Didn't the forum have a load of red Xs in the coin section for banned users. I think that could be a better solution, as it shows the rank of the banned user.

I'm grateful to the members who care enough about the forum to create external sites and scripts. It frees Theymos to spend time on essential internal forum maintenance. It also allows him to read threads and posts to form an opinion of members.

You don't have to take responsibility for who you ban if no one knows...

You have to read a lot of theymos old posts to understand the way he thinks, at least try to understand him. There are different aspects and points of view, that really changed the way I was looking at some things, like the email confirmation upon registration etc.. (this was a discussion with Satoshi back in the day, so theymos is keeping the old legacy)

What I would love to see is the number of banned accounts per thread, only for the Altcoin section. This can be good guideline for reporters

I like this idea, would be just fine for the purpose.
If we are facing more and more spam, efficiency can be a key for the reporters...
BTW, I can understand that theymos don't want to show to the public that half of users of the Altcoin discussion is banned already

It's probably already a field in the database. If you're running a query to get the user's information anyways, it's not much to pull that extra field of information from the database anyways.

I did make an extension (w/ Vod's approval) for BPIP: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.46208761
Eventually, the plan is to add a feature where-by the "Banned" red text will be added to a user's profile.

Correct is has been discussed also but I don't know why admin not reply like this important discussion. It could be safe reporter time so that he can report some other post.

You are right. If an account already banned then we don't need to report like plagiarism. So we can search some others.  

May be at least it will be some helpful. But I don't see any problem if mark on profile. Do you believe that someone will use banned account continue except create new account ? I don't think so.

With even a very cursory search, I've found three threads in the last 6 months discussing this. In every thread, it is generally considered to be a good idea, but theymos has not commented, so we can only assume he doesn't want to show banned accounts publicly for whatever reason. In that case, I would propose a simple alternative - everyone with over 1000/2000/5000/pick-a-number "good" reports gets to see which accounts are banned. These are the people who are doing the majority of the reporting and catching the majority of the plagiarizers, and these are the people whose time is being wasted the most by investigating users who are already banned. Since we know that banned accounts are already marked as such for staff, then it should be fairly easy to implement.

This has been discussed before, but I don't remember the outcome now.
I'd be happy to see if a banned user changes rank to 'Banned' or something similar.
I remember now (hopefully well) that this was discussed in a topic about reporting, because this could really help those who report a lot to check if a post is worth to be read and check or not.

If I remember well, there was another suggestion too, that if a post has been already reported and still waiting for the judgement of mods, the 'Report to moderator' button should be hidden to prevent double work and let the reporters job more efficient.

Exactly that's the most important reason why I like to see ban indication on their profile. Few case might be happen like this that user already banned and we are searching him to find plagiarism. Sometimes we bother to report spam post, if user already banned then its really waste of time for both mod and us. So theymos should consider this option. If banned user is wealth for forum and not possible to exposed them then why should ban them ?

Really I don't see any problem if marked them on their profile like I explain him. I don't know what is on admin mind if there is any valid reason.