Topic: What we can do to get ride of alt farmers? (Read 352 times)

I was concerned about both. But it was not for my payments. I was just talking about other legit users who do fair work but get less because of some farmers. Also these alt farmers are spamming the forum especially local board with useless talking and shit posting for merits. I do not care much about social media campaigns but for a signature campaign, I won't mind for some extra income while exploring and learning in the forum.

This isn't work station that we should regret when workers leave the forum. Forum contributors don't care about the bounty campaigns nor leave the forum for bounty spam. We can't prevent creating alts even implementing KYC verification and IP restrictions. Farmers know very well how to skip restrictions.

That has already begun to happen. From my observation, I've notice the influx of more applications in BTC paying campaigns once there's an opening. So many users struggling for a single slot. Most times it takes less than two hours to get into several pages on a campaign thread. The rush is gradually increasing. It's obvious those with enough merit have started seeing that staying in bounties is a waste of their time. Thus they're switching over. Regrettably, this won't stop the spams in bounties as more newbies will continue to troup in there. That's where they can easily be absorbed in campaigns.

Is the forum really of your concern here or about the pay you get out of bounties?
Hypothetical, I could say it's due to the pay with you talking about users getting to leave because the are receiving less pays and stuff like that.  You seem to be one of those that promote bounties as I can clearly see your POA amongst your recent post. Although I must recount that, you seem to be doing it healthily and that's okay. But les not forget, bounties isn't a the best way to go, forum wise and you are doing much damage to potential crypto investors as, most bounty projects turns out to be scams due to pump and dump.

Little wonder what became the case with 1xbit. Somehow, despite all the warnings and tagging, thy still get patronage from users on and off forum. The more reason why these activities aren't moderated as individual actions still comes through despite flags raised.
My advice for you, keep a healthy involvement with the bounties if you can't stop, help to catch these account farmers if you can and ensure your participation on where it matters most on the forum isn't lacking.

The merit system prevents the worst kind of spammers from ranking up. So that part is solved. Unless they already have high-ranked accounts, they will never rank up in genuine ways. Everything else is up the bounty managers who manage the campaigns. You really shouldn't expect too much from a campaign manager who has no standards and accepts just about anyone. If that is the case with the campaigns you participate in, maybe you should stop wasting your time with those bounty managers (or all bounty campaigns in general) and focus on something else.
 
The bounty section is like that ugly part of the town where all the junkies go to get their daily fix. We all know it's there, but almost no one goes there anymore.

Their activity is mostly contained in bounty section so I don't see it as a huge problem, at least not for a forum as a whole.


Since theymos is against newbie jails and forum staff don't wanna meddle into all this, the only ones who can actually do something about it are bounty managers but they won't do anything because its against their own interest to remove alt accounts. I would advise you to stop wasting your time thinking how to solve this as nothing can be done about it.


I do think that its possible to maintain 10 accounts in a signature campaigns without using bots. Keep in mind that we are talking here about altcoin campaigns so if you don't care about post quality (and I doubt that altcoin bounty managers check those thoroughly) I am sure that you can churn out few hundreds of posts each week without much issues.

Merit system has done fine job on making alts useless, there is that evil fee too. Regarding bounty payouts getting thinner, choose bounties where pay rate is based on account rank (ie, most signature bounties). Alt farmers mostly go to social media bounties.

I think the rules that apply to the forum now are pretty good. The existence of a merit system has also minimized these alt farmers. when compared to before, which he said only used an activity counter to rank up. (I didn't experience it because it was new). but now with the merit system, it has been minimized. and about bounty hunters, I think every manager has their own way of dealing with this.
and remember the main purpose here is a discussion about bitcoin or things that are directly or indirectly related to bitcoin. Even with tools like ninjastick, it's also quite helpful. because I saw many reports in the reputation section how these alt cultivators were caught with just a ninjastick.
but I really appreciate people who care about forums like you.
because I myself can't be like you who can share the focus for caring for the forum. I can only focus on improving myself and improving myself. Because I see that Quality is what is valued in this forum. and it's amazing and motivates me a lot.

That was my first thought after reading OP's post, and it's not the first time the thought has entered my mind.  It's not even the 10,000th.

Having bounty hunters buy a badge wouldn't solve anything.  Hell, the merit system didn't even eradicate these fucking idiot shitposting bounty hunters (although it did make things much better).  And believe me, OP, the problem and the many possible solutions have been discussed many times over the last few years.  I get that you're frustrated, but I have a feeling that this thread isn't going to lead to a new solution to the shitposting problem.

theymos has shown a dislike to the newbie jail which was implemented several years ago, because it restricted too many legitimate users, without too many benefits associated with it. They're unlikely to implement something like this that would pretty much have the same effect.

Although, $10 is nothing when they can earn that back in a day. Most of these alt farmers are likely earning a pretty penny. I think it was somewhat recently discovered a alt farm was participating in a well established signature campaign, and were earning massive amounts of money per week. Then, there's the plethora of bounties they can abuse, which might be hit, and miss, but can earn users some money on the side.

They definitely use bots. I see it everyday now I'm more exposed to it. I wouldn't think it would be far stretched to say some are in the thousands. They're likely using bots in an attempt to earn enough merit, to then earn from the accounts, which might mean once they've done that they'd use them properly all of sudden. I don't think the latter happens much as it simply doesn't happen with the merit system, but I imagine that's their line of thought.

Otherwise, I don't know why. Hundreds of accounts like these are nuked per month I'd say. You find its either low quality or they're copying it from another post. However, in most cases because of the way they're doing it, connecting the accounts is almost instant. For a few months I was battling a thread bumping system, which used the same sort of words, and sentence structuring. They have somewhat disappeared recently though, at least that group of them.

Unless, I haven't caught onto their new techniques yet.

Are you of the opinion that the bounty payout is getting thinner because the number of participants is increased? How about if the increased numbers are totally new people that aren't alts?
I think the emphasis should be how to avoid cheating by making alt accounts not join same campaign.


I don't understand the part of the forum you are coming from. Do users control accounts upto 10? For what purpose and how do they manage it. There's no how a user can complete posts on 10 accounts without using a bot. Aren't they required to make posts?

You can choose an alternative way. As I have seen on a campaign managed by Brainboss, he only allowed hunters who have more than 100 activity on forum. We can increase that to maybe 200/300, and we need some mod on bounty section who will verify and report those who will try and increase their activity by shitposting. This will be legit and no one will have to pay to get their account activated. Or if we can give some time except doing bounties, we can report those and mark them for mods on forum.

There is no way to get rid of the Alt account, especially the cheating part in the Bounty campaign, I can say the purpose of the forum is not for that, some Alt rules are allowed on the forum, the problem of cheating lies not in this forum, but in the rules of the Bounty campaign itself.

For example:
Nearly 99% of Bounty campaigns employ members of the following sections: Twitter, facebook, Telegram, youtube, instragram and so on, the main requirement is to meet the highest Followers rules, especially the T/F section, the campaign doesn't make rules, you have to be the highest ranking member, Well, that's where a bunch of Alt accounts will appear who want to generate some of the tokens offered by the Bounty company, There are no high shelf requirements, the important thing is that you have lots of followers.

Conclusion 1: if you want to get rid of or reduce the involvement of alt accounts in Bounty, campaigns must create additional rules for certain ranked accounts to complete the terms of the Bounty campaign, although some involve Alt accounts, but it will be limiting because you have to have a certain rank to be a participant, is such a method possible, the answer is of course no, reason: because the company's profit is not based on members, but based on tweets and Rets from Twitter accounts, facebook etc.

Another solution, every bounty is paid in Bitcoin and only advertises based on sig, not with social media, is such a method possible, Of course you can, but the company can't afford to pay the bounty participants, because nowadays there are many companies who cheat, for nothing.

Conclusion 2: I don't think the forum wants to get rid of the cheating Alt in the Bounty, because the cheaters, cheating and so on it's not moderated, the problem that the OP meant that could solve is the Bounty manager itself based on the rules, the others can't.

You got it wrong or I failed to clearly mention it. It was a one-time payment for new members only to be eligible for every future campaign. My only intention is to demotivate them from creating hundreds of accounts again and again.

Ultimately, if there's an incentive for account farmers then you'll likely see alt farmers on mass. If there isn't any incentive, there would be less, but ultimately the wider forum users would suffer from this. For example, removing signature campaigns would undoubtedly reduce spam, farmers, and some scam signatures, however ultimately that means restricting legitimate users, which I'm not a fan of.

I personally think the sort of economy we've got going on in the forum is a good thing. theymos has made it more difficult with various changes, for example the merit system makes it harder for low quality farmers from ranking up accounts, and therefore reducing the incentive without too much impact on legitimate users. Then, the bumping changes on the altcoin announcement sections was implemented, which in turn reduced the amount of projects participating in fake bumping groups.

So, ultimately theymos has already implemented things which have been rather effective. However, I'm sure there's other things that could be introduced, although none spring to mind. Although, what we have to remember this will always be a problem, when there's an incentive for doing it, which at the moment, there's plenty of incentives.

Pay $10 to join a campaign? These poor bounty hunters can't earn enough to pay for it. Is there a guarantee that the campaigns themselves will pay?

In order not to be disappointed, just do not participate in dubious campaigns paying in tokens. Leave this "fun" to those who are completely unable to read and educate themselves on the forum, but can only click links and repost unnecessary spam.

There is no solution, just leave them in the bounty section with their spam, if there are genuine bounty hunters that feel hard done by the cheaters, let them leave the bounty section and come to other sections of the forum where genuine and quality conversations take place, that way they will never have to feel cheated again, and if they must earn from Bitcointalk, as they leave the bounty section and converse with good members of the forum, they will learn many things about bitcoin and they will rank up, then they can join signature campaigns run by reputable managers. Problem solved.

The forum is for bitcoin discussion, and there is no discussion about bitcoin happening in the bounty section, how then can a member make 99% of their post there and still feel entitled to earn from the forum, it is unethical.

Forums actually need contributions. Even though we managed to get rid of that account farmer, I don't even know what kind of contribution the honest participants will have as far as they are doing tasks outside the forum. If their crafty work is still promising and they have the chance to do it, I don't think they'll care about any warnings either.

And the rules of bounty board give them the leeway to send work reports (which are considered spam), maybe the board were reserved for them.

A lot of them just spam threads of generic research like not giving up and do research and yadda yadda in the hopes of getting at least 1 merit. Just be significantly stricter if you see accounts that has a very low postcount:merit ratio.

IF all bounty managers will be united and have the same criteria for picking participants, there will be no problem.

IMO, let them be, let them catch, and as much as we have scam busters they'll become have less interest in the forum plus another factor, is they don't even rank up into a member status, they can buy maybe 1 or 2 merits but I don't think they can more than that.

Regarding the badge, sorry but for me, it's wasting of time.

I disagree, buy a badge to join a campaign is similar like using this forum only for money oriented purpose and they can get rid of achieving 100 merit/improve quality posts.

Do you think a manager care with such rules? bounty is pay with worthless coin, why should they tightening the rules if they receive worthless coin? Let's say the top managers will adopt such rules, do you think they don't have any other option to pick newbie manager who will do anything to earn worthless coin? And the moderators doesn't care with any managers who manage the campaign.

There's no solution for bounties section, it is what it is.

Anyone who leaves the forum cause they did not get the expected amount they wanted from a bounty campaign, would not be missed that much.
Bounties and signatures are secondary on the forum, the primary purpose is Bitcoin discussion.

The admin has already stated that they would not get involved in managing bounties or helping to directly moderate their activities.
In the hypothetical situation that this idea was accepted, what would force the bounty managers to consider the badges when choosing participants for their campaigns.

Recently the number of red-flagged accounts to getting higher but still, it is not demotivating them to create many more. These alt farmers are destroying the environment of the forum and abusing bounty rules. These also demotivate genuine workers to leave the forum because their already dropping payout getting thinner because of these multi-users. So I think we could discuss a solution on how to get rid of these alt farmers or at least demotivate or force them to work fairly. I am giving my opinion here and you can leave your opinion too.

my opinion: