Round 5: Notes & Critique

Here are my notes for all of the participants. Please remember that this is my personal opinion, and in no way reflect the views of the moderators, staff, or any other members of this forum. If you don't like it, start your own challenge. These notes can also be seen on the spreadsheet.

Seetheummerallyeah: I like your posting style a lot. A lot of your replies and answers are simple, very direct and to-the-point, but I can tell that you took a lot of thought and time to answer them. You're a model member, and I'll be using you as a reference (if I could remember your username lol) of what I consider to be a great poster, and far from a shitposter. Even the 3 companies that you chose for bounties are the same ones I bookmarked as decent bounties to send to people who inquire about bounty campaigns that I'd recommend. You're a great member of the Altcoin community, and based on your post contributions and the topics you find interest in, I personally feel like you'd be a great merit source for the Altcoin boards. Great job this week, and I hope you stick around!

Sellingaccs: Great to see you stick around for the challenge this week! I like how you focused on helping out other members this week. Your technical knowledge in bitcoin and altcoins is welcomed and refreshing to see. You also took an interest to helping eliminate a shit campaign, which is great, as it shows your general interest in the forums as a whole, and not just a place to earn money. You've shown a huge improvement in that aspect, in my eyes. Your posts are short and direct; a great example of posts that don't have to be paragraphs in order to be good posts. Your posts, however, leave a desire for more references and sources, especially when reviewing sites or providing examples in your replies. Rather than just stating something definitive, it's always an added bonus if you can back it up with a screenshot or a link. Other than that, the only other critique I have is your post structure; try not to create a line break after every sentence. It's not really too annoying, except for the fact that I hate seeing this structure now because so many shitposters use it. You're far from being a shitposter, so it's confusing to see you posting this way lol. Solid week!

max2607: Great week for you! You're a well above average poster, and you seem to be very comfortable with the forums and its navigation. I wish you would reference a few more sources in the posts where you make some definitive statements that could easily be backed (example: these could easily be referenced - "There twitter has all bots followers" or "theymos or moderators only ban someone..."). Overall, keep up what you're doing; NONE of your posts have made me feel that you were a shitposter in any way. Great job!

butka: I'm really glad that you're part of this challenge. You've easily been added to the likes of @nullius and @Blue Tyrant as perfect examples of Newbies performing the correct way. Your dedication to the development and technical knowledge of Bitcoin is extremely impressive, and you're asking the right questions the right way. I've learned from the topics you've started this round, and while its apparent that you didn't have all the knowledge of the given topics, you've positioned them in a way to invite the correct answers, and you did it in a non-threatening way that was inviting for more established members to easily contribute to. Thank you for being a part of my challenge. I know that your interest mainly lies in the technical side of things, but feel free to venture about the boards! For example, you'll find a lot of questions by Newbies in "Beginners & Help" and people looking for help in "Project Development" that I think would benefit from your insight. Overall, another solid week for you!

shahzadafzal: Another solid round for you. But again, be careful when choosing which topics to post in. Opinionated and speculative topics such as "How to raise a smart kid?" or "What will happen if many countries accept virtual money" are designed to illicit broad and generic answers, no matter how much you try to portray your own experiences in those types of situations. The problem is that your answer, while well-written, will become ignored by users who are solely posting to rank up their accounts. Ultimately, posts in these topics end up contributing to more spam, no matter how well your posts are written. Other than that, I'm glad that you're finding more comfort throughout the forums. It's apparent that you enjoy bitcointalk, and are a great asset to the community!

RYXES: I love reading your posts. Your knowledge of mining really shows through, and I believe that you're an asset to the mining sub on the forums. Your passive aggressive posts are also entertaining to read, and they actually are contributive to the topics at hand LOL. I don't consider you a shitposter by any means, but if you want to improve your score, the devil is in the details. Just those extra little details when constructing a post, giving just that one extra example, and then posting a link to a reference or a source will take you a long way. Overall, I don't know what to tell you to help you improve your posts other than that... Otherwise, it's not that your posts are bad, it's just that all you participants are being critiqued and graded on a curve, so your competition is mainly each other (not my criteria). I had fun reviewing your account this week; keep it up!

Danstan: Getting better! I can see that you've listened to my critique from last week and have done a better job in choosing topics to post in, as well as providing better replies that weren't so generic. Your replies this time around were thought-out much better than your last round, and I could tell that you took more time and consideration in your posts. However, be careful where you post. One of your best posts just happened to get ignored (mainy) because it was on the 29th page of a megathread. These topics are only contributive to more spam on the boards, and a haven for shitposters to spam their posts. Just a word of advice for the next round: Try to stay out of Bitcoin Discussion, Speculation, and Economics and see if you can contribute to any other conversations. If something is too much for you to handle or understand, feel free to ask questions! Just explain that you're new and really do have a desire to learn. As long as members don't think you're there to post for the sake of posting, they'll be helpful! Overall, good improvement, but I know you can do better!

theyoungmillionaire: Your posts are the most controversial in this challenge. While I do appreciate that you're taking a lot of time to post positive news regarding bitcoin, you're just copying and pasting articles from other sources. At least you're referencing the sources, but what you're doing is essentially using the forums like your personal blog. While you're intentions are good, I find this to be slightly deceptive. There's no need to copy and paste an entire article; you can grab a paragraph, quote it, and then link the article for viewers to read the rest of it. If I may be honest, you're a merit whore. I feel like EVERY SINGLE post that you made in this round was for the direct purpose of receiving merit. You definitely earned merits for doing this, but anyone that views your post history will see that you're lacking the genuine aspect of wanting to be here on the forums. The impression that I get is that you're simply breeding your account and aiming to level it up so that you can join a campaign later. None of your posts seem genuine to me. I could be wrong, but the name of this challenge IS "Joe's Signatureless Challenge", so my opinion is what matters the most. Please stop copying and pasting articles, as I consider that shady, even if you are posting the source at the end. There really wasn't much else for me to critique, as the very few posts that had words of your own were submitted in merit threads. If you want a better score next round, try to post more organically, cool?

Disqualified Participants

IvanRed58rus: Does not qualify. Only 4 posts in Round 5 were in English
Crypttoman: Does not qualify. Only 6 posts have been made in Round 5; none of the posts were in English.
marcelo01: Does not qualify. 0 posts have been made in Round 5
btctrad0r: Disqualified. Wearing paid signature (SKYFchain)
nalinpuri: Does not qualify. Only 5 posts have been made in Round 5
maflec0713: Does not qualify. Only 2 posts have been made in Round 5
Ancient skills: Does not qualify. Only 3 posts have been made in Round 5
rockyz: Does not qualify. 0 posts have been made in Round 5
Lorin: Disqualified. Applied for paid signature campaign (BitWhisk)
sull.kureen: Does not qualify. Only 2 posts have been made in Round 5
oleksaUA0209: Disqualified. Wearing paid signature (GymRewards)
kiemnhieutien: Disqualified. Wearing paid signature campaign (IOS)
EzBreezy: Disqualified. Wearing paid signature campaign (IOS)
jony35490: Disqualified. This user is wearing a signature from an expired paid campaign (Ultima)