Quote from: KingZee on October 15, 2018, 02:13:01 PM

That last statement is a bit subjective. You should see both sides of the coin. A few people already agree with you and prove it with only allowing a select few to their signatures. But the others that don't, they're not really stupid (I hope..). If they see that allowing more people is more beneficial to their campaign, who are we (you the elitist, me the more lenient) to judge? It's their money they're losing/making.

It's irrelevant who's money they're losing or making when it's at the detriment to the forum. ICOs are pretty much wholly responsible for the forum being a wall-to-wall shitshow consisting of barely coherent crap made only for payment. Most ICOs don't actually lose anything either because they pay people in a pre-mined token or coin that they've made for free, so that's why they accept anyone and everyone regardless of quality because the more people advertising for them then the better, but this shouldn't be acceptable.

Quote from: KingZee on October 15, 2018, 02:13:01 PM

Requoting you : "people were literally farming Junior accounts by their dozens and in some cases hundreds (and probably even thousands) just to abuse campaigns"

That honestly is another problem which is alt accounts. If genuine unique people came in droves to register on the bitcointalk, is that really a bad thing?

Depends what you mean by genuine users? Little cousin Timmy signing up to this forum because he's just been told he can get paid for posting? Is he a genuine user? Not when little Timmy can't speak English very well if at all and has only just found out about bitcoin and doesn't even give a shit about it other than the fact that he can earn money here. That's when we have a problem and that's why the forum is filled with mindless drivel, because little Timmy wants to earn some money and this forum is his best option for doing so. The fact that it's a forum about bitcoin is inconsequential and irrelevant to him, and that's a huge problem.

Quote from: KingZee on October 15, 2018, 01:15:13 PM

Like I said, I agree with you that alt accounts are bad. But is Merit really solving the problem here?

Merit doesn't solve the problem, but it helps curb abuse and is one more hoop they need to jump through. It obviously doesn't go far enough though, but at least it stops bots and the worst of the worse of posters from being able to get paid for copy and pasting or posting rubbish straight from the get-go.

Quote from: KingZee on October 15, 2018, 01:15:13 PM

This is pure speculation but I'm willing to bet that people who are interested in alt accounts are more likely to be longtime members that true newbies.

What do you mean exactly by "interested in". The forum has decayed to the point of unusability because the board has slowly morphed into a place for people to earn money rather than being about a place to talk about bitcoin. Probably 99% of people only sign up here to earn from posting these days. It's like signing up to a Chinese Lamborghini forum. Only you can't speak Chinese, you don't care about cars and can't even drive. If a Chinese Lamborghini forum did start paying people to post then you'd have the same problem you have here: "I like Lamborghinis because they go fast and are nice colours and can get me from A to B and they help me with my daily needs". Ka-ching. Money in the pocket. Rinse and repeat over however many accounts you have and soon you might actually be able to afford that Lambo.

Quote from: KingZee on October 15, 2018, 01:15:13 PM

The merit system doesn't benefit people who write half-decent posts, more than it benefits people who have some sort of "fanbase", "fellowship", sometimes power, leverage. No one besides the select few sMerit generators is going to waste his points on the daily. He needs them to maybe build trust, convince someone, kiss ass, whatever the reasons may be, the reason of "oh wow i'll merit this well written post because the user is honest" comes last.

I wholly disagree. If this was the case then nobody would be giving them out other than to their friends or "fanbase" and this just isn't the case. Most of us want people to make great posts regardless of who or what rank you are, because we're tired of the forum being overran with idiots posting drivel just to get paid. What possible benefit does somebody have by giving me merit? Show me what benefits the people who have merited me have received, otherwise this is just baseless and biased speculation. I don't even need it for anything, and I certainly don't look through my merit history making notes of the names so I can maybe do them a favour or send them some business their way.

Quote from: KingZee on October 15, 2018, 01:15:13 PM

A solution? What's the problem in the first place? Alt accounts? I don't know the behind-the-scenes of this forum, but maybe just ban out alting as a whole? If we can all agree on paper that they bring nothing of value, why don't you act on it?

Not really alts, but low quality posting. How do you ban alts exactly? One of the reasons they're allowed is because you can't really enforce the rule efficiently. There are also genuine reasons for having alts.

Quote from: KingZee on October 15, 2018, 01:15:13 PM

If the problem isn't alt accounts, what then? Forcing people to make well-written posts? There are other systems based on negatives rather than positives. Punish the users who DO spam, don't punish the users who don't post ENOUGH. Force a word-count rule on lower ranked users.

We're not punishing people who don't post enough. We're punishing people who don't really make any posts of substance. It should tell you all you need to know that people are crying like hysterical babies that they now need to get one merit for a signature. A solitary merit. How outrageous! Most people just aren't capable of writing anything constructive and hence why they're so irate because merit isn't easy for them to get, especially when you've got dozens of alts accounts. They got used to earning good money by posting shit and now some effort is actually required these entitled babies are furious because you've essentially snatched money out of their greedy/lazy hands. A word count rule doesn't do anything either and it can make things worse when people just carry on rambling to hit their quota. Some campaigns have had minimum word counts in the past but people just found ways to abuse it by hiding invisible junk onto the end of their posts.

Quote from: KingZee on October 15, 2018, 01:15:13 PM

Or maybe the merit system but in reverse, instead of people being able to +1 people, how about them being able to -1. No one might care about meriting a well-written post, but that doesn't matter because it also prohibits people from using merit as a bargain chip. On the other hand, if a user posts some extremely low quality post, make other users punish him.

Really? How is this any different? This is actually a far worse system and I don't think you've actually thought it through. If we would have implemented this system you'd be here complaining about that right now as would thousands of other angry shitposters who had been neg-bombed into oblivion and have negative chance of being able to earn. How would they even get that back to positive or neutral without some sort of +1?

Quote from: KingZee on October 15, 2018, 01:15:13 PM

In my personal opinion, in the end, context matters a lot. You can't judge a post quality based on word count, user rank, or merits. Almost all signature campaign posts have a shitton of merit, does that mean they contribute with any intrinsic value besides money money for everyone? So in the end, without context, it's just another stat that people are going to trade.

You can't on word count or rank, but why not merit? It somebody writes a really great post it's almost certainly going to get a merit, and probably quite a bit of it, and merit is a pretty good indication of a quality post or not as users making generic nonsense will go unmerited. Again, it's not a perfect system but it's better than nothing and anyone who comes here to contribute something worthwhile should have nothing to worry about as they will get the required merit over time, but those that come here and can't speak English very well and can offer nothing more than basic generic opinions are going to struggle and so they should. Merit isn't the be all and end all of spam control and it needs to go further, and there's a lot more that we need to be doing like punishing badly run signature campaigns, but this is a start and is certainly better than nothing.