Quote from: Becassine on Today at 09:47:24 PM

Can we consider accepting a participant who didn't have a forum account, but who has had an account X for at least a year, for example? Otherwise, what's the point of sharing the contest on social media?

You are talking a lot like a bounty campaign.
But even here, if they don't have an account on the forum, how can the contest manager be sure that they are not abusers or scammers?
The participant needs to prove they are not a scammer or an abuser and that's why they also require proof of authentication, which is not possible without an account on the forum.

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Could you tell me what's a copper member please ?

Buying a copper membership will allow a newbie rank holder member as the same power of a member rank holder.
Mainly it will allow a newbie rank holder to post images on their post.
here is the admin post about the coppermembership-

Quote from: theymos on November 10, 2017, 09:23:30 PM

By popular demand, newbies can now pay to have some of their restrictions lifted. If you pay the fee, you become a Copper Member, and you can post images. That's the main point of this: allowing newbies to post images. Additionally (and these might change depending on how things go), Copper Members currently have these bonuses:

- Some of the same permissions as Member-rank members, such as reduced signature styling restrictions. (But none of the PM-related restrictions are currently lifted, such as the style limit or per-hour PM limit.)
- Your "you must wait ____ seconds between ___" counter is reduced by 75%. So if you're naturally of Newbie rank, you only have to wait 360-75% = 90 seconds.

If you paid an "evil IP" registration fee, then whatever you paid (in BTC terms) is subtracted from the upgrade fee. If you paid a registration fee a long time ago, you might even get a free Copper Membership due to the increase in BTC price. Just visit the link at the bottom of this post to check whether you have it already.

I am aware that for most people the benefits of this membership are pretty lame. This membership is only intended to fill a specific niche; if you don't need it, don't buy it. It is not intended to be the lower-cost Donator/VIP alternative which I've talked about before as a possibility.

I wrote the system so that I can easily add additional paid memberships in the future, but I might not ever do so. Not sure.

You can buy it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=credit;promote