Bitcoin Forum

What's to be done about threads like this one (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1563184)? Pretty much every reply is from an illiterate sig spammer except for my reply calling them out (which didn't stop them, no doubt because they didn't read it - I don't know why I thought they might). The problem of sig spam has officially gone from "goddamn annoying" to "fucking ridiculous". Tell me again why we don't just ban paid posts like every other forum?

There is really nothig else to do about the spams that other people post. A thread will keep on getting useless replies if it stays open to other peoples post. If every thread starters will know the importance of lockig their thread once they get an answer, spammers will have nothing to post their nonesense.
There is this SMAS campaign that campaign managers are trying to implement on all campaigns available here in the forum. It may not stop people from posting nonsense but it may reduce the number of spams here in the forum

 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1545652.0

I dont know why is for somebody annoying if forum have signature campainsg allowed.That is good for forum users and users which come just  to advertise their site.So the are in position win-win and forum admin is in win-win position because forum is more popular.I hate when rich peoples are moving ref link code,they hate faucet in casinos,they hate ads in forums.I cant understand their angry brain.

The majority of the problems with Signature Campaigns are the things that stem off of them. If you give someone an incentive to post on the forum then it is guaranteed that some people will take advantage of this, spamming the forum with useless shit.
This benefits no one but the spammer. It ruins the forum experience for a number of users, and paints the company incentivizing this posting in a bad light for allowing it (Ex. YoBit, CoinRoll).

Because once again, it encourages spam. This forum (Especially subsections such as Micro Earnings and Gambling) would become a cesspool should ref links be allowed.

In regards to the original post, I believe that the main problem with spam stems from there not being a clear point of what is and isn't allowed. You would think that threads promoting said spam would be disallowed under the 'No Insubstantial Posts' rule, but apparently not.
If you want to ignore the majority of these posters, I would suggest DannyHamilton's ignore list (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=973843.0). While it does sometimes block posters with constructive posts, it is a fairly good compromise to avoid seeing spam.

Hmm i dont know is there any program like example bot which can scan post and if is in your post something which can spam forum then it dont allow to post that post if it dont exist it can be good idea.

Yes its true that many users spam here just to increase their post count to earn paid for their posts.
But why you want the paid posts to be banned here.Many peoples earn from this there are some good members also who do not spam and earn.
You want all the peoples to be workless you want to take the earning opportunities from them.May be you are pretty rich or already earning alot but for those who dont have much earning,these earnings are helping them but you doent care about them.
May be you are jealous and dont want that other people didnt earn and you are the only one of the few here who is rich and every body gives you respect.

Yeah I honestly feel bad for joining a signature campaign some days.
But I figure if someone will pay me for my posts, I might as well take the money.
I try not to spam, I only post actual helpful responses, but there are definitely people who are going to make a ton of new threads and reply with a bunch of garbage to increase their post count.

Its sad that probably more than 50% of the posts on this forum are people just spamming to increase their post count.
Half the shit isn't even readable. Or its a link to some story about bitcoin from six months ago.

I suppose that someone used that alt-account to create the thread and after reply with his main accounts, if you look most of the threads in that section/board are articulated in this way.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1563903.0

Exactly and I don't think there is a way to stop this cra*, maybe reintroduce the limitation for newbie users aka newbie jail (I don't know).

Illiterate.  This is a great example of that.  You might be literate in your 1st language,  but this broken bullshit English is not worth the effort to even try to understand.  99% of posts on this forum wouldn't be worth reading--I'm not wasting a single nanosecond trying to figure out what some degenerate Indochinaman (or whatever) is trying to say in their sig spam.  This is an English language forum after all.

What you need to do is to put your self in their shoes :) if some one paying $1.5 bucks for said 20 posts in one day then will you spend 10 minutes for each post and then do it? it is about 200 minutes, I'm not justifying spamming but maybe if you get a decent amount then you could make the efforts to take your time with posting.

Oh and another thing is just to not reading them and ignoring them completely.

 Awwww... you rich guys and your angry brains just don't understand it's a win-win-win-win for these guys to post in broken English.

Ignoring cancer doesnt make it go away especially if it already spread around 90% of your body.

You should not call them illiterates. Insensible and uneducated is the right term. They should not spam for few cents only to get banned. If only, all legendary members were mods! They could clear out the mess. I can hardly read any educative post here in BCT

Sir, I am by no means rich.  Angry yes, but getting paid to shit all over the place to be for bitcoin enthusiasts can't be justified.   I'm sorry,  you know these fuckers wouldn't be posting on any English language forum if they weren't getting paid.  And I highly doubt they're feeding themselves with sig earnings.   Gambling is more like it, and then they come on here to ask for loans and all that other BS.  Does that sound about right?

 That sounds spot on ;)

If you ask me I'd say forum mods love this cancer as for more posts and traffic means more popularity and income for them as well.
Honestly if I wanted to spam I couldn't find the right and good threads fast enough to do it because most of the threads are useless.

Then you arent looking correctly.
For example there were two threads shown here in which you could spam for infinity.

Ha,  just look at the Gambling section, its literally clogged up with pointless threads wherein every user utters the same bullshit replies.

Not all questions are considered crap. Yes, I agree that I expect good news, or good strategy or good betting site reviews and I find posts regarding users wins and future of BTC. However, they are related to gambling too. I think we should not objectify the minds of users. Who are we to comprehend the human mind?

Danny actually has a whitelist of people who wear paid signatures that do not post complete garbage. This pretty much addresses the issue of not being able to view constructive posts.

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I have noticed that since this crackdown (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1334019.0) in the off topic section was implemented, that more and more useless threads who sole purpose is to allow signature spammers and account farmers to make a bunch of useless posts has significantly increased in the bitcoin discussion section. There are probably at least 5 or 6 threads on the first page of bitcoin discussion at any given time that most likely have nothing but useless posts in them.

If I understand you clearly, your definition of spam is someone who writes bad English. Campaign managers can correct that by checking the posts of the people they hire, and keeping those with good English.

The problem is not that sig spammers can't write (bad English does not make a post spam), but that they can't (or won't) read. Half of all spam replies ignore what previous posters have said (often just answering questions after they're already answered, but bonus points for replying with questions already answered in the thread), and the other half are completely off topic due to not even reading the OP! My ignore list currently has 3,390 users and is growing at an alarming rate. This nonsense has to stop.

How do you think it can be stopped? Advertisement is a major source of income to the site.

There are no bots that can detect post quality accurately, as it would need to understand the English language. If there were I'm sure it would be used for better purposes than a spam checker for a forum.

He does, however it isn't very conclusive. Members such as myself, mexxer and Lutpin are still blocked by Danny's list. I would consider all of us to have constructive posts.

You're an idiot.

Paid signatures can be removed. Signature advertisements do not directly contribute to the site's income; I'm sure that it can live without them.

Signature campaigns are best way for newbies and others to earn bitcoin and this way they promote Bitcoin.I wouldn't even care to visit the forum if I dont get bitcoin because unlike early adopters or rich miners, I dont have lots of coins and buying them is not economically possible for me.
That said I dont mean to say that we should tolerate spams or crappy posts in the name of increasing post counts.
But the best one to take decision in this matter is the campaign managers

Really hate those threads. But I guess the best I can do is to try and clarify, because those threads are always already 5 pages long by the time i try to report them.

Literacy is certainly a problem on this forum. I would really like to suggest banning all illiterate members, but that could be viewed as discrimination by me.


But you've gotta admit that a large chunk of the bitcointalk community is just here for the signature campaigns.

I would, yes. Whether this is a good thing for the prosperity of the community is debatable.
While I think it is fine to get paid for something you already would do - in this case wearing a signature to get paid for posting you would still do otherwise - I believe that people that post solely get paid from their signature do not benefit the forum whatsoever.

I know I do have one, but I rarely post here because I would feel ashamed to do so.
Bitcoin Discussion is now just a dump of "what to do with bitcoin" and a lot of other non sense hypothetical bullshit.
I come here mostly to check my localized section(Portuguese) because at least there is no flooding of useless posts and topics.

Even reddit is proving to be more useful and cleaner than this forum. No wonder why all the veterans and devs of this forum disappeared.

Look at beginners section, Gambling and Bitcoin Discusion. There are full of signature spamers. There are many long topics with more than 50 pages inside. And what we see in it : every page of thread consists of same answers. They not see, if question was already answered, sometimes they are too lazy to read what OP.

Alot of hero members I noticed in that thread too.  :-\
Just skimmed over it so if there was a legendary you might want to see if their account was bought recently. ::)

I was removed from his list after I requested for him to review my posting history several months ago. He removed me from the ignore list and placed me on a special list on the next update. Seeing how he hasn't been updating it frequently, I doubt he is actively maintaining it anymore.

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The spam wasn't this bad several months ago, I'm seeing threads with 20+ pages of spammers typing the same content over and over again. The worst part is some of the spammers aren't even talking about the topic itself.

I got to admit its some places to posts if the only thing you know is signature campaign but it think its up to a signature campaign to disband certain topics in some threads.

I think most spammers are from yobit. And since of local posts are not counted it's just easier to posts in this kinds of threads. And yobit has to update and track every spammers and thats why the  send button is not working there because of this major spam problems. But not entirely that yobit is like that because of spammers. Other things need to be updated.

I will say I strenuously disagree with this.  If you can't write in a given language, your posts (the content of which spammers could give a shit about) are going to come out garbled and indecipherable.  And many of them do.  We have members here whose 1st language isn't English, and they write English beautifully.  I'm sorry, I don't want to have to work hard to interpret a post that's probably not worth reading anyway.

I agree with you about the lack of reading.  I see it over and over.  Shitposters read the title of the thread and BANG, they squat over bitcointalk.org and out comes the reply.

The thing is, that's not my experience at all. If a person can write in any language at all (and is trying to), it shows. Bad English written (as opposed to auto-translated) by someone who is literate in their native language will typically have a logical grammar even if that grammar isn't English, and spelling and vocabulary errors will be consistent (to the point where it's often possible to identify their native language by the kind of errors they're making in English). It's not hard to tell the difference between someone who just doesn't know English and someone who just doesn't give a shit. The former are in the minority on this forum.

Interesting that we didnt get a single input from a staff member. They might have given up on this one :S

Discussing this in threads that seem to pop up every week or so has become the norm, and although the threads are fine to throw hate at these spammers (and occasionally at the moderators and admins), I hardly think that they will help much (if at all) towards getting rid of these spammers.

From what I can see, these are the two options that the forum has at this point (tell me if you think otherwise):

1) Do a 360, take some sort of action against shitposts that will prune pretty much 90-96% of this community, and set itself back down but make the forum a much better place to be in. Whether this will attract more users that actually give a crap about what they are discussing or destroy the forum is up to your decision.

2) Let signature spammers continue to pluck off the actually intelligent, dedicated bitcoiners who came here to have a discussion of bitcoin, instead of parroting why exactly gambling (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1091704.0) is (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1243659.0) bad (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1199744.0) for 100+ pages in multiple threads, and inflate the forum's population until a different forum arises that is a safe haven for the afore mentioned bitcoiners and BitcoinTalk is reduced to a shithole. It's only a matter of time, trust me. It may be good advertisement money for now, but it won't last long.

Oh, and as long as BitcoinTalk doesn't make a decision and remains as option two, it's harder and harder to choose the first option.

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Not really.You do have the "Report to Moderator" button ,use it more often,required actions are taken by them as quick as possible.If the case is too bad,you can always PM them,Cyrus is active most of the time and so is hilariousandco!

About the thread,yes there's always a new one in a week or so.Mods are too tired of arguing over same stuff repeatedly I guess.

As others have mentioned these sorts of threads pop up every week or so and it gets tiring responding to the same question over and over. We're currently discussing ways to combat spam but can't really make any big changes without admin input but most of us agree those sort of shit threads mentioned in the op should be locked and probably will be.

Yet still, when i report such threads, nothing gets done

Where did I say they would be removed if you report them? If you read what I wrote I said we were currently discussing how to handle them.

I'm not sure of the problem of the thread OP posted? Most signature campaigns pay bonus for posting in the gambling section - so why don't spammers just post there all the time if the intent is to spam (there's enough threads to do that there)?
Users who feel people do post bad quality posts should consider talking to the manager of the signature campaign directly to have them removed from it.

Ok, i dont see what the discussion is about though, you guys have no choice but to either delete them, or get new staff to clean up the spam

It may be difficult for the moderators though. How can they work out what is spam? They can't just target those in signature campaigns either, they'd have to clear up everywhere! Or then they're judging things differently depending on whether a user wishes to earn when they post or not.

The problem campaigns never listen to you. 9/10 I never get any response from them even after months of telling them they need to start looking after their campaigns. Try PM bitmixer or some of the shitcoin sig campaigns and see if you get a response. They don't care and the ones that don't listen even after repeated warnings either need some sort of punishment or not be allowed to advertise here in such a way and that's another thing we're discussing.


Exactly and that's what we're discussing. It's not a question of new staff but making sure everybody is on board and on the same page about what is acceptable or not. You might think a thread is spam and others might not. Even a constructive thread can be taken over by shitposters so do we trash that as well? What threads should or shouldn't be permitted are currently being discussed as are ways to cut down on sig spam altogether. I'm not the boss here and don't want to overstep my authority so any big changes that happen need to be run through with both all the other staff and most importantly theymos first and that's what we're waiting on.

I think I got the situation:

Staff are like Germany and the spammers are the refugees.


Jk


I hope you get a solution. It is really getting worse by day. I'm pretty sure right now the spammers are registering new accounts to create new threads and then are spamming with their sig campaign accounts.
Like just look at the first page of politics&society.

The worst campaign for spammers is probably yobit (which isn't even regulated).
Steep sanctions should be put in place go tackle this (such as blocking accounts either permanently or until a fine is paid to the forum).
I've looked on threads and thought I'd turn off signatures for one day a while back. Its interesting to notice that the post quality of people in and out of campaigns is very similar to me. And the fact that most people are in a signature campaign means that threads are more likely to have those people replying to them.

I think it has gone beyond the point of discussing 'whether to punish them or not', to 'how to punish them exactly'. Quite a few campaigns deserved it.

I disagree. I can (usually) easily asses whether you're a spammer or not. Sometimes even based on a singular post (although for a conclusion a deeper analysis is required), and most often based on your last post page. There are certain behavioral habits that can be identified in addition to the linguistic skill of the user in question. Hint: "I'm not native to English but should be allowed to post useless & faulty posts in every section" is not a valid argument.

I don't think we're lacking manpower. If anything, the moderation may be imbalanced in times where there may be a lot of unhandled reports. Generally, my report list is empty or quickly emptied (as a patroller & 2 section moderator).

IMHO: If the thread itself is pointless, then everything should be trashed if it gets flooded by spam. If the thread initially happened to be constructive then either: a) Try to clean it and punish the 'shitposters'. b) Lock and archive it.

No. You're looking at the wrong place and potentially encountering account farmers without signatures. There's a usually a distinct difference between genuine posts and spammers regardless of whether they have a signature or not.

Once a thread is taken over by spammers, there's not really any easy way of recovering it. I have not really ever seen that being done either.

The "farmers" that you refer to whom I was talking about are mainly of a lower rank so they may be looking at making many posts to get accepted into a signature campaign once the account matures.

Again, there are internal discussions regarding this matter. I have compiled a nice list of threads that need locking and trashing (preferably). Once there's some consensus on the matter, it will be (hopefully) handled.

Not necessarily. It is not rare for me to see Hero member accounts (with or without signature) who almost have no clue about Bitcoin (i.e. their posts lack in content and quality).

Am i the op of any of those threads? If so, i can make it easier and lock and delete those threads (that'd be nicer than having a mod overpower my intellectual property).
Newer members are more likely to account farm as it has great value to mature an account from newbie to member and sell it on (presumably, though account sales would be slow based on me trying to sell accounts taken as collateral for loans)

How do you stop signature spam when paid signatures are allowed? There are money-making forums and guides that encourage registering on here and posting simply as a way to earn an income online. While that $3 a day or whatever signature posters get paid may seem insignificant to some, it is pretty enticing to people in some parts of the world (eg. official minimum wage throughout India varies from $2.40 to $6.35 per day; and there are many places with lower wages than that). Multiply that $3 by several accounts, and they've got a a pretty good thing going for them.

You need to remember than in poor countries, there's probably a £100 startup fee for Internet connection. Mainly used for cabling and routers. There's then a £20 fee per month at least in most countries to maintain a connection. The money earned is a bit worthless, however, it all adds up and is probably seen by some as a good way to greater decentralise the currency.

You can get a 3G data connection with a few gigs for less than $5 a month in many countries. More people in India have access to smart phones than toilets. Maybe some of the signature spammers can shed some light as to why they spend time here making incoherent posts that no one wants to read instead of exploring other sources of income.

That is very interesting.  Can anyone else here verify whether this is true (I'm a skeptic by nature)?  

If this is true, I'm very happy that bitcoin is providing a real source of income.  But that doesn't excuse lazy shitposters by any means.  I'm not saying that.  If that's a day's wage, they should put some serious effort into their posts.  But I really like the idea of Indians being able to earn that much by sig campaigns.  It almost warms my blackened, dead heart.  This is what bitcoin is supposed to be about, a global thing.

Here's a Wikipedia list of minimum wages by country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country

Anyway, as for the ones that are relevant (with minimum wages starting at 0.01 usd/hr) there are 69 (if I've counted correctly) countries that have minimum wages of <$1 usd hourly. The map helps to really show the difference between the higher wages vs the lower ones, but you always need to consider cost of living to truly understand.

The solution to this on another forum I'm a part of was to be a lot more liberal with locking threads. For example, once a question was answered or a request was fulfilled the thread was locked to prevent further spamming. This would prevent threads like this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1407763.0) and this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1418126.0) (which is essentially the exact same topic anyway) from gaining any sort of ground with spam.

You moderate the users, or you remove the paid signatures. While this is a lot easier said than done, I'm hoping that something eventually gets theymos' approval and it can begin to take effect; there's only so much users can do without authority.

Minimum wages relate to wages paid for unskilled labour.
When somebody is literate enough to access the internet and understand bitcoin, he can make a lot more than minimum wage.

Yet neither literacy nor understanding Bitcoin appear to be requirements for joining a signature campaign, which is the problem in the first place.

Maybe signature campaign managers has to check before accepting sig participants to minimize their numbers.

Anyway, Just wanted to let you guys know i do my best when responding to threads, i'm not illiterate my parents are married. I can post proof.

Ha ha. There is no quick fix for that one.
As long as signature campaigns are present, you will find people trying to make a quick buck by spamming.

Removing signatures altogether is something we're also discussing. Personally, I'm at the point where I think that's going to be the only solution to stop all the bullshit and hassle that comes along with having them but we're trying to find a workaround too that suits everyone. We know removing signature campaigns is going to have a drastic impact on the traffic here and to do so or enforce fully we would probably have to just remove signatures and avatars altogether for everyone otherwise people would likely still try get around it. I've long said signature campaigns could help improve the post quality of the forum but that would only happpen if every campaign only accepted quality posters and didn't just pay anyone and everyone regardless of post quality and ways to force campaigns to do that is being discussed also.


I agree that certain threads should be locked when a person has got a solid answer to a specific question and we're discussing whether those sorts of threads you mentioned should just be trashed straight away or not but there's some threads where people may get a lot of responses but others can still offer their suggestions but repeating the same thing for pages and pages is unnecessary. It's hard to find a balance really without just locking or trashing half the threads here but I guess maybe mods may just have to make executive decisions on this sort of stuff otherwise the forum isn't going to get any cleaner. Some sort of quality control of what sort of threads is and isn't allowed needs to be established though but if spam threads do get locked or trashed people will get the idea pretty quickly.


PMSL. The irony of this. I'm assuming you're getting confused with illegitimate? Not sure whether you're joking or not  ;D.

After a quick check the answer is no.

I'd safely say that the majority has a very limited knowledge regarding Bitcoin or none at all (although they know how to use a wallet and generate addresses). This is quite unfortunate to see on a forum dedicated to Bitcoin.

This is far from what we have in reality. We could set up regulations that require better quality control though.

1. It's better to attempt to merge those two threads instead? Also, locking all threads liberally would be really aggravating and I feel it may lead for some users - including myself - to leave if done too liberally. It may also move spammers to other threads and spam them.
2. Removal of signature campaigns will also force users to leave. Then there'd be a forum of scammers, account farmers and traders.

the main reason for account farmers are sig campaigns.

scammers are everywhere it is not exclusive to this forum.

well traders are as much part of bitcoin as tech nerds are.


overall i have to say i dont bother much about sig campaigns per se - it is just the stupid shit people are spamming to get their counts up for the campaign.
just somehow get the campaign managers in line if needed with hard punishment like a temporary ban of the sig campaign and stuff.


/edit

Ps:
@hilariousacando

why is the one half of your last bitcoin green instead of purple?

Because hilariousandco is a moderator!
Signature campaigns are sometimes good, I don't spam from mine and nor do many members.
The concentration of scammers and traders would increase and make less diverse conversation.

There is currently a staff discussion on what can be done about this issue.

I don't believe that there is a solution that would leave every party completely happy in a situation like this one.
Personally, I think a number of pages/similar responses should be set before a thread is locked. There is little point allowing people to brainlessly repeat the same thing over and over for the hope that someone may say something with any sort of thought behind it. If a situation happened similar to the one above, where the thread was locked and someone had a new suggestion, then there would be nothing stopping said user from using PM or any other method to contact the OP and propose said suggestion.

When half the threads here are shit, I don't see that as much of a compromise.

Agreed. I think that something similar to this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1334019.0) could be enforced more strictly and across all sections. While this may be my opinion, I couldn't care less what ilovebitcoin89 would do if he was given 10BTC (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1434511.0); I doubt many others do either.

Why? So some other user with some shitty signature campaign can tell the OP 'if you do programming you can earn bitcoin through that'? Do you really think it's necessary to have 40 pages of people (for the most part) saying the exact same things?

My proposal isn't to lock any thread that I don't like, my proposal is to lock any thread which is saturated with people saying the same things over and over again. Look at the first page of 'Beginners and Help' or 'Bitcoin Discussion'. Do you seriously think that topics such as 'Post which Bitcoin Wallet you use' (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1529378.0) or 'How to earn x BTC in x amount of time' (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1566861.0) really add anything new to the forum, or even the discussion its self, after 1 or 2 pages? They are completely useless to everyone, other than those shit-posting to try and 'earn' some BTC.

Threads to which the same concept can be applied to. Simply because the spammers have moved to a different section of the forum does not mean that rules cannot be enforced to them.

As I have said previously, I don't believe that any user who only comes here only to earn money from signature campaigns is of much value to the forum in the long run. The fact that something like removing paid signatures would cause such a terrible effect on the forum is a perfect example of that.

As opposed to what? A forum of scammers, account farmers, traders and spammers? Is this an argument or a fact?
Not to mention that account farming would also subsequently decrease, as no spammers would be buying accounts specifically to spam. That would leave only scammers and traders - one that is inevitable in any forum dealing with transactions and one that is beneficial to both the forum and the economy.
In addition, stating that all discussion would stop because people wouldn't be paid for it is stupid. Some people do post here simply because they enjoy posting here, not needing any sort of monetary incentive to do so.

I understand that those types of threads should probably be locked as the only reasonable reply to these threads is insubstantial content, see here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1334019.0).


I am not sure about this. There are many people that come here to earn money who have contributed both to the economy and the community. Many people that come here to earn money do not necessarily only participate in signature campaigns, as some people come here to start/run some kind of business.

Agreed, I mentioned this rule being implemented more harshly in another point.

My apologies, I meant people that come here and post solely for signature campaign earnings. I have nothing against those who come to start/run their own business.

You support the man and not the people,we understand you well. ;)

I agree that people who come here solely to post for signature campaigns are generally annoying. You could however argue that these people have come here to start a business.

I also find the people who work in the little kiosks at the mall to be very annoying, however I do not propose banning those kiosks from malls. I don't think we should ban people from coming here for the sole purpose of earning signature campaign money, as long as they do not break the other rules, including not making low quality/low content posts. What one person thinks is a good business idea, someone else may find very annoying.

I think the best way to find some sort of balance is to limit which part of the forum sig campaigners can post.  The Bitcoin Discussion section should be definitely off limits to sig campaigns.  The quality of posts there are at the lowest and I tend to avoid that section.

If there was only a way to have the signatures disabled in some sections and on in others.  That would save a lot of mods some work if they plan on cleaning the forum up.

Edit:  To start, maybe telling the campaign managers that posts in Bitcoin Discussion, Development & Technical Discussion, Mining, Technical Support, Project Development, Economics and Speculation should have no payment to discourage the campaigners to spam those boards.  Then expand the 'no pay policy' to other sections of the forum in due time.

I can't say I find them annoying, simply because there is no way to distinguish them from regular users enrolled in Signature Campaigns (unless they of course come out and say it). I simply think that it isn't very good for the forum in the long run to have users who only come here with a monetary incentive, similar to why 'buying friends' doesn't work.

I don't understand. Unless someone is running a business and a signature campaign, I don't see how advertising for a website is comparable to starting a business.

Me neither, which is why I didn't say we should. All I said was that I don't think users who come here only for signature campaign earnings are viable for the forum in the long run; as soon as any sort of monetary incentive disappears, so does a large portion of people who 'love BitcoinTalk'.
In addition, going back to my first point, there would be no way to separate those who come here only to earn money from signature advertising and people who use it as a reward for something they would already do. I would not support banning these people as it could not be done effectively - either all users wearing signature campaigns would be banned or no one would. I have no problem with anyone that comes to this forum providing they follow the rules.

There isn't going to be any solution to anything that would leave everyone 100% happy but I don't really care about the hurt pockets of sig spammers complaining they've got less places to easily spam in.


But what's the magic number? Threads like how can I earn ten dollars in bitcoin? don't need to go on for long if they're allowed at all and not just trashed on sight but there's other threads that can go on infinitely but at the same time we don't need people just repeating the same stuff but where's the cut off point? Not always easy to judge and enforce consistently. Lauda might have a different opinion on what thread is trash to me etc and if he is removing threads only started by newbies it can lead to inconsistency and people complaining.


I don't think threads like what would you do with 1-2-5-10-100 bitcoins need to be here or at the least should be moved to off topic. Maybe after one big clean up people will get the idea. It kinda worked with off topic with the crappy 'daily' threads but people keep insisting to make them. This will be no different.


It might be annoying to sig spammers and if shitposters leave because of it then good. Mission accomplished. I would bet my money they along with you wont leave though. They'll just have to work a bit harder to earn money here which is what will cause people to get defensive or panic but allowing users to easily spam such shit threads is the problem in the first place. They can't be allowed to shit the place up and ruin it for everyone else.


This is something I've suggested. I know a big peeve of DannyHamilton is people giving bad advice/help so maybe we could disable sigs in the main Bitcoin Discussion and Technical Help subs. Campaigns would then likely not pay for those boards and the content would be significantly improved because nobody is posting just to get paid. On the other hand, if posts in there still contribute to postcount account farmers wont be effected but maybe they would find easier boards to spam which keeps the crap out of the most important boards.


If we disable signatures in too many boards though it would just defeat the purpose of sig campaigns in the first place and campaigns will dwindle both in number and pay. I guess that could be good or bad depending on your stance but shitposters from poor countries will still spam for dust so it wont kill the issue. Signature campaigns only exist because they're a great way to advertise as your ad is shown everywhere but if we're going to restrict them from pretty much the entire forum and the only place sigs are shown is in a few crappy subs like Off topic and Politics then we may as well just get rid of them altogether so a balance needs to be found.

Any changes, regardless of what they affect, usually leave some people unhappy. We should not be concerned by this.

Indeed. Unless enforced on a "global" level by senior staff members (global moderators and admins), it is surely going to be inconsistent to a certain agree. However, it is impossible to make it 100% consistent (a certain degree of inconsistency should be acceptable). However, keep in mind that it should be acceptable for section moderators to enforce it within their sub-board (similar to what gruez did with off-topic).

(IMO) Those threads are, per definition, garbage.

Correct. Using something in the lines of "I would leave" or "some would leave" is an invalid argument.

Bitcoin Discussion has pretty much degraded to being a waste of time (at least for the majority of the thread). Also, a huge amount of spammers attempt to give advise which usually is partially correct or just nonsense. This is also quite annoying.

I think, there are some things that must be considered about illiterate signature spammers. First is that in many cases it is fine to close some threads that are (or tend to become) spam and not stop users, since if there is not spam thread there would not be no spam posters. Second is that since here is a forum with different sections and different topics, many people may like to talk with each other about things that cannot be valuable in view of others but you cannot stop them. For example many may like to talk about if they have 10$ it is better to buy it or invest it, this may seem a low level discussion, however it is fine to stop others from discussing about it. There are some technical sections in this forum which only technical people are there and you can go and participate in the topic of your interest. Third is that even people who are only spamming can be fine for forum and if they leave here the forum may lose a big part of its users and its popularity. Fourth and final point is that many of people who are spamming after spending some time may be attracted into other sections.

I'm writing a guide called "A Newbie's Guide to Bitcointalk".  So I'm on almost all the sections of the forum, observing and finding out what makes the people come and hang out here.  One thing I noticed is that sig campaigns in general, if handled well and moderated well is actually good for the Bitcoin economy.  At least in the economy that we have going on here in Bitcointalk.  When people earn BTC from sig campaigns, they spend some of them mostly in gambling sites, some even save then spend them in cloud mining contracts (don't know why, most of those don't get you a ROI), others go to the market place and trade them for cash and the rest do altcoin trades.  That's overall good as BTC changes hands a lot.

There's also an argument to ban them altogether.  But what good will that bring?  It will kill the small economy we have going on here.  And that's what makes this forum tick.  It has evolved from a simple message board to a commerce board thanks to BTC.  That small economy makes this forum really unique compared to the rest.  I suggest banning sig campaigns in all sections except the Bitcoin and Altcoin market places and its child boards.  That's where all the advertising should be anyway because it's a "market place" (of course!).  :)

Edit:  It will be easier for the campaign managers to watch over their campaigners since it's all in the market place and it will be easier for the mods to notice which campaigners are bad posters.

if people trying to log on from previously banned ips have to pay up, would it not make sense for people who organise sig campaigns to post some type of bond to be able to host one?

I dunno the ins and outs of how the signatures work, but maybe they can include some code that allows a moderator to shut the campaign down if enough of their participants are posting junk.

there are campaigns that are run well and are diligent about who they admit. that would incentivize all the rest to stay in line.

No, you are not fine for the forum. If you leave here, nothing of value will be lost. Posts like that one are exactly what I'm talking about (I couldn't even understand the rest of it).

I second this.  That whole post is a big load of horseshit disguised as a long, pseudo-constructive post.  People here don't like their English language skills criticized,  but so many of these garbage posters only know so many English words that they rearrange about six of them in different combinations for each topic and try to pass that shit off as a good post.  Someone here with more motivation and less laziness than me ought to do an analysis of shitpost content. 

What is there for analyzing? It's obvious they are using different machine translation engines and that's why there are so many weird word choices making for a banged up English that is hard to comprehend. Do you think they will go through a dictionary to double check what they are writing?  ;D

You do realize that the useless content that is produced by them is the reason for which people with actual knowledge regarding Bitcoin stay away from this forum? I couldn't care less about the few bucks that these spammers make and what they do with it. There are campaigns that do not care about this problem (e.g. BitMixer); thus the need to punish services that endorse spam.

Yes, it will bring a lot of good and no, it won't kill the economy. The people that do trades of value are usually not signature spammers.

You're wrong: We can and we will stop you. We are just debating how exactly it should be done.

Go into some chat-room and talk about garbage like that there.

Indeed. It was difficult the extrapolate the meaning behind the post.

That's why a good move from Bitcointalk would be to ban all sig campaigns in all sections in the forum except the Bitcoin and Altcoin market places imo.  And even then the mods should pressure the campaign managers to have stricter rules and to recruit only people who make good posts.  I think I remember you in the Betcoin sig campaign before, not sure.  But the guy who used to run it, Ros, was a really good manager and recruiter.  The campaign actually made me improve my posts.  He's a good example of an excellent campaign manager.  If a sig campaign cannot produce good posts for a set amount of time, warn the manager or else ban that particular campaign altogether.  They should clean up their act.


It won't kill the economy, no.  But you know what I mean.  It's a metaphor for it will really affect the forum's economy's growth.  Again from what I have observed, Bitcointalk is evolving into a commerce board where BTC are changing hands day by day.  And that's cool that a simple machines forum has the potential to achieve so much more.  Don't hinder it.  Earning BTC from sig campaigns is not a bad thing.

I suppose that's a possibility but people would just complain when/if they didn't get their bond back. An easier option which I suggested would be to force people to use a trusted and reliable campaign manager from a list that the community could source in a similar way we do with escrows. If every campaign manager was very thorough and only allowed good quality users to join there would be no issue in the first place. At least this would almost assure that.


As I mentioned before, if you're going to remove them from pretty much the entire forum it defeats the purpose of them in the first place so you might as well just remove signatures from the entire forum. Allowing them only in the Marketplaces would make those sections unusable.

What can be done from the level of an administrator, is that sections as "Development & Technical Discussion" and "Technical Support" will not be showing a signature.

That's reason for campaigns to remove these sections from the for payment eligible sections.

Quite often people ask for support hoping for a helpful answer, but instead they get nothing more than nonsense answers from sig posters.

This issue/suggestion has already been brought up:

The logic of allowing sig campaigns only in a smaller part of the forum would make it easier for campaign managers to maintain the quality of posts of their recruits.  At the same time it would be easier for mods to clean up threads if needed.  Spamming will be lowered overall and post quality will theoretically increase in the other parts of the forum.

But yeah, I agree with your idea of finding the right balance.  Maybe it's good to test disallowing sig campaigns in the Bitcoin Discussion section for a couple of months and see how it goes.

Edit:  Maybe there should be a 'no broken English allowed' rule.  I know some might find it discriminatory and that's the downside.

I disagree with this being the result of that. Generally, most campaigns do not manage their campaigns properly not because it's "hard" (if it's hard, then find a proper manager or don't do it at all), but because they don't care. Pushing all the spam into a singular sub-forum would not make our 'job' easier as the quantity would most likely not reduce as much. Keep in mind that they would still probably spam in other sections to farm up their accounts (higher ranks = more money).

We don't have that much time to experiment. Action should be taken now.

That's near impossible to enforce consistently due to the nature of the rule. That one is based on subjective perception and would likely alter a lot dependent on the linguistic skills of every individual moderator in addition to their 'strictness' (some may find a post to be "too broken" while others may not). Generally, if you have really broken English then you should not be posting outside of your local section (you should be reading and trying to improve your skills).

Yeah I understand your point, and I get what you're trying to say.  If you guys decide that it has to go, then I guess it has to go.  But for the sake of the forum the sooner the better imo.  

Tbh I would hate to see it go.  I've been in a sig campaign for like just a couple of months.  And I ask myself why I didn't try doing this sooner.  I'm on these boards all the time anyway, so might as well get something going while I'm at it.  

We are discussing alternatives to completely killing signatures (there's no consensus on this). The problem aren't the people that don't change their posting behavior once they enter signature campaigns (especially not the people that are actively trying to improve their linguistic skills in addition to general understanding of various topics). The problem are the people that are posting solely to gain money and the people that are spamming with several alts (account farming).

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=397924 (CryingMidget)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1239416.msg13726378#msg13726378
we saw a rise in the US Dollar against major currencies. we saw a rise in prices for risky assets such as raw materials, particularly oil. Considering such news the Dollar strengthened on Friday and pressured Bitcoin.
Bitcoin price moved lower than $350 but then again, the price rose back to $423. This shows great confidence of investors in Bitcoin. So don't worry about it. It will bounce back.Wink

https://cointelegraph.com/news/weekly-bitcoin-price-asian-merkets-fall
we saw a rise in the US Dollar against major currencies.  
...and we saw a rise in prices for risky assets such as raw materials, particularly oil. Considering such news the Dollar strengthened on Friday and pressured Bitcoin.  
...Bitcoin price moved lower than $350 but then again, the price rose back to $423. This shows great confidence of investors in Bitcoin.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1366286.msg13902989#msg13902989
You need to download a software to your computer to use them and make sure to only download form a trusted source. Understand that your wallet can contain numerous bitcoin addresses. It is a good practice to generate a new receiving address for each incoming transaction, to increase anonymity.
you can use that segregate to each and every work.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/How_to_use_a_Bitcoin_wallet_(for_newbies)
Understand that your wallet can contain numerous bitcoin addresses. It is a good practice to generate a new receiving address for each incoming transaction, to increase anonymity.
...You need to download a software to your computer to use them (make sure to only download form a trusted source ...


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1361011.msg13937007#msg13937007
taxation on bitcoins and its reporting is not as simple as it seems. For starters, it is difficult to determine the fair value of the bitcoin on purchase and sale transactions. Bitcoins are very volatile and there are huge swings in prices in a single trading day.

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/040515/are-there-taxes-bitcoins.asp
taxation on bitcoins and its reporting is not as simple as it seems. For starters, it is difficult to determine the fair value of the bitcoin on purchase and sale transactions. Bitcoins are very volatile and there are huge swings in prices in a single trading day.


And 1 more copy/paste taken (by CryingMidget) from bitcointalk shitposter romero121. Even posted it in the same thread.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1508038.msg15819504#msg15819504
Bitcoin earning signature campaign is the only way to get a steady income. At the same it also have its own risk with post quality and knowledge about bitcoin. At times you may get kicked from campaign which affects the earning. Trading also suggested which needs investment and the one with less risk is faucets but it won't give worthy income for the time you spend.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1508038.100
In terms of bitcoin earning signature campaign is the only way to get a steady income. At the same it also have its own risk with post quality and knowledge about bitcoin. At times you may get kicked from campaign which affects the earning. Trading also suggested which needs investment and the one with less risk is faucets but it won't give worthy income for the time you spend.

Just a few of total c/p, I see more. Just look for the post written in good English!
Account purchased Jan 29 2016, probably.

I doubt if there could be total consensus on such a controversial topic. Better to have a trial/pilot run and check the results. Post that a decision can be taken.

I've notified a global moderator. Nice find.

I was talking about consensus within the staff members which is possible as there aren't that many people involved. Currently, everyone who has participated seems to agree that this is a problem and that action needs to be taken (regardless of whether we're removing all signatures or going with a different approach). The hardest part is agreeing to the specifics (what will be done and how). Hopefully we're going to see some changes very soon as the situation is already very problematic (it wasn't this hard to find decent-quality content in 2015).

Verified, banned. Thanks!

I think bitcointalk should allow to wear signatures only starting from Sr. Member or Hero Member rank. It would help to decrease amount of spam. Offcourse, it won't help to avoid spam from farmed accounts
And I think signature campaign managers should be stricter. It looks like some of them don't care about quality of campaign participants posts.
And it would be good if moderators would lock topics when question was already answered and spamers only starts to repeat it in different words.

So then you wouldn't mind not having a signature anymore? You could, after all, disable it right now as all you reply on is Micro Earnings and a signature is unnecessary there. (Or anywhere lest you own a service/product)

If I wouldn't wear signature, it absolute won't affect me. But as I have little time to visit forum, I have nothing again'st to earn some satoshi. This is why I'm in yobit campaign, because they not require to reach high posts number in week or month. But in this topic we don't talking about me personal.

I am sure that when only hero members and up are allowed to participate in signature campaigns, that it drastically decreases the amount of spam and nonsense in this forum.

As you also stated, it won't completely solve the problem, but I am quite sure that around 75% of the garbage will be gone.

Signature campaigns are something cool and unique, so it would be sad to see them go away because certain people are only posting nonsense.

This might be a decent idea, and it's one that's been bandied about at least since I joined this forum last year.  The problem is that people buy and sell accounts all the time, and a potential sig spammer could--and will, definitely--buy a hero account thinking they can earn their initial outlay back very quickly by shitposting.  Of course, no one thinks their posts are shitposts, which is why they come to meta whining about getting permabanned.

I don't understand your point here.  The point of wearing a signature is to advertise, which is what anyone does in any of the sections.  Right?

Then it would be a good idea to take it a step further.  Disallow all accounts from participating from sig campaigns except Legendary accounts.  That status takes a long time to attain and you're not even sure when exactly you get it.  I'm pretty sure over 90% of account farmers will give up shit posting after a couple of weeks once they realize reaching Legendary is almost futile.

Another cause of account farming on here is because people sell these accounts.  Does Bitcointalk still allow selling of accounts?  There was a time that no one really cared.  I think that should be stopped as well.

there are fewer seniors and heroes than the lower ranks. it would be easier to keep track of them and it's only gonna take a few to be exterminated in a short space of time for people to realize they'd better shape up or ship out. a bought account is wasted if it's wiped out in no time.

Sometimes in newspaper stands, and at the grocery store, there will be certain publications that are given away for free that contain both advertisements and various articles. These publications are in the business of writing articles, and selling advertisements to be displayed nearby such articles. Someone who comes to bitcointalk solely for participating in signature campaigns, among other people, are in the business of writing posts and selling advertisements to be displayed under these posts.

I think there are most people that come here for the sole purpose of participating in signature campaigns then you realize. This is probably a high percentage of the people that participate in signature campaigns (I believe that many people who can be described this way have several alt accounts each participating in a signature campaign) are here solely for that reason. I also believe that some of these people will develop a genuine interest in the discussions that they eventually participate in, so they came for the money, but they stay for the Bitcoin (discussions).


I think this would only drive up the price of these ranking accounts, and drive down the price of accounts. I don't think this would do very much in terms of reducing signature spam, nor would it do very much to address the issue of low quality posts.

That's not a bad idea at all.  I would be cool with that even though I'd have to wait to rejoin one.  These shit spammers would certainly not have the drive to rank an account up and wouldn't be able to even if they tried.

Quickseller's argument is retarded as usual.   Who gives two shits about how it moves the price of accounts--oh, that's right, the account sellers who could care less if people use them to scam and spam.  He has done so much dishonest stuff on this forum that it boggles my mind that he even shares his opinion like this.

A good alternative would be to use Steemit while you're waiting for Legendary status or if sig campaigns get banned.  If you know how to blog or write good, insightful articles then it's the way to go.  At first I used to ignore Steemit, but if I had no choice and wanna get something for posting good content then that leaves me no choice but to use it.

jonnyjash

Out of 85 posts (in 6 days as a member), 14 posts just "agree."  These are the 14 entire posts. (not snipped, his dots)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=885862;sa=showPosts;start=0

i secondly that this...
great idea...good one.
This is a great idea.. Nice one.. Loving it.
Good work...nice one,loving it.
I absolutely agree that
I absolutely agree with you
I absolutely agree with you
I secondly agree with you
i absolutely agree with you..
i absolutely secondly agree with you
i absolutely second that
I absolutely second agree   
i absolutely secondly agree..
i absolutely secondly that...

This is copy/paste, or just copy/copy, or just shitposting spam?
Anyone absolutely secondly agree with that?

You know whats tiring?

People who just barely read the OP and then proceed to click the "reply" button meanwhile ignoring 6 pages in between OP and your own reply.

Not sure what Milkduds point is here.

That's odd for a user to post about something that has already been stated (and not contextually in response to anything)?
Though, criptix, he appears to have read more than the OP and reading 120 posts just to post your own opinion seems a little big to do. I usually read the firist and last page (at least).


How much have you earned from steemit though? It's probably harder to earn there and you yourself must make more from your BitcoinAG signature campaign than you do from steemit. Also, you need to target specific audiences instead of the entire group of users like you can do here.

It's not all about how much you earn, it's about getting some value in what you were going to do anyway.  I guess in a way, Bitcointalk spoiled me.  Before I really didn't think much about sig campaigns and getting some BTC for posting.  I was happy with the way things were.  But when I got in to a sig campaign and then I saw this thread with the mods saying that they are thinking of removing all sig campaigns, I'm like 'Wait a minute...  I want to continue getting something for my time here so it wouldn't be considered a total waste.'

Steemit was designed for this kind of thing, so I might as well try it if sig campaigns are totally banned.  

Edit:  There's is a good case for allowing sig campaigns only for Legendary members or having the signature functionality only enabled for them. 

1.  They basically know what we're talking about when it comes to crypto and didn't reach the rank by being stupid.
2.  They have been in the forum for a long time and were awarded the highest rank.  So that and the account signature enabled will be treated     
     more as a privilege than something given outright.
3.  Legendary status will be valued more not just in monetary terms, but also as a bragging right earned in the forum and it should be that way.

Maybe most legendaries picked up how cryptocurrencies work in their time here, but I'm sure that there are legendaries that either

a) just posted random crap in off-topic or "what do you do with bitcoin" type threads or
b) bought the account and don't know the difference between a block and a bitcoin, but are adept that barely passing the post rules and sweeping in the money every week.

Had no point just like the thread,you can not expect this forum to grow if you are always attacking aspects of it.
The continued grunting about signatures achieves little other setting the stage for people to dismiss people based on their signature.

Dare some one to compile all the threads on the nasty signature spammers,bet you notice a pattern or two.

yeah. up until recently legendary members would've signed up in 2012 or before when getting into this needed serious research. now there are legends who signed up in 2013/14 and being here for long enough don't automatically make you a crypto god. 

but it's about as good an indicator that you won't end up paying a total moron as there is. or maybe a campaign owner could set a quiz. there are way less of them so at least they're easier to keep on a tight leash.

If sig campaigns were restricted to legend only, I dunno what it would do to account values. most newbies couldn't afford what they'd cost and roi would be uneconomic. I guess it would clear up most the issues.

Yeah well, welcome to bitcointalk.  This has been going on since the start of sig campaigns, and that was well before I got here.   It's a healthy debate.   The real problem isn't in the debate itself but in all the garbage that gets posted.  And the more I think about it the more I really like the proposed legendary restriction.  I wouldn't mind an invite-only section here, too, that could be free of shitposters.  Or something.   There's just too much crap to sift through here.

Is it time to create that thread?

I agree with you but the politics in this forum will always control the narrative. Restrictions would work in a ideal setting if you can find that unbiased person to screen quality and be able to put up with reading crap.

To post this kind of stuff?


http://cryptomining-blog.com/7752-what-we-dont-like-about-the-ibelink-dm384m-x11-asic-miner/


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1260666.msg14788785#msg14788785
Locked thread. poster Kahir. May 8 2016
But this reason can be justified and unjustified! Trust me, I know some people that had their accounts limited and even frozen and this has killed their income earning over eBay, and they lived from selling stuff on eBay!
Whenever you have a single person that is deciding your destiny during a dispute, you never how will this end!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1260666.msg13086174#msg13086174
Locked thread. Poster Mickeyb. Nov 27 2015.
But this reason can be justified and unjustified! Trust me, I know some people that had their accounts limited and even frozen and this has killed their income earning over eBay, and they lived from selling stuff on eBay!
Whenever you have a single person that is deciding your destiny during a dispute, you never how will this end!



Should I make a business here. I could ask for btc from offenders before posting details?

It would help to create a single thread to view and report spamming/copypasting content. I wouldn't like to see these threads pop up day and night. As well as this, I could (previously mentioned) compile a list and reference (like the alternate account thread)

The problem is account buying and selling which is hard to combat. Maybe stop users from changing the emails that they enter on signup would be a good way
It is a good way of distributing Bitcoins (this is my only main income with Bitcoin and if I didn't have my signature campaign, I'd feel slightly isolated from the rest of the community - as I don't really want to spend my own money on it in fear something will happen to them).
In some way, signature campaigns become slightly addicting to some users which leads to spamming, if users were only given specific periods of time on probation from signature campaigns and then removed every few weeks so they have to reapply or change campaigns, then that may work in order to stop spamers as it frees them from the campaign for a few days and we can then see who is spamming and who is actually enjoying thier time on this forum (though this idea is a bit extreme).

Very reasonable comment from you, I agree with it.

For the time being newbies up to full member should not be allowed to wear a paid sig (especially if they don't speak english) and there should be serious restrictions for other members.
So being paid will not be considered as bad as it is today and post quality could be enhanced once more.

I also like the idea of a minimum rank rule in order to enter signature campaigns. If you up the level requirement to be at least senior member before you can join a signature campaign, then it's much easier to keep track of those who are still spamming and filling the forum with broken English clutter that doesn't make any sense. Signature campaigns are nice for people to earn some bits and to spend them again. I don't want to see them be gone because of some rookies looking to earn dust. Till this day it still amazes me that people don't come to sense that if you get paid for posting, that you at least deliver a decent post in good English. Also, look at Yobit, they allow you to make 20 posts per day, and yes, there are a lot people racing to reach this daily 20 posts. 7 days x 20 posts = 140 posts per week, x 4 weeks = 560 posts per month! If they somehow lower their maximum posts to just 10 per day instead of 20, then it will also drastically decrease the amount of spam since people don't have to come up with nonsense in order to reach 20 daily posts.

You can't really differentiate between a signature campaign and say a signature worn to promote referral links. Signature campaigns would just move underground.
You should remove signatures for lower ranks, not restrict them from joining signature campaigns.

You can't know that. You're just speculating about potential cons. Every single solution to this problem is going to have cons and there are going to be people complaining because they're losing their opportunity to spam and earn money by breaking the rules. I'd rather we try-out some solutions that seem good enough, than infinitely discuss how to tackle this problem.

I think a general thread used to report spammers (& copy-paste spammers) wouldn't be a bad idea. We've had a lot of these threads occasionally pop-up (sometimes singular and sometimes bulk reports). Since this is already happening, it wouldn't be bad to streamline it into a singular one. I'll talk to theymos.

Uh, tell me, what's the difference between removing signatures for lower ranked members, and not allowing them to join a signature campaign? Result is the same.

Underground where?  And I agree with 1Referee, there is no practical difference.  If you can't advertise in your signature,  there's no incentive to use your signature space at all. 

Sure I can. All I have to do is use logic and use my understanding of economic incentives.


This is what was said about Obama-care, and look where that got us :D

Lauda, it is fairly probable that account prices will increase if signatures are not enabled for the lower ranks.
More farming would also take place and may produce more spam. However, there may be more accounts of the higher ranks and that may reduce their value (say if there are now around 1000 legendary accounts, if there were 10000 legendary accounts, the value would fall as more may be sold).

If there's a thread for reporting spam, unless it's self moderated and posts are archived and moved on that thread after the report is resolved, then that second idea would be open to spam and hard for forum staff and moderators to navigate through.


They'd move uderground (as in to other forums or sites).
It's hard to tell the difference, for example, some users promote their sites with the same signature used for the signature campaigns. (Like lightlord from bitvest and 777coin - he looks like a regular signature campaign user unless you know he's the admin of that site, the yobit.net account will also wear their yobit signature and bitcointm's account wears their signature).

Spam you say? Hard to navigate you say?
Luckily, I've created a solution! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1584993.0)

A list on the first post - that's what I have. Suggestions can be made. I didn't want to create a self-moderated topic due to possible backlash. Besides, if they're spamming on the anti-spam thread... what do you think is going to happen, exactly?

It would be easier for moderators to look through. There's references to show the user's spam.

You've not got any replies yet though. If you get, say, 100 replies per day (and there are some random people here who accuse people of spamming for no/little reason), then it's going to be hard to navigate through them. Your start off this will work quite well, though you may want to add something like a donation address so people can reward your efforts when you do well in producing your list that the moderators can see. If they spam on the antispam thread, nothing'll happen unless the moderator of that board is etremely good at spotting the spam or identifying if it is correct or not.

100 replies a day wouldn't take too much time to navigate through - and for those who spam on the thread, they will be added to the list.

Random people here may accuse people of spamming, but I have enough time to perhaps skim through some replies. Any names that are already on the list will be ignored (or hopefully the person replying will see), so eventually the amount of replies will be toned down to such a level that it won't matter. There won't be 100 replies a day. I'd expect 20, at most, on a peak day. Albeit there are spammers, not many would report them (or those that do would only have time to find a few)

However! It's quite easy to spot spammers, but the formatting would take at least a minute or so (and some people don't have time for that [spammers]). I've personally already put down a few spammers (a lot of them found by simply going to one of the spam megathreads and picking out a random person and their post history)

I'm doing this primarily to create a page for signature campaign managers to view for reference (as they can see the sources if they've spammed or not) and perhaps moderators in the future.

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I'd recommend you to help out with the endeavor. Every little bit helps!

I'll try to help out whenever I can. If you want a second opinion on anything that comes up, feel free to pm me to check if for you and I'll try to look at the thread as well to see what I can pick up.

I was just suggesting that it may be difficult to keep up with, though if you have community support, then it'll be easier for you.
You may also want to create an "Ignore List" that people can simply copy into their ignore user space (If a user is ignored by a large number of people, their signature will not be advertised creating a loss for the campaign owners.
I also think it'll be easier to judge the users by not looking if they have a signature or not. (Not having a signature can still be as bad as having one)!

So that's a good thing for this forum, yes?  But I doubt that if they have an opportunity to wear a signature on another forum they're not doing it--but that's another story.  In either case, the argument that you're driving spammers away isn't much of an argument (no offense intended, sir).  That's the point of this.

I don't think that's what he meant. If I am understanding correctly, he meant that other sites would begin trying to offer signature campaigns externally which lower ranked members could join.
For example, someone could go on one of the several other Bitcoin forums on the internet and say 'I will pay you xBTC per post for putting my link in your BitcoinTalk signature'. This would cause exactly the same problem, apart from this would be more difficult to moderate.
I disagree that limiting signatures for lower ranked members will achieve anything, for both the reason stated above and the reason given by Quickseller*. As I have said previously, I believe the only real solution to the entire problem of spamming is stricter moderation on both campaigns and their participants.

*

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Regardless of political events I have no idea about, Lauda does have a point. Indefinitely discussing the subject does nothing but give it time to get worse, until it may be too late. This has been in the pipeline for several months now, I believe it is becoming fairly timely (even for BitcoinTalk standards) for something to be finally implemented.

the worst part about it is, most of them are foreign, they BITCH and MOAN about low payments, read any signature spammer thread

"halo sir low payment plese rise"
"escrowwwwww?????"


YOU ANNOYING CUNTS

That might very well be true.  We can't control that, nor do I think anyone on this forum is concerned about signature campaigns popping up on other forums--that's not up to those who would flee from BCT, is it?  It's up to whoever runs whatever forum(s) you're speculating about. 

We are speaking of our concerns for bitcointalk.  And I strongly think that nixing lower-ranked members from campaigns would help.  More moderation certainly would help too, but I think we ought to try the restrictions and see what happens.  Kind of like an experiment.  Then at least we'll know, right?

Anyone else find it ironic that most people that comment on this are sig spammers/wearing a sig promoting something

You're still speculating.

False analogy.

A value adjustment can be expected in this case. However, the situation becomes different to what we encounter now. Currently, the spammers are often able to start getting paid since the begging and one is incentivized to do this very early on. They would get nothing in most cases while they rank up (which takes time)

True. However, the OP could try and keep it clean.

It truly isn't. It comes down whether one has changed their posting habits after joining one.

Are you telling us that solely because you don't have any signature you have more rights than someone like me to comment here?
Anybody here is on-topic and trying to give hints and suggestions on how to tackle this issue that we also find very annoying.

So I am more than happy if you contribute to the discussion in a constructive way.

I like the idea, and think it's worth to give it a month or two time to see what it will do with the total junk that comes from these lower ranked members. It will also give people something to look forward to in the way of these lower ranked members to build up their account with decent posts so that they can finally reach the level that is allowed to join a campaign. And those who from these lower ranked members keep spamming with junk anyway, banhammer. Simple.

I think it's more funny that all who replied and are in a signature campaign are, themselves, against spammers.
Also, Lauda I think it would be useful, as you can delete posts at your position, for you to try and help clean the thread (as long as that doesn't interrupt with your regular moderating of this forum.

(Also, QS still hasn't improved upon his posts that were said to be somewhat confusing to other members - including this recent post). His speculation is highly likely to happen though.

Not necessarily. An example would be Blazed, IIRC they are also against campaigns but they did participate in some. IMO it is better for them to take a chunk out of the budget, than a few spammers.

You're looking at the wrong moderator. As a patroller, I can only moderate newbies and the sections for which I'm assigned as a moderator (Croatian & Speculation).

My point is, we can't really know if we don't try anything. Every solution is going to have cons and people complaining. Does that mean that we shouldn't try anything? I'm not generally supportive of this particular idea though. The quality has degraded severely during 2016 - keep in mind that the severity of this differentiates depending on the section. As an example, I'll take Bitcoin Discussion. It is extremely difficult to find content that is worth reading and replying to these days.

I think you're misunderstanding. What I mean is, let's say that I own a website (E.G a faucet). I could reward lower users for putting a link to my website in their BitcoinTalk.org signature space and posting. In that case the only way to stop that from happening would be to moderate individual users to remove their signature, since it would be impossible to moderate an external source.

The only way that this would work would be to completely remove signatures altogether from lower ranked members; simply trying to remove them from campaigns would not work. While this would probably work, it would be a shame for the few who use their signature space legitimately.

In future, read my entire post before replying. I stated that most (if not all) the people in signature campaigns who replied on this thread were against spamming.
That was in response to a user who was criticising the people replying with a signature campaign (including a moderator and staff member).

EDIT: Glad you understand and no need to apologise

I believe I misunderstood the way you wrote your post to be a snarky remark. My apologies.

Gotcha, I did misunderstand.   That makes sense, and that could very well happen.  Would it not be possible to restrict lower-ranked members from advertising anything in their signature on penalty of banishment?

It would, but that would punish users who come here to try and benefit to the bitcoin economy by starting a business; it would be impossible for newbies who come here to advertise their own business to do so fully until they became active members of the forum (which shouldn't be needed IMO).

Some things have been done about it, Grue implemented this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1334019.0), which locked threads that spammers liked to use to increase activity, all displayed profile information (eg signature, personal text, bitcoin address, ect.) is now removed when a user gets permanently banned, Grue created this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1003570.0), which makes signature advertising less effective (and thus less attractive for companies to use -- previously if yobit et al can only afford to pay the little dust they were paying, then they might not be able to afford to pay anything at all), hilariousandco has been aggressive in finding, and banning copy/paste spammers.

What Lauda was proposing was to implement some "solution" without regard to it's potential effectiveness, nor it's potential consequences.

I remember when Dell started accepting bitcoin, that there were threads that literally had nothing but pages upon pages of posts that all said something along the lines of "this is great news", and we do not see anything close to that level of spam anymore.

I think Grue locking threads in off topic whose solicited replies were insubstantial replies improved things greatly. I think it would be a good idea to implement (and enforce) similar policies in other sections of the forum, especially Bitcoin discussion, as Bitcoin Discussion has started to fill up with a lot of useless threads. We could even possibly expand this to include threads of which it would be very unlikely for any meaningful conversation to take place.

Agree. Only reason I look into Bitcoin Discussion subforum nowdays is to see if it's a new core release. The posts is just spam spam spam.
No useful information what so ever

Edit: and poor newbies, Beginners & Help is possibly the worst place to look if you want some useful information

I admit I only looked at signatures on the first two pages but none of them where taking new accounts,not even Yobit and I do not think that is per chance. So I do not expect a flood of signature spam from a army of farmed accounts any time soon.

The newbie forum is the way it is because established accounts spend all day in meta complaining about signatures and ponzi schemes to reach out and say what is what. I also see the language issue spammers but with the signatures all closed it should be easy to pick them off as they are reported.

I admit this is controversial topic regarding Signature, however I am only a new member and going to be a FM, alternatively if lower ranked member couldn't join a signature campaign it will have a drastic impact from a newbie wants to learn BTC but as I said I am only a new member, if what come is come.

I personally want this topic to be implemented if necessary I am wishing good luck all for the "Ideas" I hope for the better if not best to come.

i think the topic is about illiterate signature spammers. It simply means having a bad grammar in the english language as to it is the language we mostly use for interaction. its understandable that not all of people here are good in english and it takes time to learn, especially to none english countries. just clarifying for vhern.

Having ten accounts doesn't help you with anything. Campaigns (good paying ones) need max 90 posts a week in average as I can see. 90*4*10... 3600 posts a month to get your ten accounts paid with the max amount. You don't have time to write so many posts.. over 100 posts PER DAY. Even having a secondary account is hard. What is the point? I mean, 10 posts with the main or 10 with 5 accounts.. same thing :D

My language isn't too good on posts unless I'm really concentrating on it.
777coin and bitvest accept newbies. That used to work well as the old campaign manager waited a few weeks before accepting people. (Meaning they were already Jr members when they were accepted on the campaign).
Removing campaigns means people would mainly come here for other monetary purposes which may increase the number of scams as accounts become worth much less than they currently are.

And that is why there is spam. They put in less effort for the same amount of payment. Why wouldn't they do that? It's less work, but the reward remains the same.

Is that so, hahaha I misunderstand I supposed, cause English is also not my mother tongue. Thank you for clearing my perspective of view to  this topic I thought they were having an arguments whether to remove signature campaign altogether or reduce the rank allowed to join in that. nevertheless Thanks.

In the Off Topic section. While I agree this was a very good move, the spam has since moved to different sections. More needs to be done to the same tune as this.

While this does exist, what percentage of the community do you think uses it? My guesses are >5%. This is insignificant.
In addition, while it does make signature advertising less attractive for companies to use, it is not effective enough. This is shown by the fact we are still having this problem after these fixes were introduced.

Whatever solution is implemented would obviously need to be criticized by staff and other members of the community. I'm sure that Lauda understands this, and doesn't expect that a solution will be implemented on a whim.
Regardless of this, a solution is still needed. While the things you listed previously do help, they are not enough.

That is debatable. Whilst we don't have that sort of mindless spam, we still have a significant problem about users saying nothing of any interesting in their post and assuming it is alright due to it's length.

It should be implemented in all subsections of the forum, not just a select few. There is no place on this forum that shitty, nonconstructive posts and threads should be accepted.

Not every account on here is low ranked, and higher ranked accounts can make more Bitcoin with less effort needed. It is highly likely that people own several of these higher ranked accounts in order to get large rewards for little effort.
Please do not post if you have no idea what you are talking about; you are part of the problem by doing so.