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I can't find anything that explicitly answers this question for me, so I figured I might as well make a little Meta post and see what's going on. I've seen a lot of topics, as we all have, that are full of repetitive answers, redundancies and plain ole' spam. Not only mega-threads, but regular questions like in the beginner's and help section; a newbie will pop a question, get it answered, acknowledge they have received their answer and then dozens of people continue to post the same answer. I'm wondering if it is appropriate or accurate to report these posts to a moderator to be locked?

An example of a thread that I was watching can be found here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3123906.msg32423969;topicseen#msg32423969 , and I even suggested to OP they lock their thread after they received their answer. Is there any solution to this kind of problem or am I to just ignore it?

I sent the OP a PM to please lock their topic, I've posted in their thread instructions on how to do so and so now my only thought is hoping that moderators would be receptive to this kind of reporting and work.

Yes, I totally agree. There's so much redundancy in some areas that it's simply alarming.

I don't think mods really have the time for it since they're already dealing with a lot of stuff.

I just replied on another related thread that maybe a solution to this would be to automatically lock threads after X pages (but still leave an un-lock button for the OP to use in case he needs to) because clearly the OP doesn't really care about it after he gets his replies.

A slightly off topic but a suggestion: In many of the tech forums where you discuss related to issues and whatnot, the users who ask questions have an option wherein they can vote whether the post helped them solve their issue or not. I'm thinking if those sort of ideas would help or not.
There are a couple of things that came in mind:-
If a query is answered, the user who asked the question can deem it to be helpful/not helpful.
If the issue is solved, the thread will be automatically locked. And no one can necrobump it later on. If not autolocked, the mods can verify the issue to be solved and thread will be locked by them? This would be a hassle for the mods, autolocking feature does help here?  This is just a sort of a basic idea. And who knows, this may help stop shitposting same thing over and over again. Maybe even combine this idea along side the merit system. Who knows.

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I don't know how bad of an idea this is but I'm just throwing it out in the wild.

The same thing happened here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2678858.0

Newbie question that was answered to the OPs satisfaction back at the beginning of January and then people just come along and answer it again. I reported the first one that did it this morning but now it is in sight again others just join in. In this case, the OP isn't even active, so unless a moderator locks it this will go on forever.

I agree, mods are never short on work. There is always something for them to do, and always more for them to do than they can do within a day. Automatically locking a thread might be a good idea, but it would need some very careful parameters or it is going to cause a lot of confusion and frustrated users. There will be giants threads that are useful to some degree that will get caught up in this, such as the Wall Observer thread. Then the question becomes, if the OP unlocks the thread will it automatically re-lock after X replies/pages? I think it would either be "abuse-able" in that it could be avoidable, it will be unfortunate for a portion of users or some combination of the two.

I've seen some mods share their personal criteria for this kind of thing, I know there is at least one mod that will lock topics that have been sufficiently answered/discussed. I'm wondering if this is universal amongst the mods, what their individual criteria are for locking threads and if there is a more formal way of alerting the mods about these threads they may have overlooked while doing their other laundry list of duties.

This is a pretty good idea but how can the user deem a certain reply helpful? Will there will be an available button or function for members who created a thread so that they can use it to deem a reply helpful then after that the thread will be automatically locked? Another is that, I guess the member who created the thread must be responsible and really used the said function so that we can really avoid more users answering the same thing.

Thinking more about this, it seems like this should only apply to threads that ask for help, like "how to create a wallet?", "how to start trading?" etc. Questions that can be easily answered by a simple solution but if the member who created a thread asking for an opinion on something, then I guess that thread will still come a long way before being locked down.

The thread starter can always lock a thread if he thinks it has served it's purpose. I locked my thread about today's merit give away, as I thought it hd the potential to become a spam fest.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3136930.0

A couple of things that thread starters may not realise are - You can unlock the thread, and add to it, or edit your posts, you can then lock it again. The other thing is that it looks as if merits can still be awarded to posts in locked threads.

That's not off topic at all, but if we were to apply such a system it would probably serve best within specific boards. It would be wonderful in the Development & Technical Discussion, Bitcoin Technical Support, Beginners & Help sections and maybe a few others that I am forgetting, but unfortunately I think most of the spam finds itself in other boards. I really like the idea of automatically locking "Solved" threads though, and enabling a User-Friendly way to label posts as the "Solution" in some way. Connecting it with the merit system would enable abuse I think, but without it we might be able to just simply disincentivize spam complimentary to the merit system while remaining separate.


That should be a more clear cut situation IMO; mods should be perfectly willing to lock a thread that the OP is inactive and has been sufficiently responded to. It would seem common sense to narrow the opportunity of threads to spam in, and ultimately give mods less work in the long run.


You're a good person for having etiquette when you start a thread. I fear that too many users are unaware and uninformed in the worst ways; some might not even know they can lock their threads, some might not know they can unlock it (as you've said) or maybe even fear they won't be able to receive merit. The worst users are those that do not care and simply remove the spamfest they've created from their watchlist.

In Indonesian local section, the community has agreed (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2964081.msg31000167#msg31000167) that the opening posters are required to lock their thread after they got a satisfying responses/answers and if they don't, mods will lock the thread. So it is appropriate in my local section to report over-replied topics. Please note that this is possible because our board's activity is relatively small compared to other huge section like Bitcoin/Altcoin Discussion and there are two active mods to handle the stuff. This approach might not be practical at all for bigger boards as it'll only add more workload for some moderators who already too busy to handle it.

Since we already have More serious discussion. No advertising of any kind. No junk posts. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=250.0) board for season members who don't want any distraction in their discussion by repetitive thread with same question, where spamming is not tolerated, I think we should give Newbie their board to ask away, whatever they want, as many times as they like.

If you think fighting spam is good probably you need to police another board, policing Beginners & Help which specifically created for Newbie to ask away is not wise thing to do, its like trying to police kindergarten kid to follow adult rules.

Reporting Newbie behavior in their own board will just open another opportunity to others to open spamming topic that pollute this Meta board without any logical reason and add nothing to our knowledge, its just some wild gossiping, and if it become trend and people who do this getting merit point I believe soon after Meta will be filled with this unnecessary spamming report topics

There is no reason to allow opening thread by newbie. Maybe only in help and beginner section, where they can ask for any help or answer to his question.
They need first to read and learn. It will be easy to boost his rank if they understand this forum.

I don't entirely agree with this. In fact, there is a newbie (his rank was updated to Jr. Member now, here's his profile Husna QA (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1827294)) in my local section who started a contributive thread to our local section (Indonesia). But I do understand that there are many newbies who created too many unnecessary threads. Which is kinda interesting, how come there are so many newbies that do that?

Simple answer is they are Newbie

Pretty much this. Tho, it might be good to allow them like 1-2 posts in other sections weekly, just because there can be someone who has the preknowledge and can actually start some valuable topic. But the main, mega thread, problem can be solved with urging the ones who start a topic to lock them after they've received the answer.

OP, you have a more-than-valid point here.  There are countless topics that have been allowed to live for far too long.

One of the first things that drove me nuts about bitcointalk was that 1) Duplicate answers would be given in a thread, because 2) No one reads replies past the first one or two in a thread.

This thread is one of the worst I'd ever seen: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1097068.0

OP was asking whether there was any interest in cupcakes for bitcoin.  After a while it was clear that OP had disappeared and that further posts giving the same replies was idiotic.  If you read this thread, you'll see how many times I begged the mods to lock it.  But it's still not fucking locked.  And I don't think the mods care much about locking threads.  More traffic, more profit for bitcointalk.

It's funny that you say "Since we already have" as if these boards were not created as a reaction to the endless sea of spam in the boards we already enjoy visiting that make it impossible to use it as intended.

We should not allow Newbies to do anything and everything they wish to any board, as many times as they'd like. This is called abuse and you become what you practice. If the newbie section is not for informing users, among other things, but especially how they are expected to act around the forum and how to find information already available then I have no clue what it is for. It certainly is not an off-topic for low ranking members, like you seem to think.


Do you think fighting spam is bad?
I'm confused why that would even be a caveat to whatever you plan to say next.


Again, you're wrong. Newbies become veterans by becoming informed. They become informed through us showing them the door and them choosing whether or not to go through it. I wasn't only speaking of that board anyways, so I don't know why you're so hung up on that. I am speaking more broadly than that section, but that section should not be an exception. If you do not try to get the kindergarten kids to follow any rules, then they become adult kindergartners that cannot follow rules. You grow into what you practice, not out of or away from it. Continue to act a certain way, and you will soon not know how else to act.


I disagree, again. Removing spam and locking topics that are being abused will not cause more spamming. That is nonsense and you know it. Wherever they do this, it should be enforced and if it is enforced well there will be a net reduction in the amount of spam around the forum in general and within each board individually as well.


I don't know if I'm able to agree that there is "no" reason to allow them to open threads. I can definitely agree that it does more harm than good allowing them to open threads though, and it is very very rare that a newbie starts a thread that is beneficial to the community in any way. There should be some kind of restrictions in place to reduce the amount of spam that they're able to dish out.


That's what drives us all nuts, it gets the best of us. It makes it look like we're mindless zombies just beating dead horses. Maybe the mods collectively don't "care" about locking the thread, I won't attempt to claim to know why they are unable or unwilling to do so. It might be as you prescribe, or it could simply be the lack of resources to handle such a thing. I'd imagine that your egregious example should have been locked at this point if they were interested in handling this in any capacity.

Do posts = Traffic? Are lurkers not as valuable to the forum in terms of "profit"? Does the forum actually benefit financially from spam, or mega-threads developing/remaining open? I would like to hear some more on that.

To an extent yes. Just by the fact that more people are posting actively, they must be making page impressions and looking around. More importantly, the sheer volume of content (however mindnumbing) does boost the sites ranking on search engines.


I would say more so judging from the site advertising stats page https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats
Total page impressions are usually ~5x page impressions from logged in users. But the unanswerable question is how much of that traffic is driven by searches would reduce.


The last round of advertising pulled in 2.4BTC https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3006864.20
It is an auction and it is really a matter of opinion/speculation as to how that would be affected by reducing spam. Would the bidders pay less if there was less traffic?


Back to the closing threads issue. I don't think it would reduce spam as new threads will simply replace them. Many of these threads are actually opened by account farmers for the purpose of answering from their alts. What it would do is stop annoying anyone that replied early in the thread from constantly seeing them pop up in their unread replies page.

Your thought was good but in some point, have you consider the satisfaction of an OP? You can also look diffirent angle like he/she finding a reliable answer or unique answer that can meet his/her satisfaction.  As an example, if I am going to create a thread then I will wait reliable answer until I satisfy. Different people has a different perspective right? correct me if I'm wrong

Just to make sure you don't waste your time and readers here please do us favor report this topics (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0) because I see you already have a lot supporter to your cause

With this being the case, then I can't imagine it would be that hurtful to get rid of the mind numbing amount of meaningless content. Our lurkers are more valuable than our spammers, so if we can even transform any amount of the latter to the former then we'll be in better shape. I'm skeptical that our traffic driven by searches would be harmed, because I'd be willing to bet that the only searches these spammers are driving is airdrops and ICOs. The quality searches, that will drive creative, intelligent and long-term users that are coming for the right reasons are going to be searches that will remain at the top of search engines regardless. I don't think this site has any significant competition, but I might just be naive.


I would argue that they shouldn't pay less, because the quality of traffic would go up at least proportionately to the amount of spam that's reduced. Speculation and opinion as you say though, until something is done with tangible results.


Would this not also fall under the opinion and speculation category? I haven't seen much evidence for this, at least in the thread I reply it seems that OP is genuinely interested in getting an answer most of the time, but then get lazy about locking the topic or simply unwatch the thread and never come back. I've been proven ignorant on many things though, so I'm not saying you're wrong; it just seems ironic to place the one as speculation and not this.


The OP of a random thread is capable of unlocking the thread, so if they're not satisfied they can continue their search. Mistakes are not costly in this scenario.

I've revisited this thread, and a thought occured to me with regard to tech questions.

Although the initial query was answered, there may be secondary points that arise, and discussion of these could be of benefit to members.

I agree that repeated postings of the same solution are of no benefit to members.

The problem is that the secondary points are buried deep inside these threads. There are threads with 100+, 200+ pages, which not many people give a second look. Unless it is a thread like the Wall Observer thread in Speculation, it is best to lock these threads.
Secondary points can be brought out in new threads. I would prefer that to having a spam thread which goes on and on.

This is based on what I've seen the moderators say many times so maybe file it under the opinion of those dealing with it every day.  ;)

I'd just be happy if there was an auto lock after x days with no posts system and the OP could reopen if they need to. I always want to check threads I've posted in for replies directed @ me and it is a real pain when dead threads are bumped for no reason.

The auto lock feature suggested by some members sounds nice and it can help a lot. May of these threads are created by new members who just ask a query and then never come back here. They are not going to read the suggestions being added by members here. One reason i think the admin might had not implemented is because of the traffic these posts might be getting. Updated posts or content in ranked higher and thus it helps for search engine traffic.

Fair enough, they would know better than either of us and I haven't read up on anything of the sort. So you'd know better than me and I'll take your word on it. I like the idea of an auto-lock after X days with no posts. I'm in the same boat, I hate to miss a direct reply to me.


This might be a salient point, because frequently there is points of discussion that are valid to be discussed that the OP may not have considered. I would think that something along the lines of selecting between a couple options when creating a thread might help; "Closed-Ended Question" or "Open-Ended Discussion", something along those lines. At least this could avoid extra spam and cutting discussions short that need extra context or input.

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Bump

I've revised my opinion after reading the post by botany. I agree that it would be better to create a new "fork" thread referring to the original one. This would also simplify moderation.

Although I agree that would be useful in many cases, threads like this one would be locked as well: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=12156.0

I think it will be worth to keep bumping the thread with comments in the future if price skyrockets.

The problem with this is: threads that are needed to be locked are the ones which receives regular posts, thus, those will not get locked.
Using that "auto-lock" feature will help necro-posting but not the spam problem.

Together with automatic or moderated "report spam" and...
Including the Author's Rank, Last Active Date and new Poster's Rank to the basis might lessen the harm on thread locking automation.

Examples:

• The threads of a Newbie-Member account which last login date was a year ago needs to be "soft-locked" after X period of time, only Full members or above can post a reply triggering "unlock" to the thread. That way, necro-posting newbies cannot revive an old thread, only established members can.
• A thread of an active Full Member was reported as "spam thread" (can be automated or moderated), the Author will receive a notification about a request to lock his thread. Since the Author is active, he can receive and respond to that notification, this can apply to active newbies and members as well.
• A thread of an inactive Full Member was reported as "spam thread", the thread will be "soft-locked" but will not be automatically locked.

In regards to the notification, it could be a warning for a read-only or ban-able offence in extreme case scenarios.

Still, the best way is to get this moderated by responding to "lock this thread" reports, but that's much of a hassle for Moderators.

The only problem with this that I see is that when people are searching for that topics subject they'll be presented with multiple topics which have been split up making it more inconvenient. Mega threads just need to be moderated heavily and I would start reporting the posts if I knew exactly what is and isn't allowed on a mega thread. Imagine having 10 separate threads forked on the same subject. It's no different to having it all in one place.

It has been awhile since I've gotten a chance to loop back around to this thread, but I have to disagree with what you've said here. The Necro-posting inevitably provokes those threads to be a part of the spam problem. If they had been locked prior to the necro-post, then the spammers would not swarm into the thread. It is a domino affect in many cases, where a necro-post, due to a lack of locking the thread begins the cycle of spamming the thread endlessly. I think the auto-lock feature would help with quite a lot.

Necro bumping and spam fests are not the same problem. If a thread hasn't had a reply for 3 months (say), then it could be auto-locked. If some new event turns up that affects the issue in the thread, then the new topic can be posted with a link to the old thread.

I said "that" means that I'm talking about the quoted part from TheQuin's post (above the paragraph) which is the "lock after x number of days without post".
And you quoted only a part of my post which broken the whole statement.

Did you even read my whole post, including the quoted message?

@Jet Cash Read the first sentence of my post above.

I absolutely agree with this, though I know it's an extreme position to take and it's unpopular as well.  The vast majority of threads created by noobs are to ask questions that have already been asked a hundred times already, and all the noob has to do is use the search function to find his answer--and they can't be bothered to do this.  And if newbies were restricted in this way, it would also solve the problem of bots creating new accounts and spamming nonsense, like we've seen in the past (though I think this has been solved, perhaps with the captcha).

I mean, come on.  You wouldn't be creating a serious hardship by not allowing newbies to make new threads.  It might be somewhat inconvenient for them, but such is life.  I wasn't here when there was a noob jail, but it sounds like a great idea as well.

I know exactly what you were talking about. I have no idea what you're attempting to get at with this post, though. I was simply pointing out that fixing a portion of the necro-posting problem will solve a portion of the spam problem. I'm unsure what part of what I said was hard to grasp, because I kept it short, sweet and explained it multiple different ways.

A lot of the spam is made possible by someone reviving a thread that has already fizzled out and regular spammers avoid. I only quoted a portion of your message, because your premise and conclusion were incorrect. It was the heart of your message, the main point and the only portion compelling a response from me.

Which part of my post indicated that I don't understand what you're saying?

All you said was "Auto-Lock won't solve Spam" and then proceeded to give what you believe to be improvements to the Auto-Lock suggestions. So you've made your position abundantly unclear and without substance.



Another bad idea, because all this would do is require the spammer to acquire a higher ranking account to begin threads and allow them to create an entire family tree of spam-threads. It would make higher ranking accounts even more valuable to spammers.

I see :)

Anyways, the good news is: They (Moderators) are now responding to "lock thread" requests.
I tried it twice (With the right reasons) and afterwards they locked the reported threads.

In one instance, I PMed the Author right after using the "Report to Moderator" button.
After a few hours the user had sent me a PM saying that "a mod already locked his thread".

You can lock the thread now.

You have no evidence that suggests they are responding to "lock-requests." The moderators are locking spam threads, this doesn't mean that your reporting is being considered to achieve that. The scent of self-centrism is quite off-putting.

Have the moderators explained that they are responding to "lock-requests," or are you making messy conclusions, based on half-baked premises?


That's a little bit rude and self-serving of you. There are other conversations and suggestions being discussed, and it would seem abrupt and pointless to lock the thread simply because you believe to have gotten what you wanted from it.

I will lock the thread when I feel it has been sufficiently discussed or there is nothing to add. Do not act condescending and attempt to order people around.

I'm mostly interested in hearing a staff member, moderator or someone with close-contact to such members as they would have a better perspective on the situation than the single anecdote you've provided.

If there are still mega-threads existing I think adding more moderators on sections where there is a lot of mega threads can be a solution, the clean-up can be faster and I think they will be more responsive with your request. Also I think it is a good idea to change the "Report to Moderator" function to handle more than "abusive or wrongly posted message" as I think it would be more appropriate rather than sending a personal message to one of the mods. If they changed the Report to Moderator" function where you can ask for lock-request on sufficiently answered threads then it would be a great help on their part of cleaning up the forum.