Bitcoin Forum

 Bitcoin Discussion  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=1.0)
 Economics  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=7.0)
 Altcoin Discussion  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=67.0)

These boards are one of the most popular in the whole forum yet they either have 0 dedicated moderators or they only have 1. The Bitcoin Discussion one only has hilariousandco who is a Global Moderator which covers the whole of the forum and is a dedicated moderator in other boards too. Altcoin Discussion is covered by mprep who is currently covering the whole of the altcoin boards which just isn't enough considering the amount of spam that goes on over there. Economics doesn't even have a moderator even though it gets hundreds of replies each day.

Let's have a look at each board and their current problems as of the time of posting this:

Bitcoin Discussion - Currently covered in megathreads which are bumping legitimate discussions out into the 3rd or 4th page. Several topics which are posting telegram links and thats it.

Economics - Completely overrun by megathreads and shit posts just saying "too the moon" I don't frequent this board because of this.

Altcoin Discussion - Pretty much the same problems as Bitcoin Discussion but much much worse.

I'm sick and tired of having to post in serious discussion where there isn't that much engagement.

I'm hoping that we can have a community discussion which would be similar to: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3292413.msg34350945#msg34350945

We don't have any stats but hopefully if theymos agrees he can release those here in this thread. Instead for the time being I will list threads which are publicly helping and maybe find possible candidates:
1. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.0 - Several members have posted reports here
2. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4320682.0
3. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4198858.0
4. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3922020.0 - Several members here have posted their reports publicly
5. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4188412.0

The entire board is over run with shit threads. I've been suggesting for a while that most sub boards need at least one dedicated non-Global mod, but until we tackle the issue at the source and do something about those who are paying them to make this mess nothing will change no matter how much moderation power you throw at it. Even a handful of new moderators can't win against hundreds if not thousands of automated bots and many multiples more of desperate shitposters who are signing up here to earn a living. More and more ICOs post here month after month and hundreds of spammers sign up every day often with multiple alt accounts each to claim their bounties and that's something that just isn't manageable. If campaigns pay these people then they need to be punished. If people only got paid for quality posts then the culture around here would change pretty quickly.

I do agree with what you are saying but some of the spam isn't related to signatures and it's people posting copy and pasted content, account farmers and people asking questions which are in the complete wrong board. Then we have the people who are posting there trying to rank up there accounts to some day earn signature rewards and if we made it more difficult for people to earn then they would still spam nonsense just on the off chance that someday they will get enough merit and get accepted. The economics board is in desperate need of a moderator and the altcoin boards in general. There will always be continous posts on the current price of Bitcoin and a lot of spam to go with it with or without signatures and the altcoin boards will always be littered with spam because of the hype that they generate and the promise of making money even without bounties. Bitcoin discussion will always be spammed because its the first board people see and will likely post anything and everything in there. 

These 3 boards do have good discussions sometimes but the rest of them are shit. I want to have good discussions there but every time I go there,I shit threads,and I just go back to what I was doing before.

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How about introducing voluntary staff? Like hire more people to volunteer ,and help clean the forum. There are a few people who might readily do so,probably. It can temporary or permanent,whatever is feasible. There's no harm in trying,is there?

Maybe we need a board for posters talking through their bots. 'bot' is a shortform of the word 'bottom', which is an English euphemism for 'arse' ( or ass in the US ).

Mods could just move threads and posts onto this board, that is if they don't delete them.

Exactly!

They do have good discussions but they are often lost a few pages into the board.

Aren't all staff members volunteers?

You can argue whether we're volunteers or not. Staff are paid every month, but we're not technically employees.

Maybe Pugmans suggestion of people who 'volunteer' and don't get paid like the usual staff 'volunteers' could be an if funds are tight but I don't think this is the case and probably isn't the reason why theymos hasn't got more mods in these boards.

ICOs have ruined btct and damn near ruined all of crypto..
I have touched on this subject a few times and feel exactly the same way..
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3945231.msg37755380#msg37755380
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3833424.msg37935684#msg37935684
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3955810.msg37760900#msg37760900

What can we really do to retaliate against these funders of destruction?

It's pretty plane to see who are responsible but what constitutes enough proof to slap their company rep accounts with red trust or start deleting their main threads?
If it could be proven that they are knowingly sponsoring spam will you nuke their ANN and bounty threads? Nuke their rep accounts? That would be epic..
Can you just nuke sig campaign threads that are obviously not moderating their posters?

Somehow ya gotta start putting the hurt directly on the companies..

Why do you think they care about red trust? Especially so when the trust reads something like "Employs spammers" because the people wanting to advertise do not care about the people who are going to be advertising their site as long as it's advertising and some sort of impressions per month or post per month get reached.

THEY ONLY CARE ABOUT HOW MANY PEOPLE SEE IT

They don't care about the quality of the forum or who they employ to do the job. However theres only one way to find out if red trust will affect things and that's to do it. Give signature campaign mangers red trust if they are caught not doing their job and enrolling multiple spammers.

It's easy to prove if they are knowingly sponsoring spam by sending them a list of people they have enrolled that are currently spamming and if they don't do anything about it then you can tag them because they obviously don't care as long as they get paid.

Although signature/bounty campaigns are contributing to it I don't think this is the ultimate problem. I do agree with eddie that nuking the accounts responsible for hiring spammers could be the way to go and following Saidasuns recommendations on how to know if someone doesn't care about the quality of users.

Maybe the current staff that moderate these boards could offering some insight on whether they are struggling or if there just isn't enough reports?

"Investors" might think twice about putting their money and/or effort into a project whose main threads have red tags right on the OP..
I would hope anyway..

I don't think so, in connection with bounties...
Bounties are giving out tokes, which they have in an unlimited amount (theoretically, because they are the issuers of their own tokens) so they don't risk real money, so if there's no risk, there's no need to care about the red flags, they have nothing to lose.... so as long as a red tagged bounty manager is cheaper (this is the only real cost) he will get the job...

I am willing to volunteer for any section. no strings attached.

Archival doesn't have any moderator ::)
Your comment to OGNasty in the other topic and this, lol digaran.

Back to the topic, our boss needs to discuss this with the staff, mprep (or any other mod) cannot alone (+/- global mod) moderate half of the forum (alternate cryptocurrencies), as i said before bounties alone needs its own mod...

Bounties just need to be removed. Let them scam and spam elsewhere as it's just ruining half the sub forums on this forum. I doubt any meaningful members will miss it. 

As far as I can tell mprep, and Hilariousandco does pretty well when reports are coming in, There's probably just a lack of reports that are being made, and at certain times they aren't on, and the section gets spammed. Even then though the reports only sit for a few hours, and are eventually dealt with in one big chunk. I guess finding someone to cover for them when they are away/sleeping could be of benefit. There's probably another staff member that could fill in this position rather than a new one?

I can't answer for them though, but I imagine a large part of things not getting dealt with is due to the lack of reports. Economics probably does need a dedicated mod, and would benefit from it just like P&S is right now.

If admin remove bounties he does an economical suicide, a competitor will born and 90% of traffic will move and yes for sure the quality of the forum will increase a lot.
Just ignore the section if you don't have the need to be part of it.

Oh, of course. If we're talking strictly about spam concentrated in the board. But bounties, among other things, cause people who wear signatures to spam their bs all over the forum.

Notice: Bitcoin Discussion, Economics, Trading Discussion, etc. are all filled to the brim with meaningless discussion about the most general shit that anyone can whip up a quick 100-word redundant paragraph in a minute.

We don't need any more 10-page threads about "ok the price is now n and it should be m, but maybe it will fall to p. i believe bitcoin the technology will go up and go to m though"

You right if we talk over the forum, I thought he was talking about the altcoin / bounty section.

On most forums I know, moderators aren't paid at all. And most forums have much less spam too. It feels like a fight that was lost the moment spammers got away with earning money from their spam.
It's a vicious circle: if the spam would be handled fast enough, they wouldn't earn from it, and spam wouldn't be worth it. At the moment there's too much spam to handle, they get away with it, and earn money.

I would like to see very strict (and enforced) rules to post Altcoin ANN and bounty threads.

A solution could be to disable signatures for anybody at -4 red trust DT2.

I don't think theymos cares about the revenue that much. I base this on the fact that he doesn't allow ICOs to advertise on the forum anymore.

That's a fair point about removing signatures for people with a certain negative trust that could work. Other forums don't have the traffic that this forum does have so it's going to have a lot more spam than other forums.

Yeah but that's probably because of moral reasons and how most of them are scams.

Why -4? If a red trust comes from a DT2, it should be serious, so if red trust exists, signatures should be removed. After, if the red trust was really a mistake or if the user can explain why the red should be removed, the signature can be allowed again.

I've been a mod of several forums before and you're right that they're normally just volunteer positions but this forum is pretty unique really with the amount of money that is able to be earned here which just exacerbates the problems as the forum continues to grow at an exponential rate. As with most forums, they tend to go through staff pretty quickly as it's largely a thankless task and this would be infinitely worse if there was no mod payments as people would just give up because it wouldn't be worth the stress or hassle. Many staff have already walked away or got burnt out over the years (BadBear, tysat, miningbuddy just to name a few), and there's quite a few more that seem to get less and less active with each passing month (grue and some of the local mods etc), and the more and more users that sign up here the bigger the workload gets piled on existing staff, so that's why the workload should be distributed a bit or more staff added to meet demand.

This would undoubtedly lead to abuse where several members on the DT2 aren't really considered trustworthy themselves and have a few negatives from people on DT2. Anyway aren't most signature campaigns disallowing people with red trust from joining? So it should not be a problem.

Yeah, I don't think this would be a good idea and would lead to a lot of hysterical crying and possibly malicious abuse. Most scammers can't join signature campaigns anyway, but on the flip side there are campaigns that will accept them, but I don't think negative feedback should wholly disqualify you from campaigns (but this should be decided on a case by case basis).

That's a very good point about negatives should be considered on a case by case basis. I think a lot of the managers put that in so they don't have to research each individual case though. Another sigh that these people who are running these spam campaigns are lazy.

Even you are right, this is not parmanet solution to prevent spammer and shitpost. Unless we change our mind. Main problem on our mind. Even 100 moderator assign but there is million people posting daily. They are not robot !
So how can they prevent it ? I always said " prevention is better than cure".

First we need behave our self to make quality post. Then we can report to moderator those are shitpost we find. So that they can delete it.
Every one should help clean this forum. Not only moderator alone can do anything.

Let's build this forum clean together.

Moderators can prevent us seeing as much as we are seeing now even if it only curbs it. There's a real issue right now and any discussion in altcoin discussions or Bitcoin discussion is impossible. Topics which are easy to answer with generic answers are the ones which keep on getting bumped. Where as the actual intellectual discussions that require a little thought are buried a few pages in.

It's an issue that could be tackled with an additional moderator or two. The same goes with altcoin discussion. I'm sure the moderators which are covering those boards would appreciate it too as they are probably waking up to a lot of reports.

i could take eventually altcoin discussion

but i demand all my negative trust to be removed or outbalanced

Then I would like to beat you to it by asking for 35 seconds alone with alia. I would moderate for the rest of my life for free if I can get that 35 seconds. ;)

Question is that do we have reputed members that will be able to handle this responsibility. Most of the old members here are active only in their free time. Moderation on a busy forum like this can be quite time consuming. It can even consume more time that a regular  job in some situations.

Another possible reason behind less moderators can be lack of funds to pay them. This is less probable though in my opinion.

I'm not sure as I don't tend to visit that board that often. Although looks like achow101 might be the only active moderator there at the moment as gmaxwell looks to be inactive.

I think Bitcoin Discussion and altcoin discussion is much more in need of moderation though due to the sheer amount that gets posted there in a day.

theymos (and the other mods) have already been decently clear in letting people know that although mods are paid, it's still nothing near a job and should be considered as volunteering with small monthly rewards.

We wouldn't need someone to do a full time job. You would just need people in a timezone which isn't currently being moderated or someone who reports in times when the spam is too much for the current moderator to deal with.

I'm sure there's several members that are reputable enough for the job.

Definitely. Given that one of our board doesn't have a moderator, (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=89.0)this doesn't seem to be a priority at all.

It's not just about being a reputable members.Moderators have a set of responsibilities to take care of which comes with experience in reporting posts in general.So ideally you would want members with high post reporting accuracy.

I doubt that.Forum makes enough money through adds and of course massive donations in the past.

I think I agree that moderation is not a priority judging by the lack of response from any of the higher ups that could change this. I'm taking the merit fro mprep and hilarious that they agree with the concerns voiced.

Mods only get paid from advertisement funds as far as I'm aware.