Bitcoin Forum

What is motivating these users to create spammy topics in the Serious discussion section? I am pretty sure they are not doing this for signature counts.

Have a look on the top two posts. (http://archive.is/BRLs1)

How do I get merit.

Re: Crypto or Job?

If we dig down then we will find more. You will also notice spammy replies in the topics. It just do not make sense to me.
I am not sure if I should report the topics. Any thoughts?

I agree with you that asking about merit in Serious discussion section is inappropriate. We have a lot of this kind of topics in the Meta.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were people who didn't know that this section has no signatures enabled. Spammers probably don't even check if their signature is in the right place.

I have created a thread in that section once and I wasn't disappointed. Here is a good example (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4315868.msg38754659#msg38754659) of how an ordinary post in this section should look like. Raising the requirements to access that section won't change anything.

That is simple begging of merits to those users could raise up and earn more from the forum. I am also not sure how can you report on this begging posts, if only to try to send it to off topic section.

Serious discussion needs to be restricted to members and above, and to be removed from activity credits in my opinion.

Merit?

Well looking at those topics I do not see merit could be a motivation. It's hard to read their minds.


May be this will be a better idea. My few days experience in Ivory Tower is positive. It's totally noise free.

I think there's a better way if you want to preserve that box: hide it from forum index. The only thing you only need to do is to remember its board number, i.e: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=250.0 -->> board number = 250.0
If you want to access Serious discussion, from Meta box for example (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=24.0), change the board number from 24.0 to 250.0, hit enter and then boom, your rabbit hole shows up.
This way only very very old members of the forum know and get access to that box.

Or even higher to full member and if lower ranks want to post there, they should get a permission from granted member first, like the moderator of this Serious Discussions board. They will be able to post but their threads should be on hold until not accepted. I'm a senior member and never even replied there. I thought sometimes about this but I was not sure if my knowledge is sufficient to post there and I was afraid to create new topics because I was sure that missed topic in this section equals big problems.

Boom, no one (except who already knows this idea of yours) will know that there is a section called Serious discussion LOL

Everyone will start wondering for Serious discussion section.

Try board=911.0 for the hidden board.
Don't! I am joking

I think it's merit in some cases and in others it's just that they are mediocre posters.


I also think it is a good idea to restrict signatures to members and above. Although I think when Theymos implemented the merit system he did so with the intention of not making any changes in quite a while, as @The Pharmacist said.

It's not readers you want to block, it's the bad posters. The income from advertising on a quality board would be good for the forum.

Do you think it would be a good idea to restrict signatures to members and above, then?

P.S: Sorry, re-reading the post, I see you stated that already, so I agree with your proposal.

The answer to what is motivating these shitbags overall is right here.  The poor, ignorant souls in the Philippines realize they can earn far more by spamming bitcointalk than they can doing manual labor in their country.  There's probably nobody left to do those jobs in that country, because everybody is here on the forum writing nonsense and spamming Facebook and Twitter.

As to why these people are writing this trash in Serious Discussion, my guess is that they're ignorant of what that section is and that they can't advertise in it.  The one I quoted above IS probably trying to get merits, but this is typical of shitposters from this section of the world--they don't realize how bad their English is and what nonsense they're writing.  They get no respect or merit from me.

Edit:  mdayonliner, I do believe you're from the Philippines and you're a rare exception to what I wrote above.  No offense meant to you personally.  This is just something I've observed a lot on bitcointalk. 

I'm sure Theymos is not as smart as I am for that "hiding" feature, LOL.

You can unhide it when newbies forget about the existence of that box.

Lack of reports to the moderators and lack of moderators. best course of action is to charge a fee to enable the signatures globally.

Nah mate, I am from 127.0.0.1 (localhost)  ;D

I can assure you that I am not from Philippines but I wish I would. I have a mate from Philippines and his hairs are smooth, soft and silky.

By the way, what's wrong with Brazilian? I can not remember correctly, long ago I tagged someone for merit abusing then s/he gone mad and ended up saying something like.. "This Brazilian guy....". I kind liked it though. I love their skin.

PS: Don't worry, I did not get offended.

Bingo! You ARE smart. You found it!!!  :)

Some users consider bounty/sig campaigns as a professional career. You can see multiple topics like "Should I leave my job for bounties" "What is the best crypto or regular job" "I am a trader" (whisper: traded 40 bucks once or twice)

Sometimes there are some interesting discussions started but after 3 pages reading the replies (bitcoin is good because the moon, bitcoin gives me full income I believe in crypto because bitcoin is trusted) the discussion is killed. After 5-6 pages reading replies you don't remember what is the topic is about

Lol!
Bangladesh?
You forget topics like "i have 50$ where to invest?" - and answers - never invest 50$ in one altcoin! You can lose all! Buy eth, nem, wem, bem, gem, rem...

It's really no different than any other section of the Forum, they don't care where they post.

I spend most of my time in the Bitcoin mining sections, and there you can see the ignorance of board separation extends to many people. There are so many people asking about GPU's or other random shitcoins.
Then there are all the posts advertising their scammy cloud mining services.

Then there are the career shitposters in most other sections who earn a better living wage here than they can working, who do just drop a post wherever they want because they can't be bothered to read the board description for where certain posts belong.

Honestly though, I just report to MODS. I reported 2 the other day in random places, 1 in Bitcoin discussion for being a low quality repetitive thread. Something along the lines of will BTC be $20000 again.

And the other I think was to our newest MOD hellfish for a post I didn't think belonged in Politics and society. Something along the lines of a UFC fighter still having the backing of his sponsor.


I personally disagree with the ignore button if you want to clean up the forum, despite it being a task that can be tiring and frustrating for myself, it has to be worse for the MODS. If you are here for your own scrolling posting and do not have an interest in making the forum better, then ignore away.

So if I must I will report/annoy MODS with several posts a day, if it becomes to much for the MODS they will in turn report/annoy theymos until 1 of 2 things happen.

1) They are given the support they need to deal with this shit
2) The fight is lost and the forum continues the decline many of the senior members speak of.

A point of clarification, annoy might be the wrong word but it's the whole squeeky wheel idea, and I do it to be helpful in rooting out the trash not just to be a dick.

It is sad to see that some of the people in the Philippines are trying to spam and take advantage of the forum. They don't require themselves to post correctly and make sense of it (not everyone). I'm from the Philippines, and I got offended by reading this post.  Probably they try to get every possible "profit" that can that's why it's like that. Every situation that the people here experiences, just my two cents.

Anyways, the Filipino people take advantage of the "possible" earnings that bitcointalk forum could bring but spamming is not the way to do it.

P.S. It's not just people from the Philippines who are spamming Facebook and Twitter.

I believe that Bitcoin Talk has forked. There is an underworld of bounty hunters and scammers, and an outerworld of members interested in Bitcoin and the better crypto-economies. I hoped that the mods could keep the underworld posts and posters on the underworld boards, but this doesn't seem to happen. The members inhabiting the underworld venture out to try to gain merit on the main boards, and because they have no interest in the main board topics, they contribute nothing to the forum. It would help if the underworld had its own beginners' board. This would allow genuine new members to find their place in the new world of digital assets.

I kinda agree with this suggestion from Jet Cash. Serious Discussion board needs to be restricted for member and above . Below that rank, members can only read people's thread on there, it is ideal suggestion, because it sucks when you find trolls in a serious place. Removing activity credits from post on serious discussion should be done too. With that being applied, why would a spammer going there, right?

I'm not sure why some people are making spammy threads on Serious discussion section. Maybe they think that it's easier to get Merit there, because this section aren't very active and it will be easier to notice their post. My second prediction - they don't know where exactly they are posting and what Serious discussion means. Maybe that guy thinks that question "How do I get Merit" is serious question and this section is appropriate place for this thread.
I expected that this section will be moderated more strictly, but maybe mods just aren't getting big number of reports from this section. It would be great to have dedicated mod for Serious discussion and Ivory Tower sections, but these sections aren't very active currently and there are no reasons to appoint mod there.

Those two posts are not on their proper boards. The first one should be on the Meta and the second one on Economics (I think so), so sad to know that even Serious Diecussion is now attacked by the spammers. And what feels me more disappointed is that there is a Filipino between those two spammers :(.
I couldn't dig deeper and even the post itself is now off limits to me or missing (probably deleted already). Whether you really report those posts or not, the outcome becomes favorable for us — those spammy posts are now exterminated. 

I know you saw me posting in the Other languages/locations (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=11.0) section. Did you notice me to post in the Pyccкий (Russian) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=10.0)?   ;D

I know I am messing around however you are really a smart one. Originally I AM FROM Bangladesh but I can assure you that I do not physically live in there that much.

Ivory Tower IS a very peaceful section. But for Serious discussion, we really need a dedicated mod or at least one mod will need to volunteer regular scanning for Serious discussion board.

I also agree with the proposal...
Unfortunately I think as the spammy topics are started to get deleted from Bitcoin Discussion on a higher volume (people reports them and mods delete spam topics) so spammers realized that there's no use opening meaningless topics in Bitcoin Discussion anymore (OK, all of them haven't realized that already, but a few...) so they are trying to find other places to spam... And they don't read the rules, so they don't know that the posts are not counted in the Serious Discussion.... poor souls :)
You see, those who are programming spamming bots are smarter and know that those posts are in vain if it's about activity count, so they don't let their bots to spam there...

Some of us users are the nodes which are rejecting the current fork, and wish to continue on the existing one without the spam, and bounties. Then there's the newer generation supporting, and contributing to the "problem". I would agree that there's several issues right now, but I must say merit fundamentally changed the way people go about their business on Bitcointalk, and I see it as a generally good move.

You could still very easily go there at certain times, and report up to 50 posts within the first 20 pages for breaching the rules one way or another. This isn't just referring to spam though. I don't think they've migrated to other sections it's just that there's a lot more of them venturing out into other areas of the forum on the hunt for merit.

This merit awarding is quite a strange situation. I've got all these merits that I want to give away, but I want to award them responsibly, and there is a shouting and jostling crowd that is demanding that they are cast into their midst. It reminds me of the times I go to the lake to feed the birds. The Canada Geese rush over and shove everything else out of the way. I chuck the bread right up into the air, and try to get it to the moorhen that is waiting quietly at the back - that causes a real flap and some shouting. :)