Bitcoin Forum

Disclaimer: I do not claim that bounty managers are spammers! ;)

So I've been spending the past few days cleaning up some bounty threads by reporting several messages as spam. ALL of them were accepted with a 100% accuracy rating. I am talking especially about these two types of posts:

1. "you are great sir you project i see great future go to moon you have my support".

These come mostly - but not always - from Newbies without Merit, or from the infamous 1 Merit Junior Members. No doubt some of these come from fake accounts, especially if their activity is 1. 8)

2. Bounty campaign updates for campaigns that finished weeks and even MONTHS ago!

You've seen these things before, surely:


They are part of the bounty game, so I suppose we just have to live with them. But continuing to post these horrible things, while quoting themselves from the weeks before that, not only weeks but sometimes even MONTHS after the campaign has ended, can only mean two things: either you don't care enough about this forum and the campaign to just read the OP from time time. Or you're a robot.

Some examples are this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4297444.1220) (ended August 15th). Or this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4292255.6760) (ended July 31st). And this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3301710.6500) (ended 4 months ago, it's even marked in the thread's subject but people still post updates). Sigh...


Suddenly it occurred to me: what the heck am I doing? Cleaning up someone else's mess? My respect for the mods on this forum who have to try and keep these threads spam-free has only grown bigger... Sometimes they really must have the feeling the situation is hopeless...


I have nothing against bounty management or against bounties - heck, I am participating myself, so I would be a huge hypocrite if I would have a problem with them. Some managers really make the effort of adding "ENDED" to the subject thread, but that doesn't help against robots. I just think the amount of spam in the bounty threads could be seriously reduced - and the forum mods could be relieved from a serious part of the spam cleaning - if this responsibility would be delegated to the bounty managers. Same goes for translators of bounty threads.

My gentle suggestions:
1. Keep your threads self-moderated.
2. Clean up nonsense posts.
3. Clean up bounty updates once the campaign is over.
4. Close the thread as soon as all bounties have been distributed.

If the bounty managers were to take this responsibility, it could also create an indirect but nonetheless very important extra advantage: it could largely improve the quality of the bounty campaigns, and at the same time reduce the number of fake threads. Cause if you are responsible for keeping your thread clean from spammers and robots, you might think twice before opening yet another fake or spam airdrop or bounty thread.

If you've read some of my other posts, you'll already know that I don't like to impose rules. But bounty managers could for instance keep their thread self-moderated on a voluntary basis for anti-spam reasons. At the same time, it could also give their campaign and their management skill an extra credibility boost.

In a nutshell, bounty managers, forum mods, forum members and even crypto-project leaders and teams: everyone could profit from this!

It looks as if bounty campaigns might be causing spam. I may need a few days to recover from this shock.

Seriously though, commendable attitude, sadly nothing's gonna happen until theymos decides to reign them in.

Good job in doing your part, OP.  Keep reporting those shitposts--especially from the 1-merit wonders. 

And you know, I'm kind of in the mood to do some spam reporting myself.  I think I'm going to un-ignore some of the altcoin sections and see what I can find.  I'm damn sure I won't have to look very hard.

Also, I totally agree that bounty managers ought to be more diligent about keeping their threads clean, but unless they suffer some consequences for not doing so, they have no motivation to do it.  The managers should do a lot of things they don't currently do, like weed out shitposters and alt accounts, but most of them could care less.  It's sad.

I try to see their side from the story too. Even if campaigns cause spam, the spamming itself is not done by the campaign managers, if you know what I mean. But I'm not trying to defend them either. The story is just not one-sided and indeed, they really could do A LOT more.

Nonetheless, if they would at least start reporting spam in their own bounty thread, or if they would actively clean up spam themselves, it could actually help them to gain some respect from the other members in the community and relieve the mods a bit.

Really man, just try to clean up one of the links that I posted in the OP. Reporting spam posts one by one. I can tell you, after 50 reports I started asking myself some serious existential questions... Poor mods...

This isn't avoidable as they are using the thread as a way to report their requirements and it won't change until they find a solution externally. Also cleaning up hundreds of post will be an impossible task for the bounty manager as he is only one person. The solution I am currently seeing is for the future post reports done by the members which are to be sent elsewhere and they can do this maybe by sending their reports outside of Bitcointalk maybe with the help of Google Docs/GForms, with this way we won't be flooded by these kinds of posts in the future, and that we can maybe clean the past reports without any worry that it will pile up with new ones.

Yes they should do but ofthen those are not self-moderated threads.
The spam in the bounty threads that noone will ever read (maybe not even the good manager) is one of the best ways to find abusers.
The most part of this report when the campaing is over, its done by bots and you can check back their post history to find the original higher rank account.

like this one
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4456229.msg46146141#msg46146141

From post 7406 till 7412 I can bet they are multiaccount-bots.

I am only talking about the posts made in the bounty thread itself. It's not at all "hundreds" of posts, and if you close the thread at the end of the campaign, you'll hardly have to clean up a thing.

If they have the time and energy to manage, calculate and distribute hundreds of bounties, they really won't mind spending one minute a day to keep their thread clean and the community happy, don't you think? And if they don't want to self-moderate, they simply can hit the "Report to moderator" link and the cleaning will be done by the mods.

If they don't, the cleaning will have to be done by other members and especially by the mods. And then, indeed, we won't be talking about hundreds but about thousands of posts, which is exactly where we stand today.

I have noticed this and was always wondering if this just bots!! or there are people behind this accounts!! Trust me it is hard to believe that there are real people that dumb behind this accounts, I am a member of many bounty channels and I saw how much managers keep warning that making more than one post to report the work will result in a disqualification from the bounty, I know that's this is not enough but that is not my point here, my point is they will not get paid! So if you are a real person how you can miss this? So are they bots? Is there even a possibility that there is a bot exist that can do all this work? From the tweet, share, like, and so on...!

All bounty have a bounty group in Telegram, so I think all bounty thread should be locked after ended and if anyone has a problem he/she can connect with the manager in the Telegram channel. Maybe this is a rule that needs to be forced on all the campaigns. But that will not solve the report quotes spamming.

There is no need to keep threads self-moderated, just click "Report to moderator" and shit post will be removed as soon as possible.

Yeah, I can see see posts that are worse than google can translate lol and usually those members wear signatures of different ICO projects.
I say and repeat again, hang on those members, also reminder: you can rarely see spammers in Development & Technical Discussion and Bitcoin Technical Support, thanks to gmaxwell and achow101 too.

We need a general guidelines for the bounty managers as well as for the Ann thread managers.

I suggested something a day ago I'll just quote it here.

I considered adding ANN threads to my OP, too, but then I thought we really can't expect people to follow up their ANN threads for months or - if the project is successful - even years. Or can we? At least, for a bounty thread, the final date is already known from the start and the manager will (or should) be there during this whole period.

Normally, bounty thread should be locked around a month after the final distribution of the rewards. This is the ideal case. The problem is that those managers don't take their work seriously and just leave the mess after the end of the campaign. The Ann threads should also be controller no matter how successful the project is, this will give the project better reputation at the end.

Well I guess this will never happen as theymos is following "the less rules the better" philosophy.

The crazy part is that some bounty managers have the audacity to claim they're preventing spam...  They need higher standards as to whom they allow to participate, but they only care about getting as much money as they can.  I believe some go as far as to create scam ICOs using alt accounts just to get people to invest so they have money to pay themselves to run these spam campaigns, act as escrows, and then participate in the campaigns using their alt accounts.

We are seeing a step towards reigning in these members with the introduction of merit and the restriction of lower member levels making it a bit more time consuming for them to continue with these tactics.  It is sad that theymos is having to start taking steps to address the issue of paid managers failing to protect the forum from spam, but I think with some more restrictions and eventually the banning of those found to be acting in bad faith with regards to bounty programs, ICOs, and alt accounts, we may see some improvement down the line.

(not limited to "their own thread" in my thinking, but relevant to the underlying problem)

So I've asked this question before


was answered the admin should be holding the bounty managers to a higher standard.

Well said @OP, I can see many bounty threads that already finished months or weeks ago and abandoned by the bounty managers  (like this) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4268680.0) but still many newbies and even higher ranks still posting their bounty reports, there are only two persons can blame in this kind of problems the participants for not even reading the updates on op and the bounty managers who doesn't even care to closed the thread properly if the campaign was already  ended.

I do not think the bounty topics are so damaging to the forum. I do not see problems for the forum in these reports. Of course, there are several possibilities of this being avoided. And locking the topic up when the campaign ended would be great. But in a high moderate topic, there will also be many doubts about the project and the manager. But the big problem of spam in the forum is not in those who are reporting comments made on facebook and twitter.

The problem is in the comments in sections that should be more serious like Bitcoin Discussion. Altcoin etc. And in these situations, Bountys Managers should use their power to exclude users who only write spam. But they would not have the ability to delete the comments made by these users.

Well they should, but the problem is they don't.


Most love any sort of comments because they keep threads bumped to the top so it doesn't matter what gets posted in there as long as something is.


Most of them are bots and there's thousands. The rest are mostly just bounty and account farmers looking to easily rack up their post count.


These aren't that much of an issue to me, especially when they're confined to the bounty sub, but we could disallow this sort of claiming and only allow the announcement there and their TWITTER/Twitter Link: XXXX/Likes and Retweets claims would be prohibited and only allowed to be claimed off site somehow. They are an eyesore and completely pointless. 99% of the people claiming them are probably using multiple alt accounts and completely fake twitter and facebook profiles anyway but the ICOs don't care.


It is. Sadly theymos and cyrus don't seem to care too much and anything that requires much work or time from them is just ignored. Plenty of solutions have been made and some of them are very simple and things like adding more staff and distributing workload between current staff could be done within minutes and the board would benefit instantly. The best we get after a year of complaining is a one merit requirement which is a small step in the right direct but clearly isn't enough to tackle the huge abuses that are going on here and we're already seeing how easy it is to get around: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5037225.msg46135292#msg46135292



This is sadly too much to ask. Most ICO Managers are lazy and greedy and because there's no repressions for doing a bad job they will just do the least amount of work possible and spam the forum in any way they can do to maximise exposure for their ICO. This is obviously something that needs to change and several solutions have been proposed, one of the most effective being punishing ICOs who come here and do nothing but contribute to the destruction and unreadability of the forum. If that was to happen then the culture of spam here would soon change.

If you change your signature to promote your new project, then the constant bumping of your old threads will promote the new project.

I am very active in that section and i can tell you that things are slowly changing, nothing happens over night. There are bounty managers who already moved the reporting phase on their own platform.

Maybe there is a need of more competent bounty managers. Anyway, things have progressed.
Last year managers like Jamalaezaz Cancer accepted users in various bounty campaigns only if we could keep a percentage of their reward at the end. Now, there is no such behaviour among managers...as far as i know.

Adding too many rules can get confusing and, like in every ecosistem, the worst thing you can do is to attack it's economy.
Small and well thought steps along with competition will eventually eliminate bad behaviour.

There has to be as less rules as possible, because if you study economy, you will understand that the market always finds a way to regulate itself.

But not always for the general good - look at banking for example. If banking hadn't been self-regulating, then Bitcoin would never have been created.

I was refering at a free market, given the context of the discussion.

I personally close all of my bounty threads after a couple weeks following completion, there is no reason to keep the bounty thread open, but I suspect that many users on here are not actually aware that you can close your own threads. To be honest, it took me longer than it probably should have to realize we could lock/unlock our own threads.

Why are you surprised? Many people create such long "footcloths" From several months of their work. So they save all their links in one place.
In some rules participation in bounty write a managers. "Quote your first posts." That's what they're doing! And there is a group of people who do not understand what a forum is. This is their first experience. They saw on YouTube video, that you can coins to earn, so they are trying to earn them. They don't even realize that there are other sections of the forum that discuss more important topics. Than the typical brad "I panic, me sell coin or not" "Yes sell and run from this forum" Honestly boiled already...

The one I really hate in campaign threads is the social media reports. It makes me sick seeing those post that contains the link of their status/tweets about the current campaign. I once checked a random profile and it has a huge number of activities then after that It's just a full of shitposting and social media reports.  :-\


Or maybe they can create a self-moderated thread to delete those shitposters. They should have delete or report those people that'll try to spam the thread. Our admin should add requirements or rules before having a Bounty/ANN thread so he/she can be responsible and will not tolerate shitposting in the threads.

I know some poeple who locks thread after the campaign ends because they knew that it'll become a place where shitposters at.

Maybe it's better if it's required that after a week or maybe month the bounty end, the Bounty thread should be closed and any updates, issues etc will be discussed in telegram. I remember, BM of Inmusik do this to the  bounty thread . He closed the thread and no one can edit or add anything on the thread and all issues, question and updates happening to telegram.

Here is a nice one from the PR Manager of Syscoin:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1466445.msg45655560#msg45655560

Instead of reporting the spam message (which I did in his place... ::)), he thanks the guy for his support. ;D

I am absolutely disagree. If threads will be self-moderated, it will be very difficult to discuss the project and expose scam. I've seen how deleted posts that had criticized the project. People might find out negative information too late.

The best decision is using google forms, but they must be open to keep track reports.

Obviously this is a smart way to bump the threads, I think other managers have been suspended for x days thanks to this maneuver.

The problem is that even when you report a spambie membre, BMs ignore you  >:(

What I noticed is that they don't really care about the forum and the project, all they want is to get paid for editing a spreadsheet.
That doesn't mean all bounty managers are guilty  ;)
I worked with the best and there is no need to mention his name here.

Bounty managers are not forum moderators, why would they be responsible for cleaning up spam? Are we going to start getting paid for this? If so, please tell me where to apply.

The bounty section is entirely full of bounty reports and bounty related posts, you don't go there looking for content obviously. There is no reason to clean up the section at all since that is its exact purpose.

Personally I don't like them but more i hate this:


Scrolling such thread is pain in the ass.... and it's almost impossible to find an important message in threat (if there is any) - many people already found it while they miss information about scammy project and got RED TRUST for advertising it...

I think that such posts should be prohibited - today more than 90% bounty managers uses google form to singup, some of them uses it also for submitting reports - its much easier/comfortable - especially for bounty manager so why not to force them to use google forms or other tools for reporting. I understand that despite reporting function reports have one more function - bumping up threat on the list - ok so let hunters report in threat but shortly "@tlegramnick 17 week report done".

other ideas: locking/self moderating etc... fully agreed

As long bounty managing is their work for real money and they USE bitcointalk AS A TOOL which helps them to earn money they can be FORCEED to follow some rules....

Fact!
If they really want to avoid those spammin' and shitposting people, report those accounts. If the bounty managers are accepting spammers and shitposters in his/her campaign, then he/she will face the consequence as one of the fail bounty managers. Let them be on what they're doing because we're on the step-by-step process and soon enough, no more trash posts will exist here.

Bounty managers should really implement their campaign with google form as an alternative for reporting in the bounty threads. This way they could help the forum from all the bounty reports posts made everyday from the bounties sections. Kudos to the OP. Appreciated and commended.

Many bounty managers are dong their best to ensure stakes are not given to shit posters.
I have gone through many spreadsheet ,and i observed that even the legends,full members and senior members are involved in this mess.
If you go through many spreadsheet,you will see some full members ,senior members,and legend whose details are marked red on the spread sheet.
To make the matter worse,some full members and senior members run multiple accounts for one project,of which bounty managers always track them and reject them by marking their details red.
No bounty manager will like to reward shit posters.

From my little experience, I have learnt that 90% of the spam in bounty threads are made by bounty managers. I have reported 3 bounty threads and preparing for another one. So, what I have learnt from those-

1. Bounty managers may get larger payments depending on overall pages. I have seen 3 bounty threads where there were thousands of bumping with at least 500 newbies accounts. Those accounts were made for only bumping threads.

2. Bounty managers payment are based on participants. The more participants are there, the more payment will be given. That's why they bump the bounty thread so that they can get eyed by participants. I have solid proof of this one.

3. Bounty managers ask people to submit reports on the thread while they can create spreadsheet and ask for submit with that. But they don't, because they need more bump for more visibility.

So, who are the ultimate responsible persons here? Definitely bounty managers. Expecting solution from them is nothing but foolish.

Disclaim: This comment is my personal view from my little experience. Not all the bounty managers are responsible but most of them are doing this shady practise.

This should be a rule in my opinion , this would be positive in several ways:
1) Keep the thread clean so that actual discussion could take place in the thread.
2)  Bots who are posting reports months after bounty have ended mos likely wont be there.

But this requires some level of google sheet skill, possibly some of the bounty managers do not have that :/

It is interesting to know who actually posts these nonsense posts. If the bounty managers simply want to promote their post by allowing shitposting, you cannot do anything about it. I mean even if you remove the post, the topic moves to the top of the thread anyway right?
Also, I think deleting these posts won't help, you have to block the user, at least for a period of time.
Closing the thread after they are done with their bounty is something that I can get on board with.

Also, on a completely unrelated topic,
If someone knows how a bot can take care of bounty reporting please send me a dm.  ;D ;)

Altcoin threads that are self-moderated are a recipe for disaster.  Any criticism that someone points out flaws or accusations of being a scam will be immediately deleted.  I actually think certain boards shouldn't have a self moderated option because it limits free speech.

I dont agree with this, what if the delay between the completion of the project and the distribution of bounties for 6 months (even longer than the time of the bounty took place). Most of the bounty report spammers are they don't read the deadline for the completion of the program. If i were a bounty manager, I would lock immediately after the bounty was closed by leaving the last message as an announcement (with a larger writing format that can make them realize that they don't have to waste any more time making their next report).

Meh. Bounties (Altcoin) section is created for that very purpose. To confine all the bounty campaign related posts such as signature campaign signups, weekly social media campaign reports etc.
As stated by mrep here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3953664.0)

I do not know much about those bounty campaigns but what I do know is that as long as it is posted on a proper section/thread of this forum, it's okey.

If you are concerned about too many spam posts made on this forum, maybe you should try and report your own posts.   ;D





The list goes on.  ::)

There are many people who are posting their reports for months even after the campaign ended.  Even There are several senior members on the forum who are continuing their posts in such cases.  It hurts more than the freshers in the forum.
Some bounty managers are adding the word "Campaign ended or Ended"  in the thread address.  There are several others who write it on the first page only.  I also suggest them to add the word ended in the thread address itself.
IMO that quoting of reports should be banned only editing or fresh reporting should be allowed.  It will save the space.   And if a rule is made that quoted reports will not be paid; I think it will be effective. 
All of us should bear the responsibility to cleanse the forum.   

Hmmm yes. That's spectacular investigative journalism, man. Did it occur to you (even for a second) that replying to these nonsense posts with complete sarcasm was exactly the purpose? ::)

Surely you did notice that, back then, I couldn't even participate in signature bounties, because I was still a Newbie. 8) Eventually I quit the sarcasm and started reporting these posts. Mostly not because it was spam, but because people like you didn't understand my replies were meant to be sarcastic.

Oh but please go on with your list. Surprise us.

If you are referring to bumping your thread with never ending spam, this is forbidden and a lot of threads are deleted because of this rule.


It seem that non moderated ANNs is better choice since then the option of scam acquisitions cant be deleted and then mods can see if the thread is bumped with non allowed techniques

Are thread starters (bounty managers) allowed to delete comments done by bounty participants? Or the only option is to report to moderators?


4. Close the thread as soon as all bounties have been distributed.
I think it's better if the bounty thread be closed immediately after the campaign ended and just provide a complaint form at the top of the thread. I know one manager using google form for submitting complaints and it's working.

When you start a topic, you have the option to make it a self moderated thread. The OP can then delete posts for any reason that they feel like.

Yeah. Of course, it's not up to me or us to decide how to run a bounty campaign properly, but they should at least keep their own threads clean. By reporting, self-moderating, closing threads, just any way that works. I am sick of cleaning up other people's mess by hitting this "Report" link one by one. We've all got more useful things to do and if nothing happens, well-meaning members might get demotivated and eventually leave the forums sooner or later. That would be a shame.

*necrobump*

This is exactly what I'm talking about, completely unacceptable incentive for people that post OVER 150 POSTS A WEEK!! This bounty manager must be flipping. No idea how he gets away with this for 2 weeks now...

Good point. I some times see newbie accounts acting in the capacity of bounty managers. Probably it could be some users Alt which is not allowed and with that knowledge or fact that we assume all newbie accounts to be a potential new user of the forum, it's only natural we assume such account to be inexperienced and as such, can't function in such capacity.
Again, spamming on a bounty thread should come with a strict no pay rule to bring to the consciousness of the user the dangers of it and the stress it puts the managers and moderators in with regards to cleaning and having to go through messages on their thread.
On the issue of spammers dropping spam posts on already finished campaigns, the threads could be easily locked to prevent further activities on it coupled with the fact that, most bounty campagnes come with a telegram chat group to handle complains and provide information/possible solution. That should be exploit for such posts as No.1 in OP.

I guess they just get disheartened by looking at the number of spammy posts, they just give up.

No-one is stopping them from finding a source of income that doesn't get them disheartened and at the same time does respect the forum rules.

Hah, you are right. Only if project owners would tell BMs beforehand to clean up the spam.

It's simple. He doesn't care about the post quality, the forum, or the spam his campaign generates. He is interested in having the members parade his signature as much as possible. Quantity over quality.

I have checked the spreadsheet of the ChipMixer campaign in the past and seen many members do 50 posts a week, but do we have any respected members on the forum who manage even 100 posts a week? I seriously doubt that.

There are few that went over that number in the last 7 days and some of them are even in CM campaign, but I doubt that they do that consistently week after week, sometimes you just get extra inspired. Here is the list https://loyce.club/active/7d.html


Has anyone tried to talk to him about this? Then again, I am not surprised that MASS is doing that, since they have paid shillers in their ANN for quite some time so I doubt they care much about their reputation here or this forum in general.

Sure, I've left a post in his thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5278735.msg55359090#msg55359090). It will not come as a surprise that it was efficiently ignored. If you need an Ignore Manager, don't look any further. 8)

But just to make things clear, when I woke up this old thread, it wasn't necessarily my intention to discuss this one specific case. I only wanted to use it as an example to indicate that in two years time, basically nothing has changed concerning these managers.

That's it, it's the job. Your paid to ensure all that. Supposing the forum passes a rule that penalizes bounty or signature and avatar campaign managers as well as the individual user involved in spamming, don't you thick they will treat the spam with utmost urgency rather than wait for it to be noticed and the they get quarrelled over them? Because, I believe they would.
In fact, this actually could be a suggestion for review if such a rule is put in place. As you are as well a moderator of your thread. As a bounty or signature & avatar manager, you don't have to be overwhelmed by the responses you get on your thread, I know it's not easy that's why it's always in your hands to edit the rules as you deem fit. With that power, comes with responsibilities and how you set the rules ease's your stress as regards your thread.

Yep, not surprised when I saw the name of bounty campaign, MASS decided that it wasn't enough to have their ANN spammed, it was time to spread it on rest of the forum. Luckily it seems like it isn't working as they thought it will as I haven't seen their signature around.

Regarding this "manager", if he didn't accept the terms, they would probably find someone else. And those low level managers will accept just about any crazy idea client has in order to get the job and make a few bucks. You know how they say, beggars can't be choosers.