Bitcoin Forum

I see too many rubbish and spammy comments throughout the forum. They are usually written without reading the OP and they usually contain repeated stuff which is useless for readers. I've noticed that these posters have something in common: they have ads (mostly ICO) in their signatures.

I respect everbody's freedom to post whatever they want. I'll also use my freedom to use a browser addon to hide those useless comments. I've been using it for some time and now I want to share it with the community.

NOTE: Although I consider the addon stable, please note that it's still in beta. It may give false positive results in some circumstances.

How does it work? When a post has an ICO related ad in its signature, the whole post is automatically made transparent by the addon. If the user hovers mouse on it, it becomes readable and when unhovers then it gets transparent again. There is a treshold of 1000 merits, users above that don't get blocked by the addon.

Installation: The addon is a "user script". So in order to install it you first have to install Tampermonkey (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgffkkebhmkfjojejmpbldmpobfkfo) for Chrome or Greasemonkey (https://addons.mozilla.org/tr/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/) for Firefox. Once you install it, click the link below to install my addon:

https://gist.github.com/CapnSparrow/d1f4f3d48c776279895a497a2eabe266/raw/084c8bea6b6207337c5334f394f174466b9d39b9/bitcointalk-poor-comment-blocker.user.js (https://gist.github.com/CapnSparrow/d1f4f3d48c776279895a497a2eabe266/raw/084c8bea6b6207337c5334f394f174466b9d39b9/bitcointalk-poor-comment-blocker.user.js)

Is this safe? Yes. It works offline in your browser and is open source.

Source code: https://gist.github.com/CapnSparrow/d1f4f3d48c776279895a497a2eabe266

I hope you enjoy it. Feedback is welcome.

Your link is broken. Here's a rehosted version you can use to install it: https://gist.github.com/DarkStarFTW/9b281cc74f6f81fff249c685315fb451/raw/6102f0f07b549d1daeb89f03100bb3ef1b79d91c/spamcomment.user.js

(disclaimer: not responsible for any damages from installing the script. code looks fine though)

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A suggestion: Could you also collapse the spammy post, so that it doesn't take up as much space? Kind of like how reddit works. (https://i.imgur.com/wpTafCF.png) It would make browsing threads much easier, as you wouldn't have to scroll endlessly to get past posts from ICO spam.

Nice. Although using jQuery is a bit of an overkill. Regular DOM functions are robust enough nowadays.

Fixed, thanks.

LOL

Serves me right for promoting an ICO.

I pmd the fix to you auchmoon which is probably a lot easier than op making his code more complex.

Although there are a lot of good quality posts that come from newbies promoting icos.

Thanks mate, I'm back from the dead invisible.

Actually I don't know, I'm not using the script but it's a solid hack, should be good :)

I suggest you to remove "casino" and "dice" from your blocklist, there are some high-paying Bitcoin signature campaigns (FortuneJack and others) with this word in their signatures, so your script actually filters some decent posters. Filtering ICO spammers should be just enough.

Check this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=615953.0l) to see all the bitcoin-paid signature campaigns to avoid false-positives in your script.

Also, your logic of minimal merit to bypass blocking doesn't calculate earned merit and uses only raw merit instead, on practice it will let pass people with 0 earned merit while sometimes ignoring those with hundreds of earned merit.

Stake is causing quite a bit of spam too. 777Coin, BitVest and Bitsler both have a bunch of spam megathread posters as well who make spammy comments outside of spam megathreads, so it's not a bad idea to filter them. FortuneJack does seem to have decent posters though

You're right but that's a challenge for me. If someone makes the required code conversion I'll happily update the source.


I've just implemented a treshold of 1000 merits. Users above that won't get hunted. However I'm not sure if that number is fine; what do you guys think?


I'll look into this if I find some time.


Hmm. Philosophy of the addon is "blocking users who are posting around for the sake of ads and not for adding to discussions". I'm not aware what kind of deals are available between users and advertisers. Does the case you point doesn't encourage users to post useless stuff? What are they get paid for?

Sure, but there's probably some good posters even in those campaigns. OP's idea with taking merit into account can prevent false-positives, but it needs to be improved to calculate earned merit.

I'm kind of new to the forum. Could you clarify the difference between raw merit and earned merit?

When the forum first introduced the merit system, everyone was given enough merit to keep their current rank. For example, since I was Legendary at the time, I was given 1000 free merits. I currently have 1537 merits. 537 of those were earned by me, and 1000 of them were given to me for free.

There are a bunch of people with over 1000 merits, but make spammy posts (ex BTCEvo  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=359888)in my opinion, who has 1007 merits but posts that repeat what has already been said/don't make sense. Only 7 of those were earned by them)

there are also  ICO signatures with very good quality posts like the "HoweyCoins" signature.

I am not against any sort of signatures, but this browser is suppose to give you a spam-free experience and with those words being removed from the blocklist it will only make it less efficient for sure.

Reference for HoweyCoins: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3920469.0

Basically a joke from theymos that some notable members are promoting for fun (and not money)

Is it possible to find that out via the UI? If that's not the case I think the only thing we can do is to increase the treshold.

 i know what HoweyCoins ICO is , i wouldn't be "shilling" it otherwise !.  i meant if we were to make exceptions for "dice" and "casino" and allowing signatures for campaigns you mentioned in your comment then this will open the door for ICOs too.

I know, I was pointing it out for CapnSparrow who is new and likely would have not known.


Unfortunately not.

Here's my attempt at this: https://gist.github.com/Tiramisu77/155f1e076c58728efc06131c7226baee

The results are not guaranteed to be always correct, because the function assumes that the user has maxed up their activity throughout the period between today and the day merit system went live, it also assumes that Legendaries rank-up at 902 activity (in reality it's random between 775 and 1030).

Also, I couldn't find the exact date when merit system went live, so I used Jan 24, 2018, please correct me if I'm wrong.

I am in two minds about this.

On one hand, the spam problem is huge. The majority of topics, and even some entire boards, are unreadable due to bounty spam. I don't blame anyone who wants to try to hide all this nonsense for either an easier forum experience or simply their own sanity, and good work from OP to create this script.

On the other hand, everyone has to start somewhere. While the majority of bounty spammers will be bounty spammers for life, there are undoubtedly a small number who will mature over their time in the forum and become useful contributors. They will never achieve that if senior members are ignoring all their posts, not responding to their questions, and not involving them in discussions. By ignoring them all, we'll also be preventing the few good ones from earning any merit.

As I said, I have no issues with people who want to use this, but it feels too much like newbie jail for me.

I can get you a list of users who earned more than a certain amount of merit.
Does that work to whitelist them all?

Even if you put the threshold at 2 merit you'll rejected most spammers.

Thanks. I've added "HoweyCoins" as an exception. It's fair to do that for HoweyCoins.

I've reviewed the code. Thanks for the effort but that's too many assumptions for the task. Trusting raw merit number might be more safe here. If it doesn't work out, we may implement "userExceptions" list which is the list of users who have too many merits but still spam. I guess that list wouldn't be too long.


Thanks but I guess that list would be too long to maintaiin. Let try the current approach for some time and see if it works out.

I maintain that list already and can easily add another weekly upload if you want to give it a try.

the best way I think this can be done is by saying.
If usermerit < 500 and > 300 then show their posts
If usermerit < 1000 and > 600 then show their posts
If usermerit > 1100 then show their posts
Maybe also if merit > activity

Spam is a massive issue and this approach is ignoring the problem rather than solving it. What could be a better approach is to automatically report certain replies instead of ignoring them. This could become a problem because of the workload for the staff members but I think would proactively help the forum rather than ignoring one of its biggest issues. That also means that if the users start to improve their post quality they aren't just going to get ignored.

I don't think there is a way of ever solving the spam issue, short of having every post manually reviewed by a moderator prior to being posted, which is obviously completely untenable. More active reporters and more sub-board moderators would help, but that's a whole 'nother conversation. As I said, I can't blame people for wanting to ignore the problem, but I'm just not too keen on ignoring the users, and therefore removing their only way out of that behavior and condemning them to be spammers forever.

Edit: Spelling

You're a nice person. On the other hand, the addon doesn't ignore them forever. When they remove ads from signature they become visible again. But I guess you think they will never know what the problem is, so won't change signature.

The altcoin board is a board that is well moderated. I've reported posts that have been deleted within seconds of them being posted.

There are users who have been ignored in the altcoin board long enough that the work their way into making a thread in the b&h board which I think is a great start...

Just in case, here it is:

Thanks for the list. However this user-script's approach is a little different. Key points are:

1. Someone who is shilling a coin in signature is a coin shiller.
2. Having too much merit doesn't change this situation (Yes, I made an exception in this script upon feedback and actually I'm not comfortable with that. It may change in the future.).
3. I'm not interested in what a coin shiller has to say.
4. Also I don't want to completely remove what a coin shiller says. Only make reading it more difficult. Hence the mouse-over animation. That difficulty helps me remember that that comment is probably a spammy comment.

The user script currently addresses above issues. Injecting a huge key-value DB in the script is not necessary at this time.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Only ICOs are targeted right? Casinos exempted?

Casinos included. Signature ads tempt users to post spammy, useless comments (most of the time). If there are different kind of ad deals in this area please correct me.

My point is when some users post garbage comments only to show their signature to more people.

While I do agree with you, there are some who genuinely converse with one another (such as quoting).

Nevertheless, it takes trial and error to perfectly filter spammy and genuine contributions.

You should take a look at this thread > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=615953.0 < listing Bitcoin Signature Campaigns and then check the members that take part in those campaigns. You will see that some of the most trusted and/or best posters on the Forum take part in some kind of signature campaign. So putting everyone in the same boat by saying they post 'useless comments (most of the time)' is a bit over exaggerated.