Bitcoin Forum

It's well known that the shitposters are suspected to give a shit whether anyone will reply to their posts in a spam megathread or not so I had the idea to make an experiment: Asking them questions and get a proof how serious the problem is or if our suspicion will be proven wrong. (My experiment took place before the YoShit disaster).

Finally, we can get an official proof if we were right, suspecting them ignorance to stop following the "discussion" after they have submitted their one-liners.

I've asked 11 of them questions where I had no doubt that a normal user would reply. (I used my alt account 0xmiau because I couldn't bother my main account to post there and wade through the shitposts.)

I've tried to make it as simple as possible for them to answer and only replied to posts where my reply is directly below theirs. After I quoted them I waited a week for their reply.

Here is my result:


#1

No reply:
http://archive.is/kZJzQ
http://archive.is/unGF5
http://archive.is/oREyg
http://archive.is/d8jmY
http://archive.is/WQg3a
http://archive.is/dwReg

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#2

No reply:
http://archive.is/lR9jO
http://archive.is/cbs9d
http://archive.is/DT7zX
http://archive.is/RLrNk
http://archive.is/yn5r8
http://archive.is/g528k
http://archive.is/prldS

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#3

No reply:
http://archive.is/QRgAg
http://archive.is/ulVcZ
http://archive.is/jCz1H

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#4

No reply:
http://archive.is/h6WFV

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#5

No reply:
http://archive.is/ZMflq
http://archive.is/O2T98
http://archive.is/fITAb
http://archive.is/Hrx0V
http://archive.is/E3uVb
http://archive.is/W5tbk

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#6

No reply, but someone else replied. There is still a chance that the user would have replied if someone else didn’t reply instead:
http://archive.is/SB54c
http://archive.is/K0JUZ
http://archive.is/bn0gG

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#7

No reply:
http://archive.is/FbYIO
http://archive.is/jJime
http://archive.is/AIBBG

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#8


No reply:
http://archive.is/J6yHV
http://archive.is/aMx7Y
http://archive.is/MVOFE
http://archive.is/4XMVN

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#9

No reply:
http://archive.is/zOqoC
http://archive.is/BTKp0
http://archive.is/htI37

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#10

No reply:
http://archive.is/bXGWi
http://archive.is/4mkM5
http://archive.is/kiY1Q
http://archive.is/nqX3V
http://archive.is/Qchvm

And in addition, I caught a plagiarizer (reported here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.msg50713433#msg50713433))  :D :D

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#11

I got a reply:

http://archive.is/cP6Gg#selection-5195.0-5195.49

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Conclusion: out of 11 users 10 didn’t reply. I know, the result is not very representative but if someone is interested to do a similar experiment, feel free to do it.
And the recently launched YoShitShow is almost a guarantee that the issues won't get better...

Expected. :)

Most of them just jump from thread to thread posting any nonsense they wasted 30 seconds thinking about until they fill their weekly "quota" of posts.

Or do you really think 95% of the Bitcoin Discussion frequenters are actually having a discussion, reading and replying to each other?

The worst part is when they actually spread misinformation (it's crazy the amount of incorrect shit or bad suggestions they give). I try correcting them when I see this kind of stuff, but they never come back.

I once gave someone a Neutral tag because of the amount of misinformation he spread.

Re: Top 5 safest Bitcoin and Altcoin wallet
P.S: He's talking about blockchain.info (now dot com) wallet.

Honestly, I'm starting to think these "experiments" on shitposters are just shitposts themselves. You aren't helping the problem lmao, they won't stop shitposting so that makes your post pointless. I've seen at least 50 of these posts today about things like yobit and people posting crap, just stop.

Maybe a call out for the problem? Some people just deny the truth about the forum being full of those shitposters.

On the other side, that's what I would call an example of a shitpost:

Top-notch analysis sherlock.

The lack of real back-and-forth discussion was one of the first things I noticed about this forum, and that was probably even before I created this account.  It was weird to me, because most discussion forums have threads in which people are actually having a conversation and often they even seemed to know each other on a personal level (I'm thinking of several forums not related to crypto).  And then eventually I figured out why: signature campaigns.  Nuff said.

It isn't just shitposters who don't reply, either.  Good posters who just make a lot of posts may not return to a thread that someone asked them a question in.  And I guarantee you I've missed some questions that members have asked me in some threads.  It just happens when there are so many threads and posts like there are on this forum.

I'm all for science and experimentation, but this was a teaspoon of weak sauce, OP.  No offense, I know you meant well.

Ah, give him a break.  And the Yobit stuff will eventually die down, just like every drama does around here.

As "excuse" if someone doesn't reply sometimes is that the number of people leaving comments in a thread just kills the discussion. In the German section we have also some good discussion threads and an hour later there are 30 new replies. If I start answering all the people who have quoted me that is sometimes a bit confusing for the discussion so I think in some cases people tend to refrain answering if it's not necessary.

:D :D
That's a good one.  :D
And Fiat (https://www.fiat.com/) has invented our money system. xD

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Yes, we can't help, the forum is lost if the shitposters go for their hunt... xD
If you have effective ideas to help and prevent shitposts while the traffic on Bitcointalk stays high I would appreciate it if you share it.

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In my opinion, the problem is a missing notification if we are quoted. I'm sure the people interested in a good discussion will reply if they get a notification that someone quoted them and asked an important question, it's not the lack of interest to reply.
Of course, that won't solve the shitposter problem - they won't reply even if they get notifications all the time. In addition, they are quoted mostly by other shitposters.
I know about the tool from Piggy but I would prefer in-forum solutions so I keep checking all the threads myself (still possible to miss questions)

I guess I've just chosen the worst point of time to post it.  :D
I didn't know that there will be the big YoBit issues when I had the idea and started to prepare the topic around 2 weeks ago. But on the other hand it's obvious that we have to be prepared much better if the bull market starts. There are still so many accounts waiting to get back to business (maybe bought accounts) and they are not interested in making quality posts :/

Great findings there, but you seem to be missing an important factor which is the fact that they might not even notice your question, not saying they would have answered, but there is still  a chance.

Not too long ago , before i started using piggy's notification bot, i am pretty sure i missed a lot, i am below average in terms of (how to use the forum) - up to this moment i don't know how to see if someone mentioned my name somewhere, and i do post in a few sections so there is no way for me to remember every post i make then go back to check if someone said something to me.

But it is pretty much safe to assume that your results are fairly accurate by at least 80% at worst case scenario.

Excellent way to judge - if someone posts a reply or even asks a question and straight up fails to revisit it - they've either forgotten or they're too busy creating dead-end replies elsewhere. Someone above said "these experiments are just shitposts themselves". Everything can be a shitpost at the end of the day (this is why most forums don't have big markets - if at all - for user signatures).

These guys are the worst kind of shitposters after they drop the bombs (Spams) they're nowhere to be found, as long as they fulfill the post quota for that week, they will not care whether someone had a question or a suggestion on their posts.

So it will continue like this, the real thread that has some value on it will be buried with this nonsense thread created by some greedy spammers who only think money is worth dying for.

I can assure you that the "shitposters" very much care if someone replies to one of their posts. The reason they care is because if you reply to their posts, they can respond to what you said for another easy/quick post.

I think there may be a couple of reasons you received so few replies:
1 - you posted in fairly large threads in which it is difficult to even a "normal" person to find a response to what you say. These "shitposters" want to spend as little time writing each post as possible, and going back multiple pages to look for a response takes time. I suspect you would get different results if you replied to these users in a smaller thread.
2 - There is a 20 post per day limit as to how many posts each account will be paid for. I don't think many in this campaign will make much more than 20 per day, or even look at the forum from that account once they make 20 posts that day. If you wait a day or two, you may see a couple more responses

I can not really agree to this, simply put , a valid question from a non shitposter requires both time and effort to reply to, if i wanted to increase my post count asap i would ignore 1miau's question and stick to the regular ( very promising project sir, i hope price will increase because of the adoption) kind of b.s .

Your theory would make sense if there was a lack of topics to post in, which is not the case, so this  IMO renders your theory invalid.

Then, I would have gotten much more replies.

Maybe, but I had the impression that also smaller threads start to get more pages very soon if you can't get a first page reply.

My experiment took place way before the YoShit Signature Campaign (April 11 + April 12) and is not related to it. It migh be a strange coincidence that YoBit starts their spam campaign just after I started to do the experiment.
And I've waited 10 days for their replies if you look at the date of my posts in the OP...

Most threads do not get that many pages of replies.

In my experience, most threads that are titled with a question, especially those that can be answered "yes or no" will not have a lot of meaningful discussion. Looking at the other threads you (I assume 0xmiau is you) posted in, I am not especially surprised you didn't receive a response. 
Ahh, that is my bad -- I only assumed this was related to the yobit spammers because that is what most threads are about right now.

I looked more closely at the posts you replied to, and they are especially bad.

My experience with shitposters more closely resembles what happened here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1072042.msg11465421#msg11465421) by "brewins". I have seen other signature spammers act similarly in that they would ask a series of questions in a marketplace thread for something they had not interest in.

I had always assumed most signature spammers have at least a very basic understanding of bitcoin, but this is perhaps not true (anymore). Ever since I saw this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4139632.msg38185053#msg38185053) thread, I have suspected some of the bounty hunter spammers are being paid by a third party, and the same forum account may not even be used by the same spammer from day to day. If someone does not even have a basic understanding of bitcoin/crypto currencies, they are not going to be able to engage in a conversation with you -- if they try they will look (more) stupid.

it is not just about answering that particular question though. the point is lack of communication. basically when you create a topic, specially a question or a discussion that you found interesting, you come back and "communicate" with others who posted a reply in your topic not just the one. but when you don't, that can be a good indication that the topic was just a spam.
i have actually used this method to determine whether a topic is a spam or not before reporting it as "low quality topic".

while i agree with the part about the notification system (i honestly forget to even check it) but a couple things.. what about the just busy author who saw the one gold coin under the name and just glanced on by. I think the rankings also have played into this outcome. Hate to say it but if you aren.t a 2 gold or higher a lot of people just dont really pay you any attention. this isnt ALWAYS the case but it does happen. Also im guilty of this one too, i usually stop reading after the quot is done.. maybe two... but 3 yeah screw that move on to the next.. as you  may notice in the reply my quote  here is from... i stopped reading after the quoted statement

I did notice that too that's why each time I start a discussion (topic) I do leave room for contribution from other members to make that thread interactive not that I don't have all the point needed for that topic to be perfect. Also I prefer replying to replies in threads instead of OP unless it's the type of topic that needs direct reply. Again looking at these users post history you can easy identify those shitposters (mainly posting because they are paid to) even though their post have some little sense to it, they just move around the forum replying in any board they find discussion they can contribute to but the average none shitposters post history are always similar in regards to boards and sometimes threads he/she posts in.

Shitposters mostly don't care about the odds to get informative replies for their questions, or posts, what they mostly care about are their weekly (pay per week campaigns) or daily (pay per post campaigns) quota. Sometimes, I saw shitposters reply to answer for their original posts, so maybe (just maybe) small part of shitposters care about replies to their original posts. It might save their time (seconds) to find new topic to join and spam if their previous posts got replies. Nevertheless, in general having replies or no replies does not matter with shitposters, whom usually even don't spend their time to read OPs, or just fews posts in the last page before typing their shitposts.

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They even don't care to click on the "Show new replies to your posts"!
It wil be very interesting if the Profile page has new line for: Total times you click on the 'Show new replies to your posts'. It might become one of useful factors to point out potential shit posters. However, this figure might contain several bias factors, but I don't think bias will be significant large, because shitposters will probably don't care to spend their time to click on that button to create fake statistics for their accounts. Instead, they are busy with their shit-post composing works.

how does what they chose to post on an indication of being a "shitposter"? wouldnt it be more of the content of what they post? and isnt that what we are doing? moving the forum finding something we feel we can contribute to? and im a little confused are we speaking of the author being a shitposter or the commenter?

(sorry for the so many questions just trying to contribute  :D)

How does this work? Do you get a notification via email or in the forum once you're logged in?

I usually read and post in 6-7 boards and what I usually do is I click on mark read after I am finished with that board for the day. In that way when I come back the next time I can see all the new replies in all the threads that are of interest to me. This makes things easier. I also have piggy's bot notifications enabled so I can see any mention of my name.

Although this method works just fine on the Bitcoin boards (excluding Bitcoin Discussions) it would be almost impossible to do and keep track of new replies in Alt discussions and even in H&B it is difficult.

Well you don't directly get an email, the bot posts in your thread but i guess if you want emails you can simply turn on forum notifications, or you can use telegram if you want instant notifications, i use non of these since i am not so obsessed yet  ::), i just bookmark my mention topic and view it from time to time.

Anyhow this is the thread that you should read https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5023605

I've always called these sorts of users 'hit and runners'. They write a generic reply in a sentence or two usually having only read the title of the thread then move on to the next thread to rinse and repeat. It really kills the idea of a discussion board because they're not really engaging at all and they will rarely stay around long enough to see if someone has replied directly to them because it's irrelevant and that's why the board is full of spam. The amount of times I've engaged with people here and I never get a response is staggering. Basically the only people that tend to have discussions here are the 'big' or noticeable names.

Stake campaign has a really silly rule in that worsens this issue:


I think it was made with good intentions but it only exacerbates the problem. One thing I've noticed is that Stake spam is everywhere and I think this rule is partly why. Rather than sticking to threads they can have a conversation in they aren't going to get paid for any more than three posts in there so they naturally are unlikely to make any more than that. Imagine you're an expert in something or are very knowledgeable about a particular topic, well, once you've made your three posts in that thread there's no financial benefit for you to continue so off to another thread you might no little or nothing about. I'd much rather a person stick to talking about football in a football thread if he's very knowledgeable about that rather than leave and go find another thread to posts some generic nonsense in because he needs to get paid. Things like this just cause more harm than good whilst complicating the issue for everyone. If someone is spamming or making poor quality posts then they shouldn't be on the campaign or getting paid in the first place.

From our perspective this is a valid statement, however i do not really think it makes a lot of difference in terms of their campaign goals, someone might argue that people tend to read quality posts more , which is both right and false, quality members probably do, but what about the rest? The last fact can be discarded anyway since you don't need to read a post before seeing the signature, so why would they care about quality posts anyway?

Some campaigns do actually care about the forum quality and carefully chose their members and also keeping an eye on them all the time, that is great and all, but how many good members are left out there? There will always be more spots available than what the a few quality members can handle, most members here know nothing about anything so probably it is not that their goal is to spam but that is pretty much all they can actually do anyway.

Surprised you got one! Nice experiment but as the other said, the result was not that unexpected.

I never got feedback or a thumbs up for telling people that surprising as it might sound Africa is not a country, neither is Europe and Japan is in Asia!!!! Let's not even go to more advanced stuff like bitcoin mining not being done with excavators....

And you expect to have a meaningful conversion or even a reply each time you post something? Get real!

But, if you want to get replies, I'll give you a hint :P
Go to the alt section and look for topics that have very low views/post ratio, the bumping bots there would love some fresh blood

I've chosen the replies where I can ask a good question that someone would reply (normally) and where it's not likely that while I'm typing another user submits a new comment. 0xmiau is me, I didn't want to confuse them if I make comments with 1miau there.

That's awesome, Nobel Prize for shitposting.  :D

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I think CryptopreneurBrainboss means that they are searching threads where they can submit their low-quality posts without any effort, there are several topics like "will BTC die?", "when will the bear market end?", "when should I buy BTC?", "is gambling risky?" or similar.

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Yeah, that's when the campaign is managed by the project itself and they didn't bother to hire a professional manager.  :D

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I was also surprised and thought of giving him a Merit  :D


Of course not, in most cases that's not possible and I'm only going to respond if there is really need to do it. Same like if I start a new topic and ask for opinions, it's impossible to reply to all of them.

Yes maybe I will ask them "when moon?". xD
There are indeed some spammer services offering "real" questions (most likely because the "great project" spam posts are deleted immediately.)
http://archive.is/Herr1

with that being clarified then another variable that was not addressed in this experiment would be the commentor who shit posts. the should should have been comments on theirs as well not only the author of the shitpost. with the parameters set  with this addition as well as taking your rank into consideration as well i think the results may differ slightly. higher would probably achieve more replies from the author. and if commenting was also on the shit commentators boost to the replies. keep in mind peoples underlying urge to feel important, or liked... or hell the fact that ego drives most peoples actions

There's quite a few people that like to post in certain spam megathreads multiple times, as they run out of new threads and need to recycle content again. I'm assuming that's what they want to prevent - now you can only recycle your points thrice. (though I highly doubt it's actually enforced in that manner, as it's a huge pain if the thread isn't large enough to "print")

Forum already has rule on this issue, the rule #12. However, the issue is by now, there is no specific fixed amount of time of content duplications to call it is violation. By now, in my opinion, it is hands-by-hands identification on content duplications, but in long term, I think the rule should add fixed amount of duplication time. Moreover, what if topic creators changed their contents just a little bit, even not paraphrasing violations. I guess this is reasons why by now there is no fixed figure of minimum of duplications for this rule.