Bitcoin Forum

I often see users promoting their websites by posting one line of text, or others who do the same thing by posting a wall of text with their links in it. I report them to moderators as advertising, especially if it's a forum user who does this systematically.

Three days ago I reported one user who is doing promotion of his news site for months on this forum, report is still unhandled and this is a bit odd when looking at the post history of this user. I wonder why things like this aren't punished instantaneously and with temp bans? This would certainly be a clear message that such behavior is not acceptable.

Reported post : Bitcoin Price Analysis: What Has Triggered 30% Surge? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5196109.msg52881876#msg52881876)
User Post History : Prateek_sharma (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2592879;sa=showPosts)

Another example of how to promote exchange by posting something relevant and useful :

Breaking Down FUD on Halvings/Promoting My Exchange (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5196812.0) Edit: // thread deleted.

I'd say temp ban due to most of their posts being of low quality, and obviously trying to push a website with their low quality posts too. Its up to the global moderators what they deem temp ban worthy though. If they were at least putting some major effort into the posts before linking their website then I could understand this not being so black, and white. However, that certainly isn't the case here.

The global moderators probably deal with 1000s of reports a day, and it might take them a little while to get through all of them. Especially, when handling bans.

I don't think this post you reported is promoting anything, that news website is not his probably,
and no need for all members to write long and boring posts as they would mostly be edited copy/paste.

But maybe he should move some of his previous post to proper sections.

It doesn't have to be their website, though. These posts are still very low quality. Some of his posts are literally "Alright".  Although, apparently the user has written up a review on the website  that they're constantly posting about;


Almost every single post is pushing that website, and for the ones that aren't promoting the website they are very low quality posts. Plus they aren't even participating in the threads that they're posting. Thus, I would deem that as the only reason for posting; to advertise the website, and would fall under this guideline:

I actually left that account negative trust (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5179175.0) due to the scams it was promoting in these sneaky posts.
At the same time another legendary was meriting them (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=2592879).
WTF.

There are a few of those in the Turkish section and every time I see it, I immediately report them. It is so damn annoying to see, several lines of somewhat comprehensible information and just a read more link to their own website.

They have levelled up recently though, I've seen one of the sites giving a tutorial on how to buy Bitcoin/Ethereum etc. with Credit Card (very short, few lines and sites with no detail whatsoever) and then linking their own site so that you can purchase there.


If there were to be rule implemented to combat this, I would be all for it.

Well I proposed not allowing newbies to post outside links or create topics, but I was attacked by some oldtime members...
like it would be some kind of members right violation or something idk

I don't say that I lile what we have now but I think site promotions regarding sites related to artivles, news, blogs are harmless as long as it's relevant and not about the main purpose of the thread. But for posts with links involving money then this should be heavily moderated as they are illegaly promoting something outside of the signature area. Yes website links for articles are also promoting their site but as long as it's relevant to Bitcoin and crypto I think that we should give them a pass.

No. This would kill almost all of the announcements threads. The whole problem is not Newbie's posting links. There are a lot of helpful newbies helping each other out there. The problem is some websites, mostly news and/or site that you can purchase coins from with a lot of commission do this. The best way to deal with this is just nuking these specific accounts who keep doing this.

If he writes that news and the wording in the subject is good, I don't think that can be considered spam.
Therefore, the ruling differs from one user to another and it is better to give a temporary ban as mentioned by @Welsh.


I do not think that you will search the history of user posts before sending Merits. that topic (alone) does not seem to be a Spam topic> Maybe those who gave Merit admired the content of the article.

I think OgNasty may have awarded the merits because he thought the thread might create interesting discussion, and that is something that merit sources should do. Unfortunately being a merit source is quite an onerous and unpaid responsibility, and we don't have time to research  all of the posters we review. The only thing that we can do is to put the posters on ignore, but something has to trigger that action ( such as all caps titles, or quote pyramids :) ).

There are some users doing the same in boards like Altcoin Discussion.

"I was looking for.......and then I saw website xxx"
"My friend told me about website xxx"

or something like that.

---

At least they can tell a little about what's in the article and then write something like "you can read the full article at website xxx".

Yep you are right, this user is using the link of "Coinpedia.org" from the beginning and i found something interesting this after checking his post history. Its clearly intentional and most probably he is the owner of this website. Every single time he used the same website link.

Here is some post link:

1. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5122674.msg51136458#msg51136458
2. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5144188.msg51089232#msg51089232
3.https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1607111.msg51147953#msg51147953

Another interesting thing is that he also advertised an exchange website which is not active now.

Here is the exchange link: https://airfio.com (Inactive now)
His post link where he encouraged others to use this exchange;

1. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5137037.msg50980719#msg50980719
2. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5141771.msg50993601#msg50993601
3. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5137534.msg50920599#msg50920599

I remember that chap so well... almost every post he makes, they are low quality and always directing people to read more from his website including scams. That's why i even had to leave a negative feedback to his profile despite several warnings.

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Look through his post history again... There is on particular website he keeps mentioning

I do.


Make time, or don't leave it.

I’ll like to read this post, and boost my knowledge but when you click the link, it says, ‘The topic or board you are looking for appears to be either missing or off limits to you.’

By the way, The Forum already has created a good feature to advertise your website, and that’s SIGNATURE You can decide to advertise your website there.

That's really how you can contribute and be relevant to the forum without having the real intentions of just promoting your website here. I've seen different ways of this people on how they want to advertise/promote their website mostly the ones sharing articles are having a conversation with their thread, the ones promoting their services are not and is more interested in answering questions regarding their business rather than what the other things they have posted just to promote their link on the post.

In my opinion, users like Prateek_sharma (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2592879;sa=showPosts) should be banned.
There is no problem if someone makes a post and refer to a news website, but when all of the posts are referred to specific websites, that's abusing bitcointalk. Because they are using bitcointalk for another purpose.

how can you say he is not promoting... he is promoting the site! making backlinks to boost his site
check his post history, all of his post always linking out to coinpedia.org pages

agree, he makes it look like he creates a legit thread for a discussion on something
but his true intention is to create many backlinks to improve his site's seo rank and get visitors/pageviews
I support a temp ban for a warning, then a permanent ban if he repeats it again

I know there are just a few mods, and they need to handle a huge number of reported posts, but in this case, they seem rather hesitant to do something. This user is doing the same thing for months, and I think my report is not the first one.


That's your opinion, but think about what a forum would look like if everyone was doing the same thing as the mentioned user? Not only that it is a spam, but also advertising against forum rules.


I reported this post, and the whole thread is deleted, that's why you only get that message.

Yeah, you're probably right. I had 4 reports against this user handled as good within a few hours. I can't remember what sections they were in now so could well have been a dedicated moderator who dealt with them. Global moderators are definitely more experienced than me, but my personal stance would be a temp ban. The user may have possibly been warned via a personal message though so the user may have already been warned.

Maybe I'm a little too strict when it comes to these sorts of posts though. I tend to favour quality discussion, and take the advertisements in a post without being substantial quite seriously which other moderators might disagree with.

My report is still unhandled for that user, but as you say he is maybe warned via PM, or he is maybe get temp ban. The user in question has not been active for the past two days, but I have no doubt that he will return to old habits sooner or later.

I found another one using the same method to advertise his site, although this one has only recently woken up after hibernation. I think his intent is pretty clear, but just two posts this year may not be enough to report.

harshvasistha post history (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1110905;sa=showPosts)

Given that:


I think it's pretty clear this crosses the rules. These "article" threads shouldn't be posted around, either. If anything all of them should be moved to the Press section.

I report such posts as promotional as well, what pisses me off however is that, users keep commenting there keeping the thread up.

This is obviously a marketing strategy, to boost his websites visibility on SERP. Search engines has optimized to reduce the effect of this self promoting.

Such low quality threads provides a good opportunity for other users to make posts without any real effort. Some newbies simply start threads and leave, return a few hours or days later and start another. I usually put such members on ignore.

As Welsh says in his comment, not all moderators have the same point of view in such cases, how else to explain that someone has been doing this for months and that he was not properly punished. Although it is possible that such users first get only warning, then temp ban and maybe another one before perma ban.

Press board has much higher criteria then such posts, and personally I have not yet seen any moderators move anything there because it is also a very problematic board where in recent months, some have literally privatized that board for signature spam and as people paid to post links of certain so-called crypto news outlets.

I just came across a member I think is doing this.  This is the Op of a thread he started:

The advertising is in the last sentence.  This member also started another thread  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5197391)which was *very* much like another one (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5197153).  I reported both of them.  The trading rules thread isn't a straight plagiarism but it is very close.

There are number of them that only promotes their crypto news site. Although they spark the conversation here its not much healthy if they just keep doing it without replying back to the thread. If they are going to be posting links like they are spamming, they might as well be buying a copper membership for that privilege otherwise they are going to abuse this.  For SEO purpose, dofollow links in the forum is very much useful for them to rank.

This user had been doing it since last April of this year https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2474729;sa=showPosts

target, did you report that user maybe? I just report them, let's see what happens.

Some use a different strategy without direct links, but they certainly make sure they mention what they promote as many times as possible. For example, here's a user who just woke up after several months of hibernation, and in just a 3 days he made 10 posts about his service or better to say - how to make a fortune from trading by using my site ::)

Post History (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2620251;sa=showPosts)

I think I'm also guilty on this kind of feature
...

As far as I remembered, it is the third time I've done that. Is this still counted or should I stop it already?

On my own opinion I couldn't count this one as some kind of direct advertising especially if this involves a good running charity that is posted here in Bitcointalk unlike other shillposters who post external links to their websites and also doesn't really want to get involve with their own topic. But with the example you have given I don't see any kind of connection on the “what if” thread you created to the link for the charity you included so I think its inappropriate in this matter.

If we look strictly at the rules, one might say that you do not strictly follow them, but I don't see that in your case it could be seen as a negative thing. You don't do it for a reason and in the way others do, it is enough to look at the posts of those who abuse the forum in such a way.

What I do not like is the way how such cases are handled, just deleting such threads/posts does not stop those who want to promote their links in this way. Yesterday I report user BitOffer (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2620251;sa=showPosts), or to be exactly one of his thread which is deleted, but everything else is still there, and he continues with his work today.