Bitcoin Forum

There are many newbies and even some users from higher ranks asks some questions that could be easily answered.
Such question are probably asked only for increasing post count. Because they can be easily answered by a simple search. Should such questions be considered spam? Should we report them? Or we should answer them?
There are always many posts that I hesitate to reply them because I think I would encourage spam. Sometimes I report them and sometimes I ignore them.


There are many examples. But I don't quote any post here as my purpose is not accusing users.  

I mean posts like following examples when the poster does not bother himself to visit the official website of a gambling website or an ICO/IEO.

What cryptocurrencies are accepted?
Can we bet on champions league matches on your site?
What is the price of tokens at ICO? When will ICO end?


Also, assume that there is a discussion about the new bumping system and someone asks what is the new bumping system. Should I answer such a question or I should report it?

That's just bump spam, dumb questions are an easy way to pretend involvement.

This is obviously an abuse and should be reported. However, the OP is talking about something else, he even mentioned a  question about forum rules:


I don't agree with this.
Reporting legit questions ? This forum is very hard to navigate, specially for newbies. It is not easy to find rules, bumping system and so on. Most of the new users (if they are real users) don't have even an idea what is "bump".

Moderators must be cautious not to delete legit posts.
This forum is an important tool for bitcoin, and even the dumbest question should be answered correctly, because we are the bitcoin support.

If someone doesn't know how to make a transaction, or which fee to use, or he doesn't know what is an address, or what is bump, or whatever he asks, I would answer. The problem comes when a user is abusing to bump a ICO, and this should be reported.

If that question is made in altcoin section, 99% is the case of Ann bumping service. Take Bitwings  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5133411.0) for example. Last 20 posts on their Ann are just questions made by few accounts, and what is interesting, no  one is answering those, and yet they just keep going on with their "work".

You can report a post based on your assessment as everyone has a different criteria with which they judge the quality of a post, it's up to the moderators to decide if they agree with your report or not.
Some users find it easier to ask a question than to visit a site, it depends on the context and the extra layers to the post.
I've come across post from high ranking members asking questions that can be easily answered through a forum search.

Yes, such questions should be asked. There are lots of questions on "Bitcoin Technical support" that should be answered even if they had been asked before. There are some high-quality posters like you, BitCryptex, ETFbitcoin, BitMaxz, LoyceV, achow101, DannyHamilton, HeRetiK and o_e_l_e_o answering such questions and we should thank them as they help the forum reach one of its main purposes.

My question was about those who ask questions that can be answered very easily like "What currencies are accepted" not technical questions.

P.S.
Sorry, I deleted this post by mistake and now I am posting it again. I was testing something.

Yeah, those are stupid ones and are probably made for post count--I see a lot of those whenever I visit Bitcoin/Altcoin Discussion, which isn't that often.

I think I've asked questions here that I probably could have gotten answered with a little research, but that's because I value the opinions of a lot of members here, and I like to get people's opinions and facts that I might not find on a website.  A lot of sites have biases (especially news sites) and some of them I just don't trust or understand.  It is rare that I start a thread with an easy question, though.

A while back, one of the big questions I'd see was "how do I earn bitcoin?" and there would be a new thread asking this question at least once a week--and there would be variations like "what's the best method to earn btc?" or something like that, and I think I used to report those threads as being in the wrong section or for being a garbage topic.  I have no idea what became of my reports, because they were probably 2-3 years ago. 

Anyway, I wouldn't mind if mods would either nuke stupid questions like the ones OP mentioned or at least moved the easier ones to the B&H section.

While we test the bounds here pretty often, I still believe there are no dumb questions. this is subjective of course as I might think it's dumb but they may think they have a legitimate need to ask it. I'm not going to pretend there aren't crazy amounts of techniques out there to up ones post count, most of these are just people asking a question without looking or being unable to find the answer by not looking hard enough.

Personally I tend to answer any question I can, then take the time to find a link to the answer. That or I link them to the correct page so they can find it themselves. Regardless of how stupid or lazy something seems to us this is a place for discussion and learning, so it makes sense for people to treat some threads like a Customer Service Chat or a general inquiry thread. Then there's the ones doing it maliciously or as a troll, you can't really distinguish between them most of the time, but I'd rather help some and waste time with the others knowing it assisted someone who needed it.

To answer your question, report it and see how it works out. Just don't go crazy until you can see how the Mods interpret those reports. A bad report here and there doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things.

The problem here is that there's no way to know with 100% certainty if a question is legitimate or is just created for the sake of postcount. So I guess it completely depends on the question.

My take: If the question looks legitimate and sincere but is really really really redundant and easily Google-able and searchable on Bitcointalk(e.g. how to earn merit, where to spend bitcoin, how to rank up, etc), someone should simply just link some article or post and the mods should simply lock the topic immediately. But then again, this completely depends on the topic question.

It is the very well known hot trend in the past (in 2017 if I am correct). When the forum had explosions in both traffics and new registered accounts.

In that period, the forum was deeply burried with spam. Spammers (in that trend), created shit topics then join together to spam.

If my memory is correct, the forum solved this by trashing all shit topics (that resulted in postcounts automatically dropped for nearly most users). I knew this because I followed the BitVest campaign that was managed by Lutpin (participants complained and asked for reasons why their postcounts were incorrect). This happened around the time merit system activated (closely before or after that day).

If my memory is correct, the term Megaspam topics born during that period too (from DarkStar_ ?).

After that, the merit system came.

I think such boring questions can be reported as non-value posts but there is another very warm welcome to 'real' newbies from theymos (and I think most of us do). Real newbies often ask 'stupid' questions, me too in the past.

So in my opinion, before reporting, we should take into consideration the whole situation of discussions from those boring topics. If there is evidence of spam ones, let's report them.

@hosseinimr93, you can instead focus on reporting necroposts or those that basically regurgitate the same thing. For instance, an open ended question way back in 2017 and some fella decided to quote the original post today.

However it's hard to report OPs (original posts) if they're genuine, just like the examples you posted.

You should be able to distinguish legit questions and ones meant for the sake of post count, if you find it legit, reply with link that explains the question and ask op to lock the thread, for spam questions, just report it.

If answers to these questions were already indicated in the OP or the answers were already in the previous comments, then I guess the questions were only meant to increase post count or an attempt to bump the thread. Low value.

If not, then they can still be considered as legit questions.

If you are pointing to questions that are used to keep a topic "bumped" then you should report them.

There may be legitimate queries but these questions should be obvious to anybody to be legitimate. In other words, do no overdo your reporting. The essence of making reports is keeping the community clean and keeping the discussion going, not attempting to earn a "reporters badge" ::)

Moreover I see some threads made with simple questions. Just answer them or ignore them. You are not the forum mod to be bothered about who is posting spam and who is not. Report them if you like.

And the problem with this threads with very simple questions is it gets so much replies, and in the end you take a look at it and almost everyone was saying the same thing(giving the same answer). All I think those threads with simple e.g "How to earn merits" questions is just very few replies to the op, maybe with links to read up with.

When the replies gets so much for those simple questions, it starts to look really spammy and worth reporting.

Correct! Fake question and genuine question are different initially. Sometimes I see users sent 1 (usualy 1) merit to OPs that ask questions for basic terms or recommendations how to start off in crypto. I am not those merit senders but I guess they sent merits to those OPs because they felt those questions are genuine ones and they sent merits as kinda motivation to genuine newbies.

People who join here to learn about bitcoin & other cryptp, these questions are very much expected I guess. It's normal to have simple question because you know newbies never do much search or they don't know all the questions have been answered already.
Reporting these questions & getting deleted would encourage newbie to get out of the forum. It's not possible to vontrol the spam in the forum (look at altcoin section), I guess these spams you are talking about are less spam to consider reporting.

To have a better solution, it would be good if newbies can have a journey to the forum by default when they register. Many websites ask to have a journey when people register on the website. I guess it would be good solution.