Bitcoin Forum

The forum allows anyone to advertise their services. We have some boards like Service Announcements and Announcements (Altcoins). Signature space can be also used for advertisements. There is no excuse for using other boards for advertising.
In my opinion using any board other than Service Announcements, Announcements (Altcoins), etc. for advertising any service is abusing the forum.
Sometimes, I see there are many replies in such topics. If you don't report these topics, at least do not reply to them. By replying to their topics, you help them to be be more visible.

Take a look at Post history (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=410181;sa=showPosts) of CoinTrendy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=410181).
This user is posting his/her website link everywhere in the forum. This is abusing the forum.

I am sure there are many other examples.
Please avoid replying to topics that are made for advertising purposes in boards that are for other purposes.

These kind of newbies deserved to be nuked and high rank to be banned for breaking forum rules. For sure they will be once their posts getting reported for spamming with links.

So all we have to do when finding such kind of shitty link spams bang "Report to Moderator"

As far as the rules are concerned links/advertisements done by the member's own thread is still ok but on CoinTrendy's case it can be counted as shilling as he ain't really interested in the topic but is more interested in advertising his product or services. My other opinion for this matter is I also don't see anything harmful on article/content relared websites having advertisements on the forum as long as it is in their own thread and is also interested in a real conversation.

This kind of users are harmful for the good environment of the forum posting websites links on any thread is not a good way they're not only promoting their website even they are spreading scams mostly anyway this is very informative post thanks for the knowledgeable information.

Surely it depends on the service. I'm thinking of reviving my Fit to Talk English project for new non-English speaking members. There isn't much point in posting a thread in the services section, as it is unlikely to be visited by new members. I am not multi-lingual, so I can't posr it in any of the local boards. This is why I have used the beginners board in the past.

I agree that commercial services should be posted in the suggested boards though.

I think the issue is that the advertisement/links are being included in the body of posts instead of the signature space where most advertising goes.  You're not allowed to just throw some advertising link at the end of your post, which is what CoinTrendy was doing.  And I've definitely seen that before.  Members will make what looks like a normal post, but if you actually read it, it's nothing more than an advertisment for whatever service they're here to promote.  Not cool.

And here is another example:

The site even does not make any sense at all. There are no service or nothing but bunches of search engine results with BTC address. This account seems to be in a roll to spam LOL

OP's heart is in the right place, but this thread will achieve nothing, I'm afraid. There are too many bounty spammers which will reply to any old nonsense just to pad their post count, and the people who will read this thread aren't the ones who need the advice. As another example, a well known troll has been posting the exact same nonsense for over a year now, and even after multiple users asking multiple times to stop feeding him, people still engage him.

The best thing you can do with posts like these are report them. Any post in someone else's thread breaks rule 22 and should be deleted:

Any new thread potentially breaks rule 24 as quoted above unless it is "really substantial and useful", which this user's site clearly isn't. Like most sites which are spammed on here, his entire site is a collection of poorly written blog posts/articles designed to hide referral links.

Another "check out this article: <LINK TO A REFLINK BLOG>" spammer'Digital Marketer' ::) ::) Recommending "cloud mining" in 2020... ::) :-\

Any mods care to comment if reporting these types of posts is worth it? Is this "link to reflink blog" type of stuff breaking Rule 24? ???

Unfortunately I never got a straight answer from any of the moderator team regarding that exact question a few weeks ago: Is this against the rules? Indirect referral link spamming. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5211486.0) I doubt it was because no mod saw the topic, since several are active in Meta. I've suspected that it's because no mod wanted to say "This is answer" because there isn't actually a straight answer and they might all handle it differently. Hopefully one might clarify the issue here.

What I can say is, of the user who I linked to in the OP, I had several of his posts in other users' threads trashed for breaking rule 22, and also several of his own threads trashed. I reported them for being all of low value, insubstantial advertising, and indirect referral link spam. Whichever mod handled them obviously agreed with me, but I'm not sure if that will hold true of all mods.

Guess every Moderator has his one way to handle reports and maybe some are diffrent views about and handle them diffrent !
As long they follow the main rule of theymos he want to act Moderators !
Also guess it depends from what Board ( Section) the report comes maybe .

But yes ref links directly or inderctly should be removed.

QFT. Heck, even there are still people bumping a dead ICO thread (DaoX)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3799562.0;topicseen

So you have a signature and an avatar that adverstise and you are complaining about other people advertising.

Is this correct or do I misunderstand you?

This thread has 2 people  that are not selling space me and Lafu.

So once again  how about a  2 week zero advertising  policy?

Take some stats  and see how much drops out post wise.

I agree with what o_e_l_e_o said, we can't really control other people from commenting even if it's obvious advertising. I've ignored many users here who always have crypto site links (names below) in their post. There is no point in replying because the OP of those posts rarely responds to comments. Some of these site owners even pay to have their links posted here.

I appreciate what you and Lafu are doing in the forum. We have many valuable members in the forum like you, Lafu, JollyGood, gmaxwell, qwk, Carlton Banks, etc. (Apologize others I not mentioned, there are many) that are not using their signature space for any campaign. We have also many constructive users that are participating in signature campaigns but are very valuable for the forum too. Good examples are almost all of Chipmixer campaign participants.

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You got me wrong. I was talking about the way the advertising is done. We have many members in the forum advertising in their signature space without breaking any rule. Just visit the post history of the user I referred in the OP.
Rule number 24:

As you know, wearing a signature to advertise a service is allowed.

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You are 100% right. We will see a significant drop in number of posts.

I have never sold my sig space - the domain name mentioned in my sig is owned by me.

It is a publicly known fact that some people are paid for the number of published links to specific sites, and abuse the forum by posting links in the forum, but still adding some content to avoid deleting posts. For me, such behavior is something I should sanction, but mods still tolerate such behavior. What's even stranger is that some prominent forum members are encouraging such users by giving them merits, and in doing so, they sent message to others that such behavior is perfectly acceptable.

Bitcoin Discussion is considered lost board (defeated by the spammers), and many have it on ignore. Let's look at some users' history posts : cheezcarls (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=254229;sa=showPosts), DreamStage (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=389851;sa=showPosts), cryptozink (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1674955;sa=showPosts)

The intention of all three is more than obvious, but if you report them on any basis, the report will remain unhandled. At least mods should move their threads to Press board (what deserves to be posted there), and everything else should be deleted because it is advertising in posts.

Seems like you might have triggered something there Lucius... I note that at least one of those 3 is now attempting to claim they're just "sharing information" ::) ::) I mean at what point do you say "Ummmm if I wanted to read the 'news' from cointelegraph, I'd just go to cointelegraph and look at it"... They seem to almost be linking every single news article from that site!!?! ::) ::)



cryptozink just needs to be banned... 99% of their posts are designed to drive traffic to their own site and basically have no substance at all. That is the sort of stuff that should be nuked.

Not the first, and won't be the last. It's the same users over and over again in both Bitcoin Discussion (as Lucius' has linked to) and the Press Board. Look at Jgilpulg (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;threads;u=914598;sa=showPosts) for bitcoinist and jdebunt (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;threads;u=28364;sa=showPosts) for fintoism. Their entire post histories are just page after page of the same advertising spam.

I constantly report users like this, and they are constantly back again the next day with the same low value trash.

Please no. It's take a long time to clear the Press Board up. If you go back a year you'll see 5+ copy-and-pasted spam threads every day from users like Vladdirescu87 and ppblockchain. Even with users like the two I've just linked to above, we are generally down to less than 1 thread a day on average, once we've reported and trashed the spam ones. These threads should be trashed, not just dumped in a different board.

I think it's just another toss of dust in the face of all of us, because the intent is obvious. If you want to share useful information, then this information cannot be from a single source, so in the past, we also had a user who publicly admitted that he is working for a particular web site.


This was just an idea, since they post news, and we have Press board, it would be more appropriate to have it there, of course, if there is reason to consider it something worth reading. Under the current rules of the forum, nothing is unlikely to change - because several lines of text are clearly considered to be an exception to violations of the rules of the forum.

The best chance to remove them is if we catch some post without source link, or wrong posted link - which can then be reported as plagiarism. Press board is cleaned just because most of the abusers are banned because of plagiarism. The only long-term solution is to change the rules because I don't blame the mods for doing anything in these cases, technically these users are just using those rules to their advantage.

Oh sure, perhaps I misunderstood your previous post. Threads regarding substantial news stories which are actually newsworthy, and not just sites advertising themselves, could definitely be moved to Press, but don't just use it as a dumping ground for low quality spam.

An imperfect solution, as that's not really what the plagiarism rule is designed for. Simply forgetting to add a link or a quote is not plagiarism, as you are not trying to pass the text of as your own. This is even more the case when an account has a long history of copying and pasting news articles, and no one could reasonably claim that this account is claiming that work as their own. Further, if they don't make a mistake, then they will continue indefinitely.

A better solution would be to start handing out escalating temporary bans for this kind of behavior.

There is no doubt that this would be the best solution, as it would send a clear message that such behavior was unacceptable. But until the administration decides to do something (if it intends to do anything at all) does it make sense to report such things at all, given that there is no reaction and that reported posts remain unhandled?

Bitcoin Discussion board is completely taken over by users who post just for promoting their links, it is like a Press board in the past. It is funny that after moderation there becomes much more aggressive, spammers just move to Bitcoin/Altcoin Discussion. We need one mod just for that board, as it currently looks like one big spam/shit posting circus.

Completely agreable. On replying on such threads we do indirectly bump those and those are then displayed on top of the sections which also catches eye from even more peoples and more peoples fall for them. There might be a strict watch kept on especially newbie accounts as those are mostly used for promoting scams and spams.

Number of scammy peoples never deplict. The hell is wrong with them?

I have seen so many such services that are spanned over 10 pages just because of comments of senior and hero member comments. Our every comment gives a bump to thread and that's what op of that thread want.