Bitcoin Forum

Recently I found that many posts in the Discussion section are locked.And I saw some comments on this section a few days ago, so I want to post a topic to discuss this matter.

1）As of 10:11 am UTC time, a total of 21 posts have been locked in the bitcoin discussion section, accounting for 26.25% of the posts on the first two [archive page1] (http://pages.https://web.archive.org/web/20210813101441/https%3A%2F%2Fbitcointalk.org%2Findex.php%3Fboard%3D1.0)[archive page2] (https://web.archive.org/web/20210813101606/https%3A%2F%2Fbitcointalk.org%2Findex.php%3Fboard%3D1.40)

2）A few days ago, I saw somebody made such an evaluation of bitcoin discussion.


I don’t know what others say about bitcoin discussion.But at least, for me. I checked this section almost every day when I was a novice.

But gradually I found that the quality of the content in this section is too mixed, and gradually I tend to read posts in other sub-sections, such as Beginners & Help, Development & Technical Discussion.

For those who come to the forum for the first time, bitcoin discussion is definitely one of the most important sections.（It's still like this for me now）.I still shared my first Bitcoin shopping (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5354038.msg57675388#msg57675388) in this section a few days ago,Of course, sometimes there will be posts that I am particularly interested in, as I mentioned in the previous topic.  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5351702.msg57569855#msg57569855)

But as I gradually deepened my understanding of the forum, my enthusiasm for bitcoin discussion diminished.

Do we need to make any changes?In other words, I have observed that the moderator has locked a large number of posts. Is the moderator cleaning up and rectifying this section?

In the beginning, I would only be active in the  Bitcoin Discussion section. At first I only read, and then I tried to reply to the post, and now I can publish my own post.

I have a habit of not searching for old posts, but only looking at the latest replies that are displayed.
Recently, I found that the topic of the new forum posts is similar, but the title is different. Will they be locked? Decide by quality or by the order of publication?

I think mods/admins just need to be a bit more strict when deleting off low-quality posts; and also those posts that are obviously just rehashed versions of earlier replies(for some reason I get annoyed a bit too much when this happens to my posts).

But yea, spammers suck, but you can still see some good conversations from time to time.

Trust me, we all do.

But I think reporting those posts won't get them removed right, as long as they abide by the rules?

They will get deleted if reported. Unfortunately, its quite clear to me that signature campaign participants are much likely to engage in this behaviour, which is something that should have more exposure, since the campaign manager has to review their replies to get them paid, and obviously there's the chance that they'll even report them to the moderators.

They will, depending on the context. I'm not going to blanket statement it, and say they all will. It depends, but I've reported many especially in the Altcoin Discussion section, and they do get deleted. In fact, 100% of them have been deleted of the ones I've reported which was probably over 100 of them.

Rehashing another post isn't exactly abiding by the rules. It's spam. You don't need to keep saying the things that have already been said. Realistically, it should be a discussion, and therefore there should always be a contribution, otherwise your just talking in circles, which isn't exactly a good discussion.

Obviously, there's different angles users can take, and expand on things that have already been discussed, but if its not contributed to better the discussion, then it probably isn't abiding by the rules.

If you want to help with the efficiency of handling those reports; then just state they're rehashing another reply, and link to that reply if possible. It'll likely speed up the process of deleting it, otherwise the moderator has to read the entire thread, but if it can be streamlined from the community, even better. 

I usually check Bitcoin Discussion first thing in the morning with my first cup of tea. I report 2 or 3 spam topics or replies and have a scan through the first page. Sometimes there’s something worth reading and replying to , but generally I can flick through the section in less than 2 mins.
Yes it is full of repetitive and spammy nonsense , but if you change this drastically , this repetitive and spammy nonsense will only appear in other sections. It’s worth trying to keep it contained to this section. My 2 sats anyway   :)

Nah, definitely not. If you see a spam post, and you don't mind reporting it, don't hesitate because you think it might start leaking elsewhere. It'll leak elsewhere anyway, and the more spam we remove the better for the community. Plus, you keep us mods busy; I've been getting fat because of the doughnuts I'm eating instead of handling reports.

You gotta prepare yourself for the next huge run up in price then; because you're going to starve.

Jokes aside, wouldn't a temporary mute feature work nicely? e.g. if a certain user has like 10 of his/her posts deleted in a day, he/she is muted and unable to post for like 24 hours or so. Haven't thought of this deeply, but yea.

Very hard to get a decent discussion in the 'Bitcoin discussions' board. There are a lot of shits there.

Some topics are interesting per se, but people turn it out to trash in a matter of a dozen of posts. They don't stop reformulating what has already been said earlier. You need to ignore 75% of the users to get proper content.
Seriously, imagine the same discussion IRL, in which all your friends repeat each others. I'm not interested in parots and don't plan to open a zoo.

When such posts are reported, it's usually moderated efficiently, but it becomes so boring to report them all. You spend more time reporting posts than reading a discussion

Not a joke at all. It's a reasonable idea IMO. Not only on the Bitcoin Discussion board, a lot of boards full of spam replies. Sometimes reporters report from the user's profile, in this case, spammers should be muted or temporarily ban for a short time. So that person will think twice before spam again.

Potentially, something like a shadow ban which is then reviewed by a staff user before their posts going public again could also work. I think at the very least it would be beneficial to have an intuitive way to see when a user has had several deleted posts recently. Maybe even including posts that they've deleted themselves.

The most annoying thing in the section is that I constantly run into topics with clickbait titles, where the news are proved to be either fake or the title misleading, like the news about Amazon, Aramco, Xiaomi, yet, despite users pointing out that in the first 2-3 pages nobody reads, everyone is shouting good news, so great, wow, such, moon, paraphrasing the same two liners. The nice thing about the section lately is that I see moderators acting more on locking topics, either these ones that start with a fake story or rumors or the ones that go nowhere, don't know if it's just somebody reporting them or the mods acting on their own but good call.

I'm trying as hard as possible to stay away from it and it's a real pain to see some subjects that are interesting, to see some posts that you simply feel the urge to reply to point the things you think are wrong there or to voice your opinion and then realize that probably the user will never come back to reply since he has done his quota, just reading your posts makes him spend twice as much time and ten times the effort  :'(


Sounds good but it could lead to some abuse, people reporting tons of posts just to get somebody banned, or at the same time some escaping this as they only get n-1 posts deleted every day. Maybe a little tweak to (deleted posts/total number of posts over x days) ? If they try to bypass this by screening with the percentages and posting more crap they will be banned by the mods for sure.


That's why I don't revisit topics once they get past page 4 unless somebody quotes me or it's a topic I care about a lot, not that I've seen too many like that lately.

That's the problem--the good stuff is only intermittent, and I'd estimate that there are far more crap threads/posts than there are good ones, and that's the reason I have Bitcoin Discussion on ignore most of the time.  If I have the section un-ignored, my unread threads feed tends to get overwhelmed with BD threads that just suck but are being bumped by shitposters, and finding good threads in sections like Meta and Reputation becomes harder.

I'm not sure what the mods do if you report a post as being of zero-value (which I've done a number of times).  Most of my reports have been marked "good" but that doesn't mean a mod deleted anything.  But if a post is complete garbage, it technically is going against the rules, so reporting them is a good thing to do.  However, once you report a post you think is crap, it all comes down to whether the mod handling the report agrees with you or not, and if anything is done about it.

I think it's Bitcoin talk and if any -Newbies- without any routine guidance will find Bitcoin broad the absolute pleasurable place, I think their are more -Newbies- I'm Bitcoin section posting than the rightful beginners and help, so with more -Newbies- posting what their knowledge isn't adequate about then the section Bitcoin discussion looks detestable or under-knowledgeable I still don't let it get to me, because I can search even in the midst of -Newbies- like post for some knowledgeable post.

My 2 cents .. The quality of the posts in this section has not changed, as all the key thought of each of the threads in this section are revealed in the discussions on the first page. All other messages, mostly spam and a repetition of what has already been said (few people read what was written in front of him).

Consequently:

[1] Or you began to write better, and analyze what you read, which influenced your perception.
[2] Or you yourself have become a frequenter of mega-threads, so against this background it may seem to you that the quality of messages has deteriorated.

My idea was sort of like 10 posts that are made in the same day; as to potentially remove the chances of a user getting temporarily muted because 10 of his/her posts that were made a year ago got deleted.

But yea, definitely lots of room for improvement.

I very rarely visit bitcoin discussion, despite being very interested in bitcoin. The bitcoin discussion sub is very spammy and in my experience, is mostly made up of threads with no substantive discussion. I might propose that threads in bitcoin discussion be moderated in a way that if the thread is not resulting in substantive back and forth discussion, it should be locked (unless the lack of discussion is due to a lack of replies). Based on the OPs report, a version of this may already be implemented.

Here's what I said about Bitcoin Discussion three years ago:


Nothing has changed. More and more senior members either don't post in it or ignore it entirely. 90% of the replies in any thread over about 3 pages are just repeating what has already been said. Trying to have a good discussion is near impossible - you can maybe get 4 or 5 good posts in an actual discussion before the spam starts rolling in and drowns it out.

Locking spam megathreads is one thing, but as I've said elsewhere, it does nothing to address the underlying issue. Given that there are tens of thousands other threads, and anyone can open as many threads as they want, the spam will continue until we either starting actually punishing spammers and their signature campaigns, or we absolutely blitz the section and spammers learn not to post in it anymore, such as you get in Mining or Technical Discussion. The second option will just lead to the spammers spilling over in to other boards, though, since they have to hit their quotas and we don't punish campaigns which pay for such trash posts.

I am a newcomer and I will check the Bitcoin discussion board every day. The quality of the posts varies, but there will still be some good posts. Even if the post itself is bad, if it can lead to some discussion, it can also inspire me to some extent.

I think the board is serving its purpose well. The board was created for discussing bitcoin and things relating to it and that's exactly what the board is doing. If you notice i don't post much there but that doesn't mean i don't visit the board often infact it's one of my most visited board but all i do is read over there.

No denying there's a huge number of low quality post but guess it's better than the alternative subboard. Mostly when i have something to post that's when I write on the board and it's usually me starting a threads.

For a change I'll suggest the spam busters over there should be a little more strick. More reporting should be encouraged and not just replies but also threads having similar contact. A glance at the board and you can identify two to three thread having similar content. In summary more attention should be given to the board as it's the most vital of all other boards.

Totally agree. But not just spam busters. Everybody who visits these boards should be more engaged in preventing spam and keeping them clean. Also, bounty managers can be extremely useful here, since most spammers post purely to meet signature campaigns quotas. While I understand that it can sometimes take a lot of time when there are many participants and a lot of posts, but every bounty manager should plan their campaign so that quality control is a part of their process, not just weekly counting of posts. After all, a campaign won't be much of a success if most of its participants and their pots end up on the ignore lists of a large number of forum members, right?

Thanks for your input. If we all were to report those zero-valued posts, that would be like taking away over 80% of the discussion volumes. And that's after discounting those "complete garbage" as gibberish or spambots.

Too much unnecessary work to deal with those I guess.

Bitcoin Discussion should be the sub forum that has the most attention we are a Bitcoin forum and there should at least be a dedicated mod in that sub forum. Members would report more if there was a dedicated mod there.

It is the bounties in the altcoin sub forums that are promoting low quality replies in the Bitcoin Discussion forum. I think the spammers and the bounty managers there should be banned if they cannot control their members in their campaign.

We have tried to do something, but instead of any result, we are labeled as those who constantly complain about something and those who waste their time in that board. Consequently, I have decided that I will not waste my time cleaning that board if some prominent members already think that it is a lost cause (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5353772.msg57669928#msg57669928).

The BD board is just a reflection of the whole forum, and obviously, we have enough boards to write off one board at a time.

Edit:

Still, it's hard to watch all that spam and not report anything - so I decided to hit spammers and shitposters even harder.

Spammers sure, bounty mangers that would be too harsh since they're not the ones producing the spams but some punishment can be introduced although that'll mean signature/bounty are now been moderated and that'll be against the forum principle of not moderating this campaigns.

Managers can play a role here and I'm sure some of us are already doing so but there'll always be bad eggs. If we can denied posts that aren't worth rewarding constantly then the campaign promoters will get the hint of zero tolerance to low quality posts. Majorly alts are the reason behind this low quality contributions as they'll want to maximize the time they have on their hands to post as many posts as possible so as to get paid with their multiple alts.

If we can win the fight against abuses ongoing on the forum with alts spamming meriting themselves and cheating then we're a step closer to eradicating spam from not just the Bitcoin/altcoin discussion board but the forum as a whole.

I did all that for months. Reported thousands of spam posts, reported hundreds of threads to be locked due to them being spam megathreads, reported hundreds of threads to be trashed entirely because they were low quality or a duplicate of an already existing thread. Even after my busiest days of many hundred reports, only the first page would be cleaned up, and by the time I woke up in the morning, it was complete mess again. We can report individual posts and threads until hell freezes over, but without either real action taken against the spammers and the campaigns which pay them, or maybe a couple of dedicated sub-board mods who can monitor the board near-constantly and delete/lock spam threads before they even get started, then nothing will change.

This is the crux of the matter. The spammers spam because they get paid for it. They get paid for it because of shitty campaign managers who don't care about the quality of their participants, and it is the rest of the forum which has to deal with the consequences. I've caught a couple of signature spammers who delete their own posts and then repost the exact same posts the following week to get paid, and the manager did not pick up on it. This is not an isolated incident, and is proof that many managers do not even read the posts of their campaign participants.

Why should the managers get paid for doing nothing, while it is the forum users who have to sacrifice their own time (with no reward) to clean up the mess? We need to start banning managers who don't manage their campaigns properly, or even better, banning the campaigns altogether to incentivize future campaigns to choose reliable managers.

I second that as well, Bitcoin paying signature campaigns on the forum are more or less run by the best and reliable managers, thus I don't think we actually have too much of a problem with them, they (the managers) are open to take reports of wrongdoing from any of their participants and action would be taken subsequently against such user, these campaigns actually have the desire to promote their establishment here, I think that's why they more often than not go for the best managers so they don't get into trouble.

Having said that, the altcoin bounties is an entirely different thing all together, their managers are most times even newbies that wouldn't mind if you ban their account or not, neither would they spend an extra minute going through posts made by participants of their signature campaign, thus banning them may actually not be productive, what could work is outrightly putting a stop to such campaigns, if that's even possible, cause more often than not, what they even advertise is either BS or even a scam.

The other big difference of those bounties with bitcoin paying signature campaigns is that, altcoin bounties don't have any limit for maximum number of participants and they accept any user who apply for the bounty.
In altcoin bounties, the budget is fixed and the total money shitcoins they pay doesn't depend on number of participants. This makes them to not reject anyone. They think that if they accept more users, they can have a more successful bounty. 

That is true, they prefer quantity over quality, and that is the problem. These campaigns risk no funds at all. If the project fails (which is the case with most of them) they will simply distribute worthless tokens to bounty participants, so they will not lose anything. As a result, we have to deal with a huge amount of low quality and spam posts on our forum. Also, the number of reports moderators receive is on the rise, so I am assuming it is becoming more difficult for them to stay in the loop with everything that is going on.

What I’ve always found difficult is knowing who to trust, especially with semi-technical stuff that doesn’t quite fit in the dev & tech board. I love when I have a post for Gmax’s section because many who are often hanging out there know their shit and the board is run by a legit cypherpunk/former dev who’s typically engaged in everything I post there and of course is a slower board and isn’t bogged down as much as some other mods.

I don’t know if there is any way to do this but it would be awesome if theymos / Hilarious could give users who they know are knowledgeable a marking of sorts, like I believe Hal Finney and Gavin have, and other early day contributors (like Theymos,).. I have mostly learned about btc from Andreas, Szabo and my buddies in collectibles who I know I can trust since we are a close group and I’ve gotten to know who knows what they’re talking about but I wish I could be more confident posting in general discussion.. Merit helps some of course. Maybe this is a silly idea ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is why I am taken to reporting egregious users' post histories as opposed to hunting for shitty threads. Merit was an improvement but any improvements come with a time lag: you can conflate a similar analogy of sticky prices with post quality because spammers need to be "shook out" of the forum. My goal at the time was not necessarily to ban users, but to wipe a significant chunk of posts to point toward their behavior as a wake-up call. I could only imagine the impact if, for your deleted posts, you also had the merit removed!^*

In contrast, when you're peering through boards and threads themselves, you could very well participate in a shit thread and contribute some substance, although the likelihood exponentially decays against the increasing post count. Another scenario too would be the constant answering of simple, generic, and vague questions in threads posed by "Newbies". I liken this behavior to that of stalking the Lending, Scam Accusations, or Investor-games board and posting your typical no collateral/no evidence/warning ponzi reply which takes minimal effort beyond being the fastest.

Given all the amazing benefits that scammers, trolls, and spammers have on the forum, a smart account farmer could use any combination of tactics: creating Newbie accounts to ask idiotic questions with premade answers, creating troll accounts to post in the previously-mentioned copy-paste reply boards (like the style of this user (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=193160)), making obvious ponzis or scams to call them out, or participating in fake discussions (which is probably part of the megathread problem). What can't scammers do? They have all the privilege on the forum. Seriously.

If I understood your suggestion correctly (if I didn't, correct me), are you postulating that Theymos should appoint mods from users who are knowledgeable in what the content of the particular section is all about. I think that is the case already, I don't think there is any mod currently who is not knowledgeable on what is acceptable or what it not, there is also the Global mods whose duty covers all the sections of the forum; thus I don't think is the solution to the problem.

The problem is the enormous amount of shitposts, for example, it's just like when two people are handling a job in a company that's meant for ten people, sooner or later this two individuals are either going to be inundated with duties and their input would gradually deteriorate as they would be unable to handle the task at their disposal. That is somewhat the case here, if the shitposts in some sections of the forum is pretty small, then it would be easy to pick them out and delete, but as things stand now, even with the mods and the assistance of users who report LQ posts, it is like the situation gets worse everyday.

Negative …I meant just simply give people like Loyce / Nullis etc who we all know are very knowledgeable some sort of different colored moon, or a badge (like the art contest winners got) that could show they are well versed in cryptography, the forum etc.  I’ve been around for a long time now and still mostly don’t know who I can trust when given feedback /replies etc..even people I interact with often. If you’re a tech dummy like me it would be nice to know members who actually do know their stuff ..because I sure don’t, and with a lot of stuff I ask I may get 10 different replies ..who do I believe?  I dunno, this may be too hard to implement and maybe get too political ..but would be cool even if there were only like 10-20 users who are pretty active given it just to start and go from there. Merit doesn’t mean much to me if being honest and of course rank doesn’t either.

No, the forum doesn't like intervening by telling you to trust (or not trust) others. You are granted the privilege of ignorance and the opportunity to learn: quit trying to bring about these crazy socialist policies. Just let the scammers do their own thing - they have rights like you and I.

Next, you'll ask for guests to see default trust ratings or be warned about scams being unpunished! Or maybe you'll ask, "why do we have a literal ponzi section?"

I might agree that bitcoin discussion board have a much bigger role for users to discuss about bitcoin and other thing related to it than just keeping a fair amount of junk and unqualified post from the sheer number of active poster there every day. I don't completely ignore the board but I'm not very active on it either although I know there are some interesting discussion I missed. So far, I've only been actively posting 65 time this year, even though there may be 1-5 (don't remember) posts that may have been deleted due to the low quality of the threads created. There's only one thread I've ever created a bitcoin discussion board "Am I the Only One Who Forget The Innovation of Bitcoin ? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5197013.0)" for during my time on the forum, but I don't see many poster interested in getting involved in the discussion.

Applicable rule may not be very effective in preventing poster from posting spam and trash on bitcoin discussion board or this forum as a whole. I have to understand it in a different way due to the fact not all users of this forum care about a forum environment that is clean of low value post. Agree to get stricter moderation from moderator on board that have lot of posters and daily post, deletion and reporting are possible and recommended rather than ignoring board. As of August 16 since 2021, there have been 106,997 created on bitcoin discussion board including child board. If in July 2011 sirius said more than 50% of existing post had become junk, then by 2021 I believe 90% of them may not be as expected.

You can always get a stationary bike and exercise in between two reports. Try to get your heart rate up to 140-160 BPM and feel those doughnuts going to waste.

That's an excellent idea. It's like when Bitcoin nodes ban and stop communicating with other nodes who aren't behaving properly. Question is, can something like that be automated in this forum where mods get a notification when X number of posts have been deleted from user A, or would they have to perform manual checks? If its the latter, I don't see it happening.

They care only about the quantity of the posts and the visibility of their signature. Maybe the admins should consider a pilot program of some sorts. Don't allow altcoin signature participants to post in the Bitcoin Discussion boards for a week or two and see what will happen in terms of spam, reported and deleted posts, etc. It might be too restrictive and controversial though.
 

Looking at Bitcoin discussion board, it doesn't seem to me that it's dominated by altcoin signatures and that they are the main cause of the issues. On the contrary, seems to me that majority of posts are written by those that are in Bitcoin signature campaigns. Current bar set to enter one of the signature campaigns paid in BTC is very low due high amount of campaigns and lack of quality members, so even a  shitposter  with 5-10 merits in the last 120 will be capable to secure a spot.

Now that signature campaigns are mentioned, I wish managers remove subpar participants more often but then again, I understand why they don't do that as they probably won't find adequate replacements so they just go on as it is.

Chicken or the egg: did poor campaign management cause quality members to leave (from increased spam), or did the shift into poor post quality lead to respectively poor management?

The existence of zero/extremely-low entry fees for altcoin campaigns made it so that low quality could easily seep into any board. Bad money drives out good, and the same could be said about posts. Why would people bother with high quality when they could farm with 20+ altcoin campaign accounts, spewing shit into the air to get paid? Sad state of the forum.

https://i.loli.net/2021/08/17/6oMLJ5zwIQdxV8j.png (https://sm.ms/image/6oMLJ5zwIQdxV8j)
This is what I expected, I now read in the BD section every day...most of people still choose to read this section.
Although the quality of the posts inside is really different.

There is almost anything about Bitcoin. That's why there will be a variety of posts with different qualities.

Just like the two posts listed by OP. Both of them are good posts but the types are completely different.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5354038.msg57675388#msg57675388 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5354038.msg57675388#msg57675388)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5351702.msg57569855#msg57569855 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5351702.msg57569855#msg57569855)

Bitcoin Discussion should be the one sub forum which has the most moderators instead it has the least it does not make sense to me? There will always be more members wanting to join a signature campaign that there will be spaces this is obvious if you look at the open signature campaigns and how many members apply for them how quick they fill the position. Bitcoin

And what would the section be left with if all of those posts were deleted?  Most of the good stuff!  That's why all of those shitposts should be reported when you see them--and I'm not saying you need to go out of your way to look for them, but if you're reading threads in sections like Bitcoin Discussion you're inevitably going to come across them.  It only takes a few seconds to report a garbage post to the mods and then your part is done.

I just made a post in Meta about the quality of posts in Economics deteriorating lately and asked whether this might be due to an increase in signature campaigns and/or bounties.  I don't follow the Services section (or the bounty one), so I don't have a good sense of how many are currently active.  But it sure as hell seems like those old "bitcoin has a bright future and is increasing day by day" posts are making a comeback.

Lol, so that's why you wanted to take the username "Skeptical Chemist" ... it turns out you do not believe in the bright future of Bitcoin, blabla, and etc. But seriously speaking (although this has already been mentioned), in order to put an end to this discussion, and at the same time unload the moderators and the users themselves, Theymos should think about creating the same conditions in this section as in the "Serious discussion & Ivory Tower" section. But, personally, I am against it, since this is likely to affect other sections ... sections that spammers, thank God, bypass for the time being.

I think we are all agree that something needs to change I do not know the best solution to our problems with the spam but we as a community need to pick up the slack if there are not enough moderators until theymos decides to add new moderators. The more reports we make in Bitcoin Discussion the more likely theymos will add a new moderator. I do not report many posts but I will put special effort into reporting spam posts I see on that board from now on and I hope others will to because atm the spam is very bad there.

I also think that there are many similar questions in the Bitcoin discussion section, and the content of some topics is not true, and the questions sent at random are not convincing. There are many more worthless threads than valuable threads. I think it can be strictly reviewed. Some inferior posts or posts with no quality and value can be left unreserved. When I first joined the forum, I felt that the Bitcoin discussion part should be the main part, but I think the quality of Bitcoin discussion posts is not so high now.

I think the forum is very good now (except for some bounty hunters) and everything else is very good.

Many new people join the forum every day. Many old members of the forum are also very patient to answer questions like others

Agreed. Much easier to digest what's going on without seeing the same thing posted over and over again.

But then, if this happens while I'm an advertiser, I'd be pretty sad because I need them to spread my brand ;)

If you're referring to the number of signature campaigns, you could check out the Overview of Bitcointalk Signature-Ad Campaigns (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=615953.new#new) by Mitchell. I won't bother with bounties because they're aplenty and I doubt anyone has the time to make a compilation AFAIK.


Tell me about it. ;D

Happened to stumble across one thread earlier today about "deciphering" the Bit from Bitcoin and one senior member expressed his exasperation because of this.

The most recent threads created in Bitcoin Discussion...

https://i.imgur.com/yLjoACm.jpg

This has been over the last 24 hours. Every one of his 12 threads is text spun plagiarism and zero value trash. This board needs a dedicated mod to stop users like this before they gain traction.

Those should be considered as topics spamming, I hope most if not all will be deleted soon. 12 topics in just less than a day. Maybe the person is doing it thinking it will earn him merit, or doing it for recognition, I just do not understand.

I actually commented on one of the users thread, although the main theme of the comment was replying to an idea I saw in another reply while scrolling through and which I thought was wrong. The purpose of the topic is a hackneyed one on the comparison of Bitcoin to gold.

It's an obvious case of spam and looking at the user's post history, (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3371029;sa=showPosts),they have never replied to any of their threads since they joined the forum, they just push out thread after thread with no care to interact with any discussion on any of the threads.

In this case; a newbie posting these types of posts, there should be enough patrollers to deal with it. The issue is likely with higher ranks, that would justify a dedicated moderator. Assuming that global moderators are overwhelmed or not going through the section, and cleaning it up a little bit.

The user was text spinning from articles elsewhere. The text spinning was fairly decent at avoiding most searches, however ultimately wasn't good enough to avoid being nuked.

Do you really think this problem only applies to beginners? Here on the forum, there are quite a few high-ranking users who do not hesitate to create hundreds of useless shitty threads ... moreover, these users, receive hundreds of merits. And they will not even bother to respond in their own discussions ... which once again convinces me that it is not in vain that I ignore such "supposedly" significant authors. I mean, in addition to all of the above, we should also reconsider the rules of plagiarism, etc. ... because now there are double standards on the forum in this regard.

The "they" in my reply was referring to the specific user and not beginners or newbies. Spam is not peculiar to rank and merits or activity is not an explicit sign of a positive member to the forum.
Trolls, scammers and spammers come in all profiles and ranks.