Bitcoin Forum

I came across this proposal below in my thread  List]Gambling Board Spammers; Concerns, Solutions & Suggestions (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5403475.0)

I've proposed some solutions to at least reduce the rate of spam in the gambling section in the past, but this proposal may be useful to the entire forum.


Could this reduce the amount of spam? Yes, because most Mega threads are a haven for spammers, some go so far as to use them to gain activity. The only issue this could present is multiple threads, as we are likely to see a lot of new threads, but as long as it reduces some level of spam, I do not see a problem.

What do you think.

I had to quickly head over to the gambling section to check how many threads will fall under this category.

For the Main Gambling board;
I found just one thread in the first page which goes beyond 1000 pages.

On the Gambling discussion child board;
I identified 6 of such threads in the first and second page on the board.

The way I see it, not counting signatures in this threads anymore would just push spammers to post on other threads and the cycle continues till those ones gets above 1k pages. Rinse and repeat again.

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I'm "not sure" if this would be effective.

As you added a poll, you should also add an option for "No" too  ;D

Yes
Maybe, yes
Not sure

I would probably be inclined to say that it will not work. That is just my opinion but even if the masses agreed with that proposal, trying to get admin to make the change would not be easy.

People can make continuation threads if they want.
Also people spam easily in smaller threads too.
So I don't think that this will be of any help.
So I'd vote No, but you've missed that option.

At the very least, they would find it difficult to begin spamming in a thread with quality posters, as their posts would be easily detected and reported. The mega thread gives them a lot of freedom to operate, and it makes tracking and reporting difficult because the pages move in the blink of an eye. Another option was to make all threads self-moderated, allowing the OP to clean and dry.




I'm not sure i missed that :-\

@igehhh Why creating a voting Poll without giving option to vote No?

I don't think limiting number of pages to 1000 to show signatures would benefit anyone, simply because bounty managers who are counting posts may disregard this rule.
Than you would only have people creating many more duplicate topics with less pages, so there would be five or more topics about Premier League, three or four for Champions League or World Cup.
Instead of having one Mega thread you would have more Mini threads with the same or very similar content, so nothing would be solved.

This is a really complex issue, and I am not sure I can draw any conclusions from it. However, I do believe that the decision to let these threads exist as they are is a good one; most mega threads are harmless and aren't just for of spammers. They contain long discussions on various topics, and people usually update them regularly with new information as well. On top of this, deleting signatures in these threads would probably just drive any discussion that does take place into other threads on the forum, which would defeat the whole purpose. So for now at least, I think we should keep mega threads intact.

I have a basic question, please make it clear.
Why do you specifically refer "spam" to a mega thread?
Do you think every person who posts on the mega threads is a spammer?

As far as I understand, spam is everywhere, it is not specifically located in mega threads only.
Please don't mislead people to judge "spam" is always related to mega threads.

If you really want to eliminate spam in this forum, you need to monitor all the boards, not specifically target the gambling boards only. Unless, if your target is to decrease the number of gambling signature participants. If it is your goal, it makes sense that the focus on the gambling board only.

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Regarding your vote, limiting the page number won't impact anything to spammers.
As I said above, spam is everywhere, it is not specifically on the mega thread only.
It is a false assumption to think spam is always related to mega threads.

CMIIW

That won't happen though, mods will delete duplicate threads as it is against the rules.

I actually made a suggestion on one of those threads, e.g. the NBA thread. Since it is discussed per season, lock it after the end season then create a new one for the new season. But the regular posters don't agree on it.

Somehow, yes.
This is actually promising. For the first time I have managed to accept an appraisal, not because he's Igehh but for the fact that I've realised a kinda - hidden logic - in that alot of users are afraid of JG and his recent development, AFAIK - they don't wanna get that fine-red paint on their profile, that'll be expressing who they really are and the shit in their ass- queekin' goo. So if every mega-thread is nutured in the same 'modus operandi', then they'll have no choice that to go 'hard' or go 'home'.
But, on the other perspective of thinking, mega-threads are essential in here as several questions will be asked Incessantly without 'em. Threads like the FAQ (yeah, even in gambling sections, there are.) Shouldn't be tempered with or sometimes, mega football prediction threads too. The whole thing is confusing ASF. My opinion is: if anything be done, then let it be: designating peeps to make 'em self-moderated, that's it. Deletion will do much harm than killing their guts

Sandra 💇

There are good and bad posts in any good or bad topic.

The biggest problem with Mega thread is there are abundant posts in it and a lot of new posts will be published after one or few hours. It makes it hard to follow discussion as well as to filter posts and find good ones.

It is true. It is easy to create new threads after locking past mega threads and spam will be continued. Spam in new and smaller threads are not better in quality than spam in Mega threads.

If people can make repeated topics to hunt merit, it is not a minor issue for them to create new threads to get post quota whilst post quality would be the same (low).

You can extrapolate it to ChipMixer campaign. In gambling, most of posters are spammers but there are a few posters chosen to join ChipMixer gang. Their posts have good opinion and quality so that DarkStar_ have reasons to pick them.

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Generally, it depends on managers to set up rules for their campaigns and criteria to count eligible posts and it is a complex combination of many factors

I am generally surprised at the ability of spammers to repeat the same post in their own words. I tried to check their posts for plagiarism, and surprisingly, the posts show uniqueness, but the idea and meaning of everything said are repeated in many posts.
Perhaps it was worthwhile to establish a rule that any post whose meaning is no longer new should be deleted. If we complain about positions that are similar in essence and the moderators delete them, it will probably create a task for spammers to think about what they write.

Nope, I don't think that solution would reduce spam. I just wish you put that option in the poll so I can actually vote. :P Take for example NBA (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1220979.0) topic that is going on since 2015 and has more than 2k pages; I don't see how there would be less spam if someone creates a new topic for each season as the same people would write in them.


They would? Somehow I am not sure as there are at least 3 different threads ( I probably missed a few, this was just a quick search) for the FIFA World Cup 2022 and all in the same child board: FIFA World Cup 2022 Group Stage Highlights (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5392585.0), FIFA World Cup 2022: Tournament Discussion Thread for Qatar 2022 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5326182.0) and FIFA 2022 world cup (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5392720.0). Btw, its not any better in other parts of the forum as the moment there is some big news, bunch of duplicate topics pop up, and they rarely get deleted/merged (I don't know if latter ever happens).

I agree with @NeuroticFish, spam isn't only define because of how many pages or posts has been posted on the thread, but it's mostly because of the post quality. The judgement to know how high the quality is from both campaign managers (if the user join a signature campaign) and the moderators (which they has a power to delete someone post). As long as the campaign managers count his post and the moderators didn't delete his post, this mean his post has decent quality and not a spammer.

Just because the manager counts a post and the moderator doesn't delete it doesn't mean the post is actually good. Most of the time, our reports go unhandled because there are so many of them. Additionally, some managers use Ninjasty.space to count posts without properly evaluating the posts' quality as long as the user met the weekly post requirement.

No, but home to spammers

Not all, but most are.

I'm not misleading anyone but most mega thread contains a lot of spam, compared to smaller ones.

Some of the best campaigns simply don't pay for the posts made after a certain page of a megathread. Of course, it depends also on what's the thread about and the quality of the post.
Also, of course that in many cases the campaign/bounty managers could do better if they would care about the forum. On the other hand, the advertiser wants visibility and some don't care where that visibility is, so the managers will also just do the counting and that's all.

Of course, in altcoin announcements I've often seen threads very long and filled with spam. In some cases they were even paying for that spam to keep their topic look alive. But I still feel like restricting topics' length will do nothing good.
For now I still think that the only solution is to report the spam.



Sorry, but then I don't think that the poll holds any value. It will only tell whether there are people somewhat sharing your view, but no information at all about the rest.
I see you've updated the poll. Great! I voted.

If you lock those megathreads, where do you think those spammers will write? Do you think that they would stop posting or suddenly increase their post quality because of that measures? Of course not, they would just share their nonsense in other threads so I don't really see how what's proposed in your first post would help the forum.


Its true, managers could do more to control their signature campaign members, but the problem is that there are far more spots in signature campaigns that there are quality members so if they kick someone (unless its one of the best paid campaigns), they won't be able to replace with anyone better so they just let it slide as they have to fill their campaign somehow.

The gambling "report to moderator" function is less effective than it is on the Meta and, of course, on the economy child boards. There are a lot of unhandled reports on gambling discussions, so I personally prefer to have a list of all the spammers so that managers can evaluate their posts before accepting or counting them.

i didn't think it was necessary since it was a kind of probability question that needed a probability answers too. but well, I've added the No option.



Don't lock, only disable signature from the 1000th pages onwards. It would filter signature spammers from posting shit.

What if someone creates a self-moderated topic and then deletes the posts before the 1000th reply? Or moved that topic to another board and bring it back again?

Solving the spam is not partially. I suggest that there should be a minimum level to show the signature in all forums, such as 1 merit per month or 20 per month in some spam boards, if you do not get those merits, the signature will disappear.

I agree with this one. Signature campaigns provide a good way for members to generate some income, and to help support a community. It's easy to look at them as a bad thing, but they really can be both negative and positive. Managing campaigns can be time-consuming, especially if you are running multiple campaigns. This is not always a problem, but when hundreds of members signup on an campaign, it is a challenge for the manager to sort out who is posting quality content, who is posting low quality content, and who is a regular spammer. However, it really is up to them to set the standards for engagement that they expect from their participants. And it is up to us to report spam and low quality content to the moderators and thus help keep the forum clean.


It's an interesting idea. The question is, how do we determine how many merits someone needs to get before a signature appears?

And how would that change anything as they would just move to another sub-1000 page topic and continue posting shit. Keep in mind that they have to fill their signature quotas and they will just do it someplace else and posting in smaller topics won't magically make them better posters.

As I mentioned in one of the previous posts, take for example NBA thread that has more than 2k pages. Let's say that you create a new thread at the beginning of each season (which would happen if you disable signatures after 1k pages) how exactly would that affect the post quality? People would continue to write the same as before.

Since majority of spam is created due signature campaigns, its up to the managers to (at least try) control that by not counting low value posts.

It's obvious what will happen
- spammers will create new topics and abandon them when the quota is near
- they will flock to other topics that are building slowly and start spamming stupid things about sports they don't even know how are played

The 1000 barrier is also way too high for some and for some other sports or competitions it might be too low.
Unfortunately, the only ones that can do something about it are mods and more importantly campaign managers, but the second ones don't seem to care that much.


Sounds nice but I'm pretty sure in reality a lot of them will manage to get enough either directly or by trading it.
Even the red-tagged 1xbit spammers are getting 1 or 2 merits, so for the more advanced spammers capable of writing 5 not 2 lines of text 1 merit will be reachable. Also, I don't think the WO members will be happy with that, that topic will be flooded with merit begging.


I think that the battle for the whole board is lost and there is absolutely no possible way to control it, so it would be better to simply keep your own topics clean by having them moderated. After all, if we think this from the user perspective, they could spam all the s** they want in mega threads while real gamblers who make real posts will stay in those self-moderated ones where they can actually communicate.

But out of pure curiosity, what would a bumping rule do to that board?

It's a bit hard to grasp all the impact but if topics with shitposter are not getting bumped by low-merit spammers while self-moderated topics with users with higher activity are being kept on the front page, wouldn't that cause less exposure to mega threads and finally make managers realize they are paying for bottom page zero views posts?
I know there are flaws here also but at least the code is already done and it takes just a minute to include the board.

Based on spam rate, Merit rate, Merit-to-post rate, posts to merit posts rate...etc

Most of us will fail in this task. Suppose, for example, that the members who participate in the signature campaigns are 500 members, and with restrictions of about 20 Merits per month, this means 10K merits per month.

Merit sources generate 33989 and therefore it will not be a difficult task, especially since what you will lose is the signature (for a week/month) and not your account.

This will also move the forum as a whole as it is rare for members to be removed after they join signature campaigns, such restrictions will make it easier to remove a member and thus add more members.

20 merits a month is going overboard and even 10 sounds like way too much.
You say it's easy for 500 members to get 20 merits a month but I doubt there are that many posters overall in the gambling section that get that many, probably one of our AI friends might come up with a list but I'm betting that there are way fewer users that get 20 a month and that there is way less merit being spent on the gambling board than other subforums, so a higher requirement will also hurt some that don't frequent high merit distribution areas too.

I think we're slowly turning from making the board less spammy to making it some sort of restricted area for older users only.

In that case it is the duty of the moderators to detect the threads that have the same content with different ideas and delete them. There are some times people would be saying the same things in different boards unknowingly, and it is the duty of the moderators to delete such posts to stop spamming. For the OP question, it will be hard because most user are using it to add up to their weekly count.

A QUALITY  poster posting in page 3000 would still produce a quality post. Mega threads don't breed shit posters or spammers, it only helps to hide them. If signature no longer appear on mega threads, shit posters will have no option than to polute more innocent threads.

There's no how a mega thread would be as decent as a two pages thread, for the love of soccer I visit those mega thread and read, when I see such shit posts I'll just smile and move on because I expect such a thing to happen.

I guess it depends on the mega thread. One's like discussing soccer, make a lot of sense. However, there's a bunch of mega threads that are basically obsolete since every single thing that could be discussed have been discussed. Yet, users continue to participate in discussion, mainly the build their post counts. This is most evident in the Altcoin Discussion thread, but it happens else where too.

Limiting signature past the 1000 page probably wouldn't help all that much. I think the solution would be to better moderate these mega threads. Whether that's through increased manpower, community helping out or being a little more restrictive on mega threads. The latter probably being the least ideal solution.

Have to love the replies that all go, "[winning team] had an (un)expected victory, the score was ____, the team should keep up their streak, but [losing team] did well/poorly so it was a well-earned victory/predictable"

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A simple strategy that is no doubt employed by signature spammers is to create a sockpuppet account to frame simple or general questions in a new thread.
This creates a space of available replies considered sufficient substance (i.e. how can answering a Newbie's question be spam?) provided moderation isn't on a thread-wide level. I've seen more than a few examples of low-rank topic creators, and it would be straightforward to simply cycle through a set of basic topics. This is all before considering subsequent alts and of course the genuinely curious new users, who could also unknowingly perpetuate spam threads. Boards of interest include Lending, Scam Accusations, Investor-based games, and Beginners & Help - plenty of typical one-line responses about thread creation or generic tips (collateral, format, ponzi, simple answer respectively).

I wonder if deleted posts should have an additional merit or activity penalty.

Yeah, a lot of that goes on, and we should probably crack down on it a little more. You could probably if really wanted go, and report over a thousand reports a day, just on these types of posts. It's quite clear that some of them have never even watched the football game they're commenting on too, they keep it extremely vague as an attempt to go unnoticed, and I imagine it does actually trick the campaign managers that don't watch the sport either.

A little bit too heavy handed in my opinion, since pretty much everyone on the forum has had a post deleted at some point, whether it's from breaking the rules or replying to someone that has broken the rules. I think it would be better to implement a shadow ban system or review system is probably the better word for new users. That means we're somewhat introducing a newbie jail again, but it would be far less restrictive. Plus, I think we have the moderators to cope with the current amount of users signing up, and posting to be able to review them in a decent amount of time.

This doesn't fix the existing users talking utter crap in the mega threads, but I think we just might have to pay a lot more attention to this sort of thing, and crack down on it.

I didn't expect it to completely eliminate or limit spammers, but I did expect it to reduce what we have now. Since you know there's a lot going on behind closed doors, and I know we've discussed it before, I'm curious why the activity of mods on the G, discussion board has decreased.


What happens to members who delete their post history on a monthly/yearly basis?

Hmm....this actually doesn't sound like a bad idea, and I'm not even sure that if it were to be implemented that people would just start up new threads with the same topic, because if there's already one going with 1000 pages, a new (essentially duplicate) thread could be reported to the mods and nuked. 

Then again, most of us who like reading things on the forum avoid mega spam threads like those in question so I'm not sure how much of a problem they really are.  And although duplicate threads could be avoided, I've no doubt members in bounties/sig campaigns desperate to meet the maximum post count would find a way to do so somehow, and that might present a different problem that's hard to predict exactly.

Good suggestion, OP.  The only problem is that it seems like Theymos isn't listening to proposals from the community all that much.  We did get the "OP" tag, which is probably one of the least useful ones I'd seen in years, but aside from that there haven't been any new methods made available to combat shitposting in a long time.  Keep your fingers crossed, though.

There's already an "Activity penalty" if enough posts get deleted. The next step is a ban. I don't think most spammers care about Merit or Activity anyway. And not all deleted posts are bad, such as scam warnings while waiting for a post to be deleted.

I don't really know the answer to that, but I'd assume it's because the gambling section is covered by global moderators, which probably have a lot of other reports to deal with. Although, I suspect every report is reviewed, it would be nice to have a dedicated moderator that actively participates, and removes the spam as they come across it.

However, it's a absolute huge undertaking to fully moderate the section. You could probably get it to an acceptable level in a few months, but there's so many replies in those megathreads, and if you don't watch the sports, then sometimes you don't know when those users that are basically just putting vague replies out, are doing exactly that. Sometimes you can, but ultimately to be able to catch the majority of them you need to know a little about the sports.

Actually, this kind of thing we called the Mega thread those are the threads above a hundred pages and still, other members keep making a reply some of the campaigns before having the rules to not make a reply or counted posts with these pages above 50+, not an exact amount but the same thing with that, also those threads too which are since a year ago that we called necro bumping, community members keep making a reply and continuously bump those old threads which are already answered.

This would be useless and doesn't tackle the root of the problem. People would just lock the thread and then create a new one once it has hit the 1k pages and lost the signature. It would also be counter-productive on valuable threads that have only lost their signature because of some arbitrary limit. If a thread is useless of spammy then it should be locked or trashed or more importantly if people are being paid en masse to make low quality posts then those campaigns should be punished. I've been saying for years signature campaigns could actually help the quality of discussion if they only paid for good posts but if they're paying for any old shite then of course people will abuse it. Unless you tackle the root of the problem then you're just trying to plug holes on a sinking ship and people will just find a way around some restriction you put upon them.

I was surprised to see the OP tag implemented a few weeks ago, despite the fact that someone suggested something similar last year and it was not implemented until Pow... provided a patch to support his suggestion. We have been requesting the Nigeria board for almost two years and have received no response from them. It is quite painful how he remains silent on some cases but acts quickly on others. The lack of an African board speaks poorly of this forum, but that's a story for another day. Nigeria is one of the top five countries in terms of bitcoin/crypto adoption, with more than 70 active community members.

Cyrus and hilariousandco moderate G. Disscusion, but I doubt Cyrus is as active as hilariousandco, and the G. mod can't handle those bulky reports alone, so I guess that's another reason we have more unhandled cases.

Sometimes I suspect that my unhandled reports are duplicates of other members' reports that were resolved before mine arrived. Is there a way for the system to indicate which post has been reported so that duplicate reports on the same post are avoided?

I think that when several members report an identical post and when it is resolved, all reports get the same tag (good/bad) or remain unresolved. I think someone already mentioned this idea to avoid multiple reports on the same posts, but you can never know the exact reason why someone before you reported some post - is it because of spam, referral link/hidden advertising, or something else.

There is also the question of whether such a warning would be publicly visible or would be displayed exclusively in the report window - with the fact that the first would probably be a bad option because anyone who saw that his post was reported could edit or delete it before the moderators did their job.

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Regarding your proposal, I would suggest that signatures be automatically turned off on all posts after 5 pages, because that is more than enough to discuss something constructively, and everything after that is just a repetition of the same ideas and attitudes. However, I think that the biggest responsibility lies with the campaign managers who pay for posts in mega threads, and this only motivates spammers to use such an option even more.

I think the poll should have been directed this way...
Which is the more worst?

1. Having these mega threads remain in existence and then we observe what we do observe now or
2. Having the result of the closure of these mega threads only result in the creation of another thread and we would have same content in the new thread.

Apparently, this is what would happen and as such, we've got to decide which one to contend with. Moderation is hard and would come with such load of work in that board but since they are mainly pushed by campaigns, managers would be some great tool.

Correct, though I'm pointing toward reported offenses that have been deleted. For enough posts to be deleted where someone does get an activity penalty, it would have to include all of their posts within that activity period. An easy workaround is to make a simple post in an off-topic board with a barely-passing reply - it shouldn't be deleted, and reserves activity.

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There are still dozens of users out there that will consecutively post absolute rubbish one-liners. You don't even have to look for long to have enough reports to take up an hour's worth of time submitting. Bitcointalk is an orchard of low-hanging fruit.

Out of curiosity I just checked one forum where I discuss sports (and other things) for the last ~20 years and I counted like dozen moderators (+ few sort of admins) in charge of that section so yeah, having few for the whole gambling board is hardly enough. Another big difference there is that mods moderate specific sports and are usually active in discussions so they can easily spot someone who hasn't any clue what he is talking about. Maybe bitcointalk could benefit from such approach and recruit few more mods from active and reputable members there to clear up that mess.


That measure would only reduce the amount of posts written in those threads and nothing else, as spammers would easily find the sub-5 pages topics and continue to churn out their spam or they would create new ones. Maybe its just me being used how other forums operate (mods there are less tolerant of duplicate threads) but imho bitcointalk already has way too many topics being opened every single day and any measure that would cause even bigger amount of those is bad in my opinion. Beside that, it would be unfair to penalize posters some topics in gambling board that naturally have a lot of pages.

OP, I'm not really sure what the right solution is to combat spammers other than reporting their posts. Spammers are not only on gambling board, but on altcoin board, bitcoin discussion, economics, speculation may also be a lot. I actively report spam posts on some of the boards I mentioned, the amount just depends on how much I open one thread and another thread when I want to post something.

If your focus is on fighting spammers, then you shouldn't ignore other board that also have spammers. To be fair, let's think of all the other boards instead of just the gambling boards, and one more - fight the spam not the signature participants.

If the mega-threads bother you, why not avoid them?  There's already an option in your forum settings to not display signatures if they are an annoyance to you.  I think the forum is happy that these mega-threads exist as they drive user interaction and inflate statistics so that the forum looks more popular.  This can help with the valuation of the forum or raising funds through advertisements or even ranking among websites.  I don't think there's really a good reason to start treating long threads differently.  Especially when the option I mention exists for users.

Maybe yes...

But since we all know theymos is not really interested in making any changes regarding the signatures unless he wants to completely wipe away from bitcointalk so I don't think this will be on his to do list.

However spam especially in few boards are getting out of hand so instead of choosing not to display the signature the managers may have post criteria that posts won't be counted towards weekly quota if its posted after the 10th page.?

1,000 pages is 20,000 posts, bearing in mind that a page is 20 comments. That's even more than a mega thread by my judgment. I want to believe that user meant 1,000 comments and not pages. Anything above 50 pages is already a mega threads in my books. Let me quickly add, while I agree with that user that at a certain number of pages signature display should stop, that not every mega thread is a spam thread. There are some threads which have to continually run to maintain balance in discussion, perspective and knowledge exchange, using local boards as an example. For me, the easiest way to checkmate spam posting is for campaign managers to read the riot act to hunters and restrict them from posting in mega threads.