Bitcoin Forum

Have you ever wondered what the bitcointalk forum would be like without signature campaigns? I have thought long and hard about this question. There have been numerous controversies regarding post bursting and spamming just to meet the weekly post count and other vices on the forum, all in the name of joining signature campaigns. As a result, many users have faced punitive measures such as temporary or permanent bans, registration tags, and more. The reputation board, which is the court house of the forum, is brimming with disciplinary cases, most of which are related to users in signature campaigns.

Therefore, I ask, what would the forum be like without signature campaigns?

Would it be more sanitized?
Would it be less filled with spams?
Would there be fewer alternate accounts?

One thing I am pretty much sure that the number of active users will go down significantly. Which in turn would reduce the number of new topics created on different boards. In a nutshell the amount of traffic everyday that the forum gets will be reduced. Almost everyone here is part of a signature campaign. Those who are not are trying.

Spam will still prevail as spammers have their own personal objective. Alt accounts are allowed by the forum. I don't think removing signature campaign would stop them.

You forgot to add a signature ban on the shitposter as part of the punishment. I can't remember which thread I read about it, but there is some sort of punishment where the user won't be allowed to wear a signature for either a week, months, or years, depending on the level of the offense, unless those rules no longer exist.

If there were to be no more signature campaigns on this forum, we would definitely see less shitposting, bostposting, and some unnecessary thread creation. Some of those shitposters are not yet wearing signatures, but they are still posting because they are in search of merit and activities that will qualify them for ranking up and give them possible chances of participating in the signature campaign.

Not only will it stop shitposting, but it might also make the forum kind of boring to some extent because not every quality poster derives joy from posting, especially when they don't have an expected pay week. I have seen a member in this forum whose posting style and post quality I so admire. But when the current signature that the user was wearing ended, there was a gap in how the user was posting. There are also lots of members here for whom I have not seen a signature code since I joined the forum, but they are always active and have made this place their home, people like Franky1, JayJuanGee, and many others.

Like any other forum without signature campaigns.
There will still be users and marketing campaigns for sure, however, they will turn into older practices. For instance, bumping, fake reviews, and spamming links services.
If only signature campaigns are removed, but users still can bear a private signature, some will still post to promote their own sites.
That said, removing signature capabilities altogether will demolish any incentive to post -> less traffic -> less valuable domain name.

Signature space is a good way to monetize our own content, i.e., posts and threads. Removing it will make us generate content for free, and I believe many people here don't want to spend enough effort for free, so the spam count will be higher/post quality will be reduced IMO.

Yes, alts and spamming will reduced especially from the bounty hunters.

I believe those that have tasted being on a signature campaign before will not want to leave except in some unavoidable circumstances whereby the just have to go due to personal reasons or challenges with campaign, yet we have a number of members being active on the forum and care not about signature campaign, some come onboard to enquire about bitcoin and left immediately after they got what they want, but we beed to know that this forum is not created for signature campaign but rather for bitcoin discussions, but a signature campaign comes in as an advantage in which we may choose to participate or not, though it will affect the activeness of many on the forum if signature campaign is taken away but the forum will still maintain being existing abd functional,

No, It will be worst. User is now thriving to post a quality content to create a good account background for a higher chance to join in signature campaign. Bitcointalk forum has a lot of spam way back the time when there’s only few signature campaign available here.


Yes on this. Signature campaign is the only reason why user create a secondary except those who want an extra account on unsafe places.

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In conclusion, Forum will be more organic if there’s no signature campaign that exists since user will just post freely without any quota or judgement on their post quality. It’s a pros and cons but signature campaign pros is greater than cons since it gives opportunity to forum member that has a financial problem to have an extra income by just sharing knowledge here.

Additionally, if signature campaign doesn’t exist, I think all post here will receive a straightforward answer like this thread with no, no, yes without an explanation to prolong the content.  :D

It would have less spams and if you are curious how less spam is, you can surf some boards in which signature is disabled.

• Two new no-signature boards (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2716647.0)
• Rules for Serious Discussion and Ivory Tower (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2722359.0)

In the past, no signature and because of spamming, trolling, there were newbie jails (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5186820.0#post_newbiejail) but theymos decided to lift those jails.

Interesting question, but maybe you should move this thread to meta?
If you follow the local forum statistics that are regularly monitored, analyzed and published by rikafip and some other members in meta, you will see that there has been a trend of decreasing activity and active members on this forum for a long time.
This is completely natural because Internet forums have not been a popular way of Internet communication for a long time and younger members are increasingly using social networks and Telegram groups.
Signature campaigns actually helped this forum and stopped its trend of declining activity, but the question is for how long.
There is spam on every forum and there is not much help there.

Well we have to look at this situation critically, and not just from a single aspect we have to be open in our perspective before we decide.

First let’s start with those that are allowed to wear a signature in the first place.


From the above post you would see according to rules made by theymos the only people allowed to wear a signature are those ranks above Newbie and to get that you have to have more than one merit and 30 activities.

But in reality and from the many campaigns available now the least rank membership is the Full member, and some are even cutting the full members off that’s how competitive it has been.

So to be eligible for a campaign you have to have reached full member with is 100 and over merit with 120 activities this is not an easy fit to achieve legally excluding bought account and other illegal means.

I would say the availability of signature campaign can be a motivation to ready to many who are learn and improve to even work harder to be eligible for a signature campaign.

But the down side is relaxing after getting a signature I would be very honest I was guilty of that before I now rediscovered myself, and with the high competition now the downside of relaxing is fast being eliminated because If you relax you get kicked out.

In a broader picture signature campaign has lots of positive sides.

One of the things I believe would help the forum is when the option of buying an account is removed this would encourage hard work.

Yes to all of the above, of course. And that's normal. That's understandable.

On the other side, however, it is also possible that there would also be significantly fewer interesting discussions and posts. The incentive to post brings forth a fair amount of constructive responses, interesting ideas, informative replies, and even curious questions.

Also, because of the spam and lower quality posts indirectly caused by signature campaigns, the standard is pushed a lot higher. I was fond of reading old threads and there were many one-liner responses before which, I guess, could easily be deleted in today's standard.

everything is not necessarily also the case. but what is very likely to happen is the reduced activity of many accounts on the forum. not all of them are in the forums and creating posts to achieve the weekly targets of the campaigns they participate in.
even without a signature campaign, there will still be accounts of many members who will still be actively discussing on the forums. but as I said, the activity will probably decrease.

Bitcointalk wouldn't be as big as it is now and bitcoin wouldn't be as big now.
Signature campaigns have helped bitcointalk and bitcoin get bigger and reach more users to learn from.

Having a signature campaign has both positive and negative sides. And there may be a lot of controversy around what you say.

The bitcointalk forum will also be unknown to many people because it will be like a private forum and people will not want to join.

People join because of the opportunity to earn free money. Anyone would want to get it.

If theres no signature campaigns right here for sure there's no spam coming from the people who just want to catch their weekly quotas and just make a comment not related to the contents to get counted, back on the good side of the forum is yes seems like the forum will stay on it because whats the purpose of it? getting connected into the cryptocurrency space so still even there's no signature its like the same with the other forum like the StackOverflow that every members contributes their knowledge and skills for the sake of the community.

You don't know what you're saying, who told you that Bitcointalk is the reason Bitcoin is successful? There are many Bitcoin investors that didn't have an account on this forum, you want to hear something? I bought Bitcoin before coming to this forum, I knew Bitcoin long enough before knowing that a Crypto forum called Bitcointalk existed, so stop saying what you aren't so sure about.

Bitcointalk forum is what keeps helping people, not signature campaigns, do you know how many information about digital currencies that's available on this forum? Do you know how many problems I've been able to fixed because of this forum? there are still some members on this forum that doesn't care about signature campaigns, and how many signatures have you seen advertising Bitcoin? It's always other crypto projects.

Bitcointalk is not the only forum that allows advertising, there are many more and they aren't successful because of a coin, it's general something from a good forum.

What only fantastic questions will not hear at a forum. :)

Why should I think about what the forum will be like without signature campaigns, if at the moment campaigns are an integral part of the forum. And, for quite some time now. Will these fantasies somehow affect the current situation? No. Then why fill head with all sorts of trash?

If someday signature campaigns are no longer used on the bitcointalk, that's when we can see the consequences and impact of this.

What exactly do you mean by sanitized?

How do signature campaigns affect spam? In my opinion, people can spam without it. If you mean improving the quality of posts, then it is unlikely to happen without signature campaigns.

• The alternate accounts are sure to stop if there are no more signatures.
• Buying of bitcointalk accounts will cease to exist as the buyer has nothing to gain from it.
• We'll have less number of post and also traffic, because most people tend to make many post only because of their signature campaign but we still have a few who are not in a signature campaign and yet are actively participating in discussions here.
• As for the spam and sanitization, I don't think removing signature will completely eradicate all because even without having signature you can still find some trolls here in the forum but it's sure going to reduce it drastically.

For the first few months of the signatures removal we'll still notice high participation from users but with time it's slowly going to reduce and only those that are truly interested in the development of Bitcoin will be left here in the forum.

First and foremost, because some people love to be compensated for their contributions in the forum, the interaction and desire to learn more will be dramatically reduced.

Spamming would be somewhat reduced if there was merely a merit system to display user ranks in this forum without requiring participation in signature campaigns.

If that's the case, we'll see fewer accounts interacting in the forum because the rate of alternate accounts will decline as their purpose for creation is eliminated.

There are benefits to the adoption of signature campaigns, but there are also drawbacks.

If we were to say sayonara to signature campaigns on bitcointalk forum, we'd likely see less spam and more actual discussions. But at what cost? Will we see a decrease in new accounts? Will the forum be less active? Very likely. So, while we'd have less spam to deal with, we'd also have fewer reasons to keep coming back.

Overall, I think that signature campaigns aren't inherently bad for the forum. Rather, it's the members who create low-quality posts just to fulfill their weekly quota that are problematic.

If their is no signature campaign on the forum here, then the forum will have been very boring, their won’t be much activities on the forum here, the rates at which threads are created will reduce drastically, their won’t be  much alts accounts, no spamming because anyone that will be creating thread or replying to any thread will be doing it willingly and not for the purpose of signature, so people won’t really be spamming. But we have to be honest, the forum will be kind of boring and less people will be visiting the forum, much information won’t be shared on the forum here, because most people won’t really care posting here.

I don’t agree that there will be no spamming because ones there’s isn’t a signature the idea of having merit and activity for ranking up won’t be important and as such many people will not be interested in creating quality posts but that will be merit worth again. Rather people will be posting just about anything which seems like spam. Even the reputation many members earn by exposing scammers or spammers will reduce. The forum will certainly be full of important topics. Newbies will hardly find an answer fast to some of there technical problems fast as it is the case today because of the engagement that will reduce.

The only place I feel spamming will reduce drastically is the gambling board because there won’t be need to fill up weekly gambling quota again and only members that are actually involved in gambling and sports will only post there

Never thought about this but your question made me think about somethings that will no longer matter to anyone on this forum.

1. Forum rank
2. Merits

No one will even try to provide any help under Beginners Section and Bitcoin Discussion. You hardly see anyone without a Signature posting in these mentioned sections.
Also, the user count of the forum will also lower down as most of the accounts are Alts of the people on this forum. That will make them stop making new accounts as it will be worthless.

Nice question from the OP about what would happen for Bitcointalk forum without signature campaign? current all active user dominance above 70% are user active in signature campaign and have some user here without active in signature. But will Bitcointalk forum keep active if not any signature campaign promotion one day later? Depend each personal if they want sharing ideas and looking for new update about Bitcoin or any project they will active in forum without participant in signature campaign.

Seems good ideas if your question has vote about choose if Bitcointalk forum without signature campaign some user will left or keep active sharing their ideas in this forum.

Just like any forum, like minded people gather and share all kinds of ideas and life goes on.
If signatures weren't a thing like  you have put it in the OP, there is a high chance of reduced traffic coming to BCT, crypto projects and companies would have a tough time to launch because there arent so many crypto communities out there and generally it turn out to be a much smaller community at the end of it.

Besides this the forum would most likely have less spam, less nukes, less plagiarism and generally more order ::)

Maybe there were less pointless posts. But I wouldn't take it for granted.

Not sure. On one hand if you take away the incentive to frequently post, there would be less meaningless topics and replies, which reproduce themselves, but on the other hand, you would also take away legitimate users who do help (and don't have the time to do it voluntarily obviously). Check topics from 2012-14, when there weren't signature campaigns, and tell me if you'd rather have that. I wouldn't. They are dead posts, and there's barely a constructive one.

I am sure there will be always spams although we have no signature campaigns.
Spams aren't only created by the participants of signature campaigns, there are many newbies accounts that often made spams about random projects. I saw it not only in Bitcointalk, but it happens in other forums too. Although there are signature campaigns there, there are many spams on varied boards made by newbies accounts.

Anyway, without signature campaigns, I believe there will be fewer active members and the traffic on this forum will decrease significantly.

I am surprised that there are more than 20 responses above that did not mention non-signature campaigns boards such as Serious discussion (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=250.0) and Ivory Tower (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=251.0)

I will use Bitcointalk Merit Dashboard (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4428616.msg39521119#msg39521119) Link https://public.tableau.com/profile/ddmrddmr#!/vizhome/BitcointalkMeritDashboard/GlobalSummary to give a general overview.

Thanks @DdmrDdmr and you can share with us more analytical data.



If you compare this data with any other board, you will find that by removing signature campaigns, the number of content in the forum will decrease by an estimated percentage, and 95% of accounts may stop posting.

Comparing the activity between these boards and any other board will show you the difference.

This as far as I remember has been discussed other times already, and the general consensus is usually that traffic would be reduced a lot.


Most likely. Signature campaigns incentivize posting, and just as they can incentivize posts of mediocre quality in the Gambling section, for example, they also incentivize posts of great quality.

Many of the people who use their time in this forum and earn money, if they stopped earning money here they would surely find ways to earn money elsewhere on the internet, so it would be normal for them to leave this forum and dedicate themselves to it.

Traffic greatly decreased is an obvious reason as been mentioned by many members.

But I don't agree it will reduce spam and alt accounts because when there's no signature campaign in this forum, most people will not really care with his quality post, feedback and anything related to their profile.

They will start to trolling and abusing trust feedback in order to make them satisfied.

Why should someone built his account and follow the appropriate manner when they don't have any purpose to achieve?

Reduced spam but less traffic on this forum, most members here who joined signature campaigns are here for earning extra money or should I say to make a living especially to those who have 10 or more alt accounts joining signatures paid in stablecoin or bitcoin. If signature will totally removed most of this alt  accounts will turn into idle for a long period of time until new opportunity arise. 

Even now there are members who do not wear paid signature or avatar and they post as much as those who are in signature campaigns. But I think if signature campaigns are removed, there will a lot less activity on the forum, I doubt if users who are making 20 posts or more everyday will still continue to do the same. The discussions on the forum will decline to something like  Altcointalks (https://www.altcoinstalks.com/index.php).

I don’t believe signature campaigns are a major reason for spam in the forum, many campaign managers do not consider such posts eligible for payment, if anything signature campaigns have increased the quality of posting on the forum. Before the bloom of signature campaigns, the forum was a spam fest, the merit system was introduced to make it difficult for spammers to rank up, with this system in place members had to improve their post quality or remain in the same rank with airdropped merits. Campaign managers understand this too well, that’s why they make it a requirement for participants to have a certain amount of amount earned in 120 days before you can apply for sig campaigns.

Yes there will be no need for alt accounts because there will be monetary benefit to creating one. Account farmers would run out of business because people will not be interested in buying high rank bitcointalk accounts anymore. No signature campaign on the forum will definitely kill account farming, buying and selling of accounts.

Only serious Bitcointalk forum members join signatures because there is no room for spamming and low quality post, there are people that gets better at posting on this forum thanks to strict bounty managers for example Royse, if you are a spammer or a shit poster you will be removed, and I am not talking about shit altcoin bounties in the altcoin discussion section of the forum, that's where most shitposters are doing their thing. Promoting projects is not something everyone is qualified for, there are terms and rules you need to follow and it's helping the forum either ways.

I don't believe that everyone on this forum have interest in signature campaign, I have seen too many that doesn't care about wearing signature, and some are not getting paid to wear signature, they just do it for free, if you understand what reputation means you will know why not all signatures are worth wearing.

The traffic and active users would obviously decrease; it's normal. I noticed in a few replies that some users claimed that spamming would be reduced; however, I'm not 100% sure about that. On the one hand, signature campaigns provide an incentive to quality posting, but on the other hand, this isn't guaranteed and is subject to the campaign manager. A quick look at 1xbit's users is enough, since it accepted those without any requirements and those who had absolutely zero chances of being accepted elsewhere.

Generally, the spam issue derives from newer members who believe that entering a signature campaign and ranking up is effortless and from those participating in bounty campaigns, the majority of which have no requirements at all.

Personally, I'd still visit Bitcointalk because it's a great source of information, although I wouldn't be as active as I am right now.

Of course scam projects is out of the question, OP is talking about the impact of removing signature campaigns from the forum, I’m sure this will have a significant effect on the forum because there are more people wearing paid signature than those that are not. You can easily notice reply on threads in Beginners and help, almost all of the people who replied are wearing paid signature, I’m sure if signature campaigns things will change (but not for the better).

I think this forum will be as active and busy as usual, because the people who join this forum are mostly people who are currently investing in crypto and beginners who want to invest in crypto and all of them also want to add insight through discussions in the this forum.
However,this signature campaign has proven to be more encouraging for forum members to be more active in this forum. Because besides they discuss to add insight or solve a problem, while they advertise a particular site and they get paid. I think this signature campaign has had a good impact on the growth of the forum, because forum members have become more enthusiastic in competing to make posts that are very high quality and useful for fellow forum members.

And when it comes to spam posts or alternative accounts, for several years there have also been moderators whose job is to organize and filter every post. Even though for example there is no signature campaign, I'm sure the forum members who are appointed as moderators will definitely continue to filter spam posts and alternative accounts in this forum.

There are many forums where people don't get paid, have a lot of traffic and a lot of pointless posts, like this one:

https://forocoches.com/


Like the forum I mentioned. I agree that getting paid for writing is a double-edged sword, on the one hand you incentivise low quality posts but on the other hand you also incentivise constructive and high quality posts. I think with the introduction of the merit system the spam problem was reduced quite a bit, although it was not completely eliminated but it's pretty good for what it was in 2017 or 2018. Wanting to get rid of low quality conversations on forums and at the same time maintain good traffic seems to me to be an oxymoron.

In my opinion, it would be better without the signature campaigns, for sure it would be a normal forum without any money involved so most of the users would just post for knowledge, experience, questions, tips, etc. which is surely a great thing since we are getting all organic post. There will be fewer spams for sure even though there will still be spammers, multiple accounts will still happen for sure.

But it would be great in my opinion because the community will be solid for users that are interested in trading, bitcoin, or cryptocurrency. I mean it would be nice to see a great discussion on every thread just because your posting because you just want to learn about it.

I beg to differ, i don't think the forum would be better without signature campaigns, let us be honest, the forum activity is going to drop quite significantly if that happens, thus who is going to share knowledge on the forum or answer important questions of newbies about Bitcoin. Signature campaigns and the merit system are two things that have helped this forum greatly to maintain its high standards, to join signature campaigns you must earn merits, and to earn merits you must make HQ posts. Mind you that there are spammers on every platform, and even if there's no signature campaigns here there'd still be spammers, thus if you think spam posts are a problem in the forum, use the "report to moderator" button more frequently.

Bare! I reiterate, bare. The signature campaigns is one distinguishing factor that seperates the forum from regular social media platform.
For those of us who upload our avatar during campaigns, the fact you can do so, shows you have been patient enough to endure a duration to at least full member spot inorder to be worthy of a campaign signature and avatar.
Bitcoin talk would be a simple social media platform without signature campaigns.

I think that your assumption is incorrect in this matter and I'll give you some examples of why it is so.
One thing to consider is the fact that before the campaigns became popular, in 2011 and 2012, people were still posting a lot. It of course increased as time went by, but saying that it all happened thanks to signature campaigns and not the growth of bitcoin presents  a very one-sided view.

Maybe people aren't posting in Ivory Tower because there aren't many interesting topics there. Maybe the best topics pop up in other sections and there's not much really left to put in there? It's a newer part of the forum established just a few years back, so maybe it simply wasn't necessary, maybe it was an experiment that did not work.
There's a thread that continues to be very active despite signatures not being displayed (Wall observer), so saying that Ivory Tower isn't active because there are no signatures there is again, not showing the full picture.

There will be less quality post,less alt accounts,less number of forum members,less fun, less information,less contributions and less knowledge to tap from because it is going to be boring for those that can't afford to buy bitcoin. The community wouldn't be as big as this. There will also be less goods and services to render. Unlike now that the forum is a big bitcoin community with different services to render and goods to buy. There will also be less gambling activities because,it is only those that have enough to loss that will gamble with cryptocurrency.

I'll start with the last question, before I go on I want to clarify that the forum isn't against multiple accounts and neither is theymos and the administration of the forum too, what we're against are those using that privilege of having multiple accounts to abuse the forum or use them to try to scam anybody on the forum by manipulating their reputation. Signature has a  big contributions to the forum and without it been active, there'll be so much reduction in the activeness of the forum and that's a fact.  Obviously the forum would be more sanitizer and there'll be less spam and also alternative accounts since there's no need to get one to double your chances of higher payout.

I can't imagine bitcointallk without signature campaign and if there was to be a time that the forum won't have one, I won't be in support and that's not just because I'm benefitting from it but because we're in the 21st century and monetizing our content on social media is now a thing so the forum shoudn't be taking that away from her members instead we should be looking for ways to put hands together to make it better and less destructive if it becomes more damaging that spams and plagiarism become a norm.

Exactly!
The merit system has raised the forum standard, making it easier to identify a user based on their forum rank; as beginners, we value replies or advice from higher rank forum users because we believe they have been here for years and should provide a quality reply or content.
The signature campaign in the forum has increased people's desire to rank up, and you need merits to rank up, and merits come from good and quality posts.

As a result, if there is no signature campaign in the forum, there will be a lot of spam because some users will believe that there is no reason to write quality posts because I am not paid for them.


They will see creating Alt accounts as pointless because there is no benefit to doing so; instead, they will stick to their main account.

I do think that it will be more sanitized in a way that you will be seeing less posts with spams. Since there are no campaign signatures present, the discussion would involve about a certain topic whereby only the people who engage in such discussion would reply.


Definitely- there will be no reason for any other user to spam messages in this forum in order to meet their weekly quota of posts. With less spam on the forum, this will make it more or less sanitized, in connection with your first question.


I do think that there will also be fewer accounts. There will be less merit for a person to create multiple accounts since majority of newbies create different accounts in order to participate them in different signatures.

Though this may be the case, I do think that campaign signatures are an integral part of this forum in making it more active. Since this is consider the biggest and largest cryptocurrency discussion platform, lots of businesses are taking advantage of this traffic for advertisements.

Well, the forum would be a little less from a ghost town. I have no doubt in my mind that we would have some very active users here still. There are those of us whom have built our lives around here for it's resourcefulness and that is something that can't be taken away from the forum.

Beside signature campaigns, there are other ways to incentives work on the forum an that is from offering needed services. We would have people sourcing out the technical aspects to the forum like working as developers and something of note, Hhampuz and his series of art contest has turned some people to artists on the forum. Users would find a way to stay but, there would be less bullshit from shitposters and spammers for real.

Yes there are other means to earn sats on the forum but none of them requires people to be active on the forum or make quality posts like signature campaign does. A newbie can participate and win art contests, but the art contests are also sponsored by casinos who are advertising on the forum. Removing signature campaign would also affect those who design avatars and signature codes.
Apart from 1xbit, I don’t really see other campaigns that pay low quality posts. I think campaigns that pay per post and do not have a maximum amount of eligible posts encourages spam because people will want to make more money and not care about the post quality.

Contrary to what other people believe, I believe that the forum would still be active but instead of it being active in the current way (being that people are getting paid to post content) that it would be active economically. If people were not incentivized to post, people would be finding other ways to monetize their use of the forum. The marketplace might be more active, escrows would have more business and users would be coming up with new ways to earn bitcoin to make up for what a signature campaign would.

Signature campaigns probably reduce innovation in ventures, unique ways to create bitcoin income, maybe reduce the amount of services available because users simply don't have to do these things to earn an income, thanks (and no thanks) to signature campaigns.

I do believe that signature campaigns could co-exist with a stimulated economy if some work was put into restructuring parts of the forum to separate the content from the economic activity. I don't think this kind of change would come any time soon (if at all) though.

The general belief in this forum is that we are all here to discuss and learn about Bitcoin. But the financial benefit serves as a motivation to be more active. Also, some of the abnormalities that are recorded in the forum are a result of the financial benefits. So I agree that all the consequences OP listed above will be the case. There will be fewer posts and activities which will reduce the amount of spam and creation of more accounts.

It will also be an opportunity to see those that are interested in Bitcoin and people that don't rely on the campaign reward for a living. Those that have little or no interest in Bitcoin will quietly bow out. Most people that depend on the campaign fund will leave and seek other sources if income. While those that are independent of the forum earning will remain.

I've mentioned most of what you said, It will surely drop down the forum activity as well as users but it's better to have a low organic discussion than having a lot of discussion that is just some nonsense discussions. I mean you know what I mean most of the discussions on the thread don't make sense, repetition, or just sht posting.

Merits somehow work on making some high-quality posts on the forum since most of the users are spamming to make a lot of posts because back then you just need a certain amount of posts to rank up. At some point signature campaign actually is a great motivation because it can be a part-time job, but still has bad effects at the same time.

This would beneficial in Bitcointalk favor but But not without loss. If signature Compaigns would full ban in Bitcointalk we can expect

Benefits:
1: End of Shit posts, New unnecessary thread, burst posting
2: End of Alternative accounts of higher rank (Member-legendary)
3: Quality engagement of users
4: Sharing more skills and technique to earn(trading)

Loss:
1: Less number of new registration who has skills to rankup
2: Very less Engagement from old users having knowledge of Btc and trading.
3: Less number of scam accusation and reputation (Forum will not clean from scammers as it now)
4: loss of Poor needy members including Legendary, Hero, Senior (working on other platform to fullfil financial need)

A lot of people came here due to various reasons such as learning more about Bitcoin, sharing their own knowledge to others, while some joined as a result that they don't have job and joining the forum has given them the opportunity to earn some money.
    In reality people pay much attention to something when there's a benefit that is attached to it, so in the absence of that, I guess there's definitely gonna be a drastic drop in the activities of some members in the forum, Where the members that would still remain active is those that do not mainly focus their attention only on the benefits of joining campaign but learning and contribution to the forum.

One can argue that the reverse will be the case.
People in the signature campaigns have a required quality of a post for that particular post to be counted for that week.
In every signature campaign, they have a requirement that your post should be constructive and have a minimum amount of characters before a post qualifies for the week. If these signature campaigns were not there, people have no target, whether the quality of post or quantity, so they can post whatever and however they like.

In the campaign I'm in, the campaign manager removed six or so people from the campaign because, according to him, the quality of posts was low and they don't really interact meaningfully in the forum. 
So I could argue that signature campaigns helps to police what and how people post and reduce shitposting.

When you are in a good signature campaign, you are left with just two obligations: 1 to meet your weekly target post and 2 to make sure those posts are meaningful, which I believe anyone can contribute constructively to if accepted, unless the person doesn't actually have areas of specialization.

Reverse could also be the case, when users join signature campaigns that the managers are not paying weekly, that's signatures that are under the bounty section. If you check very well, you will realize that's the best place all these shitposters' feet are in (I'm not saying all those are shitposters), and those are exactly the kind of campaigns they hide in. The reasons are that: 1 they can't meet up to most of the signature manager merit requirement on the last 120 days; 2 weekly paid campaigns are manager check post quality before they accept participants.

The case is different for signatures under bounties and altcoins because the manager doesn't usually remove participants for underperforming or even look at the number of merits earned. Some managers actually warn their participants regarding post quality, but it doesn't give them enough reason to remove them. Which makes the participants continue doing their sh*t posting, provided that they count it.

This is an interesting question, we all have here different goals why we are here in this forum, there are who joined to gain knowledge and also there are who wants to earn some money here.

A lot of spam messages and low quality posts will be gone in this forum because most of the users are just creating posts and replying to messages just to reach the weekly quota and get paid, but then it will also lessen the number of topics we have here, there would be less communication and less active members.

It can be affect in good and bad terms for sure, but I dont think that it will happen in the future.

There would also be scums trying to still post futile random loan request in the Lending section as well as just creating new services in the Service section even if they were already got tagged before (tag evading). I feel like bounties removal would significantly reduce more of the traffic rather than the SCs alone although I can see SCs still in Bounties, but considering we're seeing a lot of POA posts from people, surely that would affect more.

I also agree with your "signature space" point there. Users are forgetting that signature in our profile pertain on whatever we're trying to show to other users just like those email signatures that we see.

Yeah, they just count the posts of their participants into stakes from my experience like 3 years ago. This is why it's kinda worse in the Bounties section rather than the Services section. I am not saying that all are really bad posters in the Bounties section and all good posters are in the Services section though. There are just way many users posting in Bounties rather than in Services section.

I mean, look at two feedback on your profile.


Are you talk about yourself because you're the spammer and create low quality posts in order to reach the weekly quota? your alt account wasn't active anymore, maybe it's because it's not full member and you can't join most of campaign in this forum. ::)

I don't have any additional ideas to say something different from the others, but the most obvious impact of having forum without signature campaign is a drop in traffic. I think signature campaign are forum's way of rewarding the majority of its contributors, but in the end some managers may choose lot of posters who don't really care about the quality of their posts which then becomes a problem.

Some managers care deeply about suggested signature campaign guidelines, some may not, and the worst are signature campaigns that pay participants in tokens or coins form project under development. You can differentiate the quality between participants paid in bitcoin and participants paid in token/coin, most of them are never the same. I agree that many campaigns that pay their participants in bitcoin are required to post something of high quality even if there are many participants who may have lower quality posts.

Even if this assumption is not entirely preferable, but I would probably say the same.
Without signature campaigns, forum would become ghost towns and be dominated only by regular users who contribute to the development of their project or something like that. Technical users can be active and post regularly regardless of signature campaign, so can developers, traders and investors.

Of course, the real users will stay, but users who expect some incentives from their contributions will look for other platform that give them the opportunity to earn money. I don't think the signature campaign will be removed as long as the forum and the admin still trust and believe that there is a positive impact from the signature campaign instead of just a negative impact.

I don't see reduction in the number of forum users, rather more people would join the forum and strategize a personal means of earning money from the forum. Regarding the monthly traffic of the forum its a great mine for marketers to utilize the forum. Your question should be what if they weren't any signature space not signature campaign. Once they is signature space available they'll be signature campaign. If not people can still use their signature space to promote personal businesses or rent it out. So, the forum will keep moving, signature campaign must have chased some top tech developers away from the forum, making the forum filled with garbage contents that is not adding any value to bitcoin.

The development section is not active like before and discussion is all filled with padded contents so that members could be eligible to earn. Top bitcoin early birds wouldn't enjoy the forum because of the low quality contents that keeps popping up and the lesser amount of tech related contents. In a nutshell, a big forum remains big regardless of signature campaign members must figure out a way to earn, even the marketplace section has made some members more money than signature campaign has made them in their entire participation. I see signature campaign as a byproduct and not a reason why someone will leave the forum if it doesn't exist. That's lame to see such responses.

We have /r/Bitcoin - a forum with nearly 5 million users who don't get paid to post. The number of posts per day is comparable and maybe a bit lower than this forum. The quality isn't much better, it's still full of "Bitcoin to the moon" shitposts that provide no valuable information and just show beliefs and emotions of the posters. Sometimes there are good posts, but they don't generate as much discussion as the shitposts. Just like on this forum.

There are other platforms that doesn't have any signature on them and guess what? They still has some problem and I don't think it's the signature is the problem here it's in the users and since there's an incentives when wearing signature and/or avatar of course, you'll see a bunch of them wanted to take part if there's a reward. That's why there are certain rules that are unofficially implemented for such thing thus, having rules broken will result in a different types of consequences.

I think you have to experience it for yourself to know exactly what would it be like by trying different forums.

Truth be told, I bet you without a signature campaign and bounty, the forum will be as dry as any other online forum where people just come to discuss once in a long while, and not active as it is today, and that would have really affected both the adoption of Bitcoin drastically and the use of crypto casinos for gambling, since this forum has got the highest number of people who patronize and advertised to the public through blogging or Youtubing both the use of this two mentioned above.

I think there was a time when the forum never had signature campaigns and people were still actively involved.
I rely don't know what the forum will look like because I haven't ever thought of that.
On the contrary,  I think signature campaigns are one of the reasons people are making positive impacts on the forum because they have to work really hard to join a campaign and most times, your post quality and other factors are put into consideration  before accepting  one in a signature campaign, hence, one must have strived so hard to be in a signature campaign and without signature campaigns,  I think the forum might be more of a social media than a forum.

Users stay active to be able to participate in the signature campaign, and the advertiser can benefit from such advertising, so there is a benefit for all parties. Users want to be useful for this forum and try to fill it with the right content, support certain topics, so this forum is qualitatively different from the others forums, and this is what makes it interesting. Perhaps without signature campaigns, the activity on this forum would be much lower, but why think about it if everything is different here.