Bitcoin Forum

I guess the obvious needs to be stated. It is clear as day that if you have a Paid Signature in your profile, you will be many more times likely to be banned for "insubstantial post" or spamming than someone without a paid signature. I have seen about 10 threads in the past month of people playing like they are innocent after they get banned for Paid Sig Abuse.

Yes posting full sentences that are generic replies like a spambot does on Wordpress.com to increase yuor sig count will get you banned. Yes, posting single word replies even if legit will probably get you banned if you have a paid sig. If there is any doubt that you are spamming and have a paid sig, you're more than likely going to get banned than have any slack cut. So if you do not want to run the risk of an "unjust" ban, ditch the paid sigs.


~BCX~

I wish banning policy is so clear cut. I have seen members, with a paid sig, spamming over 50 posts A DAY and still not banned, while another person made a few one liners and got the ban.

I think bans happen when someone reports the member to the mods. The mods do not have time to hunt for spammers.

It's not about quantity but quality. I don't think it'd matter if you made 500 posts a day as long as they're relevant to the discussion and constructive. And I don't think users have to be reported or 'hunted' if they're frequently making low-quality posts, especially in off-topic. Eventually they'll be found out.

Shouldn't you be avoiding these type of topics, staying under the radar? "Quality over quantity" implies high quality but low quantity, which obviously does not apply to you. In your case, it is just spamming with some extra effort, I'll give you that.

Now, can you resist yourself from spamming your 95th (and counting) comment for the day? ;)

Nope, you don't need to worry about me, but it's nice knowing you care that much that you're counting. I always find it ironic and hypocritical when people complain about this, especially comparing my recent posts to yours you'll see mine are either roughly the same length or longer than yours, so you obviously just have a problem with the number I do for whatever petty reasons, but well done for trying to take this off topic.

Not sure if this is off topic or not, since it fits somehow. In the past I saw several of these now banned people and thought: wow they post a lot but its so ...slim. Its mostly just a sentence or even worse: an answer that -while sometimes correct- was allready given. With you however I think you honestly try to help people and I dont think how this can be considered spam.
My rule of thumb is: write first and when done, read again and think: is this necessary? Sometimes I write a long post and dont even post it, because its enough that I wrote it, but it wont help anyone if I post it.

Many people, including me, are just terse.  My signature doesn't pay by post count, so it doesn't matter how often I post.  I don't know how people post page long replies, it just never seems to me like there's that much to say.

Yes, but by posting a lot gets your signature more likely to be clicked, so by replying a lot, there are better chances of someone visiting your link.

The problem is that with bans they aren't really that defined here. What about the threads in the off-topic section? You can't really be constructive in threads where you're only supposed to post an image, on the thread with a word game, the thread with questions and such. If I have a signature I have to avoid those threads so that I don't get banned? That doesn't make much sense.

i wasn't even warned and still don't know why i was banned. i wasn't making entirely terse posts, and i usually try to fit in a sentence here. i actually type more shit on this forum than i would elsewhere.

either way though, a warning or a better explanation would have been good.

You have to keep in mind that the forum gets paid for advertisements and us paid sig members are competing with them. I've only recently started renting out my sig space, but hey, if it's allowed as per the forum rules, then why not? I'd be making these posts anyhow, and getting a little btc for them is a nice bonus. EvilPanda actually withheld signature payment from a member who had low-quality posts last month, and I think the bans given out by the mods will deter spammers.

I have to agree. But about the forum as a whole. Some shit goes on that's terrible, yet, people are getting banned for making a few posts. I think the Moderators rely on us reporting topics/posts more than hunting them down.

Spamming is primary about numbers, like spam email and instant messaging spam. Lengthy messages do not mean it is not spam. We are not talking about 10 or 20, you are posting nearly 100 a day with a paid signature. That has to raise some red flags.

I think you're being selective with your definition of spam. I think spam is largely about unwanted/unsolicited and useless messages and I don't think spam is necessarily about numbers or length either, but content. If you get 100 emails a month from a company you've subscribed to with relevant and interesting information and updates, is that spam? What about 5 emails a month from a website you never subscribed to repeatedly trying to sell you crap like penis enlargement pills and porn subscriptions? I dont believe I am posting crap, but relevant stuff. In either instance you can always block or report the senders as spam. Similarly you can do that on here. You can block me or anyone else if you feel they're a spammer or if you come across any of mine or others' posts that are spam, you're free to report them to a moderator. I'm sure my posts are being monitored occasionally and if they decline in quality or relevance I'm sure I'll be on the receiving end of a temp ban, but I have no intention to see that happen.

And I only did 36 posts yesterday. It's rare that I do close to hundred, but I never post in a thread if I haven't got something relevant to contribute.

I have a paid sig, the trouble is my instinct is to be terse. I would like to believe that my posts are largely substantive or at the very least not spammy.

Having said which , I am concerned enough about the possibility of temp bans to either migrate to a non post count based campaign or  eschew the as campaigns altogether.

The value I derive from being able to communicate on the forum by far exceeds the ad satoshi peanuts I make.

It's a difficult task for the moderators to control spam. Because I might see someones post as useless posts and consider them spam, whilst others might find it useful or entertaining. For the moderators  to pinpoint when someone has crossed the line isn't always as straight forward as you would think. They have to take into consideration many factors.

At the moment, looking at the moderation policy and the information about the rules of the site we have received from moderators it seems as long as the post contains some information related to the subject beforehand and topics are posted in the correct sub-forum then they aren't technically breaking any rules.

Of course I'm talking about the less obvious spammers who try to disguise their spam with multiple sentences/paragraphs. What I have seen quite a few times is even if their posts are on topic and are 'constructive' they lack on thing. Originality. I've seen over and over people posting the same information/statement which has already been said previously in the same thread.

The only thing about ignore is that I find  it extremely annoying that I have a few ignores on the page when that person who I previously ignored might have said something useful/helpful. Therefore, I have no one on my ignore list. If you have any problems just contact a moderator and talk things over with them. I've had quite a few discussions with staff members about the rules of the forum and the ins and outs.

I think that once you choose to go for a paid signature, you instantly lose a lot of credibility.

With a lot of posts people are going to think: Is he just saying that to get his post count up?

I think this forum itself has lost a lot of credibility by for example, allowing account sales. I don't think I'm losing credibility when I keep an ad in my signature.

If someone who's wearing a paid sig says something you go think if the message is legit or not... something goes wrong there. =) The message of the sig (or the fact it's a paid sig) shouldn't affect the posters message itself.

Yeah I should have added that some people do not abuse the paid signatures, but I see a lot of posts in the marketplace for example where someone with a paid signature shows 'interest' in a product, but it's just purely to bump up their post count.

Ok, the sellers topic gets bumped, but he also doesn't know if he's getting genuine interest for the product or if it's just spam on his topic.

You are forgetting something. The only reason account sales are allowed is so people can be more aware of them, since there is no real way to enforce this rule. Other forums do have account sales, maybe even more commonly than here, the thing is, it all happens underground.

the bigger something gets, the more the degradation in quality.. or at least the perception of it. it's probably because out of 100 people, there are a few bad apples.. and if you grow to 100,000 people, for instance, then you'll get more bad apples. and people tend to place more scrutiny when bad shit happens. it's no different from reddit.

I don't think mods have something against paid signature users, and are more rigorous to them, only that people with paid signatures tends to make more spam sometimes, then are baned more often, sometimes. Or maybe because baned signature paid users complains more when baned.


I think would not be fair use other rules to people that rents his signatures

The opinions really differ amongst the mods so there's different actions taken regarding paid sigs.

Spamming or writing over 50 posts a day?

There's nothing wrong with writing that much in a day as long as the comments are adding value to the discussion.

Hunting for spammers helps us all! No one wants to read through a bunch of meaningless posts to follow a discussion.


This is a great point! I never considered that people would discount my comments because I have a commercial signature. I guess it should put more impetus on me to be constructive with my comments.

And to the people that ARE just posting to get their comments high I think you'll find their comments to be less meaningful because they're focused first on getting the post in and second about what they are actually saying.

I have to ask... How much are people making from signature ads?
1 BTC a month?  per year?  ever?  Some honest ball-park estimate would be appreciated.
The idea itself is neat, and if you make what you consider a lot then good for you!

But frankly I wouldn't recommend this site - as it functions now - to someone new to Bitcoin.
"Thirsty" is the word that comes to mind when browsing a lot of other users posts here.
A thread is created... then maybe a few terribly basic, but innocent replies...
Then a storm of mindless responses rewording information to move post counts.
If there's any kernel of good insight or debate, it's usually lost and overlooked in that process.

Just my 2 cents. 

...everyone jump in and try to grab it

I wouldn't say the paid signatures increase the likelihood. It makes it so that you degrade the quality of your posts as to farm the signature campaign's money, as opposed to writing larger posts. A lot of people think it's quantity over quality, and most times they can get away with it.

I'm not trying to insult the mods; they do a good job with what they do.

I personally believe, however, that as long as your post isn't a single line, and it contributes substance to the discussion, instead of being a neutral post, such as

Short posts aren't always bad. They need substance, however, to justify them being short.

If you can write at least 3-4 sentences, that have some kind of quality to them, they should be acceptable.

Depends on your rank. People can hypothetically make anywhere from 0.16 (Which I could do, but I choose not to) to 0.64, which is what the highest-paid member posting the max amount of posts in a month could make. So you could be making 5 BTC/year if you constant max our your post count.

People could be maxing counts for that very reason. And that could be why you see signature post spam...

I've seen that the rates depend on the signature campaign. Some pay 0.1 btc per month, others pay more.

i think i seen a few people make like 2 btc  a month, not sure now, as spamming is not accepted anymore

A lot of them got banned later, they just managed to slip through for a month or 2.
It's really not worth it to spam, earn 1 btc and lose the account, you can get much more playing it safe.

This is really not possible anymore now that stunna has capped the number of paid posts on the PD campaign to 400 per month.

It used to be capped at I think 4 BTC, but I may be mistaken.

If they made .001 BTC per post and made 2 BTC per month, over two months they would have made 4,000 posts. That is a lot to make to "slip through the cracks"

That's honestly better than I expected...
I can see how it's an attractive option, especially for members that post frequently anyway.


Agreed, no disrespect to management here.  I still see a lot of good posts as well (my own was slightly exaggerated).
Just making the case for more of a focus on quality - otherwise the relationship is parasitic rather than mutualistic.

This makes sense entirely.  I have a paid sig and as far as I know I'm not risking any ban by keeping it.  However, if I was looking at a dude who might be spamming and he doesn't have a paid sig, I'd say I'm less likely to ban him than another dude who did have one.  I mean, for the former guy, what's his motivation?  For the latter guy, there's an obvious monetary motivation so he's more suspicious.  I'd say though, rather than "ditch the sig" just "don't drop generic replies".  Take a moment to write something a spambot can't write and you're fine, yes?

I agree with this.  The key thing is that you should not be posting just for the signature reward, but posting like you would normally.  Most of the major campaigns have instituted a post cap, though while it is still pretty high, 400 per month, may help curtail the most abusive practices.

The answers to the already answered questions are the only ones that bother me, but if I was a signature sponsor I'd be worried a lot about all the posts people make in off topic.

However, while I can see why having a signature ad would bring scrutiny to your posts, I don't see why it automatically makes you more likely to be banned.  Spamming the boards should be spamming the boards.

I also agree that the forum is essentially allowing competition with itself.  I am grateful to bitcointalk for allowing me the chance to earn this extra coin.

Im sure its probably been said in this thread but the campaigns won't pay for one liners or crappy posts, the posts have to be on topic and worth while. Now, if you see them just saying +1 and copy and pasting pictures, then they should at least be warned, but they wont get paid for those anyways...

Just because I have sig campaign, i dont post any more than i normally do. But i have seen others abuse the system and before they get banned from the forum I would hope that the signature campaign would nix them first..

yes, i agree with this thread
i saw many users have been banned by mods last month after abusing signature campaign ;D
they post too many spammy post to increase their post counts.
and will it ever end?
I don't think so, there are many users still try to abuse it and hope everyone (and especially signature campaign owner) didn't notice it
worst thing is some users who do spam post in local language, we can't analyze their post because we don't understand it
I think signature campaign is an opportunity to get some coins from our activity in forum
but because we have paid signature, we must really care about our post

I think PrimeDice (which is the one you're on) lets you remove non-constructive posts from the total post count when requesting a payment. I'm not 100 percent sure whether posts like the ones you mentioned would be counted as being constructive or not but personally, I would probably remove them from my count just to be on the safe side. I do know that posts in the off-topic section can be counted as long as they are constructive. For example, I would definitely count this post (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=233929.msg2487991#msg2487991) if it were mine (it isn't). You would probably have to ask Stunna in his thread if you want a real answer though.


One possibility is that they might want to sell the account later on, but that's the only other reason I could think of.

You can and should remove non-constructive posts but most people won't, but making or removing them from your claim is irrelevant as if Badbear sees lots of them you're likely to get banned. It's fine to post in off topic if you're being constructive and probably even posting a few times a month in those typical spam threads there would be ok, but post almost exclusively in that sub with little to no effort going in and you can expect to be banned eventually.

I admit that a lot of 'off-topic' is pretty nonsensical.  However, from the point of view of an advertizer, if there are people there posting, then there are probably people there reading and seeing the ads.  Some campaigns have said they don't pay for posts in 'off-topic' (PRC doesn't, for example), but I personally find this a bit close-minded because that just means that folks in off-topic won't be seeing the PRC advert in any signatures.

A signature sponsor obviously wants to advertise in an effort to attract new users.  If I was a sponsor I would not pay for posts in the thread about the signature campaign (everyone there obviously knows about the site already) or off topic.  While I agree users are in off topic, I seriously doubt a lot of posts there get read.  Do you really need to read through everyone else's answers on if some woman is hot or not, or 10,000 images?  No, many just read the OP and post something.  So the marginal value per post is really low.

If Stunna really goes to a full partnership model where you only get paid based on what your referrals play on PD then I think a lot of the posts in these areas will go away since the payback will be too low, but that is just conjecture.

While I agree the signature sponsors can withhold payment, it is time consuming to check all the posts.  Especially for something like the primedice campaign that has so many users in it.  In addition, often times the people who don't get fully paid open up scammer threads.  They never get much traction, but it is another annoyance.

The max on primedice used to be 2.4 bitcoins, which at the time was like 2400 posts per month. To answer Silencedogreat, I make about .05 (the minimum) to .09 per month from Stunna.  This is my main source of "fun" btc.  However, I imagine others make a lot more.

Amazing this is still a problem two years later.

This thread is still fact.


~BCX~

I agree, users often dont report people if they dont have a signature.
Apparently the logic is that you cannot spam if you arent wearing a signature.
TBH most spammers are in signature campaigns, other users dont have the drive to spam.


also, how did you find this thread?

There is very clear contradictions in how signatures are viewed versus people that do not have a signature.
A forum that allows this option should not allow people to be treated as second class citizens based on a signature.
Why some one that writes three words can get away with accusing some one of spam if beyond me but these are the double standards we live with here.

Glad it was brought up that moderators are not all on the same page with signatures because I was feeling like there was a agenda to make things harder or more scrutinized for people that wear signatures. So when a Mod
tells me to not be in a rush they are showing their bias and I know to stay clear of that person.

I'm a fan of the OP!

All kidding aside Lauda has whined ad nausem about people not searching the forum and posting in threads that already exist.

Lauda is very pro-necto so this is in honor of him.


 ;D ;D ;D


~BCX~

Yep but it doesn't surprise me at all because theymos hasn't made any changes that I know of.  Account sales still happen, signature campaigns are still going on in full force and these dirt floor, barefoot idiots are still motivated to make easy money by posting unintelligible garbage.

So yeah.  Let's all meet up again on this topic in 2018.  Lol

I can speak for my self I am not even thinking of my signature campaign when I am actively posting on this forum although there was a time I was reported for posting a lot just to reach twenty but none of them are spam post and they are made on threads that I fully support or has stakes on it..

~BCX~
[/quote]Yep but it doesn't surprise me at all because theymos hasn't made any changes that I know of.  Account sales still happen, signature campaigns are still going on in full force and these dirt floor, barefoot idiots are still motivated to make easy money by posting unintelligible garbage.

So yeah.  Let's all meet up again on this topic in 2018.  Lol

[/quote]














Err... and to think you are also into signature campaigns... beats me ??? :-\ :o

why there are people bit angry when someone got sigs???? dont you want  people open a sig campaign in this furom?????? this is can make advertiser go to another furom to advertise their services and thats why this site gets traffic because of sig campaigns here in this furom and i think that really helps, and for those who got sig in their name it has good contribution to this furom why?? because many people came here and it raise traffic and businessman or site owner will come here to advertise thats why sigs and sig campaign member are helpful.

fuck those sig haters,

why dont you look at yourself and bothering for another people here,

get your own life sig haters and go to other furom if you don want to see people in sig campaign..



 >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:(

 Betlord90

It's not the signatures that are the problem, it's the useless bullshit that people post to exploit the reward given by these signatures.

The question is, is that traffic the sort that we want on the forum? Do we really want a mindless bunch of people - not reading threads and spamming the forum - to come here just to satisfy their own greed for some Bitcoin? IMO, the answer is an easy and definite no.
The traffic that signature campaigns bring is the traffic that want's to exploit them for all that they're worth (3/4 of the time). These are not quality members of the forum, and not people we want to be attracting.

Because retards that spam one sentence posts (due to their signature campaigns) do nothing but bother the people here for learning/community discussion. They are a much bigger problem currently than the people complaining about signature campaigns.

Why should other people move from where they enjoy being just so people can take advantage of it (with a negative effect)?
Tell you what, if you move out of your house and let me use it as my personal trash can then I will never complain about signature spammers again. Fair deal? :)

What a useless addition to your post.

@minifrij

If you ask me the person you are replying to is a dupe account being used to push the agenda against signatures.
Have seen it once or twice lately in threads where signature users need to be looked at as idiots drooling all over their computers.

The silence by those that usually push the issue is usually another way to sniff it out.
Means they are about to get their way or they are sitting back plotting.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1274316.0;all seems like sig ad post count bumping galore.

These are the threads where all butthurt users who did not get a chance to enter in any of the campaigns, aggregate themselves and complain against them.
Having a feature to turn off your signature and a ignore button to do the needful, is enough for you guys to avoid signature spammers as much as you can.

If you had a true intention of contributing towards bitcoin community then you wouldn't have wasted time in these bullshit discussions which has no end point to it. Oh the irony! ::)

There are a few examples of such threads (that are still not locked). I've reported it.

I doubt that. There are people who are currently signature participants and would like to see them gone for good.

It has a point. Signature campaigns are horrible and I doubt their potential benefits to the ecosystem. Most of the senior members that I've had interaction with agree on removal of signature campaigns.

I wonder what they are talking about in there...

https://i.imgur.com/MCC5sVK.jpg

I don't post unintelligible garbage.  And judging by your post here,  you're leaning toward that quality of shitposting.  Heavily. Also, you might want to learn how to quote correctly and not leave a proverbial shit stain upon our common commode here.  Check your work.