Bitcoin Forum

Alright folks. First off I'd like to thank the community for starting to red tag the endless bullshit ponzi's that seemingly pop up daily. Good work!
It's amazing what a community can accomplish when we come together against a common enemy. It's time to look onto our next target...


I've created this post as a call to the community to begin applying negative trust to those who support buying/selling/farming of accounts.


Account farmers DIRECTLY contribute to the amount of spam, needless shitposting and ease of scamming here on the forums.
It's absolutely anti-social behavior and these people need to not be rewarded for making these forums look and read like SHIT.
Over 60% of the forums posting (from my experience) exists for the sole purpose of account or signature ad farming.
These people aren't here to converse about bitcoin nor do business, They are here to clog up the forums for profit.


In the forum rules it says account farming is frowned upon, I think we should start making this more apparent and start taking action against it.
Accounts should not be taken as collateral for loans, Period. Anyone taking accounts as collateral is directly contributing to destroying these forums.
I ask those on default trust to join me in combating what I can only call the blight which rots this forum, and start red tagging those selling accounts and those whom take accounts as collateral, or anyone else directly involved in the trading of accounts


Also, I would like to bring to the attention of the forums a known account farmer "knowhow" https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=381554
This user "jokingly" bragged to have farmed nearly 1000 accounts, But he also edited the posts after I neg repped him. Shady as FUCK.
I'd like to bring to attention a PM he sent me after I stated I would not remove the negative trust I gave him after he admitted to account farming:
If you look into this users posts it becomes clear he's the type of user that gives these forums and BTC it's bad name. I ask you look for yourself and give trust accordingly.


I ask the members of the forum to band together to help me fight the degradation and exploitation of the forums, You can help clean up the forums.

I'm totally with you but my word means nothing.  Get dt members to do this or better yet, get account selling banned on this forum.

That is my hope with this post. The way the forum users have banded together against ponzi's can hopefully be applied to account traders.

I've been on these forums a few years now.. And the problem is getting worse in regards to people diluting the forums content with shitposting.

Would more stringent bans for spamming be the solution.
I only see account sellers using throwaway accounts and escrows if they start getting negative repped for dealing in accounts.

I don't think tagging account sellers would really help, since once someone has an account farmed up the way he wants, he will just create a new account just to sell that account, and tagging him would just be a waste of time. The only people that this will really effect are the lenders (Possibly biased opinion, since I'm a lender) since many lenders probably hold accounts right now as collateral, and if people default, the accounts they hold would become worthless since there would be very few buyers (as they have to create a new account, and buying an account from a defaulted loan wouldn't be very hard to find), possibly leading to a large loss for the lender.

I'm no fan of account selling, but it is allowed on the forum.  So going to be hard to defeat I think.   Tagging accounts only helps if it stops them from getting into signature campaigns.   That is the goal of most they are told of easy money.. it's that greed you need to defeat.

If there is no financial gain from buying farmed accounts, then it will slow it down.  It won't stop it with it being allowed but will slow it  I think.  But I think you are fighting a uphill battle sadly.  But getting all sig campaigns to stop accepting bought accounts is going to be impossible, as some "lower tier" campaigns for lack of better term i don't think care.  

I should remind everyone (before they post) that doing something that has some effect is way better than doing nothing. This problem is getting increasingly worse and finding just 'decent' (less than than 'good') quality content is becoming increasingly hard. Tagging account sellers and sold accounts would have an effect on what they can do afterwards, because they would most likely be rejected by signature campaigns.

I wouldn't mind, but it isn't up to me. As a starting ban for a signature spammer 2 months or more seems fit.

This would not prevent account sales, as one could easily do it in private or on a external site. I don't see it being a bannable offense anytime soon (even though I would not mind it).

But it is discouraged for doing so, though.

Just be careful how you handle this. We might end up having to talk about Bitcoin and its uses and technical aspects. :)

Watch your sodium intake, Kyle.

I do understand the concern you have with account farming, and how the community is pretty lopsided.
But this community is based on bitcoin, and so should this forum. Admins shouldn't exist. Only p2p.

Small things like signature campaigns kicking out spammers/reducing slot amounts are already helping.

TL;DR: Account farmers are cancerous, but the community should be able to work this out and come to a consensus.

The solution is simple, but no one will do it: ban signature campaigns. Until campaigns are banned they will keep spamming for payments. I think most these guys live in third world areas and the pay they earn is significant for them. Most of the really bad ones tend to type with broken English.
 

Whilst I agree that this would be a (rather harsh) solution (and yes, as a campaign manager, my opinion on this is obviously biased), not all campaigns are connected to this/part of the problem.
Some campaigns seem to go with the byname 'xyz spammer' relatively often, while others don't get pulled into the discussion at all.

I don't think signature campaigns are the (sole) problem itself, but one could argue some signature campaigns (or the ways signature campaigns are mainly handled right now) are.

Correct. There was a point in time where I suggested that we punish both signature campaign managers who don't do their 'job' (along with the service and the members), but that was also unsuccessful.

Sometimes it seems like they've used Google Translate.

One way to solve the signature campaign issue is by making a set of rules which should be mandatory for every new campaign.The managers are allowed to add more rules to the list but can't take out any mandatory rules.I know folks here are obsessed with decentralization and peer to peer stuff but implying a few rules based on everybody's concern won't make a big difference.

I found out this campaign manager Gianluca95 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=206159)is managing 3-4 campaigns while himself having broken English and terrible post quality.

I concur. Now there are two things that need to be done:
1) Decide on the set of rules.
2) Convince the forum administration.

This is a privately owned (centralized) forum. Just because it is a forum about a decentralized cryptocurrency, that does not mean that we should force decentralization on the forum moderation. Their obsession is unjustified.

I think shocking blame people of the third world

maybe people do not know they are doing spam.


ban signature campaigns will cause many people leave the forum

Awesome,so are we going to keep branching out and applying negative trust to stuff?
How exciting...

- People that use poor Inglish
- People that disagree with me
- People that do not post often enough
- People that do not make me happy with their posts
- People that post to much
- People that think they are cops
- People that you think may smell behind their keyboard
- People with serious OCD
- People who do drugs
- People that sound like they are in a Militia bunker
- People the support Altcoins
- People that do not work
- People that talk about having a life outside bitcoin
- People that have signatures
- People that trust build
- People with agendas
- People that wear pink on Tuesdays
- People that have more than one account
- People that can not sign a message proving they have bitcoin

Oh boy Oh boy...Lets string up and go to town!!

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This wanting to police the forum is becoming a serious problem and it was kind of funny at first and now truly sad the lengths some of you are willing to go with this crusade. Already noticing some people that I used to enjoy reading that had thoughtful things to say and not trolling have gone quiet. If you want to live in a perfect cookie cutter forum go create one and have the people with glass houses
follow you in. Stop trying to make some kind of righteous utopia and let people be ffs!

Most of the stuff posted is not a valid reason to provide negative trust, ergo you are appealing to emotion and being hyperbolic.

There is no evidence that supports your statement. If there is, then post it here (else it isn't a "serious problem").

Post their usernames and let us be the judge of that. The problematic lies in account farming and signature spam. It is becoming hard to find content that is worth reading and replying to.

@ Lauda

Surely you have read enough of this forum being as active as you are to know if I am making off the cuff remarks or if there is weight behind what I am saying. The fact you ask for evidence leads me to believe anything stated will be brushed aside anyways,so why waste my time digging up threads and opening up old issues.
Having a different opinion does not automatically make some one emotional but I find you take things quite literal and honestly find it off putting but have been told this is just your way. Seems to be a few people that see things black and white and I do butt heads with them as well,nothing personal.

Why would I create a list of members that I enjoy reading when I rather not draw unwanted attention and future problems.
This evidence or shut up is really quite offensive but I have stated what I wanted to say and will let the thread continue down its path.
Since I hold little power I just state my issue and move on,learned my lesson with the last trust club earlier in the year and will just join others in watching from the sidelines when these type of issues pop up and the forum plays wack a mole.

I'm aware that some people are leaving (or switch to being 'passive'), albeit I disagree that they're leaving because of some "trust police" or whatever exactly you were referring to.

That's definitely a no from me.

There's nothing wrong in pointing out a fallacy in someones post (if there is one; "appeal to emotion"). You did overreact on that list of reasons.

Then I can't verify your claims either.

I don't see anyone telling you to shut up either.

Interesting. If you are willing to share the story, PM me.

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Now back to the thread. There is little reason to not punish people who are engaging in these activities. It is quite rare to see someone to sell their account for a valid reason; I mean why would they? I wouldn't sell mine after departing either.

Signature ads killed this forum.

Altho now, they keep its rotting corpse alive.

A bit of a pickle.

I cant beleive that you are praising people for putting a red number under some usernames, what exactly did we accomplish by this? ponzis are still up and running

What again did we accomplish?

How?

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thread is an obvious swipe against knowhow
grow up

/thread

I agree with some others that account farming is directly related to signature campaigns and spam.

It's a tricky situation.  Freedom of speech and all that...

The easiest solution would be to ban account sales officially.  Mods could be free to start deleting the topics, and perhaps even perma-banning those who engage in the behavior.  This could give those who want to fight the issue some ammunition to do it.

It could be taken a step further by raising the price of registering an account using TOR, restricting the number of accounts that can be created from an IP address, and pruning all accounts that haven't been active in 2 years.  This could make it a little more difficult for the account creators.

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However, my favorite solution is this...

BAN SIGNATURES FOR FORUM MEMBERS WHO HAVE NOT DONATED TO THE FORUM.
Create a new level of donator called the "Supporter" that can be reached with a 2 BTC donation to bitcointalk.
Only Supporters, Donators, & VIPs are then allowed to have signatures.  Perhaps with each level carrying different restrictions.

This would bring in a bit of revenue for the forums from anyone who wants to participate in selling advertising on bitcointalk, and raise the cost of running a signature campaign.  All this while reducing the spam, spammers, and those who fund them.

1. So the mods should go around checking people's messages? No thread doesnt mean NO sale

2. Have you made an account with tor before? the price is already too high

3. No, thats alot of money, accounts arent even sold for that much, if anthing, the cap should be 0.2 max

4. Also taxing is not a smart idea, its a forum, not a country

alot of your ideas go against what bitcoin represents
also, the forum doesnt need any money right now
Your ideas will need alot of staff if they were to be used

No.  I obviously never said that.  



No.  Why would I need to?  I deal honestly.



It isn't a lot of money considering the amount they get paid for selling advertising on bitcointalk and annoying the people here who are actually trying to help the Bitcoin community.



If someone enables you to make money on their platform, giving back to them isn't a bad thing.  What is happening right now is people are exploiting the forum and reducing it's content quality to steal funds dishonestly (not quality posts).



My ideas have nothing to do with Bitcoin.  They have to do with removing the incentive to be a spam crapping freeloader on these forums.  
How do you know what the forum needs?  Maybe they have million dollar ideas that would benefit the entire community.
My ideas require no additional staff.

This might have some merit but 2 BTC is too steep. I would like to have a modest signature, I'm not advertising anything, and 2 BTC is way to much for that. Not everyone makes money off their sig.

Having said that, I'd happily give up my signature and avatar if there is a solid permanent solution to this account trade/farming bullshit that's going on right now. I'm just not sure if making it more expensive is the solution as it seems to favor those who can afford it (e.g. advertisers) and might make them spam even more to cover the cost.

Have to be careful in creating a donation aspect of 2 btc since it creates a mirror image of society in the 1% being those that donated. It would be a little off putting but I think the site should see more revenue coming in,so little torn on that.
The problem you face is there will for sure be competing forum that is going to be set up for those that are anti government and establishment. If there is not yet a place like this as the forum moves towards crossing out a few aspects that draw people here.

But...that would mean there are some other problems we have to face.

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This isn't the only bitcoin discussion forum, hence there is no need to fear 'competition', as it is already out there.

If those people where a) the kind of people this forum wants to attract and b) coming here for the reasons this forum wants to 'draw' people,
which mostly they are not these days.

Another approach, which is definitely worth discussing, although I have to agree with suchmoon on the few points he has brought up in response:
A variation of it would be limiting 'non-donators' to members/full members signatures, whilst the ones that donated amount X are allowed to carry the signatures they have right now.
Or something a little more reconsidered/worked out, going in this direction.

 

If not on bitcointalk,the account sales could easily take place on other places.I'm sure that already exists.

 
What ? lol You might have donated to the forum when the bitcoin prices was what $10 ?
Complete illogical statement.


If they had 2BTC to donate,why would they post garbage around the forum for few Satoshis ? ::) Afterall,2 BTC is a huge amount for a campaigner.What you implied is,allow only rich to earn more money on the forum.

I somewhat agree that it is linked, but I don't think that signature campaigns necessitate it. I think all that's needed would be stricter moderation.    
Back in what I remember as the peak signature campaign value period, Primedice used to offer upwards of 1 BTC a month, and inputs.io used to pay quite a bit too. (BTC was worth 200smth to 300smth)    
Account seller threads were more frequent IIRC, especially single people selling many many accounts. Account prices were higher too (hero members > 1 BTC I think)

I'd argue that at that point in history, there was more incentive for spamming than there is now.. I think it is just that the standards for removal of posts have lowered, and more and more posts that would have formerly been considered too off-topic or too insubstantial are being allowed now. And you can't really blame the staff, presuming volume of posts is increasing.

Removing signature campaigns would solve the problem. But the existence of signature campaigns and account sales is not the cause, and they have been around from before when the terrible posts came.

Also, I'd argue that the method of micropayments in a signature campaign would actually be good for the forums as it encourages new users (if only they didn't pay per post/have absurd post requirements). I actually remember TF talking about how paying per post was encouraging spam and paying per activity on the inputs.io signature campaign. Straight up removing signature campaigns is going to cut out a lot of the new adopters of Bitcoin who can get their first fraction of a Bitcoin by talking about Bitcoin rather than actually buying it (which can often be a convoluted process not worth going through for small amounts)

So, playing devils advocate, I'd say that signature campaigns don't necessitate spam, it's just alongside lax moderation. Killing the micro-economy of new users who have found usable amounts of BTC only through sig campaigns may be bad for BTC too.

That depends. It is obviously a 'drastic' measure, but definitely an effective one. While the exact number is debatable (as it will be deemed as high to some), I like the general idea behind it.

I concur. Although we could still retain the avatar function, but disallow promotional avatars.

That's not going to happen. They would not only be risking an account (which is somewhat cheap), they would be risking 2 BTC (which is a lot depending where you live and especially for the majority of signature spammers.

I have to say this on every single suggestion topic on relevant problems: We don't need a perfect solution (this does not exist), we need a good one. We only need to make it drastically harder for people to spam for money.

Disagree. Bitcoin does not gain any kind of 'support' from signature spammers. While there are a few (but rare) examples of decent participants, most of them (99%) just spam for money.

So just for full clarification... the general idea of what happens here with account farming is:

1 They create or buy XX number of accounts
2 Join them all to signature campaigns (maybe?  I believe this lowers the value of the account?) and start posting whatever they can, as fast as they can
3 Sell them to the highest bidder when they have some type of value or reputation, presumably to someone who wants to scam or join signature campaigns themselves.

If so, a 2BTC charge on the 'Supporter' status means they can still technically get or create accounts, and still post nonsense and crap for the purpose of gaining higher status accounts for reselling, just without a signature campaign, obviously making less money in the process, but they should still get something on the account sale which I assume will keep them going.

Accounts being sold with a 'Supporter' status are just going to be marked up 2BTC more to cover the cost?  I guess it depends on how willing someone is to buy it... or how willing advertisers will be to increase their payouts to offset the costs and continue their marketing campaigns?

I disagree that this would be case. The difference here is that when they spam, right now, they don't have to worry much about a ban because either they will:
1) Buy a new account (which does not cost a lot).
2) Create another/use another.

If there's an added cost of 2 BTC per signature, they risk a lot of money each time they try to spam. It would most likely net them a negative amount as they would be caught before they could ROI.

I still think 0.2 is a better figure though, 2BTC is out of reach for people like me

I disagree.We're forgetting the main goals of our existence in this forum,we're here for bitcoins and casting our opinions on the subjects rather than investing money for ROI in terms of signature campaigns.

A better fix could be something more flexible,more efficient.Why do I see some campaigns causing less spam compared to other ? Managers ? Rules ? Fixed Posts ? Even though this seems like a complex option but could be analyzed .

You wouldn't lose that main point when signatures are taken from 'normal' users and only are allowed for some restricted group.

It's not too complex, believe me.

I'm saying they wouldn't even pay the 2BTC for the status... they just spam on accounts with no signature until they get high enough to get some type of value for the account, if they get banned for spamming, its just lost time. Eventually they either sell the account without 'Supporter' status or they purchase the 'Supporter' status right before they sell the account, and subsequently mark up the price of the account and advertise it as "having Supporter status"

I would also question what the advertisers are going to do when they see a drop in people using their advertisements. Advertisers are paying out for a reason and I'm sure they are making money off of these spammers in some fashion so I could see them increasing payouts, they are going to have extra funds anyway when the numbers drop in people using the signatures.

They could also come up with workarounds to the situation and start paying people on just mentioning their company name in a post...

There's nothing really to disagree with in that statement. Unless you think that the staff is not capable of finding those spammers before they reach ROI on that 2 BTC.

The spammers have forgotten that and are making the 'daily life' on the forum for others worse.

If I were to pick one, it would be the manager. A campaign that requires a fixed amount of posts does not prevent spam at all if it has a high amount of participants (as some will likely have multiple accounts in it).

Again, I have to remind people that there is no such thing as a perfect solution. Something that makes their 'life' harder is all that is needed in order to suppress this habit. There would be a huge difference (especially for the individuals that have a huge amount of accounts) in net profit if they aren't able to participate in signature campaigns until they rank up.

The forum offers advertisement slots.

No. Off-topic advertising is against the rules (i.e. off-topic posts are in general).

Quoting Lauda from earlier: "We don't need a perfect solution, we just need a good one."

Yet, there currently are advertisers which get along maintaining a substantial campaign without producing mass-spam on the way.

I guess I don't understand this argument.  It seems more like clinging to the status quo that, at least with respect to account sales, is broken.  The sales may very well take place outside this forum but by banning them here it certainly makes it more difficult, for buyers and sellers.  This is common to a lot of forums that I've seen:  actions that are frowned upon are not allowed on the forum, period.  It makes no sense to me that the community is giving red trust to people for these actions that are perfectly within the rules of the forum.

Red trust isn't related to the rules of the forum.  The trust system is supposed to reflect the feedback of individuals for other individuals.  If I find your actions untrustworthy, scammy, whatever, and I leave negative feedback for you, that's my opinion and it's all that it is.  As far as I know, the trust system isn't supposed to be governed by any set of rules other than what individuals find positive or negative about their interactions with each other here.

I agree that they wouldn't pay.  The spamming would cease as the account would have no value if it couldn't be used for signature campaigns.  You seem to think people would still pay for accounts if the accounts couldn't generate BTC.  They wouldn't.



They definitely necessitate spam.  I don't think that can be debated.  You do make a solid point about killing off a micro-economy of new users.  However, I believe that most of those users probably gamble their funds away to the very people paying them to advertise, likely putting in their own funds to fuel their newfound gambling addiction as well.  In other words, the spammers themselves probably end up victims in the end.  Eliminating these campaigns would probably be doing them a favor.

You Guys are just wasting your time. I don't think so that can works. If Mods and Admin ban the account buying selling in this forum. the account traders continue their work out of the forum. I know some people personally who trading accounts via Skype,   and I saw some posts on other forums and http://www.bitlanders.com/ about bitcointalk account selling,.

then The admins should block all accounts who change their passwords. If you think changing password mean the account has been sold.

What happens when one of these supporters does get banned?
They are going to raise hell claiming that the forum ripped them off.  :)

Goat was a VIP who was perma-banned, right?  If you are an idiot and get banned, I don't think you can blame anyone but yourself.

Goat had serious issues tbh. He had so many coins he thought he owned the forum and yeah, no matter what rank they're on, if they keep spamming and shit then a ban would definitely be the best.

I like the concept behind this idea, although I do think that some of the specifics should be tweaked for it to be something that theymos would consider implementing.

Many people use signature campaigns to "earn" their "first bitcoin" and whatever solution is implemented should continue to allow this to happen. In order to get around this problem, I would suggest that signatures restrictions remain how they are currently for Full Members and below; in order to "unlock" the "signature features" of Senior Members and above, a user must pay/donate an amount that equates to ~1.5-2.5 weeks worth of anticipated signature earnings based on a competitively priced hypothetical signature campaign for a semi-active poster for a senior member.

This will allow people to "earn" a small amount of bitcoin while they are new to the forum and learning about bitcoin.  This would also be in line with an amount that would equate to a "tax" on a user's signature campaign earnings. Those who intend on contributing constructively over the long term will have incentives to "donate" because of the higher earnings potential as a result of their "donation". This amount would be small enough so that it would not exclude someone who lives in a very poor part of the world.

This "donation" could be used as somewhat of a deterrent against making very low quality posts because a signature spammer would lose their "donation" if they were to get banned. 

If the amount required to unlock signature features is too large then when someone gets banned, there will be a controversy, especially considering the amount of judgment the moderators must put into the decision of banning someone.   

I would anticipate that prices accounts with "unlocked signature features" would likely increase by the amount of the required "donation", if not more, and that the rates of competitively priced signature campaigns will increase when using signatures with features that are "unlocked" with a donation.

Slightly off topic, however when the price of bitcoin was $10, the forum was in much worse financial shape then it is now. The donations were originally used to pay for hosting and the forum was not financially self sufficient. Now hosting is paid for (it used to be donated in exchange for an ad slot), and the forum can reasonably continue operations without any additional financial assistance. I suspect that the $100 donation in 2011/2 was much more beneficial to the forum then a $4,500 donation to the forum would be today.

This would be a very good idea if the amount was lowered (see above).

I do not think that many of the shit-posters would donate and would instead choose to take the short-sided approach of continuing to post while receiving a lower signature payment, which I believe will further decrease the market prices of signatures of lower level members. This could potentially (at least temporarily) create an environment in which it is no longer attractive to make low quality posts in exchange for signature payments and the signature spammers will try to make their money elsewhere. 

My basis for the 2 BTC amount is that 50 BTC is for VIP.  20% of the VIP amount is 10 BTC, for Donator.  20% of that would be 2 BTC, for Supporter.

This is not an argument, it is a statement based on a observation. Unless theymos suddenly changes his mind, I don't see account sales being disallowed.

Exactly. This is what I've been trying to say. These accounts would not be worth as much as they are now (why would they be?) if there was no way to get 'ROI' for the buyer. Over time there would be a huge decline in sales and spam.

Correct.

The is the part that I don't understand. Exactly how would they choose a "short-sided approach" and receive a lower signature payment when they are unable to have a signature in the first place?

I like the idea but a tier system might be more appealing. 1 BTC for minimal signature (plain text) and 2 BTC for the more flashy options.

I got silent cause of policing, cant say bout others,that too full of close mindedness,illogical, IMO's ,power-trip policing  :-\ and also the fact that how they all sort out ratings and support each other.Doo definitely deserves the red mark for the ponzi script coding according to the policing i see here but they are afraid to point out the Gods.Fucking cliques. Soooo much hypocrisy.


You like the Idea ? can i know how many nasty fans are going to vote here ?? no matter how many but i don't think theymos is so fucking unrealistic naive to implement such an idea.

That's strange. Just stay away from the things that tend to make you receive a negative trust rating and you should be fine. DT members should not give you rating based on the things that you've said.

There's nothing wrong with the idea.

There is no context anyways, i stopped taking part in these discussions months ago.I don't give a fuck to DT after doog's thread if that's what you think.

The idea is not wrong but its unrealistic. having an ambition to become a big man one day is unrealistic & an ambition to become a big Biomedical scientist is realistic.

people who spend half of the day on forums spamming for 400 bucks are not going to pay 800 $ loll...

No idea what you're talking about.

You aren't building up your argument properly. As I've already said, we don't need a perfect solution, we need a good one. If it reduces spam by e.g. 50% for starters, I'm fine with that.

1.) Negatives for all sellers/buyers of accounts is potentially not effective for targetting account farmers:

That would mean everyone gets hit.... big sellers, small sellers, escrows, the guy who once sold 1 account.  The people who farm huge tons of accounts are mostly posting on accounts which mean nothing anyway.  More so than the person who once sold 1 account etc, or the person who escrows.

You might aswell give negatives to all people who whore themselves out to use signatures to promote business - probably another bad idea.

2.) charging people to use signatures function via a donation to the forum:

2 BTC was mentioned, someone said that was crazy high, i agree its high.  You could charge on a monthly basis 0.1 or 0.05.  Problem is people will just spam and then since they are a paying customer, who will stop them?

You will still have extreme cases where people get perma-banned.
I don't think current standards will apply to donators.
There have been periods where I have seen 100+ permabans in the modlog.
Would that happen with donators (assuming hundreds of people donate). I don't think so.

That is not a negative, that is a positive. You should not be selling accounts in the first place.

Your suggestion is absurdly foolish. Charging a monthly basis of that amount, which is lower than what some earn in 1 week, will do nothing at all.

Once there is no incentive to spam (paying signature campaign), you will be surprised at how quickly most of them reduce their posting.

This forum needs more of those periods.

Not if it increases profits of hardcore account farmers due to them being the only people who sell accounts in the short term.  Negatives mean nothing on some random newbie account.

Also in longer term you strengthen anonymous account farmers position and alienate hundreds of better quality members in 1 swoop.

 

I have no idea where you're getting this from, but this won't be the case.

Again, neither one hits. Exactly how would we strengthen the position of account farmers if we disallow account sales? This is contradictory. Quality members will be not affected at all. Unless you're talking about signatures, in that case neither one is true again. People which do not post solely due to being a signature campaign participants, will continue to post as nothing has happened.

The OP and some of people in this thread were suggesting negative feedback bombing people who sell acounts or who are involved in any way that is what i was referring to.  I would suggest if that ends up happening to first warn people first for a while - "stop selling accounts or else etc" if newbie account it doesn't mean anything, might aswell negative feedback bomb.

If you are banning account sales and its an official forum decision then yeah discussion is over, you just delete topic, everyone has to agree :)

If you ban signature campaigns then account sales will probably drop to almost nothing but forum activty also drops, does that matter? i dont know.

Okay, that makes more sense. I initially though you were referring to banning account sales and/or removing signature campaigns/signatures.

While technically true, I doubt theymos would make such a radical change if everyone is against it.

Quality over quantity. I'd rather have 10 useful posts a day, than 1 000 useless ones.

just do the math a guy with 10 account on yobit, can do 0.04 per account every week, so 0.4 with 10 of those spamming 200 post a day, this is a no-brainer, it's highly profitable more than mining or anything else

we are talking about 1.6 btc a month, which is more than a par time nowadays...this can easily be fixed by allowing only 10 members per signature and they must be all hero, this will put a serious deterrent in account farming for the sole purpose of signature

Nothing will change as this conversation has been done 100 times already. The only solution is ban paid campaigns...period. The forum wants the activity so this will not happen.

I would have to think that the 'value' of the forum is higher because there is money exchanging hands just from typing out little blurbs of information. I couldn't see Theymos changing it unless it was financially beneficial to him.

The issue I was thinking if was:

Let's say tomorrow signature campaigns are banned somehow. Everyone's signature is blank and you get a notice that if you advertise you'll have 1 strike (1 or 2 month ban) then a permanent ban.

Would this also apply to avatars? If you got rid of avatars that's just a huge step back in time. I like instantly putting a 'face' with a name. Oh it's the donkey from Shrek... That's Suchmoon. Oh it's the cat with the tiny mouth trying to eat a huge Big Mac. You can't fit that in there kitty!

Would you guys suggest the rules overflow to avatars and personal text? People will just switch to advertising on those if the bottom 'banner' isn't an option.

You decrease the activity of the spammers, which is something that is good to see. Think about forum activity in the bigger picture for a second here. Those threads with hundreds of pages in Economics, Gambling, even Bitcoin Discussion are filled with one-liners and repetitious content that offers no substance to the forum. So what are we really missing out on?

That's the point...  Account farming is dishonest and destructive to the forum.

As someone who feels he probably has a better handle on the escrows of this forum, let me say that any escrow effected by the banning of account sales deserves to be effected...  I do not touch account escrows because I think it is dishonest at best, and perpetuating scamming at worst.  The entire business of - 1) register fake account, 2)spam crap all over people's threads making them respond to stupid questions, 3) sign up for signature campaign promoting ponzi scheme or gambling operation, 4) sell account to someone who will continue posting garbage on the forum, or use the account to scam honest traders - is one that should be stopped.  Not only for the good of Bitcoin, bitcointalk, and the honest members here who have their time wasted, but for the kids spending weeks chasing a few dollars when they could be out mowing lawns, or learning, or starting businesses to earn real money and contribute.

If "everyone" in that little micro-economy "gets hit" it would be the best thing for everyone (except those running ponzi's and questionable gambling sites).  I'm convinced of this.



I don't think banning paid campaigns is the answer.  There is obviously a demand there.  Revenue just needs to be directed into the appropriate recipients.  They aren't the major bother anyway (although I would like to see their numbers reduced).  It's the accounts spamming to wear the signatures themselves, as they are basically paid spammers.  Seems like if they want to do that, it would be even more lucrative for them if they had to pay 2 BTC for the right to wear a signature.  That would drastically reduce the amount of signatures out there and make it much more profitable (I would assume) for those that do pay the 2 BTC in order to be able to have a signature as advertisers would have much more competition for those few signatures.  I imagine those that do pay the 2 BTC would also have a 2 BTC incentive not to spam and lose their account.

The only losers here are people who want to get something for nothing.  Take away their regular income for spamming and selling different accounts, and as a side effect you might see some of them "move to greener pastures" which I imagine will reduce scam attempts as well.

Okay,assuming your rule of 2BTC deposit is implemented.Let's assume somehow roughly 50 members make the deposits to the forum (now the revenue of the forum becomes 100BTC).Forum makes a lot of money this away,great.What about the people who have donated 2BTC ? The signature campaigns hardly pay 0.05 btc a week ? It will take ages to recover their initial deposits.

On the other side : How many members will a signature campaign have ? 2 ? 4? They will surely have a nice promotion ,isn't it ? Dissolves the entire damn point of running signature campaigns.As I have stated earlier,this sounds very illogical to me.


Banning Yobit signature campaigns will reduce 70% of the spam around the forum.

That is the exact point behind this. The result will be a insane reduction of signature campaign (there might be a possibilities of a few members remaining (that do pay)).

I'm not even a mod around here.  Let's call it my "idea."  

The signature campaigns would have to pay more to fewer members to run their campaigns.  This is by design to raise the barrier of entry and encourage honest participation in the forums.  The goal is to eliminate account farming and spam posts I thought, so those things need to be disincentivized.  You shouldn't need to post a ton of spam before you earn the right to advertise and your only reason for donating to a place that so many spend so much time shouldn't just be to get a good return on your investment.  I'd like to think there's a self respect element that comes along with it.

When I first came to these forums, everyone had their address in their signature.  This was because they would help someone with a problem and receive tips from users for being helpful.  It was great.  The forum was full of helpful people growing interesting ideas and quality conversation.  Now, users are incentivized to ask dumb questions and disappear or fake goods sales to their alt accounts wasting everyone else's time who responds to their threads.  Wouldn't it be better if we as a community got back to tipping people for being helpful instead of paying them to spam us?

Perhaps even a "community tipper" of some kind could be introduced, where a portion of the donations received is paid back to helpful members of the community.

Totally agree ,clever point being made there.Unfortunately,signature campaigns bring in a lot of traffic which serves as an ideal condition for advertisers .One way which forum makes money is by advertisements.If we cut down on the traffic ,it establishes a wide gap between the forum revenue and the advertisers.Money is an important aspect which can't be ignored.To run the forum or say pay the mods ,the only source are the advertisers IE the signature campaigners.I'm afraid,cutting down on them will have a greater impact on the forum's revenue. On the brighter side,yes we will have intelligent posters and  less scammers around. 

This is why the campaigns will never get banned. This forum would have excellent content, but probably not even half of the traffic. I think banning yobit's campaign would be good. Make the campaigns know if they do not curb the spammers they will be banned. Hilarious has told them plenty of times to clean it up IIRC.

Well funny thing, Hilarious is the one currently being paid by Yobit to clean it up since more than a month. Yobit is no-longer the spammiest campaign due to that even thought hilar does miss some. That title currenty belongs to Bitmixer with similarly worded posts to make it seem as if they are not spamming

The point I had been trying to make was that they would still continue their same process which you outlined in a recent post, just without the paid signature campaign part, and obviously at a lower "income". I don't participate in account sales and I've never bought one but it seems like accounts themselves still have some value if your just selling accounts with ranks?  It even seems like right now they have more value if they are not part of a signature campaign?   Maybe this is where I am not thinking correctly?

Since they seem to have so much time on their hands, I would think they would continue doing what they know best (registering accounts and posting useless content to try and sell them) and take the loss but wouldn't they still have some type of market?  Primarily newbies (or scammers) wanting to get a jump on the rank process... or someone who actually wants to pay the 2btc and participate in a campaign but they don't want to start with a brand new account (why would they want to pay the 2btc? I'm just assuming payouts will increase with a change like this and entice them back). If that happens, now they would even get a cool new rank of "Supporter" that they can use for scamming or posting more useless content.

I realize there is no perfect solution, and I'd say this is the best idea I've seen... making it harder for them would be better than nothing. And maybe they just don't see it as worth there time and move onto something else, I can try to be optimistic   :)  

Okay so what I see happening:

• The value of accounts and the number of sales drastically drops due to no incentive and way to ROI on bought accounts.
• 99% of Signature campaigns disappearing.
• Value boost for accounts with Signatures (Supporters), and campaigns for them.
• Drastic spam reduction

Reasoning per point:

• Accounts have higher values due to potential ROI and profit; joining signature campaigns is the top incentive to engage in account sales
• Simple, as there would barely be any users that have Signatures or want that participate (as a portion of those that have don't want to promote other services)
• This is obvious as there would still be a small percentage of potential spam
• Multiple reasons; unable to wear a signature, unable to join a signature campaign; spamming becomes risky (risking 2+ BTC).

Accounts don't have much value other than for:

1) spamming (sig campaigns) - if that goes away the value will drop
2) scamming (high rank/trust)

Farming accounts for rank requires only 1 post per day on average - a lot less than 20 (?) posts for Yobit. So even if #2 remains the amount of spam would drop significantly and could be easier controlled via moderation.

I like OgNasty's proposal, although I do agree with others that 2BTC is a fairly high barrier. With my current sig campaign, that would take me 20 months to earn. I think something between 0.75 to 1BTC is more reasonable and more attainable.

I also think that we need to be harsher on campaign managers to enforce their rules more strictly and have stricter rules about spam. I think that punishing managers for their campaigners' spammy behavior would be a good incentive to get them to be stricter. Perhaps giving out bans to managers if their campaigners are being spammy and nothing is done about them after they are informed of spammers.

The amount of course will have to vary based on the USD-BTC exchange rate. Signature campaign payments are linked to USD and of course, this payment would have to be linked to USD as well.

Not all campaigns are linked to USD. Many campagins, such as betcoin's, are Bitcoin only. This forum is Bitcoin only. I see no reason as to why the rate of the payment should be linked to a fiat currency. If it were to be linked to something, I would rather that it be related to the campaign rates and only change when campaign rates shift dramatically, as they did with the last big increase we had a few months ago.

Unfortunately, one of the most notorious signature campaigns, (the one I am currently involved in at the moment,) has the help of a Global Moderator, and it is still heavily abused. Poor guy has to keep playing wack-a-mole and have hundreds of accounts banned from the campaign, and the spammers still crop up like so many weeds.
With my short experience with the current signature campaign, I must admit, the temptation to post absolute crap definitely keeps nagging. Overall, it has been a good experience for me because it has actually made me expand my reading outside of the altcoins announcement forum. I have actually leaned quite a bit. Unfortunately, I think most in the sig campaigns do not actually take much time reading the content of the thread before posting.

Hilarious is actually cleaning house on close to a monthly cycle now that he is in charge. They no longer take Jr. members and this will help cut the garbage posting down, since it was to easy before to just start a new account.

Sometimes I think blaming signatures is a attempt to not see things for what they are, being that there is less draw to this forum for a lot of people due to tiffs, disagreements and lack of depth.
The push to get rid of signatures has allowed people to dictate how they want the forum as opposed to hearing what the majority may want.
No one knows because the loudest bark wins out more than not.
So imagine signatures are gone because so many here that have established accounts look at it as filth. You honestly think posts will improve? Lot of the members I see over and over frowning on signatures do not post indepth threads. They may run business here but is that being part of the community or exploiting them? Think a lot of the services here are the latter, so where is this community that will suddenly reestablish its self!

Signatures attract new people and give them coin to figure the ropes out. I know there is a lot of spammers that come out of it as well and agree something should be worked out, but I do not think you will get this sudden utopia once signatures are gone.
Personally think limiting to full member and up is fine but maybe setup something for newer accounts to get their feet wet. Faucets no longer cut it for this aspect.

Only in Bitcoinland do people complain about a 20 month ROI.  Rest assured that signature campaigns would have to pay more.

Yes, there might be other reasons for the garbage contents but so far every serial spammer that I've seen had a paid signature. Some get upset when I report them because they lose their income:


That's what it has become. And that was a multi-account spammer.

No, removing/restricting signature ads would not make the forum magically more intelligent and helpful and friendlier etc. But that doesn't mean the financial incentive to produce useless posts is some kind of a God-given or constitutional right that shouldn't be touched. Signature ads have no useful contribution to a discussion. I don't mind them if they help promote Bitcoin businesses. I don't mind people getting paid for posts they would make anyway, but not when it becomes a job, a way to make money at the expense of other forum members who need to waste time reading the crap.

It's why campaigns need to set the entry barrier high as well. Don't accept low ranking members and check the post quality of those applying so that you don't have to keep kicking people out.

I'm fairly inexperienced when it comes to ROI'ing on things, so I don't have anything to compare that to. It just seems like a lot of time and a lot of posts.

stopping the account sale may also stop or the lessen the circulation of bitcoin. and so it has to be decided carefully as the economy of bitcoin is more important.
what i can suggest however is just make the account sale transparent instead. a list as to who bought who and when...

If you really think bitcointalk account sales are any notable, considerable weight in the bitcoin economy, your horizon has to be very small.
Even worse, if they really were that important to the economy...

So, the solution for getting rid of account farming is, making account sales 'transparent'?
Besides the issue, that this would never be (fully) possible, as being easy to avoid, that's a bullshit suggestion.
The majority of posters in this thread wants to stop account sales, not to encourage them in any way.

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Agreed, from a newbie/junior members history (the brief one that exists at that point of time), you can hardly evaluate their future posting behaviour,
whilst with higher ranking members (considering they didn't change hands inbetween), you mostly get a good estimate on how they post/behave.

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It's funny how reporting a post/thread can backfire at you.

Wrong. The more you lower the amount, the more spammers you are letting through. As a normal user that tries to engage in discussions and help others, you don't need a signature (if you can't pay for it).

Exactly. There should be no ROI at all.

I think having a lowered amount could essentially work. A tiered system would get draw in those who only want a sig without the idea of promoting for profit. 1 BTC for a line or two of plain text, no bells and whistles, and 2 BTC for the more extravagant looking signatures that higher ranks have.

I agree that account farmers are detrimental to the forum, but it is down to the staff to outlaw it - not you. It has been known for a long time that accounts are traded here and you should basically trust no one here. With all the proxies and VPN accounts around it is absolutely futile to try to stop these people unless the staff start IP bans - which they're not going to do. You should also consider the slightly positive affect that the forum looks busier and more active, thus gathering new legitimate users with ease.

How would IP bans help against proxies and VPNs?

IP bans might only work against average users that are not tech savy, otherwise it does not do much. As a example: We've nuked several thousands accounts of both that KNC and Speculation-section spammer and yet they keep coming back.

It is a problem that I don't think can be regulated by staff.  I don't think they even want to attempt it, which is why it is allowed.  Similar to moderating scams...

I disagree that you say it has a positive effect of making the forum look busier.  All the posts are crap.  Some of my threads, literally every response is a signature spammer asking some irrelevant question never to be heard from again.  It is an unbelievable time waste to have to read and acknowledge these people.  For that reason many PMs I get asking me to check out threads or respond to a comment go unanswered.  I would say that is a negative for the forum as it appears every well known member around here eventually hits their breaking point and stops responding to PMs all together, then stops posting here.  I think it is a 100% negative thing that spammers can get paid to suck time for the rest of our lives.  They're literally stealing hours of my time and cashing it in for $10/week.  It should be stopped, or at the very least disallowed and forced to "do business" in the shadows.  Unless of course we want this forum to be a circle jerk of signature spammers and ponzi sites. 

An awesome way to combat the problem would be to give members the ability to "opt-in" to a signature campaign through bitcointalk.org.  Then advertisers could sign up with bitcointalk (like they already do) and instead of their ads only being displayed in the forum spots, they could appear in user signatures as well.  The users could get paid and the forum would of course keep a % for running the program.  The % users get paid could be an equation of some sort based on their trust ratings.  Then users would be getting paid for participating in the community and gaining trust.  This would encourage positive behavior and reduce spam, as I don't think trusted members would be posting nonsense for bits.  Those who violate could be warned or suspended, and the forum could have direct control over the number of signatures.  That of course would take more work behind the scenes, which I am sure is probably not worth the effort.  Easiest thing to do is simply outlaw account sales here and remove the ability for non-paid memberships to advertise signatures.  Perhaps Legendary members could get a text only signature or something...

Brilliant plan, I only see 1 flaw, you cant calculate the percentage they get using their trust score, I've seen highly trusted members posting garbage.

A team of reputable users on the forum could go through users who want to get in a campaign and decide how much they get paid per post.

Also, signature for advertising should requiring applying through the forum

The default trust group is the closest thing we have to a group of reputable users and we do rate forum members.  That is a salty argument for another thread though.

was thinking of a group of like 10 members

Most of the signature spammers are just trying to earn some btc to survive IMO, so I don't blame them for their actions honestly. I think it's a much more honest way to try and make a living then the SCAMMERS in the marketplace. At least these signature spammers are TRYING to actually earn their btc.

Now the businesses / websites running these SPAMMY signature campaigns SHOULD be held responsible in some way financially if they do not have strict signature campaign guidelines in place.

So if a company like YOBIT for instance is/was running a very spammy campaign? I would recommend a penalty box type system in place with NO WARNING. So let's say YOBIT is GUILTY of a spammy campaign. Theymos could easily implement a redirect system I believe for mods and admins, so that any http://yobit.net link would redirect to the bitcointalk.org/penaltybox page where the company (eg: Yobit.net) is forced to DONATE "x" amount of bitcoin, and just determine the penalty fee or whatever by the AVERAGE current round of legitimate bitcointalk advertising is worth. So if the current 10 Ad slots / spots let's say are selling for an AVERAGE of 0.5 BTC each? That's the 1st offense penalty box fee to have your websites url removed from the penalty box and not redirect any further. And I'm NOT trying to single YOBIT out here, I actually like the YOBIT site itself personally, but I see that they seem to be the current SPAM FLAVOR of the month so am just using them as example. 

You could also implement a progressive penalty system like:

1st offense: average Bitcointalk advertising price

2nd offense: average Bitcointalk advertising price x 2

3rd offense:  average Bitcointalk advertising price x 3

and so on...

other implementations I think are needed? Is to NOT allow TOR, VPN's or PROXIES in the MARKETPLACE section of Bitcointalk.org at all unless you're a MOD / DT1 / DT2 Member or whatever. This section is the scammiest and most dangerous section of the site IMO and by not allowing these would deter most scammers, and spammers even for that matter. Because their legitimate IP's would be visible by theymos and whoever else is allowed access to that information. The FAKE sales of accounts, the scams, etc... I believe would dramatically reduce within the first day of this implementation.

Anyway that's just my useless 0.02 on the matter :-)

and a HAPPY MOTHERS DAY to all the WONDERFUL Mothers out there!

i dont know of the market of account reach this far... i know that this forum have an amazing amount of traffic and that why people want account here to redirect that traffic to his/her website, but reddit have more traffic and they dont have the problem with the false accounts

You think DT is not good for this but you would like to create another group of "reputable" members? How would that work and how it would be better than DT or staff?

"Posting garbage" is already against forum rules and moderators can deal with it regardless of offender's trust score.

Claps to your wonderful comment /s , now.. how's the account farming business going?

Coming to the topic, whats Ognasty's 1/2 BTC suggestion by the way? Didn't have the time to go through the whole thread, but it seems well accepted.

tl;dr pay 2BTC to get a special rank that can have a signature, everyone else either has super stripped down signature or none.

I would think "Supporters" who paid 2 BTC would get: a signature, new title, new "who's online" color, access to the Donators section of the forum, and having your name listed here: https://bitcointalk.org/donate.html

Ah, seems quite harsh and might lead to most of the users leaving. While it looks good on paper, it will mean loss of traffic and consequently ad revenue for the forum.

 Lets face it, more than 60% of the signed users are here for the signature payments and nearly 30% of the remaining are the FUD/Ad(KNC , the advertisement posts about some bullshit and the price drop FUD) spam, which feed off the 60% of the traffic which the sig campaigns bring. With the first gone, the latter will slowly disappear too, which might seem good at first but will most certainly either mean that this will result in either a notable sig-spam free community or a user devoid forum

Edit: For the record I get paid a fixed amount(like say Blazed) regardless of whether I post or not

Disagree. If you are here for the proper reasons, and not because you want to spam in every part of the forum that you're able to in order to acquire a small sum of money, you have no reason to leave. Even though I'm currently part of a Signature Campaign, I've been trying to get them removed and/or get spam heavily reduced for quite some time now. This forum does not need quantity, it needs quality.

That is the problem...  Is this a forum trying to make ad revenue with fraudulent traffic, or a hub of Bitcoin discussion and development?  Since it has been repeated time and again that this forum doesn't need money, I would say the latter.  I would also speculate that it is a very small group of people with an army of alts who benefit from the programs you mention.

Spam is also a strong word for posting word for posting in different sections of the forum. Would you call , say Knightdk(who I believe is someone after sho who puts effort in his posts) spamming ? While I agree there are still quite a few persistent multi-account sig farmers who keep abusing campaigns like Bitmixer or Yobit for that matter, for making a small sum of money. The quality of the forum has definitely increased and is being maintained for the last few months and the ones who start spamming are soon reported.

Edit:
While the forum doesn't need money from donators and such, it does need money to sustain the group of moderators, "pay" for the admins and the Global mods(who I believe have a higher "cut" from the ad revenue). As of right now, it is taking ~6 BTC to keep the forum going, per month

The forum might die anyway if spam continues growing like this. Even though I'm not a big fan of OgNasty's pay-for-sig proposal I would still prefer to see it die trying to do something positive than just let it drown in spam.

You misunderstood my post; I have never define spam as posting in different sections of the forum. Re-read.

I strongly disagree.

It doesn't really need that either, as moderators are not on any sort of 'payroll'.

Well they both seem the same.

Well I can disagree with your disagreement for no reason at all, I believe you do have a reason (or stats to prove so) to disagree
Sure the first few months mods will try seeming as if they don't need the share of payments per reports they handle, then they will surely slack off as they are not getting any reward for the unthanked job that they have to do. As for the statement that mods aren't paid or more specifically aren't "on a payroll" I believe you yourself likely receive more than 0.2 BTC(a significant amount) per month, not that I'm complaining as you do deserve the share for the constant spam-handling you do

I don't know honestly, I haven't seem extreme cases of spam going unnoticed by the forum. IMHO, its dramatic stuff even for me

That is out of context. The sentence states that if you have not joined with an intent to spam everywhere for money, you will have no reason to leave if we don't have signatures.

I don't have time to gather stats; and the question would be what kind of stats are appropriate for this? The statement was made due to the impression that I have due to reading a lot while posting in addition to reading a lot more when handling reports.

I don't think that is the case. Example: Global moderators tend to earn quite a lot when they're active, yet sometimes they are very inactive (a month or longer). They would not do that if money was a priority.

Even though I'd consider that a small amount (no idea why 90$ would be significant) of money, your statement is correct.

Does anyone know when signature campaigns started? I want to compile some stats and make some graphs

TF the scammer started it all AFAIK


Edit: According to him it was not, apparently Butterfly labs was the first one: Here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=971653.msg10611419#msg10611419). Can't be sure

Edit 2: Aaaanyways, think this might be one of those topics which get a lot of opinions and contradictions etc, but end up in no way actually changing things. Don't think any more posts to argue further will prove Lauda wrong, the cat never loses the logic battles

The first one that I was in (I think) was Inputs.io in 2013. But:

You'd need to do more research to determine, but Inputs.io would be a nice starting point (I don't think your analysis would be much affected if there was a campaign or two before).


I like OgNasty's suggestions though; they're new. It now comes down to making the administration notice the thread and waiting for feedback.

Beat the Cat, you can not!

Why would the forum ban tor users from the marketplace? That means I will have to be forced to put my public IP at risk just to buy a giftcard?

Its not like tor helps scammers, how often do we catch scammers around here by using their IP address?

A few days ago I made an account on tor and I had to pay something north of 0.2BTC to unlock the account, are you saying even though tor users are forced to pay a fee ( a quite big one), they shouldnt be allowed to post in the marketplace section?

Also, even if members using tor cant post threads in the marketplace you know that alot of deals go through with using just PMs right?

Also, wouldnt they just make a post in a wrong section, have someone report it, and then the mods will move it to marketplace?

Nothing will get reduced, do you honestly beleive that theymos would release the IP addresses of scammers?

Believe it or not, most people dont trust the forum with their IP
The forum has been hacked a few times

I was just suggesting to ban TOR / VPN's / Proxies in the MARKETPLACE ONLY as a deterrent to Scammers mainly, but IN ADDITION it would give Theymos and Admins the ability to ban these SCAMMER IP addresses, so I was NOT suggesting they should be released publicly... BUT! IF that ban was implemented in the marketplace? SCAMS & FRAUD WOULD BE REDUCED BIG TIME I BELIEVE! There are a ton of Scammers here that would never even TRY to pull some of the crap they pull without the protection of TOR a VPN or a PROXY at their disposal and YES I understand DEALS go through via PM, but again it seems (again IMO) that MOST scams (not legitimate deals) are STARTED in the marketplace. Again, I was just adding my 2 cents, nothing more. 

P.S. I had NO IDEA the forum charged a 0.2 BTC fee to use TOR, so my bad on that one, that INDEED is a pretty hefty fee. 

What about a very simple solution such as not allowing signature space until an account is 1 year old.  If you put a time limit on it rather than an activity limit, then there would be no incentive to spam (until the year is complete).  If a year sounds too long, it could be 6 months.  I think this could deter people that don't want to wait to get a signature.

They would just buy an account that is older than one year and spam on that.

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Here's an idea that could work but probably won't happen because of the complexity:

In order to have a signature, an account must be, say, at least full member and the user must give 2BTC to the forum. However, instead of that 2BTC being a donation, it would rather be a security deposit. After the user posts at least 1000 posts over the course of two years, he can get 1.5BTC back, the remaining 0.5BTC becoming a donation. However, in order to get that 1.5BTC back, the user must also not have more than 25 posts deleted over the two years, and no more than 10 instances where more than 20 posts are made in a twenty four hour period. He must also never receive a ban within those two years. Only when these requirements are met can the user receive the 1.5BTC back.

I think this would work to reduce spam, increase the constructiveness of posts, and also maintain traffic for the forum. Users are incentivized to stick around for a few years, and post constructively in order to get their money back.

True, but there would be fewer accounts that are over a year old and they would cost more.

With over 800k accounts currently, even when taking off those that are either lost (due to the owner leaving), will never be sold or those that are banned,
aswell as those that are not (yet) at the age restriction you want to implement, that is hardly a limit to the market.

If you want to ding people for spam it should be only fair that older accounts have all their sock puppet accounts tagged as such, otherwise we are dealing with a situation where you are going after people that are late to bitcoin well also allowing them to be mislead by multi accounts.
Having seen people like Luptin leave three word responses and a person with a signature leave quality responses and be accused of spam aslo seems out of wack. Not a personal attack just a obvious member all would know. Its stating you can put little effort into posting as long as you are positioned properly without a signature. Some serious double standards. The lot getting giddy over clamping down are never happy either with one issue! We eliminate signatures and you will reap what you so desire, but I honestly do not think the outcome will be what you expect.
Notice how few signature members are in this thread! Is it because you are right about all of them spamming or more sinister in not wanting to become a target of the chosen elite? Sadly we know the truth and this discussion like those before it will turn into a closed circle jerk for like minds to scream bloody murder at members of the forum.
Signatures this forums version of a red door?

No double standards here, I've had 4 posts deleted in the last 24 hours and I'm not in any campaign, what some sig spammers try to do is make long pointless speeches when you can answer questions and reply to stuff in one sentence, I personally find that annoying. Few signature members are in this thread because this is an intelligent discussion, those that can actually understand what we are saying here know that they are guilty and are staying away.

Think it is a mix of both and not leaning to far on either side to be fair in addressing why sigs are staying clear. I reference the ponzi issue as it was the last issue and I saw people apolgize out of fear rather then thinking they where right or wrong.
Believe the same applies here and you yourself blew me off by saying some signature users write to much. I read that as go away, am I right?
Would validate my point if so.

I would be more then happy to donate 2 BTC if I would receive some kind of "supporter" tag and/or if theymos was soliciting donations. However the forum is currently self sufficient and theymos has repeatedly said that the forum is not in need of additional money/donations. 

I think 2 BTC would be more appropriate if the forum was in some kind of need for additional money and it was for something other then to enable signature features.

If signature campaigns were to outright stop (for whatever reason) then the value of accounts would likely crash and the amount of useless posts by people with paid signatures would also decline substantially. I might speculate that the volume of accounts traded might go up as people might be interested in buying accounts at fire-sale prices, hoping that signature campaigns would make a return appearance, giving value to accounts once again.
Right now, based on the various account pricing websites and the auctions that I see, high-level accounts sell for amounts that would allow someone to quickly ROI with signature payments alone. Also many of the signature spammers put very little effort into their "work" of posting. I also have observed many signature spammers decline to "invest" the small amount of time required to even briefly read  a small number of posts in a thread prior to posting nonsense.

(please note that what you had quoted was discussing what was essentially a "fork" of what OgNasty proposed in that people would need to pay a nominal amount in order to "unlock" the signature features of senior members+.)

I think you know very well that most people cannot reasonably describe what to "avoid" in order to avoid potentially receiving negative trust from someone in the DT network. What will "trigger" a negative rating has been greatly expanding in the past several months to well beyond the intended "someone is a scammer, or you strongly believe that someone is a scammer". There is also one member in the DT network that will openly give negative trust because you say something he disagrees with.....however that is off topic here...

Why is that foolish? If you charge an amount that is greater then someone can reasonably expect to earn via their signature over a medium amount of time then no one will pay the "fee" and you are essentially banning signature campaigns.

If you pay 0.05 btc every month on the 1st, then you will be risking that 0.05 btc in the event that you post enough crap so that you get banned.

I don't like this idea however because the amount that people post varies too much as this will be a pittance to some signature advertisers while it would be more then what some signature advertisers will earn in a month, effectively banning signature campaigns for people that do not post very much.

The signature spam problem has been attacked in some ways, with results that I was very impressed with. Take a look at this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1334019.0) thread/rule clarification in the off-topic section, and notice how the thread like "how long have you been logged in", "what is your favorite drink", and "what is the last movie you have watched" are no longer active (they actually have been locked. I would also say that Grue's signature ad block script has also helped the problem somewhat, although to somewhat of a lesser extent.

It is true that most of the stuff Slowturtleinc is not a valid reason to leave a negative rating, although I would argue that a good ~16 of the reasons listed essentially are the reason for a negative rating that someone has left that is in the DT network.

As someone who previously assisted with escrowing forum accounts, I can say that the amount of money you will earn from dealing with forum account deals is in no way worth the amount of time required to facilitate these kinds of deals. There were often many concepts that needed to be explained to one or both parties to a transaction, and the amount of details that need to be checked as part of a transaction means that it would often take 15-20 minutes to facilitate a deal that is not disputed, and when you are often receiving your minimum tip/fee of 2-3 dollars, that works out to essentially minimum wage. The primary reason why I was willing to facilitate these deals was to prevent someone from being able to scam via these deals. Although some people believe that account trading is dishonest, I do not believe these people would be happy if someone got scammed just because they tried to buy or sell an account, especially if the person who got scammed was otherwise honest.

The forum is currently self sufficient, and it is self sufficient because it is able to sell advertisements for (far) greater then it's operating expenses. The forum is able to sell advertisements at this price because of the number of page views that it gets. Users with paid signatures often will not participate in the forum (or their participation would be greatly reduced) if it were not for their paid signature. Users with paid signatures are essentially giving the forum additional page views (which allows the forum to sell it's advertisements at a higher price).

I would personally love to see an environment that you describe from when you first joined.

I have seen that kind of behavior take place on reddit a little bit. I am not sure why it does not take place here anymore.

(interestingly enough, I have actually asked one Legendary member for help with a couple of high value trades in the past, solicited a donation address after the help/advise was received and received a message declining a tip/donation).

Why do you think this? If someone is considering to donate money in return for their ability to receive payments to advertise for a third party but has no chance to earn a return on their initial payment + the time/effort they put into their posts that serve as advertisements then they will have zero incentive to donate the money in the first place.

I think that the people who say they receive a "fixed amount" are somewhat misleading others as to the details of their arrangement. As a general rule, the "fixed rate" deals have a minimum number of posts that must be made in order to be eligible for payment, and if this is not true, then advertisers will take into consideration how many posts such person is making on a regular basis when deciding if they wish to continue their arrangement.

I like the concept behind this, however I think some of the specifics should be changed.

If you have 3 active marketplace threads open for one year then you will potentially bump them a total of 1,000 times, and if you forget to delete your old bumps only 2.5% of the time then you will be over the limit.

When I was more active last year, there were some periods when I would average 26 posts per day over a month, however my posts were good enough so that third parties were willing to pay significantly above market prices for the right to advertise on my signature. I believe that there are many other high quality posters that have frequently exceeded 20 posts in a 24 hour period.

Nope nothing like it, hilarious has a similar deal but he received the payments until ~6 months.

I disagree. If hilarious ends up making less posts then the advertiser anticipates (even if he does not communicate this expectation to hilarious) then the advertiser will not renew his agreement (and may even end up asking to end it early and ask for a partial refund).

I have a special referral link in the BB code of my signature so my advertisers can track ??? with my signature, and I presume they will elect to not renew my agreement with me if the advertising is not profitable, and I expect that ??? is directly correlated with the number of posts that I made, and likely how diverse my posts are. 

There are plenty of ways that the money could be spent.

So, the right approach is not to completely ban them, but go in the lines of OgNasty's suggestion.

That is one of the main problems in their posting habits. They don't read posts, end up rewriting what someone else already wrote and they keep repeating this cycle. Their overall posting quality becomes trash.

That is a hasty generalization. You can't know this, as an example I choose myself, assuming that staff members also lose this functionality, I would pay the 2 BTC fee.

Risking 20$  ??? Whoa, now I'm scared; I shall not spam anymore!  ::)

As long as people see posting as some kind of investment, and buying accounts in order to ROI, this will be a problem. The point of this forum was to initially discuss Bitcoin related stuff and provide help for people, not make 100 pages of posts in threads like 'Why is gambling bad?0 (note: 1 post was sufficient to answer this question).

Are there any modifications to the current simple machines forum software which allow members to mark posts as spam (blocking the post from general view etc).  That would put sig campaign managers mostly out of business haha.  The community will then police the issue, account farming becomes pointless.

Exactly who would be allowed to mark posts as spam? How would you plan on abuse? A few people could 'gang up' on someone with the opposite view and suppress his posts.

just ideas...

Anyone could mark posts as spam? or could have only certain ranks allowed? a post needing 5 votes or whatever before its marked as true spam etc.  

To combat abuse, dont allow anyones OPs to be marked as spam incase people hurt other competiting businesses OP.  Leave OP deleting to the mods. Spammers dont usually make an OP anyway they like to hide deep in threads.

Mods could also have powers to see who is marking what posts as spam incase businesses start to attack eachother.

Yeah people could gang up, you have that problem on reddit with upvoting manipulation.

Let's initiate the process by Stopping YoShit and Secondstrade signature campaigns.It will have greater impact,the number of spam posts will be reduced eventually.

The situation is clearly a hard to clean mess. i think that the spam attacks are not gonna stop anytime soon.

Prone to abuse.

Still prone to abuse.

They can still suppress someone's input in other threads.

End result is that there's a lot more work for moderators for a small benefit (if any).

Why not just make signatures plain text, no more colors and no more BBcode. This may give those trying to get their first coins a chance to participate in a text-only advertising campaign, which isn't going to pay as much and isn't going to be as obnoxious. You could still have a 2BTC cost to be allowed BBcode, which I assume would result in entries into higher-paying campaigns?   Just a thought that I haven't really had time to process, so feel free to rip it apart  :D

I'm struggling to fully support the idea just because I am against the thought of buying any rank on a forum. The 'donator' status had a purpose at one point in time, but at this point I do not agree with the idea of buying a status that subsequently provides a false sense of trust to others.

Regardless, I'm not sure how else you would stop the activity without having a price set that makes it a much longer ROI and possibly not worth their time. But maybe just get rid of the 'rank' part... or give them the rank, but do not give them 5 coins under their name, access to donator forum, etc. the way the donator status does now. They are not really donating anything, they are trying to participate in paid signature campaigns for a profit... Or just make the rank name "Profiteering Glutton"   :P

Also, I assume this may have been looked at before but maybe ranking in general could be based on the word count or character count of posts as opposed to the quantity of them?  Maybe too resource intensive?

The sig campaigns that dont police spam are bad but even the ones with campaign managers against spam end up promoting a particular brand of postings - its 1 or 2 paragraphs long, it doesn't really say much of anything, its not actually how real people post.  People post short stuff all the time, see reddit.  I dont like the idea that someone might have 10-20 accounts all signed up to yobit though, agree.

The biggest topic of conversation in the Donators section over the last year or so is why nobody posts in the Donators section.  Letting more Donators in would be a positive in my opinion.  Their coins would be just as much a donation as anyone else's.

I see alot of spammers making long wordy posts with little content, If your system is adopted, those users will rank quickly although they are spamming.

Also, the forum had to change it's activity update system because it was taking up too many resources and a few days ago theymos had to disable the view members page for the same reason. Your plan will need too many resources.

Lack of signature members is a issue for me and think that this discussion as become very lopsided, so I have pointed Yobit towards this thread to voice their concerns here. Tired of seeing the same people clapping each other on the back acting like their is no other opinions in a discussion. So we shall see if the signature is meek,timid and voiceless in due time.

Before I get full hog tied,I endorse the idea of Full member and up for signatures but a out right ban seems short sighted and with out stats can not be discussed with a rational mind.
Lets not forget that one of the favorite tactics in this forum is to state "You have a signature,therefore your opinion is paid for and is just spam"! Dismissive and a tad arrogant because we are all equal human beings and this need for a dynasty of 1% seems like a game where the forum will not prosper. I know a lot of you feel the opposite but wheres the proof?
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This seems to be the talking point as of late about signature users talking a lot but saying nothing. Can it be more that you do not agree with what is being stated and this is a way to cut the person off? Can you show me some examples of these type of posts because I think the people still posting crap are not changing the format. May be a handful of users that are doing this but as a whole very few are posting pages.

Let me just say that I saw your post in yobit's thread and I think It's cute thhat you think the spammers care. Lets take things into perspective, after reading your post in the yobit thread, I saw the user above you say something uncalled for (spam, one liner) so, out of curiosity, I checked his latest posts, here they are.

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Is this enough proof for you?

I'm a signature campaign manager, and hence directly involved with signature campaigns (deeper than some YoBit spammers, you might even say).
I still have to say that there have been several valuable inputs to this thread, and that I'd rather see this 'very lopsided' discussion from people that actually care,
than 100 posts from alt-account xyz saying "All signatures are good, I earn from it" in a slightly different way over and over again.

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https://i.imgur.com/ECvOf4p.jpg

I think that if no one from the signature comes in to defend themselves I will have to join the rest of you in reasoning.
Should be interesting to see though if people do care. Was debating posting something similar in other signatures as well but thought it might cause a flood of posts,looks like I am way off in how I viewed the potential response here,will give it the day to see.

The comment I was making about posts was in reference to signature members making long posts with little substance.
I know there are a lot of users posting one to three word dribble responses,think those are easier to hunt down and get rid of with raising the cut off to full member. I am not a full member and have no problem waiting till then if that becomes the new criteria.

Willing to show I am wrong,no big deal for me but would like due dilgence on the issue because I do feel it is a game changer in many aspects that could be detrimental to the forum. Starting to think my philosophy is also something that can only be found on the darkwebs away from government.

If they contributed to the forum in any meaningful way (legitimately participating) then we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place.  You are merely proving our point.

There are bad apples but this is all aspects of the forum. Think punishing those caught in the crossfire is wrong and we should be addressing more moderation of those abusing the perk.

As for lack of voice coming from the campaign, not everyone likes to put their ass out to be flogged.
We have had 2 months now of house cleaning and its not always clear if discussions like this one are something that the signature wants.
But there is something to the echo I hear from myself in this discussion. Least we can validate the point if no one comes thru.

They wont come forward because they are guilty

You always presume people would speak up when they realize their doom awaits them but it looks like I am either wrong about this issue or people are more scared then I thought to address this thread. I watched the views and think its the first of the two and I sadly have to submit to "Uncle"!
Was going to check those that came in to see what their post histories where like but now I just need to face facts that a majority of the signature careless or as you say are guilty of spamming the forum.

Here is my take/issue on this and it runs around in a bit of a circle of issues that have been addressed.

If you set the cut off for signatures at Full Member it would be a good starting point to curtail the issue.
Once this is set you can kick every one from their signatures and have them apply again,this time they get scrutinized closely form spam.
It would be a slow process but people will be easier to pick off with a posting history already established.
You can see a change from well written posts to garbage on entry and tell them to come back and apply again if they had a recent password change.

The selling of accounts off site you can do little about but you would stifle the flow some what by having people to question if the guy they are dealing with can be trusted and they would also most likely try to join a campaign right away,which means you can note their account for extra scrutiny when the password change disappears and they are permitted to join.

There will always be a angle you can not kill but it would address the stampede effect we had with spammers after getting their 30 posts.
I think there has been a drop off since Yobit changed to member and would expect more so once implementing 120 as a bar.


So rewinding to my earlier posts,I know I was wrong but at least we gave the people a chance to be heard.

If the sig campaigning issue was that bad, wouldn't it make sense for mods to delete the junk posts made by these spammers? I'm sure there are enough moderators to police the problem.

If this is the case then I would suggest that you educate theymos on this so he stops telling people that the forum does not need money.

Again, I think that the price is too high and would result in excluding the majority of people who are not already wealthy.

I am not sure what your point is here. The statement that you quoted was giving evidence that I do not think the signature spammers will "invest" in the "fee" required to unlock better signature features.

Maybe "no one" is not entirely true, however anyone who is acting economically rational will not pay a fee that is designed to prevent anyone who pays said fee from ever earning a return on said fee.

If they have 10 accounts then they are risking $200 (plus the value of their accounts). Also note that many (possibly even most) of the signature spammers live in parts of the world where $1 is a lot of money.

If people are investing (and risking) their money into an account then they have incentives to not spam useless crap because if they do then they are risking getting banned and loosing their investment. It has already been clairified (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1334019.0) that low/no value threads are not allowed, so if you see one then I would suggest that you report to so a moderator with authority over that section can lock it.

When measured in number of threads, the market place sections is by far, the most active part of the forum (this would be even more so if the marketplace sections of mining were included in this), and the most important question that someone will consider when thinking about trading is how they will earn money with the trade.

The issue there would be the optics that mods are censoring members. Think the issue should be handled by a member assigned to the signature that shows a unbiased  view point. Hilarious does a great job but ideally it would good if it was not a mod to limit potential conflict of interest.

Mods are hired to enforce forum rules, how is it a conflict of interest?

This is about fighting the symptoms or fixing the root issue.

Its a suggestion because sometimes optics or perception can override the issue. Not being able to see down the road but would rather people did not have a angle or leg to the argument by making it seem like a mod had it in for them.
We both know this not to be a problem but. it would be one less thread issue.

You don't seem to understand either statements. Theymos is right when he says that the forum does not need more money, as in, it has enough money to remain fully functional. My statement was more general, e.g. you could donate the money to charity (which is a bad example, but applies).

Again, the point is not to generate money but to remove the majority of signature campaign participants (which are spammers anyways).

Again, a hasty and hyperbolic generalization. It comes down to the member; I could probably (if I wanted to) return that sum within 2 to 3 months.

If you have 10 accounts, you're risking 20 BTC. This seems much better in my eyes.

Telling a moderator what to do when he sees such a thread? ::)

Bullshit. There is a huge difference between censorship and moderation. Free-speech does not mean that you can come and spread any kind of nonsense in a privately owned place.

Bullshit and nonsense for speaking on a potential issue and you see no problem with the optics obviously!
Thought we where having a discussion here, as I read this thread it felt like you guys where close to applying the plan. I see chewing through a lot of aspects and I bring up a optics issue and not only am I wrong I am told its bullshit by a mod!
Of course you can not see the issue as you think you are nothing but rational.
Bullshit implies the person has no leg to stand on and should shut up. You do this often and I am always told that this is just your way but its getting old.
If you are fine with it, then whatever It gets tedious talking to a wall, especially when so many other issues where open for talking.
Fine Lauda, any meta posts I will send to you for screening. ;) (joke obviously)

We were/are having a discussion, and no "us guys" can't apply anything.

Did you just overreact to me using a specific word? I could have used any other word which would have the same result (e.g. rubbish or gibberish); note: "bullshit" does not imply 'shut up'. I also don't understand the use of the word "optics"; elaborate your definition of it?

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TL;dr: If your posts break the rules and get deleted, you are not being censored. That was the story behind my statement. Besides, most spammers do not really care as long as they generate profit.

Optics just means the way people perceive a issue.
Perception.

Luptin uses bullshit in the same way, reason I addressed it.

I over react because I know from past experience that when a mod disagrees with you the attack on character come out.
Will try to take your threads that feel nit picking like as suggestions to define who I am addressing in the future.

I think we should revisit a pay per post option as I discussed a few months ago, When you are starting a thread, along with the regular option, there would be a paid per post feature, this would deter spammers from entering your thread, the amount should be somewhere around 10-20k satoshis. Moneypot could be used to handle the money, and the money collected doesn't go to the OP of the thread, it goes to the forum, which then donates this money to charity.

I think its a good Idea, tear it apart, If you are getting paid for posting, you shouldnt have any problem paying to post

So every time I want to post, I need to pay a few thousand satoshis and wait for the transaction to confirm before the post goes live? This idea just sounds like a pain in the ass because I need to open my wallet and send a transaction every time I want to post. Furthermore, this would contribute to blockchain bloat. Additionally, I may not always have access to my wallet. What if I am on mobile and don't have a mobile hot wallet? What if I am just hodling and all of my Bitcoin are locked away somewhere safe where I can't access them? This just deters people who do post constructively and don't have a signature simply out of the inconvenience that this causes.

Now, you may say that not all threads will be like that, but any thread that would have a decent discussion going on would have this enabled and having to pay to post in those threads would simply become bothersome.

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A question for the mods: If a user posts something in a thread that has already been said and doesn't add anything new (as a lot of account farmers do), will the post be deleted as spam if it is reported?

As long as sig campaigns are around, this won't change. This is one of the major reasons I took a break from the forums, it really isn't worth sifting through the mounds of vapid crap people post because they are being paid to do so.

1. No, I mentioned moneypot, they could handle the transactions

2. Everything you said after your first sentence is solved by moneypot

The problem then is moneypot. I would have to trust a third party online wallet, something which I don't do. I don't care if they are "trusted", I just don't trust or use any online wallet provider; many users here feel the same way.

Also, I'm pretty sure that Theymos is not fond of the idea of using a third party service for things related to the site (as in he doesn't have direct access and cannot fully control everything), especially when handling actual money. I'm also pretty sure the he doesn't like the idea where the forum is in charge of users' money.

Exactly. Some of them aren't even trying to improve (e.g. they ignore posts that 'overthrow' their statement.

Depends on who handles the post and how it was reported. For example: If you report post number X in a thread that has 50 pages with "spam; has been said before", this would not be helpful. If you point out the previous post that it copies indirectly (rewritten content) then it would probably be deleted. Additionally, some moderators are just softer than others.

I do agree with you in the case of this 'knowhow' guy, but I don't think that account selling should be banned in this forum. People who make money out of it by doing it fair and square have to suffer if this is banned. I believe that you need to take a more subtle perspective to this problem; rather than banning account farming and selling. Take what I said into consideration.  ;)

But you didnt say anything...

People make money by the illegal drug trade, performing hits on others and other malicious activities. By your logic, since these make some people money from these they should not be banned? Please think about what you say before you say it.

The staff have tried to be subtle and just delete posts, however this has just allowed it to escalate to the point it is currently. Subtlety allows people to exploit it for their own gains, which is unacceptable. Something drastic has to happen in order for the problem of account farming and spam to be stopped fully, especially considering the level it is currently at.

I couldn't care less. Account sales should be banned on the forum and all accounts that are found to be involved in them should be permanently banned (no exceptions). Additionally, being able to wear a "flashy" signature should be a privilege (something in the lines of OgNasty's suggestion). This would considerably improve the quality of this forum. Until then, the staff will be playing whack-a-mole with signature spammers.

What i am thinking about after reading all of this is one way to deter the spamming/botposts on this forum is to restrict newbies to "Beginners 7 Help" forum and also implement a second rating system, for post quality; one for trust and another for post quality. If users receive negative feedback they cannot be paid for signature campaigns. It's time for someone to call for a complete overhaul of the sig campaign component of this site.

I find it very amusing how people conflict against them self while trying to be a 'Hero'. Sure the bogus post are bothering but a normal person would find no problem to avoid the same old threads. This includes newbies too. And yes there are list and plugins available to skip them.

A one-liner is no guarantee of BS, nor is a ten-line post a guarantee of a contributing post. So let's all stop pretending we don't utter BS. Because damn it is a forum it should be. Remember most of the people in the world can't even write correctly... So this is exactly what you can expect from an open forum...

Till the day of today I only found 2 users who did not post ANY BS.
- Theymos, who is all business like, which is fine
- Mexxer, who posted so many but all beneficial topic, which is quite an achievement tbh.

All others and I mean ALL others (including moderators) are posting BS occasionally

Example? Well that's easy. Here is 1 quote from a usual 'spam' thread.


Nothing new right? But if you look closer you will find 2 wannabe Hero's whom replied in this thread posting.. bogus, repeating others, rephrasing others, whatever you want to call it.
-actmyname
-tommorisonwebdesign

So what we can conclude here is that EVERYONE here has some off-topic posts. but,
The ones with a higher reputation or no signature are holy and can post whatever BS they want
And the ones who are spending their time to get paid peanuts (A signature campaign will never earn you more then 10 bucks an hour) can expect a hate campaign.

A hate campaign from members who can camouflage their BS better and are in fact doing exactly the same, since they visit those 'same old threads'... There should be a bot to check how many post 1 user made in 1 thread, without making a useful contribution, so you can see we ALL do it and not just 'a few times'

Really....

Sure there is a difference between spamming and posting plain out BS, but that line is grey and yes hard action should be taken against it/them. By default it is the signature campaigns duty to make sure their employer don't pay for BS posts. Since they are the ones who are losing money. They are the managers and they should select good candidates. If they fail either them or their employers should be addressed too. It's not

What's wrong is a moderator who apparently spends a lot of time on this forum and feels he needs to be rewarded more, stars blackmailing campaign managers, Yes that's you Hillie. That's putting too much power in the hand of 1 entity.

Sending new people away because of the 'SPAM'
I beg to differ. A lot has been said about bitcointalk, and we all agree quality is not one of them;
Scams,  How can I make 1 dollar? Altcoins...

Most people will do what I did and find another thread to get information.
Take notice that without traffic and views the forum will soon be dead because even 'average' people like
-actmyname
-tommorisonwebdesign

Will be banned.
No users means no advertisers for BCT, a dead BCT means less awareness for BCT in general.

Let's all try to avoid this, because only that will kill the forum.

I appreciate it if you read it all out.

Edit. Since I don't want my Hillie friend to delete this post let me say something on topic too.

No, accounts farmers are not creating new ponzi's are no they should not be banned. The forum should implement a system where 1 account can only be used by 2 IP's. Which leaves TOR out, but VPN's can be used. This way a user can have a max. of a few accounts and selling it an account won't be possible since you need an ecrow and a person to login.

Then add a dedicated staff person who can assign 1 extra IP for 0.01 per account. This keeps the process manageable by the staff and  account farmers need to do way more work to sell their accounts.

Honest persons who want to leave BCT (adios amigo) can still sell it for just 0.01 'fee'

https://media.giphy.com/media/QWIDyuEzsnYXu/giphy.gif

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A bot that can reliably tell "useful" replies from spam/crap/bullshit posts?
Will you code me that please, as a campaign manager I'd be pretty interested in that.
(Hint: ATM, no bot can do that, none.)

Your quoted posts aren't even close to the kind of spam that's being discussed here. So no. These users wouldn't be banned, not for those posts anyway.

You might be confusing spam with user/posts that you disagree with or don't like. That's not how it works.

It's just to show you we all do it.. All of us...

@suchmoon
LOL not even close.

You are so wrong with that.. so wrong. If you only knew..

hoping to contribute to this in the right way https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1472164.0

Well I think that people don't want to build up their accounts all the way from brand new, so they just buy them. I really don't see what's wrong with that.

I'll be direct about this:
Anyone who is too ignorant to see or care is part of the problem. In other words, you're part of the problem.

There's a huge difference between those. Falsely labeling posts as spam could also be disastrous.

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I've asked theymos for a opinion about this a few days ago and have received no response in regards to it.

Mate,you need to shut the fuck up and keep your signature spam outside of this thread.You have more than 5 accounts in the same campaign,moreover ,you sell your accounts enrolled in BitMixer campaign to strangers.It could not get any worse.You commenting here about stopping account sales is ironic.Don't even try to ask for proof,just admit it.

Indeed.

How am I trying to stop the sales of accounts? I said that I don't see what is wrong with buying accounts. Learn to read mate.

Either you don't know English or you don't know how to read. He never said that you're stopping anything. Why would you anyways? You're practically part of the problem apparently (multiple accounts/sales).

90% people here posting for profit with signature campaign.forum will never bann campaign. giving idea is simple but you can't go on this way.

I am coming home...

Mods are for sale. Lauda and mprep did prove it.

My close friend Hilarious, who is btw very hilarious when you see him, did it better.
If you want money, just use your status and start neg trusting campaign managers/owners (owners).

Bitcointalk's strategy is preventing bitcoin to grow and reach it's true potential.

Bye

Lol, I'm guessing this is a swipe against hillariousandco for his negative trust on secondstrade?

And what is the swipe on Lauda and mprep?
The fact that they are part of signature campaigns?

You can't buy my cat.

Allowing signature spammers and account spammers to freely 'enjoy their work' does not contribute to the ecosystem. They are receiving an adequate monthly funding, yet only a few of them have nodes (as an example).

Mprep is not even part of a signature campaign anymore, but is auctioning off (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1456782.0) his signature space.

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This is not even really relevant to the original idea that was discussed. If they really have a problem, they would open a separate thread.

i only agree with you, those people in this "community cult" should have created their private forum and kiss each other's asses there. Can i see the member list of people active in you "community cult" ? You should start wearing badges too.

Here we got back to the endless discussion. I don't see why we should ban account sales. If it isn't done here, it will be done elsewhere. And what about people lending money for account collaterals ?

The marketplace of accounts here will still exist being here or outside,as long there are signatures paying for post,remove it and kill this forum ,as you all know the main interest here is the potencial income,besides several deals opportunity.

This thread become just an act to attack me because i said i had 1000 accounts,something admin can proof i never had,doesnt matter anymore.
The same way people sell stuff ,the marketplace of accounts in my vision is just a boost for those who wanna make money faster,instead of waiting 8 months to become senior they can pay to be senior and roi at the signatures.
Loans here wont die or stop,accepting accounts as colateral here is being for a long time the way to prevent loosing bitcoins and most people doesnt have any other valid colateral,soo if remove them there wont be almost no loans as people dont have nothing else to offer.
There are several trusted members with their alts accounts here,they exposed them,something i never made,and i wouldnt because some idiot just give feedback because they are against the buy an sell accounts here.

I had provided a service ,buying and sellling the accounts to others people.Scammers will make always attempts with hero,legendary senior ,full member,meanin any rank here can became a scammer from one moment to another,doesnt matter if is member for 4 years or 2 days if they wanna scam they will do from any rank.
Thanks all, for share good moments here,i had learned a lot since i were member from here.

Well I don't know, why does anything ever get banned?  Why does my stamp collecting forum ban me from calling all philatelists cocksuckers?  Why, I'll just do it elsewhere (note: done)!  I don't buy that argument.  I hear that one quite often from people here interested in preserving the status quo and fellating their way to the top of this forum.  I'm not having it.  You allow ponzis here and they even have their own section, but people who so much as hint at recommending a ponzi get spray painted worse than that black kid in the movie Colors.  And so on and so forth.  Ban account sales because they shouldn't be allowed and doing so makes it harder to make those sales.  Or am I just being crazy?