Bitcoin Forum

Ivory Tower was supposed to be a section without spam and a section where serious discussion and intellectual debates would take place.

It sort of achieved that.

Why sort of?
Well, there is no spam, just quality posts.

However, how many of them?

Once we've removed the incentive from the posters, we witness a mass decrease in posts overall.

There are spammers in other sections, but we must not forget genuienly good posts are incentivized too which makes them quite active unlike Ivory tower which gets a reply once a week or so.

Compared to the other sections which boom with activity.
Besides, since merit was introduced, there really isn't much incentive to spam pointless posts, since you need quality posts in order to rank up.
There is some incentive for people who have already reached certain ranks to spam, as to fulfil their sig. quotas.

My personal opinion is, although there is obviously some negative effects from sig.campaigns they are most certainly good for the forum overall.
They incentivize people to be active.
They help create active threads, sections, SEO rankings etc. etc.

Why do you disagree? Or do you agree  :o

For me that’s no surprise. I’ve always said that if sig campaigns were banned, the traffic would decrease a lot, you don’t have to be a genius to see that.

Signature campaigns problem would be solved if bad managers were punished, although I don’t understand why Theymos has taken other measures and not that one. If that happened, you could still have sig campaigns, traffic and quality.

Merit system has helped a bit to improve quality but there is still a long way ahead.

I'm a big fan of the Ivory tower. Probably my favorite place to go in the Bitcoin forum. I feel like there is actual conversation going on rather than

"Bitcoin has given people hope because future will be good. I now afford good things for me and changed my life. I hope it goes higher still. Maybe even 10 million."

That stuff gets old real quick.

I still think signature campaigns are pretty sweet I just don't want them to flood into the Ivory tower. It isn't a common feature in many forums to have this kind of market place atmosphere that we have at Bitcointalk. I like Ivory tower just the way it is. The other forums may have some additional changes to make them better. I'm not sure what those could be.


What really makes me wonder, is who the hell clicks on signatures? Pretty much nobody I'd think, but apparently that can't be so. Campaign managers that allow a certain quota of posts really should watch where in the thread they are making those posts. Somebody making a post on a thread 13 pages long probably will never get read. It is surprising any of these campaigns actually generate any money.

A small percentage of the thousands of people that read every post click on the signatures. When you multiply that by all people wearing that signature and all the posts, it makes a significant amount.

Apart from that, even if people don’t click on the signatures, they are exposed to advertisements and some of them will be more likely to use that service in the future.

If people need a signature campaign as an incentive to be active then no, that's not good at all. And most of the traffic it helps create is utterly worthless. Watch Patrol (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;patrol) for a few minutes - what's the point of all that crap?

It will take us a few months to see the effects of merit. If that doesn't work out I'd rather see the signatures (and avatars) banned altogether, at least outside of the Altcoin boards.

I agree it's a place safe from pointless posts.

The point was, is IT proof that we shouldn't make the whole forum like the IT.
Not that IT is no good, or something like that.
It's rather interesting and a good section (emphasis on section).


You can't say you don't know about Crypto-Games, FortuneJack, ChipMixer etc.
You usually google their names, but they got inside your head from the signatures.

It's mostly about branding.


Some don't, some do.
A lot of people would just follow BTC without bitcointalk.
Once you see an advantage of posting in something that already interests you, you get deeper into it and create content that might be useful for other people later on (and they'll find your experience online).

I think that's just wrong. I don't mind people getting a bonus for something they would do anyway, however if someone is basing their contribution to the forum on getting paid then I'd prefer they wouldn't post at all.

Spammers post once and would never come back to post again, they don't get anything for posting. this is what would happen without post count and activity. even if you let people to have signature here, nobody would post if they are not getting any post count and activity.
Move this to meta to see how many of garbage posters would post to increase their post count.

I think this section is just perfect. It has never been about quantity and it is great that there are no DIRECT incentives (there are clear indirect incentives in the shape of merit). It is just the one place to go to look for merit deserving posts and top-class discussions.

I think that the signature campaigns are not as much as people clicking in the links (which they do, judging by the telegram groups) as much as positioning certain words in certain searching topics.  I think that most campaigns give a large importance and budget to signature for those reasons.

I don't know, there is as much stupidos... they pollute by judging and deciding it's not serious. who decide? this is the problem. on the others sub the flood of shit post is such, but again it's just my opinion... what is a shit post?

more generally is online discussion still possible? who benefits the most by destroying all form of online discussion?

for example, myself I ask if trump is such a pussy that he doesn't have what it takes to kill hillary clinton, is it a shit post? politics? serious? I.T? doesn't change the fact that I think it's a valid question, which I would like to know the answer :).

but seeking answer on an online board, only lead me to btc :) so who knows...

I do agree with these things, and I'd be a hypocritical liar if I said I wasn't motivated to post more because of the sig campaigns I've been in.  On the other hand, I usually end up posting over the maximum # of posts I get paid for in a week, sometimes waaay over.

The thing is, it's possible to be an extremely active poster and still not have your posts be spammy.  I'd like to think my posts are an example of this, and in fact Chipmixer's campaign is full of people who are prolific writers who don't produce a mountain of shitposts.

It's the crap like this:
which TheGodson has correctly identified as the problem with campaigns.  Campaigns have drawn in innumerable participants from places where English isn't spoken, and they're required to post in English.  The result is that while their desperation drives them to join, it's not matched by skill with the written word, and they resort to writing cookie-cutter nonsense like the above.  Or even worse, they plagiarize somebody else's posts or articles from the internet.

So if campaigns were driving really talented writers to post, that would be a great thing indeed.  Unfortunately that's not what we're seeing at all.  We're seeing the worst writers who are trying to earn the most money, and it's their posts we see most frequently.

and who don't know a crap about what they post... I mean in some sections... anyone with any little interest more than the sig wouldn't affirm certain monumental crap... without apologizing later on for having been so dumb :).

I'm unsure what I read right now  :D


Indeed.
Because you find interests in certain threads and come back to them even if you're not getting paid to do it, but would you even find them if you weren't incetivized to visit the forum?
You have a min.cap of posts you have to make and in that time you're capable of finding interests etc.
If you didn't have to make that min. perhaps you wouldn't even see those threads and come back to them.


That's what campaign managers are supposed to take care of.
Pick only the quality posters, at least those who don't spam.

I like the idea of the Ivory Tower ( but not the name). I put quite a bit of effort into promoting it when it arrived, but without much luck, so I backed away for a while. I'm glad to see that it's picking up, and I hope that people don't start to think of it as a merit earner - that will bring in the spammers.

I think its better to have less posts with more quality than it is to have more posts with some quality posts. Alot of the time the good posts get missed when there's too much noise around where as in the first scenario at least you will see all the quality posts.



I agree the name should be changed.

I don't disagree you in fact, few days ago I pointed it out in one of my topic. By the way today is the first time I am posting in Ivory Tower. Yesterday I promoted to Full member. So, obviously I did not see you post.

Sometimes we need to deal with unpleasant stuffs for bigger cause. It just the way it is.

I think that due to its own nature, the Ivory Tower is quite spam repellent. To post something worth merit does require some skill and time, it is not enough to post it just on I.T. Besides, is restricted to users that have quite a bit of experience and are unlikely to merit a lame post.

Congrats and welcome. Taking a look at your recent posts, I can tell that you will feel at home here.

Let`s not measure things about quantity but about quality.

That`s true, but, again, maybe this is for the best.



I agree and disagree.  ;)
To me, things are quite bit more complex. I don`t see a harm in having the Ivory Tower restricted to the masses, however, the traffic is low, but there is nothing wrong with that. My very favourite board is the Serious Discussion one, and one of my inner motivations for ranking -up was just to be able to be a part of the Ivory Tower discussions.
I understand your point, but I also can see that, in general, the people engaging in here is used to take it seriously: you change your very mindset once you know you are writing on the Ivory Tower, and, even if there are a few people in here, I just can quote my music teacher: "the less the best".

Signatures aren't bad in themselves. If I add a link to one of my sites in my sig, then it helps that site with Google. If I promote a sponsor, then I may make a bit from affiliate commissions. All of those mean that I can decide where and what to  post. The problems start with rented signatures, and the conditions that a renter paces on the posting habits required. For me a post requirement of 50 is trivial, I could knock that out in a day. However some members seem to have problems in making any decent posts, and they are forced to spam , or to create posts using discouraged methods.

The real solutions are good moderation, restrictions on new registrations, and specific boards for startup members. I'd like to give some merits to new members, but the beginners board is still useless for that. I end up putting more people on ignore, than finding posts to merit. Please get rid of the bounty, ICO Twitbook and other rubbish from that board, and lets make it a proper crypto introduction board.

Four months after this post was created I’ve been thinking how right OP was. Nobody has written anything since August, 31st. That’s four days. And we have to bear in mind that this section still has the merits incentive. You can’t wear a signature but you can still get merits.

The Serious Discussion one has more movement but more banal comments.

Merits shouldn't really be an incentive here. I'd like to see some good discussions amongst the intelligent senior members. By that i mean sensible business and political discussions, rather than the ones one would expect to find in school debating societies. I've got loads of topics that I would find interesting, such as the rise of statins, the cholesterol and cancer myths, and the rise of unicorn politicians around the world.

Don't forget that unicorns are nasty creations by man, and were designed to lead free spirited horses into captivity and slavery.

Totally disagree.

There should be junior boards for bitcoin and altcoin discussion.

Just like the old noob jail. Instead of reporting scams and shills and generally doing negative stuff to remove these types. One could spend time on the junior board rewarding good effort there enabling their entry to the senior boards by giving merit .

It would be a decentralised way to mod the boards.

Of course you will find those that can game it to an extent. They will be deleted and perma banned.

Before the first icos the sigs were not even used by most members. The discussion and environment then was WAY WAY better and more active. Activity by real posters who had real opinions not people just posting anything or regurgitating the same comments for 10 pages.

Ending noob jail was a big mistake but it was of course inevitable in it's old form.