Bitcoin Forum

If Bitcoin Talk introduced a shop, and one of the items for "sale" was the right to display a signature, then signatures could become a privilege that had to be earned through responsible posting. Credits could be removed for bad posting, and added automatically for responsible posts. Signature allowances could still be based on rank, and this would preserve the existing merit system.

Through what means are members going to make the purchase of "right to post with signatures on" with:ranks,merits,activity
A bit more clarity on this please,its a bit of a vague suggestion

And that would look a lot like adding a demerit feature and we know that won't come soon.
Creating an entirely new system on top on this one before it has failed or before trying to fix it in case it fails sounds like trying 10 pills at once.


Rather than all this, we could have a simpler solution, where you lose 1 merit for each activity period in which you display a signature.

How could an automated system decide if a post is OK or not? Sorry if I misunderstood something

I really like this idea, why not, it would motivate the members to post quality things...
But it would be fine for every 3rd or 5th activity period, 1 merit spammers would fade away in 2 months time anyway, but the stress won't be so hard on the normal members

The solution is to remove them completely.

This is actually a great idea. It prevents the earning of merit to display a signature being a "one time thing" - you can't just make one good post and then go back to shitposting for months on end. It forces users to consistently strive to make better posts to continue to be allowed to display their signature. It would vastly cut down on people buying merit as it no longer becomes profitable to continue to buy more every 2 weeks. It means the users levelling up all their alt accounts will rapidly run out of merit to send.

As bitart mentions, probably one a month rather than one every two weeks would be more appropriate. And it would need to come with an increase in merit sources, particularly in some of the local boards which get far less than their fair share of merit. But yeah, I like this idea a lot.

Funny how chipmixer shills everywhere in this thread jesus christ, you guys would probably cry if you couldnt post for money on this forum.

I've already suggested this in the form of more donator ranks that come with signatures as perks. You could either remove them all from everyone and you have to pay to get one or keep the current system but add the option to also skip through that and buy the required sig straight away.

Funny how stereotypical you're. Don't worry, you're still a piece of shit.


Nah, we gucci.

The sig spamming problem is eh. You can't really do anything unless the administration agrees with it, and takes action based on it. What you're suggesting is basically a de-merit system, and a new ranking add-on feature that will give members the incentive to use signatures. And the administration has already said no to that. Big yikes.

Onna strenfth, my brotha.  HBW says hello.

Now I don't think our current system is completely effective, but I don't think Theymos thought it would be.  Small adjustments like the one we had in September are just fine with me.  It would be much worse if he kept changing the system according to all of this advice members are giving--some of which is good, some not.  The wait-and-see approach is prudent, and in the meantime the shitposting situation does seem to have improved somewhat in some sections, while others (like Bitcoin Discussion) are still an unholy manure pile.

The next move should be more signature restrictions on the lower ranks, and I don't think that them paying for the right to advertise is going to be effective as long as their ROI for buying the right to join campaigns is net positive.  Not allowing anyone under Member rank to advertise in their signature might be a good way to go from here. 

Jr. Members right now are having a hell of a time making it past that rank because of the merit requirement, and I don't think they could get around that as easily as they do now when moving from Newbie to Jr. Member.  Right now they can buy 1 merit or get it from a friend, or they can buy a copper membership.  That's not high enough of a barrier IMO.

No probably about it ... that is a safe assumption for quite a few on this sub board.

Using a paid signature is just a privilege, nothing else. It depends on how you take it. Not all the people are here only to use paid signature.
I will just quote part of one of my recent post.

On a side note, Do you guys think only signature is a problem?
Because I think I read many useless post where do not have signature or there is no financial motive that can be proved.

Signature or no Signature , I guess most has taken this forum has money making machine/job board and they want to remain connected even by posting shit.

Actual question is how to stop this shit? I guess few step that can help.

1. Mailing a rule book for using this forum.
2.Few more moderators or automatic system that do not allow you to create a shit thread , reporting it as duplicate or out of context.
3. Automatic locking of threads if it cross certain page or one month of inactivity.

If shit occurs in sensible thread then we will use "Report To Moderator" button.

Signature, is the stage of making an agreement between members of Bitcointalk with Altcoin or Bounty, It can be said for negotiations that are (myltilateral) singnature or agreement text has been considered valid since the form of the forum, if ⅔ posting of participants registered givesvote either in local or international furum, singnature are performed by members of various methods to promote and aim well.

What does it mean when singnature is removed, all Bitcointalk members will disappear as if they were swallowed by the Earth, so if singnature, social media like Facebook, Twitter, telegram is removed for what forum ?, well if this happens it can be even more devastated.
Example:
forum, cryptocurrency, bitcoin, blockchain becomes history like. Viramid or the kingdom of Fir'un and Ka'run whose treasure is a myth.

I have a singnature adventure that is not heavy and does not disturb other parties.

Wearing signature is already a priviledge which is earned through quality posting, not sure what responsible posting is.
The current merit system means to wear a signature a member has to earn at least one merit, and to get to higher ranks and unlock more perks, different signature style, avatar etc, more merits has to be earned.
So the higher you go, the more work you have to put in, and gladly this is put into consideration as most bounties pay higer ranked members more.
The system is not perfect, but neither are your suggestions.

Much simpler solutions is remove all the airdropped merits,if only the earned merits will be on profile lot of high ranked members will go to newbie which will clear the forum all the way.

The spammers will ignore it, same as they ignore all the current rules and stickied threads.



There is no reliable way (yet) to create an automatic system to prevent thread creation based on these criteria, unless it is an exact copy-paste of an already existing thread.



Although most threads over 10 pages are a spamfest, it doesn't mean all threads over 10 pages are, and an auto-lock feature would inappropriately cut short some ongoing useful conversations and discussions. Similarly, just because a thread has had a period of inactivity doesn't mean it is no longer relevant. Many people experience similar issues or have similar questions as to those that have been asked previously, and posting in an already existing thread is usually better than starting a brand new thread and having to re-hash all the same information again.

I would agree with more moderators to manually lock the threads that are becoming spamfests, but that doesn't seem to be high on theymos' lists of priorities right now.

I agree with this notion of you OP to consider signature as a privilege for a user to wear in promoting a project. Yet, it should be the ICO or any related crowd funding activities must be regulated as studies show accdg. to the many of the users here that 90% of crowdfunding are scam or it has no actual or real implementation of the project.

The problem is not the promotion or wearing signature. The problem is all about the number of scam projects, failed projects due to poor management from the team. Bounty hunters can eventually adapt a good posting skill if it is necessary especially in joining a good project that will going to pay basing on the promised terms.

It should be putting those projects first in good by a screening committee and let them pay for it for the approval before posting here in the forum rather than asking bounty hunters to do their job well when they are not secured on the payment or the rewards which will relatively be the reason to spamming shit posts because of the mindset that a project might be scam.

Just take an example about being so hardworking in a project and it will not pay you well. So, from this experience a bounty hunter will not do the job right the next time he/she will be joining to promote a project.

If it was the way to solve the issue, theymos would do it with the introduction of merit system, IMO. Now, if it happens, it will simply be a discredit to the old members who are here for a long time. In fact, they are not the spammers in most case, at least I respect all the legendary members here. Most of them have posted here not for fulfilling the signature campaign requirements but for either learning something or helping people. Therefore, removing the airdrop merits from them is not a good idea. And if you remove merits from some members, it will also be a kind of racism. Therefore, it is what it is.

This is a forum,and if any rules should be implemented,it should cut across every member in it, no one has any rights or foothold in here,for the administration to consider when making a decision,why do you feel the old members shouldn't be discredited but all newbies should,you're on a signature yourself,now can you stop playing the holier than thou attitude already.
Likewise a lot of newbies also,and the both ranks mostly do it wearing one signature or the other,mostly Chipmixer, so why are you complaining then about newbies also putting on signatures,if you're as fair as you claim you are,then all signatures should be off,from every member,and airdropped merits removed
You really need to explain this part of your post,doesnt make any sense to me ???

It can work, but can be abused as well like all other systems around.
A good/responsible post could be a post that earns Merit(s) which would automatically earn credits for the member. And a bad post could be a post that has been accurately reported and deleted by a mod-- resulting a deduction of credits. Earned credits should be given per Merit received by the post-- e.g: 5 Credits per Merit or something. The same should apply for the deduction. If a user earns 2 Merits and gets one of his posts deleted in a thread, he would still have credits for 1 Merit.

The forum is a funny situation. At first we fought spam. The administration imposed various restrictions but the main problem was not solved. Now spammers have become less because interest in cryptocurrency has fallen. Now we have come up with a new problem - this is spam in the signature :)
Any problem needs to be solved with current resources, and there are plenty of them on the forum. In any Russian forum, if the admin finds something to be spam, then he removes it. Post this or a topic, it does not matter. Admin is always right.
The signature for the forum member is its property. If the participant places the prohibited information there, write reports to admins.
The funny thing is that for this useless discussion, participants receive a lot of merit.

Reporting the spam post is the current method to control spams but most of the posts were going so still reporting,deleted by the moderators can be a solution but too much of work for them.So having a kind of upgrade will be better that is why the discussion going.

Don't you guys think that signature campaigns are good for bitcoin adoption?

Personally, before I joined this forum, i had only one wallet that had something like 10 transactions. I bought Bitcoin only to sell it in a higher price later.

Few months later I discovered this forum and the many bounties/campaigns here. I started to use bitcoin as money. Now I have multiple wallets, dozens of addresses with hundreds of transactions.

Spamming is a problem here. However, spammers are adoption Bitcoin. They are contributing to the network, as they are receiving money and transferring it. In other words, they are adopting Bitcoin as a currency (for their spamming efforts, which is questionable..)

Also, there are legit services here that advertise through the forum. I believe all those signature marketing could be easily converted to forum's income, if theymos disabled signature and put ads everywhere. But that wouldn't contribute to BTC adoption.



Eidt: ofc spam is a problem and this problem should be at least reduced. But radical proposals may have an even worse result than the spamn problem

For sure. Bitcoin campaigns are OK. But:
Unfortunately there are way much more ICO/ANN/bounty etc. campaings out there (where you get your 'salary' in altcoin/token/other worthless thing and not in bitcoin) which don't help bitcoin at all.
Of course, people have to exchange these crapcoins to Bitcoin and the Bitcoin to fiat if they want to make a living out of it, but in this case the Bitcoin just appears on the exchange, which doesn't help the adoption but only the exchanges...

Combat the spam and at the same time  "license" it via the shop  is something really weird. As things stand at present merit is a metric for responsible posting and this metric  should not become  a pardoner and purveyor of signature spam.

This problem is solved very simply. You can hire a couple of dozen enthusiasts who will tag spam. No additional expenses will be incurred by the forum budget.
Do admins only decrease work.

Signatures are used for marketing proposes, i don't think the forum has to introduce a shop to sell the signatures privileges if it already has the Advertise rounds as you can see on: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5092259.0

Now let's focus on marketing, what do you think is better, to promote a bitcoin project on the forum or to spend that money on Facebook and Google for a campaign. I would say it's better to keep that money between cryptos enthusiasts and not spending it with those nasty marketing beasts. At the end this forum still the best way to get customers for any new crypto business, and limit signature campaigns would be like make a step back in the bitcoin world. We can say the business need from this signatures campaigns to become popular.

Now about the campaign spam, we could fight that with the campaign managers, is in their hands to control the spam and to avoid it. If the campaign manager allows the spam that will be a bad reputation for the business he is advertising, so, if you want to report any spammer now you know where to report him  ;)

there is no point in solving a problem that does not exist in the first place.

the current situation is working just fine for the forum itself, the signature campaigns and the members participating.

it's all up to the signature campaign managers to chose their participants, it is not hard to filter the good posters for the shitposters. but most campaign managers follow the bulk ads sort of way.

plus, shitposters will always find a reason to shitpost, if it's not for money then for fun.

You can't possibly say that signature spamming is not a problem. The Altcoin boards are essentially unusable because of it. If you go on to Altcoin Discussion and pick any random mega thread, it is filled with one line spam from bounty hunters. Take this thread on the front page, for example: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4582124.780. Almost 800 replies, including such insightful comments as:


Every single page is the same - meaningless drivel posted by users enrolled in some trash bounty campaign for some shady useless token. The current situation is working fine for the signature campaigns and the bounty hunters, but their endless spam is suffocating entire boards of any meaningful or sensible discussion.



It's very easy to filter the good posters from the spammers. The issue is the bounty managers don't care. They are quite happy to pay for quantity over quality. As long as we allow that to continue, the spam will continue.

Sorry I haven't expanded on my basic concept. I left it deliberately vague because I was interested in community feed back, and I am grateful for all of the replies.

Part of the problem is that Bitcoin Talk is a large and established forum, and it has a diverse membership, with  vast range of skills and abilities. It is also multi-lingual, but with a big advantage for English speakers. The structure has evolved over the years, and any changes must be implemented with considerable care. At the moment there are several methods of rating members, and there is some interaction between them. These are -

Ranking - A reflection of the seniority and activities of members, and higher ranks gain benefits for forum participation.
Activity - this is the primary tool for ranking, and it includes a 14 day cap to prevent prolific posted from rocketing up the ranks.
Merit - This is a blocking system, and is designed to allow the community to decide on members who should be allowed to increase their rank. There is no scope for a demerit function,as this would lead to the obvious abuses.
Trust - This was intended to report on the trustworthiness of members who are active traders. Recently it has become a ranking for the moral fibre of members, and has become the victim of abusive and vindictive reports.
Moderation - This takes up quite a bit of time for moderators and staff, and seems to be limited to post editing or deletion.
Post reporting - A voluntary action by some members, and intended to help the moderators.
Banning and blocking - A fairly extreme last resort for admins

SMF includes a shop plugin, and my idea is to use this to introduce some control over forum benefits. If the shop had a token - lets call it a PAR ( Posting Activity Reward ), then PAR could be spent to purchase benefit such as monthly signature use. This would have some side benefits, for example, if expired signatures were removed automatically from inactive or deleted accounts, then that could remove links to old scam projects. The moderators would have an additional tool that isn't as extreme as deleting a post. They could remove the award for an "under par" post, and this may discourage low value bumping replies.

I'm sure you guys can think of some other advantages that wouldn't be too disruptive to the existing system.

I agree with a lot of what you are saying here. I list some of what you say below with a few small corrections.

Let's take these

Ranking - A reflection of the seniority and activities of members, and higher ranks gain benefits for forum participation.

was an objective metric applied the same for everyone until merit got some sway over it.

Activity - this is the primary tool for ranking, and it includes a 14 day cap to prevent prolific posted from rocketing up the ranks.

This is no longer the primary tool for ranking up it is now impotent without merit with regards rank.

Merit - This is a blocking system, and is designed to allow the community to decide on members who should be allowed to increase their
rank. There is no scope for a demerit function,as this would lead to the obvious abuses.

I agree this is exactly what merit is it decides who has what rank and therefore who can paid2post and at what level. I will speculate a lot of new users are no interested in high rank to demonstrate they have been here a long time and have been very active helping us push toward and end to end trustless decentralised arena but really just want higher rank to get higher rates of paid2post.

However you can not provide motive for selfish and unfair meriting and give no criteria nor punishment for not following the mandate and the criteria. This system has broken the objective nature of ranking up and replaced it with one that helps control newbie spam to a degree but now has opened the entire thing up to wide abuse with no comeback,

Why would demerit be open to abuse any more than merit?? you can not abuse a system with no rules and no set criteria. To me demerit would actually help balance the system. I would have merit sources 50% legends and demerit powered individuals 50% legends. I would then mandate the demerit club to remove merits where they have been awarded to posts that are proven to have been incorrect or based on false assumptions and on people who clearly abuse the merit system. Legends have more to lose so should act according to mandate or not act at all or face account getting perm banned or no sigs ever again for them.


Trust - This was intended to report on the trustworthiness of members who are active traders. Recently it has become a ranking for the moral fibre of members, and has become the victim of abusive and vindictive reports.

agree 100% another subjective system with no clear criteria nor punishment for abusing the mandate and criteria set. To me this system should be related only to financial scams where you have clear evidence this person is demonstrating behaviour which will lead to them scamming money from you. Any other red trust issue needs a clear set of criteria and punishment for not using trust as the criteria and mandate specifies.


The only way to fix it all up is to take subjectivity out of any system of control. You allow subjectivity you allow abuse.

Of course at a top level of control ie judge or mod or theymos then sensible human consideration will make final important decisions on any grey areas .......this though is fair because they are not motivated to be in competition with normal users and will. Also when you just have one mind looking at things from their own perspective at the board the board gets the same appraisal. This does not happen when you have 100's of people all motivated to act selfishly and are in competition with those they are controlling.


I do though think you bring up some very good points and PAR is good so long as it is given objective criteria that people need to go by. If par alone controls sigs and will be based on objective analysis of posts I like it.

 I still say merit if left subjective with no punishment even for blatant abuse.. needs to be decoupled from rank after snr. Rank should be an objective measure not controlled by others who benefit from the ranking system.

 PAR - i like it if we will not attempt to make merit an objective useful score right now and PAR can easily be implemented.

Of course I believe always with financial reward you will be fighting against people trying to game the system for more money and not caring about damaging our environment for debate and conversation in a natural way. But we can try our best.

Your par is actually though a FAR BETTER solution than many others I have read and i would give you merits but I am almost run out now and I don't know when I get more filled up to give away again. I seem to have given most of it away already.

PAR could be awarded automatically, and could vary between boards. Negative PAR could be a tool for the mods as an alternative to banning. They could punish poster with variable amounts as well as just removing it for a low value post.

Another advantage could be the provision of additional shop items. Avatars could be one, but those are already provided for in the current system.

Theymos Said he doesn't want money.

I wanted to donate to the forum and asked about new donator ranks (as 50btc is too much for me) , and he refused.
You can check here
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5076618.msg48273277#msg48273277

PAR is not money. It is a token to allow members to obtain privileges.
Merit is a token to open the gate to higher ranks.
Activity is a token to travel along the upranking path to the next gate, It also reduces various posting restrictions.
Trust is a voucher to allow members to participate in various signature campaigns.

Merit and activity are independent, and should remain so. As I stated, they serve two different functions. Activity is the fuel to travel along the road. Merit is the voucher to cross the toll bridge. It doesn't matter how much fuel you have, if you haven't got the voucher, then you can't cross the bridge. Your signature is the advertising on the side of your van. If you have the fuel, you can drive around in the car park and display your advertising. Changing your speed, or the number of circuits of the car park won't get you over the bridge without the merit ticket though.

Even the VIP user, TradeFortress (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=67058), turned into scam one.
The account has very 'amazing' negative trust point, at -9999.  ::)

I known about his history by chance through the following topic:
Legendary profiles of bitcointalk. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3247239.0) (by Ariem (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=978945))
Therefore, I don't think that Donator or VIP users should be given many priorities.

Why would that account matter? Having a donator/vip account doesn't give you dominion over others and neither would new donator ranks.

To make it more interesting,I'll start from the ending and  go to the beginning.


Yet, even among the DT leaders, certain weaknesses of voluntarism are evident.


Because of its algorithmic nature  activity does not depend on  on anyone's will, nor can it be decreed through resolutions of  people  with  a privileged status here on forum. Thus whole thing with it  seems to be completely right.


As I have already said above  merit is a metric for responsible posting and in theory every individual here has the same right to decide upon wording of forum's members. Nevertheless, this is not what occurs in practice.


That raised  a major question. Who's to judge?

Nobody, it is awarded automatically, but moderators have the ability to reduce it as part of the post reporting processing.