Then just get rid of the board. The Press section was created when any news article was exciting and notable when it got mentioned by a big site, but now bitcoin is mentioned every day somewhere or another, and then of course there's all the coin-prefixed sites you mention that just regurgitate the same old story or make an entire article over what some celebrity tweeted about bitcoin or because John Mcaffe says bitcoin will be worth x amount and will eat his own dick if it doesn't get there. If it stays then we either need to prohibit those sites or elaborate on what notable actually means.

This was just posted in Press:

How to sell EBooks for Bitcoins


That board really isn't for this sort of stuff.

That seems a bit extreme. The Press guidelines already states notable press hits. Some clickbait article from shitcoinnews.net really shouldn't count as 'notable'.


Well whether someone clicks on them or not is besides the point really. I'm sure some do, but it's free to post here so any free advertising is better than nothing and they probably post here hoping that someone will click on them at least. I think most people probably don't click on signatures either, but it's still brand exposure, along with the backlink spam as you say.

The posters that are spamming their articles as described by op probably care neither about signatures or post count, they just want to drive traffic to their sites by spamming links to them. The only people that care about their sigs and post counts in there will be signature campaigners, but this is a secondary issue of the type of spam op is describing.

It's only really there because it's pretty much the only board where you're legally allowed to get away with it. It's a board where essentially plagiarism is allowed as long as it follows the Press format and that's why people have taken advantage of it. Remove it and I doubt people will just start posting it elsewhere. If they do, they should probably be warned and then temp banned, especially if all or most of their posts are just press or promo articles. At the  very minimum some restrictions should be put in place and I think enforcing the notable Press hits clause should be applied ie no crypto-related sources.

I think the table will probably resemble last years, especially with the top three and City winning again, Liverpool coming in second and Spurs moving up from Fourth into Third. Hoping Wolves can do a bit better and push for top 5 but I doubt it as the competition is too strong. I'll be rooting for Liverpool to win though.

If anyone wants to join BitcoinTalk's Premier League pool there's not long left before the start of the season on Friday. It's 0.0025 to join and all money is split between the top 5 winners. If you enjoy football and betting on it without breaking the bank and sticking to a fixed limit then check it out.

You can join here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5154317.0

I really wish this would be made a priority. Far too many people are completely ignorant to the rules and oblivious as to what to do here. A simple and short message is all we need detailing the most commonly broken rules and links to further guides and stickies that go into depth about things so they can read up on them if they wish. So many people just have no idea where to even find this stuff and Meta is usually the last board they go into so being directed to these threads when they sign up will be very helpful.

Multiple suggestions have been proposed in the past including just locking/archiving it completely or only allowing posts from non-crypto related sites to stop all the advertising spam. Doing the latter would stop most of the crap but I think that board has served its purpose and is no longer needed now. Any relevant or important article can just be posted and discussed in the main Bitcoin board but at the moment the majority of people who create threads in there are either promoting a site or are getting away with legalised plagiarism which they can get paid for on most campaigns.

Well, by definition it probably is censorship. Sure, it's not nice when you have something removed but deal with. There are plenty of other options to say what you wanted to say. If it's not against the rules then create your own thread to repost it. Posting in a self-moderated thread and having your post removed is like going into someone else's house then complaining when they kick you out. You can go in there and call them a cunt or say something they don't like if you want but they're well within their rights to throw you out.


That's about freedom of speech, which is different to censorship, though obviously overlaps.

It depends on how their bot works (or worked). If it just went by your postcount alone then it might not pay them because posts in there wouldn't effect it, but if it goes through your actual post history and verifies it that way then it would or could still see any new posts as a +1 and count it for payment. Yobit's bot didn't seem to be configured adequately because as already mentioned it was paying negative trust users which weren't allowed and also apparently paying for posts in boards where signatures were even displayed so it must have been counting them someway other than postcount.

Some have been doing it for years. I think some people gave up reporting as well once they realised they weren't going to become a mod. I'm sure perseverance will pay off for some eventually though and people shouldn't be made a mod just for a few months worth of high-volume reporting.


Yeah, like Employee of the Month type things. I've addressed the point before. People always like to be rewarded with things, especially for effort, and even more so when there's some benefit to them (especially financially or in terms of prizes). We had a thing called 'gems' in high school which teachers awarded for good work or behaviour. Once you got x amount you actually got things like Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum certificates once you achieved like 100/500/1000 gems over the year or whatever. Some of them came with actual rewards like McDonalds vouchers and book tokens and things like that.


Well yeah, I doubt theymos would promote an unscrupulous character just because they had a lot of accurate reports and the system could easily be gamed if all it took was a huge amount of reports.

There's hardly any restrictions here. Have you thought the problem may be you? Your earlier posts are mostly just 'nice project' bounty hunting spam like this:


and your recent posts are complete one liner trash:


Do you really think that is an 'important' post? No. It's complete nonsense that you're obviously just churning out for the sake of it. Maybe put some actual thought into your posts and you wouldn't have them removed.

The people who are wearing it are probably just taking their chances in the hope that they'll be paid out eventually. As far as I'm aware the bot is actually counting posts it's just that people aren't getting paid out. If you can't get onto another signature then it doesn't really matter whether you have a sig or not but maybe they're clinging onto hope that they'll eventually be allowed to withdraw funds. If the campaign was actually active then the forum would be littered with yobit signatures but I've only seen a couple. I remember on one of my previous signature campaigns they stopped paying out but people kept their signatures on for quite a while because the bot was still counting posts but withdrawals just weren't being issued and users were hoping they would be eventually but gradually people started removing their sigs as that became less likely. In fact, I think they still owe me 0.1btc and probably similar amounts to others but it's not something I'm going to chase up. 

Well I agree. I think it would be nice if it came with some small perks as well as reporting is pretty much a thankless task and even with a badge that doesn't really come with any benefits, especially since it's a time-consuming task and you're helping out the forum a lot. The only previous perk to reporting was that if you were a very high reporter it made the chances of becoming a mod much higher but I can't remember the past time someone was made a mod from sheer volume of reports. I guess when the time comes when theymos feels we need more mods the list of reporters will be consulted but personally I feel like there's a couple of users who have already paid their dues and would be beneficial as staff even if it's just as patrollers (and they could certainly help out with post approval if that ever happened).

It's probably only in USD there because that's all the tax man cares about and for tax purposes the money would be logged at its dollar value at the time received. I'm sure theymos has the btc values as well though.


Is this in regard to the new forum or the drop in payments to staff? I think lauda has been the only staff member to be 'let go', but there are several mods who had left or have been removed due to inactivity over the past few years (including a couple of Globals/Admins - BadBear, Salty, Grue to name a few.

It's mostly for spam bots and spam bots wont know about it. It's not really to try catch 'regular' users out on something.


Again, I don't think it will take that long to verify them. Most urgent reports get handled very quickly and it's only stuff like sig spam reports that tend to stay in the queue long-term or don't get handled. I don't think we'll ever get 1000 brand new accounts posting after the other but I can't tell you exactly how long it would take or how much workload it would add but I think people are exaggerating or being overly cautious on the issues it may cause but if it did become apparent that it was causing a backlog or strain on moderation I'm sure there's plenty of willing people who would make good patrollers to help verify them.

How about campaigns actually manage their campaign efficiently and staff wouldn't have to do anything? Staff aren't signature campaign managers nor should they be expected to, especially for all those campaigns that are too lazy to do anything. If you're angry then direct it at yobit and all the other lazy campaigns that give paid sigs a bad name. What you're suggesting is like trying to bucket water out of a sinking ship. What is the point plugging holes when the water is just going to keep flowing in? Abandon ship. Ie get rid of yobit. You need to tackle the problem at the source because it's pointless banning dozens of users when others are just going to replace them because yobit keep on paying them to post crap so that's why drastic measures had to be taken. If they actually had an efficient manager then there would have been no problems. The problem is that there was obviously no manager.


This was the problem. They didn't care and clearly were not keeping a close eye on things. Their campaign also accepted negative trusted members even though they stated they weren't allowed on the campaign. 'Post whatever; get paid' was their campaign model.

I've suggested it before. It's one way for sure to stop all the messy bot spam.


This wouldn't be bringing back newbie jail. They can post. They just need to be whitelisted before it goes 'live' and most will be none the wiser to it.


How immediately do you think people need something answering? What makes you think they would even get an answer? I don't think it would take long to verify at all and more mods could be added to meet demand.


It's not impossible to implement. Many forums have this sort of thing. I signed up to one yesterday which had it. I don't know how long it took to verify me as I got no notification just an alert that my account needed to be verified, but the irony is my account was instantly permabanned automatically when I made my first post as being suspected of being a bot. Had someone actually verified my post that probably wouldn't have happened.


This is more impossible as theymos said he won't be bringing it back. There are much better ways than newbie jail to curb spam and I think this suggestion is one of them.


Accounts wouldn't be banned for making a poor post but just the obvious bots. The people who sign up here just to post a ref link or something similar can also be dealt with without having to be reported. People making their first post in the wrong section (which is very common) can also be directed to the right one. The stats you would need are how many new users sign up and make at least one post. Many accounts just lurk or are bots that never make it to making a first post for whatever reason. Also, how many new accounts are nuked straight away that have to be reported and acted on by both users and staff anyway? Sure, it is more work for staff but reviewing the accounts would be a priority and at least it stops bots from being a nuisance.


In the past four months staff have been handling between 18-20k reports a month. White-listing a users first post probably wouldn't be a big deal. You could even do a trial run. Ie, the system is put in place but nothing actually changes on the user front and we see how long and how much time it would take to handle them and if a backlog quickly built up. As I already said, more staff could be added to meet demand as well. You could even have one or two staff who's sole job was to handle them. I'm not saying it's perfect and there are pros and cons to any spam measure, but at least this pretty much stops the bots nearly 100% from being an eyesore and infecting the forum.


This isn't what is being suggested. A users first post only needs to be approved just to ensure they're not a spambot. Accounts wouldn't be banned or effected just for posting something a mod didn't like and staff could already remove it if they wanted but if they did they wouldn't be a mod for long.

I wonder if we'll get an update from theymos on these. When was the last time they were posted? It would be very interesting to see how the table looks now. I think a couple of users probably deserve a mod spot, especially those with literally thousands of good reports. A new mod or two are probably long-overdue.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxUdFQ6N_OI

I'm sure it would be helpful to people but I'm not sure how much of a priority it would be to theymos. Just either keep them in a post and preview it every so often so it stays there or even better just PM them to yourself or save them on a computer notepad or some sort of cloud service so you have access to them whenever. I usually just keep things I'm working on in a separate tab with the post previewed but not submitted so I have access to it whenever I want.

Well I would like to see the reporter badges, but I doubt theymos would release the actual number of reports handled by staff as well. That data is different. theymos uses an algorithm to determine how mods are paid which takes several unknown (to us) factors so staff can't game it directly. The number of handled reports is probably the biggest factor involved though, just with other unknown ones sprinkled into the mix.