There's no definitive rule that says you can't post links to your website, but I think this falls under advertising spam and people have been temp banned before just for spamming links to their site. He's clearly only here to promote his website and I've actually given him at least one warning about this before. He often posts the threads in the wrong section as well. If you're not interested in contributing to discussions and are just here solely to advertise your site in such a way then I don't think it should be allowed, especially when you've been given warnings to stop.

I wonder if he's using a bot to do it as well as look at the apostrophes that are getting garbled:

I was the only player with the balls to go for a five nil win to Manchester City and then they want and scored the sixth in injury time. Absolute bastards. That penalty was comical. Sterling should have owned up and told the ref it wasn't a penalty, though it's rare you get sportmanlike behaviour in football (thought I've seen it happen before).

Only one correct score on the Napoli PSG game. Quite a few upsets really. Nobody back Liverpool or Monaco to lose.

Had an eight-fold accumulator on last night and they all came in apart from Ronaldo to score and Juve to win and that was of course all true until the 86th minute  . I don't know what Jose was smug about because they didn't deserve the win and the winning goal was a shambles. I think that's what the Juve players were trying to tell him before he got whisked off by security of whatever it was.



If/when he gets sacked I'm sure many people will be doing that 'salute' haha.

I dunno. Just "More" is pretty ambiguous and innocuous. I wonder how long it would have even took me to notice it had I not seen this thread. I think it probably should be renamed to something else though. "Buy Ranks" or "Buy Rank/Donate" maybe more eye catching and also more informative of what the button actual entails. Might be worth putting a link to bid on the forum ad slots there as well or even give it its own button. I often get asked where people can purchase them or if we even have them. The auction must be very hard to even find for most people, especially newcommers.

How the hell did you manage to get scammed on this? Did some random guy just ask if you wanted to buy Copper Membership and sent you a link? Blows my mind how little people will scam here for and how much time and effort they must waste on it. I mean, could this guy not be doing anything else to earn $12? I'm sure if he has the initiative to successful scam people in such a way he could use that same time and initiative to actually earn some money legitimately/productively. There was a guy here he who would spend all his time trying to scam people in the forum ad slot auctions and 99% of the time he was busted and the account(s) was ruined. However, every now and again he'd be successful and make off with a grand or two but it was once in a blue moon and was it really worth his time? The amount of time he must have spent on this would have added up and I often wondered was it even worth it? You could probably earn the same or more from a signature campaign but at least you're not ripping anyone off. I don't know whether some people just get off on the fact that they can make money for free by scamming but more often than not they could probably earn the same or even more by doing something of actual substance that also isn't total scumbag behaviour.

I didn't notice it either. I think we should have another one called 'Rules & Guides' or something. They could have some of the basic rules there and a link to the full forum rules and maybe any other helpful guides, and at least people can't complain they can't find them then. I think we should have a separate one for 'upgrade membership' as well or something, and finally offer Silver and Gold ranks. I've already been over why they would be beneficial dozens of times.

Yawn. I'm tired of this irrelevant equivalency.

Hey, please don't drive at 200 mphs on the road
OMG NAZI GERMANY.

Hey, please don't throw litter on the ground
This is how fascism happens.

Some basic rules or regulations does not equate to tyranny nor does this have anything to do with whatever reason someone gave for pensions. Not wanting people to get paid just for bashing their fists on a keyboard isn't 'authoritarian'. This is a web forum not a state, but there are rules here if you haven't noticed. I'm not saying murder or imprison everyone that doesn't think the same way as I do. This forum isn't a free for all where anything goes and there are rules to try keep some order, but this forum is also a pretty good example of what happens when you let people do largely whatever they want without many repercussions. When we let signature campaigns pay people for spam then the forum becomes the shitshow that it is. That shouldn't be acceptable. Trying to put some rules or regulations on how they can operate here or what happens whey they don't meet some minimum standards does not equal whatever regime you want to compare it to. I wish we didn't need laws and people could be trusted to conduct themselves in appropriate manner that doesn't endanger or hurt others, but we sadly don't live in that reality.

We already have junior mods. They're called patrollers, and I guess they'd probably help out with the verifying. We could even have a special team doing the verification's. There's already a fair few people who have probably earned their place on staff by now and then there's lot of other veteran members that I'm sure would help out when they can.


The forum has plenty of money according to theymos so it's not like we couldn't hire some people to do this full time. We could do with some new mods with or without this change to be honest. There's always a never ending supply of work to be done here.

No, but it would depend on the type of post. Obviously bot accounts would be nuked on sight and I guess whether a genuine user is warned or banned or not would also depend on the post but that would be up for debate/discussion before this system was ever implemented. I don't think I would ban people straight away and have always rather warned people that gone straight to a ban, but I would rather the thread be trashed and they told the reasons why via PM (unsubstantial or duplicate thread or whatever).


But we wouldn't be verifying all the 34000 posts. When I initially proposed it it was more of a solution to stopping bots and only a user's first post or so would need to be verified by a staff member. To them the post would still show up as normal but not to everyone else until it has been approved. If it hasn't been accepted or declined by a mod I think it would be helpful to state the reason so people can learn from their mistakes or what is an isn't acceptable here and at least spam threads from newbies will almost be eliminated.

I would rather have ICO campaigns (or non-bitcoin paying campaigns) banned than a full blanket ban on signatures since they're the ones pretty much causing the issue in the first place, but the issue is you can't really stop people from promoting them. You could say they're not allowed and ban them here but people will organise and run them off site. What do we do with all the users who continue to advertise for them? Warn then ban them? That's why we really would need some sort of signature bans or blacklists or the ultimate solution to remove signatures all together which is the only way you'll ultimately solve the matter once and for all. I think we'd also have to remove avatars and personal texts though too as people will still use them to advertise. That's why the better solution would be just to work with what we've got now and enforce more stricter rules on how people can operate campaigns here. We've let them get away with far too much with zero repercussions and the current state of the forum is the proof of what happens when we do nothing. If we had some guidelines or rules that were enforced campaigns would soon start to change how they operate because this forum is far too valuable to them, but they won't until there's punishments for running them badly.

Please search before you make these suggestions. KYC is never going to happen nor should it:


IPs are only blocked once they've been abused and you (or someone else) has had accounts banned on them previously. If you don't want to pay a fee then find a different proxy or connection that isn't blacklisted.


I wouldn't be against email verification and think it probably would help, but this can also be easily bypassed.


There's a new forum software in development: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=167.0


You can already get notifications to your email for messages.

Then it'd be removed. Some things will inevitably slip through the net but it's about minimising the damage in the first place.


More mods can be added to meet demand, but spam is something we should be dealing with anyway. At least this kills it before it has a chance to be seen or spread.


Well we'll always be damned whatever we do, but I don't see many people complaining in Meta about their trashed or locked spam mega thread, do you? Plenty of new users come here and ask the same old things that get trashed on sight but there's not much complaints about that either. There will always be resistance and complaints about anything we try to do to minimise spam (see the one merit requirement for Juniors) but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying things, especially when we do still have a huge problem with spam and are likely to have for some time.

Greed is good? News to me. And I've told you numerous times that you're an entitled whinger who is solely complaining because you came here after an absence and wanted people to throw their money at you straight away when you asked. You found it wasn't as easy as that now and that's a good thing. I've also told you numerous times why it's a problem but you never accept or address the answers I give.


Child pornography is big business. Doesn't mean it's ok. Mulder for hires are lucrative. Also not ok. People trafficking. Not ok. Blah blah blah, I could go on. Just because there's money to be made somewhere doesn't mean it's a good idea. Capitalism is good. Rampant unregulated capitalism where corporations run amok and cut corners, underpay people and buy off politicians without repercussions isn't. Same thing here. We've let signature campaigns destroy the forum. This is a forum to discuss bitcoin, but it's turned into a pay to post one where people can literally get paid for typing: i like bitcoin because it gives me profit and helps with my daily needs and in much worse configurations than that over however many accounts they could be bothered to farm. Sorry if I'm being nostalgic for a time when people could actually have decent discussions here and it wasn't populated by illiterate idiots who don't know anything or even care about bitcoin but they gotta get that chedda anyway they can.


I'm not. I'm on one myself, but I'm not the problem here. It's the ones that destroy the true purpose of the forum in the process. I've always been about trying to find a middle ground so people can get paid to post as I think it's a great thing, but people shouldn't be able to get paid for spam. It's low effort drivel and the campaigns that pay people to make it that I'm so against. Pay people to post constructively; don't pay people to spam whatever they can be bothered to make. It's shouldn't be too much too ask, but apparently it is.


I wouldn't. Not everyone is concerned with making as much money as quickly and as unscrupulously as possible. I'm not saying money is bad or signature campaigns, but as with everything there needs to be some rules, regulations and standards. What you're saying is like complaining at someone who want's a speed limit on the roads and you're saying hey, let people do what they want. Speed is good. No, it isn't. People can't be trusted to make their own rules because it becomes anarchy and endangers everyone else. Sig spammers have ruined it for everyone else and there's a good chance at some point signatures will be removed completely. What will you do then? I don't think spammers should be able to ruin it for everyone, especially when they'd be the people who immediately left the day signatures are removed. I don't think sig spammers should be able to ruin it for everyone. I have no issue with people coming here to get paid, just as long as they don't do a shitty 'job'.


That's not an excuse to let people do what they want and shit all over the place. I'm sure there's money to be made from pimping out your girlfriend/wife/family member, but you're not going to do it are you? Maybe you would. I'm sure there's people who would pay you to graffiti on the walls or damage other's property, but most people don't want to take part in that. 


And I genuinely want to know why you never read or can't comprehend what I write because I've addressed this numerous times. It's not about the money; it's about the spam. And what's in it for me? What's in it for me if people don't litter and shit in the streets? I and many others don't want to see it and exist amongst squalor. I don't want to walk down a street and it be littered with filth and beggars with their hands out clutching at my cuffs asking for money. All you care about is getting onto a decent paying signature campaign no matter what the cost or how they effect the forum. Should I be congratulating you for your greed, apathy and indifference to the damage signature campaigns cause or something?


No, but we can fix how signature campaigns are allowed to operate here. We have a trash problem and it needs sorting, and if we don't then people and campaigns will continue to be greedy and lazy and throw their trash in the streets, but that's not something we should be tolerating.

Well that's obviously the source of the issue here and removing signatures is pretty much the only way to stop this nonsense immediately. I often wonder if signature campaigns will ever be removed here. Theymos has mentioned it would be a last resort and one he'd be willing to do if it came to it, but it would kill of most of the activity/traffic here (not that I'm saying that's a bad thing). I'd love to see the data and charts in the drop of actual traffic and how many people would instantly leave if it does ever actually happen. It'd probably just go back to the sort of numbers we had pre-2013. Maybe much less. I suspect signature campaigns are the only thing even keeping a lot of the 'old timers' here (though there are still a lot who admirably never joined campaigns for whatever reason). I think there are a couple of other things we could do before it ever got to completely removing signatures though such as punishing badly run campaigns and maybe even removing signatures from all the lower ranks first rather than a blanket ban on everyone, but as long as you can get paid to post we're always going to have an issue with spam in one way or another, but I think we need to try find more ways of limiting it before the inevitable happens.  

He has a dought:





Ha. I've seen worse contradictory posts that that over the years. Can't quite recall any right now though,.

I think it would have a tremendous effect on spam. Imagine if every shit thread by a newbie just never makes it to being published. Every single bot that comes here to spam advertise or spread malware will never be seen publicly and staff can nuke them before they need to be reported and do any damage (which we would have to do anyway). I think the place would be cleaned up immediately, especially from spam by new users. Sure, it's a lot more work for staff, but you could argue it's work that we should already be doing anyway and it's because of the lack of action regarding spam that the forum is such a mess in the first place. As for people complaining, then it's only going to be the worse of the worst threads that get trashed which shouldn't be there in the first place. They can be given warnings or notifications as to why their post wasn't accept also.


I would say this is more impractical. We have to hope users see and then report things and many don't because there's nothing in it for them (in fact, there's usually financial inventive for them not to report them and post in them instead). I think stopping it before it even starts would be a much better solution and at least nobody else has to read it. There are also similar systems on other forum's I've seen on before and it seems to work there (though I can't comment on how much extra workload it is and what the traffic size vs this one is, but still, no more spam from newbie accounts).


The issue is two-fold. There are not enough active mods and not enough active reporters. At least mods get paid, but there's really nothing in it for reporters other than a high score and potential badges (that might not come with any benefits other than the aesthetic of them). Sure, people are helping out the forum when they report but it's largely a waste of time and futile and thankless task when there's so much spam it's often like trying to bucket water out of a sinking ship and that's why most people will probably either just ignore the spam or just take part in it instead (which just exacerbates the problem).

Bumps are usually just for your own thread and they're mostly only concerned with marketplace threads. As long as those posts claiming the giveaway follow the rules of that giveaway then I don't see anything wrong with that. If they're claiming multiple times within 24 hours even though the giveaway only states once per day then that's probably spam and should be addressed.

Posts made just for signature campaigns usually aren't helpful either, and that's the only reason people want merits, but let's be honest here; you're probably only posting for the potential of earning from signatures or bounties so what's the difference? If we announced that both signature campaigns and bounties were banned from this board outright today would you still be here tomorrow? I doubt it. The merit system was introduced because people were only signing up here to earn and even when they had little interest or knowledge about bitcoin/crypto and had little actual interest in learning about it but just earning, and that's the problem. Now people have the obstacle of merits to earn and it curbs that behaviour, but it shouldn't really even be on anyone's radar because if you came here to contribute because you would earn it naturally over time without even trying or noticing it. It's the fact that people put so much concern and emphasises on merit that's shows their true motives here.


Well I agree to a certain extent, but more often that not it's just the same old thing being discussed or complained about just reworded slightly. Just because a page is still active doesn't mean it's still of use either. Spammers will keep any thread active, especially the worst sorts of ones as they're often the easiest to spam in. 

With my suggestion at least it wouldn't be manually approving every single post or thread, but just the first ones or so of new users (or I guess you could extend it to a certain rank or maybe until all members have received a merit or something). It's about limiting spam and stopping bots because anyone who goes in bitcoin discussion can see that it's a complete shit fest with little worth posting about. If shithreads were trashed on site before they were even made public I think the forum would be a much better place.



But isn't that the entire problem in the first place? We really don't need another dozen threads from a newbie about who is satoshi, how much you think bitcoin is going to be worth by tomorrow/5pm today/christmas/2019, and asking how do I earn money here.


But this still requires the same effort from mods and because we don't have people patrolling the forum 24/7 looking for things to do they are more often than not are left there to fester with crap. Those threads should go straight in the trash when they're made but at least they don't clog up the forum in the meantime and continue to keep it an eyesore.


The second sentence contradicts the first here. It's a hell of a lot of time and effort to ban people as well and we still have to handle the spam when it's posted. The spam threads just wont make it public in the first place if they have to be verified first and at least that cleans up the place even if it is a little more work for staff but the benefits would be evident very fast.

Retail sales have probably taken a big hit but they were never really that big to begin with as most people seem to be getting involved with bitcoin for its investment potential as opposed to being a useable currency, but people are obviously still buying and selling bitcoin. If they wasn't then bitcoin would be in serious trouble and wouldn't be worth much but it has been hovering around £5k for quite some time (give or take a few times it fell over the past couple of months but seems to have rebounded each time). I'm sure Coinbase is still making a lot of money, and I'm sure there'll be a fluffy of activity and new accounts if the value ever has another boom.

They're not bumps and there's no rule about removing posts in giveaway threads. They're either just bounty hunters just trying to claim bounties and/or farm accounts in the process. People have used that giveaway thread to farm hundreds if not thousands of accounts over the years. An example here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2347778.msg23917004#msg23917004)

I'm not sure if it's even paying anymore. Litelord doesn't care either way. Games and Rounds probably shouldn't count towards post-count/activity and that has been discussed before, but it probably doesn't matter that much anymore with the merit system as just activity alone is useless to move up ranks.