There's not many benefits to the rank to be honest so most people won't bother with it. It's mostly purchased by people running ICOs or those who want their images to show up instantly. Now, if we implemented new ranks such as Silver and Gold that came with such perks as bigger signature instantly I'm sure they'd sell like hot cakes/crack .

Theymos has previously said he may add additional ranks in the future, though there's certainly no plan to. I actually think it would be a beneficial idea for numerous reasons though. Firstly, most shitposters who come here likely wouldn't have the funds to purchase the higher rank (or at least they should be sufficiently expensive so they can't be bought en mass). 2) It would decrease account sales and farming (it would stop them completely if the only way you could get a signature was to purchase it). 3) Money raised via donators could be used to fund worthwhile projects or given to charity. I'm sure there's many more benefits too.

Generally speaking they are, though it's not a definitive rule and Global moderators can give any duration they feel appropriate for the deed. Permabans are sometimes given out without any other warnings for copy and pasting and sometimes users who's accounts have posted nothing but low quality spam. I rarely give bans out for signature spam these days though as it's the people who are running the campaigns that should be getting them. Can't win a war against a hydra that is spawning thousands of hydra parasites everywhere.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2385104.msg24371150#msg24371150

Says BTC0.00208333 which is around fifteen dollars for me. Not sure if it's the same price for everyone though.

I can't comment on how many campaigns don't end up paying because I don't really monitor that or them that closely, but it's not surprising if/when they don't pay users and non-payment will probably become much more common. People probably shouldn't join them unless they have some sort of bond in escrow covering the payouts but most are too naive and desperate for that. Most ICOs are scams in some capacity and are just money grabs for their operators wrapped in some bullshit to try get people to invest. They're often run by the greedy and nefarious so it wouldn't be surprising if they just keep the tokens for themselves once the dirty work has been done for them.  

As for the effectiveness of signature campaigns; well, that's hard to say, but they do work in getting your name out there so are good exposure. When I joined this forum PrimeDice sigs where everywhere and one of the first things I noticed here, so they do work, even if it's subliminally, but I'm not sure how much that translates into actual traffic and money driven to their site and whether it's worth it or not. Sadly, the number of bitcoin-paying campaigns have dwindled and are now fairly rare now or when they do pop up slots are taken very fast, whereas altcoin campaigns are ten to the dozen and usually accept hundreds of people often with unlimited slots. They pay people in tokens they've created themselves nine times out of ten so therefore they've got nothing to lose as they're getting free advertising and sadly that works even better when you've got thousands of shitposters posting for you all over the forum and quality doesn't matter. The only time I'm ever made aware of the new ICOs of the month is when I see illiterates spamming or copy and pasting junk everywhere bearing the signature of an ICO so the sig advertising does work. I'm sure there are plenty of get rich quick idiots who are all too happy to invest in (what they think or hope) is the next big thing and click on the signatures offering them an investment opportunity.

That thread is just an example of how shitposters take over and ruin most threads. I'm not saying the original post is anything commendable, but at least he put a bit of effort in and was sharing his thoughts, yet it quickly descends into spam when users just read the title of the thread and not the op and take it as if they should just finish off the sentence, hence all these comments:



Bitcoin is good for posture:


"Daily needs" is probably my least favourite two words on this forum. I'm not sure why it's such a buzz-term with these people:



I wonder what the chances are of them two being the same  . I love how some people here seem to think that this forum is actually 'bitcoin', which isn't surprising when they have little to no actual knowledge of what bitcoin is other than they can earn here (not to mention that they probably never even earn any actual bitcoin but just craptokens).

I think Liverpool could win the title within the next few seasons, but not sure if they're there yet. They're still worth a bet, but I think teams like City will just be too tough to beat. I'd much rather see Liverpool and Spurs win something rather than the usual suspects.


The previous round I think the value was around $3500 when it started so it doubled by the payouts at the end of the season, but remember it went to the all time high of $20k during it. Hopefully we'll see a similar thing this season so it boosts the prizes but nothing is guaranteed and we could in fact see the opposite. Bitcoin could just as easily fall and the prizes with it. Who knows what will happen.

I was thinking about the possibility of some sort of default trust team should be assembled to help police shit campaign managers seeing as theymos doesn't really want to do anything about them even though they're the ones responsible for 99% of the spam here. If a problem campaign is spotted then they should be given a warning that they need to do something about the spam. If any campaign has say five or ten users baring their signature that are either making very low quality posts or are banned for copy and pasting then they should get the warning and then negative feedback from everyone on the team until they clean their campaign up. Negative feedback works a lot of the time because they don't want their reputation tarnished when they're trying to make as much money as possible and if they ignore the warning first then feedback should be used as a last resort. Campaigns really shouldn't be allowed to come here and ruin the forum making it unreadable by paying unlimited users to make any old crap they can be bothered doing. When these campaigns accept Junior or even Newbies they are at worse overrun with copy and paste bots or at best one/two line spammers, but that doesn't matter to the campaign because as long as they're making the posts and are being paid in monopoly money they've created out of thin air it then their objective is still met. The longer we let people get away with doing a shoddy job without repercussions then it is only going to get worse.

How was he meant to know? The op post made little to no sense until you edited it five minutes after he commented. I wouldn't be against avatars being removed from display in Serious Discussion/Ivory Tower, but it's probably overkill to be honest. People generally aren't paid per post for their avatars like they are their signatures so it would be largely futile. Only Full Members and up can have them as well. Might be a different issue if any old newbie could have them.

Well there already is a kind of 2-factor implemented to lock accounts via email if they have their details reset and that works, but the problem we have now is that the accounts aren't getting restored and if theymos or cyrus don't have the time to do it then they're not going to get recovered unless more staff are given access to do so, and if that was going to happen it probably would have by now.

Several two factor authentications will be available on the new forum software, but if that isn't coming any time soon then I think one should be implemented here to stop accounts from having their details changed without some sort of external verification first because locking the account is useless unless they're going to be restored.

They do this is an attempt to hide their plagiarism and make it harder to detect. It's still plagiarism.

Signatures from lower ranks should be removed as 99% of the copy and pasting is from Junior Members. Users should only be allowed a signature once they've earned it. Either that or there needs to be some punishments for the campaigns and their managers that accept and pay for this continually. Any half decent campaign manager wouldn't even allow Junior Members in the first place, or certainly not ones that were making this kind of garbled nonsense. Users should be checked before they're accepted and denied if their posts are all one/two liners or utter lazy nonsense. If this happened then we wouldn't have this issue. The longer we sit back and do nothing the worse it's going to get and it gets worse week by week as this sort of abuse is becoming commonplace and dozens are being caught and banned for it every day. There will be many more that evade detection, especially in the recesses of the local boards etc.

Sometimes the bots take posts from several users and combine them together in a composite. It's a bit freaky when they make sense or it's hard to tell a bot has done it. I think that Lion_ashy post may also be a copy and paste of one or more posts from somewhere else as well but I can't find anything. It seems to be replying to nobody, is very scatterbrained and doesn't really make sense. Some bots change words for synonyms to avoid detection and look original, and as such the post makes less sense and tends to stand out, which that one looks to me like it may.

I'm not sure what part of my post you're replying to there, but theymos has already stated that the ultimate solution will be to remove signatures completely if the merit system doesn't work and there's no suggestion more strict than that. I'm trying to make suggestions to try stop that from happening and removing them from the lower ranks who are the vast majority of the problem will go a long way in curbing that. If you haven't earned the right to your rank here then you shouldn't be able to earn either (and the behaviour of all the newbies who have heard you can earn by spamming or copy and pasting shouldn't effect everyone else either, especially when those who have caused the problem in the first place will leave en mass never to return as soon as signatures are removed.

I think a better idea would be what I suggested recently in that to become a Junior Member you would require at least some merit received (at the minimum 1). That way, if they don't get any merit they would remain a newbie indefinitely and be confined to being a bounty member by default.

Also, I think we should look at removing signatures completely from some of the lower ranks. If we made it so you only got a signature once you became a Member/Senior or above then you would only be able to earn here monetarily once you had earned your right to rise through the ranks. This would stop shitposters signing up here just to earn by posting one liners constantly. A lot of the new sig spammers here will never make it past Junior Member because of that but most crapcoin campaigns will accept them and pay for whatever they post and this is a huge issue.

Because the pay scales are based on the size of the signature you have and those get larger then higher the rank you have. Shitposters shouldn't be getting paid at all, but lazy campaigns don't care about anything other than their advert being spammed everywhere. Besides, what campaigns pay is out of the hands of the forum and up to the individual campaigns. If they want to pay all ranks the same they can, but this probably won't happen for obvious reasons.

The only way to contact theymos outside of the forum is by using the bitcoin batsignal:




I don't think they're being filtered but rather just ignored due to time constraints. Theymos hasn't being restoring accounts at all for some time it seems, but sadly, this also seems to be the same case with cyrus now. Unless one of them starts doing it more actively or someone else is given access to restore accounts then it's probably just not going to happen.


You've probably got more chance of contacting him via PM to be honest. I would only contact theymos as a last resort regarding accounts though, and just PM cyrus once a week instead, but even this seems to be futile right now.

They might not have necessarily been deleted by a moderator. If the user deletes their posts then it will also say this. I think if a post is removed either by staff or the user themselves then the merit should be removed also as it can be used to hide abuse. I have seen QuestionAuthority (amongst others) merit posts that have in fact been copy and pastes before. It would be quite easy to copy someone else's very informative or helpful post or article from elsewhere then just delete it once if has been merited and get rid of the possibility of the abuse being uncovered at some point.

You can report users like that as having advertisements/banners outside of signature isn't allowed.


You can't post images as a Newbie due to abuse. You can purchase a 'copper membership' for a small fee to be able to do so or just wait until you become a Junior Member.

Just report one post and leave a comment that all his posts are like this and the account will be nuked (or banned if it's a higher rank than Newbie). I suppose we could implement a button on someone's profile like 'report this account' but it's not really needed when you can just report their posts.

How does it mess people up? People should earn their ranks. If you can't contribute anything merit worthy then you should remain at a Newbie rank. Asking for one merit to become a Junior is not a ridiculous proposition. The other ranks are much higher.


Above and beyond?  . I'm really sorry that you now have to put a little effort into your posts and can't just rise through the ranks with generic one/two line posts. People are tired of having to read nonsense by lazy idiots who are only here to earn and do so by posting crap all over until they get the rank they want. If you can't get merit then you shouldn't move up ranks. People shouldn't be allowed to just come here and write "I like bitcoin because it helps me with my daily needs" 30 times and then become a Junior Member. Earn that title by posting something worthwhile, but if you don't then you should remain a Newbie.


Well maybe this is the problem here. Laziness or 'lack of energy' shouldn't be rewarded. If you lack energy to post on a message board then I wouldn't suggest finding something less tiring to do or just stick to collecting bounties until you've earned the right to move up ranks.


Bots are banned once spotted or reported, but their accounts still remain in the database, they just can't do anything with them. Alts are allowed by the forum as long as it's not to evade a ban or something else malicious.