I am going to be honest with you regarding a few things:

1- A lot of the ANN topics are filled with people managing several accounts and paid to bump the topic. Or most of the post are filled with shitposters posting "great project sir" "awesome project for the moon" etc... They are not posting because they're interested but because there is an incentive behind. It can be a challenge to find real posters in a discussion.

2- Running a signature campaign where users use their signature space to promote the coin and are paid (with BTC or tokens) to post. Or some paid people to bump their topic to get more exposure (as said in 1-) It is something not very welcome here since it generates a lot of spam and  low-quality content (like "great project sir" "awesome project for the moon" etc...)

3- Yes, definitely. members who have been on bitcointalk are usually more focused on technological innovation, they're more "crypto purists" while the majority of members who joined the last 2-3 years, joined only to make some money from campaigns, they didn't know what is a cryptocurrency before, and even after a year they still don't try to learn something about it. The forum is their cash cow

4- a discussion that involves a small number of users usually mean users that are really interested in the project, but an altcoin topic with a small number of users doesn't exist here lol.

5- Can answer to this, sorry

If there is anything we can help, you're welcome to ask us, there is always the light turned ON here

I personally will be very interested to read your research once you completed it, if it's possible

Hello,

I am a researcher at IDSS-MIT (https://idss.mit.edu/) studying the online crypto community. It would be of great help to my research if any of you could share some of your thoughts on bitcointalk discussions.
My research questions revolve around understanding the link between quality and success of new altcoins and how they are discussed on bitcointalk (pre 2017). I am trying to understand the main differences between ANN threads of coins that offered real technological innovation versus non-technical coins that eventually failed. I am curious to know your thoughts on this topic, in particular related to the following questions:

1- If you were to predict the eventual success of a new altcoin, would the discussion patterns in its announcement page provide any meaningful signal? If yes, how so?

2- What are good marketing strategies for new altcoins on bitcointalk?

3- Have you noticed any difference in discussion between members who have been on bitcointalk for many years versus just a few weeks? Or communities that focus on technological innovation versus those who only care about identifying a good investment?

4- What about discussion that involves a small number of very active users versus those that involve small contributions from many users?

5- Is there any specific patterns in discussions that are likely to be related to fraudulent coins or pump and dump schemes?

If you are interested, I can share my findings so far over direct messages. BTW, you don’t have to answer all or any of these questions, any information relevant to the link between coin quality and its online discussion would be helpful.
Thanks in advance for your help.

Usually, someone that is a researcher from MIT presents heir self saying from what course they are." I am a researcher from MIT Sloan School of Management ". And they usually use online forms so it is easier collect the statistics.

I think you are just a regular member trying to collect information to make an ANN for a shitcoin. But I could be wrong...

3 The difference is certainly visible. In fact, the forum is not a lot of people, whose opinion is worth listening to. I think, those who are here for more than a year, have their own list of top 10-100 useful posts, topics, etc.

1. It could but I can't guarantee this nor I will advise you to follow this as the best indicator. Here is the thing some board out there are buying people to write comments and thus thing such as this can be easily manipulated. Of course that when price raises for particular crypto that you can see more talk in the ANN theard.

4. Discussions that include a small number of active and experienced users are the best ones.

3. Yes, newer members just say "woooow, Ripple $100 next year", while experienced members tell them that's not possible.