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So much hostility in here.
Personally I'm leaning towards xandry, though ultimately I'll leave it to theymos. There is a lot of ref spam, and he's been reporting it for a long time, regularly. There needs to be a moderator to deal with that section, lot of reports, lot of ref spam, and it can't continue being handled by non-Russian speaking global moderators.
I do like what some of the others have had to say, but I strongly suspect they wouldn't be strict enough on the referral spam (seriously if I could read Russian, or if Google translate didn't handle Russian so badly, half the threads there would be outright deleted). Either that, or they don't report enough. It's easy to talk the talk, but reports show you can walk the walk.
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Good stuff, added it here for reference. Any staff member can whitelist, a couple users as well though I don't want to name them so they get drowned in whitelist requests. I'll whitelist on request for solid members, or if one vouches, most others will as well. There's no particular rules for it, as long as the whitelisted person doesn't immediately start posting garbage. |
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It goes up significantly with the next rank, I don't recall what it is at each rank though and I'm too lazy to look. Though you shouldn't have any issues at Jr Member, the rates are only extremely low for newbie accounts. I did whitelist you though which will significantly reduce the wait time between actions (the 360 second limit) like posting, pms, etc. Doesn't do anything about the 5 per hour limit, though now that I think about it, it should. |
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Is there any particular reason for having the limit?
Spammers. Either run of the mill spammers, or people attempting to avoid a ban on their real account by using a new account. Once had a guy make 10 newbie accounts to send out pm spam for his altcoin, then feigned ignorance when I tracked down his real account and banned that too. |
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So you may only reply with 4 paragraphs or more? English is not my main language so it's hard to make sentences so they aren't mostly that long. But a ban period for 60 days because of that??
No. You don't have to write four paragraphs but posts need to be constructive or at least have some effort gone into them. You can make short replies occasionally as they can still be relevant, but if your entire post history is full of very short/ few word sentences (which yours are) it's asking for trouble. There may also be other factors in your ban. Did you send any unsolicited messages or have multiple accounts making low quality posts? ok but if that's the reason just let me know and I will do my best to make better posts. It's weird to hear nothing and then be banned for almost 2 months. Hear nothing? You were banned for the exact same thing just a month ago (it wasn't referral related), and not only that, I gave you the benefit of the doubt and only banned you for 7 days. |
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Do you really think being annoying, evading your ban multiple times, making multiple threads, and constantly pm'ing me are ways to change my mind?
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Both the above are correct.
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will i get a perm banned next time?
I tend to consider sig spam bans a class of their own, as in I don't generally lengthen the duration due to previous bans, unless you are truly a bad poster or there are some other special considerations.
Second what is sig spam? Is there a sticky that has a in depth answer like less than 10 words, posts within 5mins, 100 posts a day, 300 a week etc
A tendency to make posts in order to boost your post count, and you have an ad in your signature, particularly one that pays you per post. There is no secret invisible line that you shouldn't cross in terms of numbers, it's mostly subjective. There are people who just don't post very well in general, post "too much", or don't really have anything to say, they just like to participate in the community and post. This itself is fine. But when you add an ad to these kinds of posters, it's difficult or impossible to tell if they just aren't quality posters or if they are attempting to boost their post count. I used to err on the side of caution here because I do not want to ban the former, just the latter, but too many of the latter are slipping through the cracks because it's very difficult to gauge someone's intentions. This is the main thing that has changed lately. |
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just to clarify... i am allowed to put my ref link in my signature and suggest users use it in my main post?
Do not make topics or replies just to share your referral link. Whether it's in your sig, avatar, personal message, profile, within the post itself, or tattooed on your forehead is irrelevant. Edited for clarity. |
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You are allowed to put your refferal link on your signature
So, when you make promotion, ask users to join through refferal link on your signature
And you might want to use link shortener, so every user can't know the refferal link
Any you should know it already when you join this forum
Still referral spam. If you pay people to register under your ref link it works on games and rounds, also sometimes when people find new promos or giveaways they give their ref link and a non ref link, seems to be allowed aswell.
Still referral spam. |
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I'm not talking about the meta posts.
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You continued posting after being banned, that's ban evasion. All are now permanently banned.
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Never a good idea to join a sig campaign. The chances of getting banned increase substantially when you do.  I see a few of people creating accounts today to ask why they were banned. Could someone please explain why it is a lot easier to get banned from bitcointalk forum when posting with a sig? I don't want to receive a ban. If you in a signature campaign and just spam bullshit for the BTC payments should it not be up to the campaign manager to kick you out of the campaign, I didn't think theymos and the other moderators of the forum would have time to ban people for signature spamming. Ideally, yes. Realistically, no. Most of them do not think about the long term repercussions of allowing the spam to continue, and do not really care about the forum. Same happened to me, I had one liners but not spammy post, could there be a bot?
No it's not a bot, the majority of them are my decision. I'm not going to rush to meta to get in a debate over what is mostly subjective everytime I ban someone (sig spam related anyway), I spend enough time on this as it is. |
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I don't know if I get you exactly. If it goes from hilariousandco's queue to mprep's, how could the report be handled? Can he know if the report was moved earlier or should he have to look modlog? If modlog is the choice, the limitation of the actions showing will affect, right?
Educated guess. If the report just says "wrong section", and at that point it's in the right section, it's probably going to be marked as a bad report. If it says "move to alt currencies", or "is not bitcoin discussion" then he'll probably know what happened and mark it as handled. It's not exactly an uncommon thing, and the mods are smart folks. It's part of the reason why people shouldn't stress over percentage points. |
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When you delete a post or move a thread out of your jurisdiction it usually auto handles them anyway.
Deleting a post, yes. Moving a thread, no. It hasn't been handled, the report just disappears from your queue because the reported content is no longer in a section you moderate. In these situations, the report could be handled before reloading the page, or before moving the thread (after checking the validity of the report of course). |
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i'd love to see sigads removed.
but how would you detect them?
e.g. mine is an ad for xmr
cyiam has an ad for himself
^ do you consider this as advertising also?
There are lots of ways to filter signatures. While it would be possible to alter just to get around it, just make it a bannable offense, same as bypassing certain url filters. There's a difference in having an ad, and intentionally bypassing forum enforced filtering to avoid it. And like was said, the proposals would allow the user to make that choice. I do see what you're getting at in that less pay=more spam as people try to make up for it, but more spam would just make them easier to catch. As it is, the signature campaigns just get the most garish ads they can find, throw money at it, and ignore spammers because they know people don't really have a choice. If people have the ability to turn off the ads, then they would have to work smarter. Have ads that are pleasing and not too distracting, have good posters in their campaign, and to not go overboard with how many users you have with it, and have a good rapport with the users of the forum (if you see the same ad 20x in a row on the same page you are much more likely to block it, especially if it's loud and annoying).
Have you thought about signature advert designs having to be approved by the admin's first? Maybe too colourful/garish ones are not allowed? Personally I don't mind most of them and think they look ok except maybe the multicoloured rainbow ones that are obviously designed to just be eye-catching but I think a well-designed/professional-looking one is actually more effective than those. I'd rather this be implemented than us trying to control it. Yeah, there should probably be an "ignore signature" button near each signature. I've thought about doing this with SMF, but I don't know how I would structure the HTML so that the ignore button is non-intrusive and doesn't mess up everyone's signature.
The ignore data could be used to auto-ignore signatures that are commonly ignored (as an option). Maybe using Bayesian filtering.
Could you not put it on the left directly opposite the report to mod button? I'm not sure how or how well the auto-ignore will work though as certain peeps will just choose to ignore any signatures regardless of how annoying the individual ones may or may not be. Glad to see options and solutions being proposed though. It's new ground so it will take some tweaking but I'm sure it will work out in the end. Auto ignore is a good idea. However it's implemented, a lot won't realize how it works or how they can use it, much like the trust system. |
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But wouldn't that result in a dramatic reduction of the payout? Because the campaign company would be getting less views.
yes.
I am not sure this would be effective in reducing spam, it could even make it worse as companies would pay less so the people who are willing to try to earn via signature spamming will either need to work harder (spam more) or would be willing to accept less. I would say that generally people who are willing to accept low payments will probably generally spam more. I do agree with your point that people should not be forced to view ads although it is currently setup so that only heros+ can disable forum ads. I think a good solution would be to have a second tier of a ban when someone is banned for insubstantial posts + paid signature (aka signature spam). One could be banned for 14 days from posting/sending PMs and then once that ban expires, for a person to be unable to display their own signature (they can't participate in signature campaigns). It would probably also not be a bad idea to disable displaying a signature when the ban starts as well so that when a person is banned they will likely be denied payment from their campaign because their signature is removed. This would cause people to be more careful about getting banned because it would mean they won't get paid for their "work" verses they just can't post now and would likely appear as though they just went on vacation. Well the point isn't to reduce spam, it's that I (and other's I'm sure) are sick of seeing the same ads over and over again. I would love to not have to see them anymore without turning off signatures entirely. Right now it's all or nothing. Should be all, no ads, or nothing. I do see what you're getting at in that less pay=more spam as people try to make up for it, but more spam would just make them easier to catch. As it is, the signature campaigns just get the most garish ads they can find, throw money at it, and ignore spammers because they know people don't really have a choice. If people have the ability to turn off the ads, then they would have to work smarter. Have ads that are pleasing and not too distracting, have good posters in their campaign, and to not go overboard with how many users you have with it, and have a good rapport with the users of the forum (if you see the same ad 20x in a row on the same page you are much more likely to block it, especially if it's loud and annoying). Giving people a choice would add consequences, and would be much closer to a true free market than the way it currently is. And eventually maybe a middle ground is found. |
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Didn't know we had that feature. And by the way, I just found a disable signatures button in my profile. Now I can't see your signature! So we already have this feature?
Disable advertising specifically, not signatures entirely. There are useful things to be seen in signatures, shouldn't have to turn them off completely. |
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You can do that already, just cut down the amount of characters allowed in a signature so they attract less attention.
Bad idea IMHO. Signatures are used for personal advertising too without much designs. But wouldn't that result in a dramatic reduction of the payout? Because the campaign company would be getting less views.
Only if they don't check and ban people from their campaign correctly. -MZ If 50% of users turn off signature viewing, then the signature campaign is getting 50% less exposure. So won't they want to pay less? Why should users be forced to view ads they don't want to see? We already allow forum ads to be disabled, I don't see you being concerned about that though. |
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I'm pushing for a way to easily disable signature advertising on a per user basis, it would be a setting in your profile you could set yourself. Either filter them by keywords or regex, disable special characters and formatting to make signatures less obnoxious, or something similar.
That would be good! It would also help people using mobile data to disable specific ads. If one can disable forum ads, one should be able to disable sig ads as well. Since signature ads are so much more prolific it only makes sense. Shouldn't have to disable signatures entirely just because because of ads, users should have the choice.
A similar option is available here:https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=profile;sa=theme but we can't disable specific ads, right? Signature advertising would still be possible, just less effective, and would cut down on the spam without so many users needing to be moderated/banned.
Agree. It would also mean sig campaigns would need to be much more responsible. If your campaign has lots of spammers in it that you are not controlling, then people are going to block your ads. If your ad is obnoxious, people will block it.
That would be more effective! Is it in the future feature list? -MZ Yes, currently you can only disable signatures entirely, which is undesirable. Signatures can contain valuable information. Mine contains my PGP key for example, though I should probably add it to my profile now that I think about it. It is not in the feature list, though it shouldn't be difficult to add, either as a feature or by theymos later. |
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