This might sound boring to a newbie who's excited to experience, and discuss the world of Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies. However, I would absolutely recommend getting familiar with the rules, because it'll save a lot of frustration for you later down the line if your posts were to get deleted etc. We aren't expecting you to be masters of the rules though as we all break them from time to time unintentionally. 

No issue, a lot of users don't realize this at first, and as long as you take the advice, and stop doing it you'll be fine! I understand the need to want to keep your followers up to date with everything. So you could have been doing it for perfectly legitimate reasons, but the guidelines have been put in place because this sort of behaviour was being abused.

As suggested by mjglqw compiling updates into the code function within bbcode is a good way of going about it. It provides a clean, and non intrusive way to implement changelogs into your threads. This is probably the best way of going about it.

Updates = bumping the thread.

Old bumps should be deleted, and will be reported by users. Either edit your updates into a single post under the original thread or link to your updates elsewhere. The forum isn't somewhere you can constantly post updates, because it bumps the thread up, and breaks the multiple post in a row rule.

It's a good suggestion, but I believe the "patrol" feature is in the core of SMF, and not a custom implementation. (Correct me if I'm wrong there) I quite like where the report history is, but I guess if you wanted to check you'd have to  click "report to moderator" to see it which could be annoying. The option could possibly show up once you've reached 300 good reports. I'm not sure how many users actually have access to this page as I doubt that there's a large percentage of the forum with 300 good reports.

Most of the accounts were nuked as all of their replies were posting the same "great project" nonsense. A few of them accounts only had their posts deleted, but most of them were nuked. Temp bans are good, but considering moderators can't issue those, and only global moderators plus can I'm afraid the amount of these types of reports will likely be too much. So if they're obvious cases they'll likely be nuked instead.

Although true you won't be banned for simply having multiple accounts, these users were posting a lot of "<nonsense> Great project <nonsense>" sort of posts which are obviously trying to bump the thread. In these instances I don't mind users reporting one post, and letting us moderators know that there's multiple others in the thread. I'll then go through the thread when I have time.

They'd ask a big price for it because of the popularity of this forum. I'm not sure whether its worth the price that they would ask, and the .com seems to be trying to be a competitor to Bitcointalk so I'm assuming that they don't like how Bitcointalk is right now. Judging on some of the words they've used it seems like they might be a little hostile towards Bitcointalk.

I don't think they need to avoid posting in Altcoin Discussion. I wouldn't change my habits just to get paid more, and I definitely do post in sections that don't get paid. For example serious discussion, but I'm not obsessed with hitting the maximum posts that I can get paid for, and I often don't even do half of that since becoming a moderator. Point being, I don't think just because you're in a signature campaign you should be altering your behavior, and avoid posting in sections that you would normally. Its the campaign managers job to decide whether they pay you or not for posting in certain sections.

There's probably a good reason why it hasn't been implemented yet. It's unclear what the reasons are, but something has probably got the attention of theymos. Although, a very neat addition to the forum I wouldn't class it as high priority. Hopefully, we see some higher threshold reporting badges now that there's several users on the forum with 30k+ reports. I'd like a very high one just to encourage users to continue reports as I feel 5k reports is easy to get within a very small amount of time. At least if we had say a 100k one it would potentially spur users on to keep reporting.

Transmissions can be blocked, but its whether you want to go into the skeptical world of carrying a frequency blocker with you at all times. That would mess up quite a few frequencies, and could effect  some of the emergency services communications which could potentially be a crime depending on where you live.

It doesn't matter where you store your Bitcoin it only matters that you have Bitcoin. In most scenarios its better to just give up a small amount of money than get harmed. By refusing to tell them where your Bitcoin is it could potentially put you in a life alternating situation which to be honest I wouldn't be willing to risk for a small amount of cash. This is why the point of carrying a small amount of cash is a good idea, and not bringing your whole stash with you. If you're smart, and keep your Bitcoin separated the thief won't be able to prove that you own more than what you give to him on the spot.

Currently signature campaigns are not standardized, and therefore a signature campaign manager can dictate their own rules as long as they're abiding by the forum guidelines. 

Meta is for forum related issues yeah, but this is more related to signature campaigns entry criteria, and would probably be more suited to Service Discussion because its exactly that discussion about signature campaigns rather than the forum. You're not suggesting a change to the forums guidelines, but you're suggesting that campaign managers change their criteria of accepting certain types of users. A common misconception is Signature campaigns are related to the forum, when really they only exist on the forum.

The current problem we are facing is many of the campaign managers aren't running their campaigns effectively. The majority of the altcoin campaigns are very poorly managed, and let just about anyone join them with no sort of moderation at all. The Bitcoin ones seem to be generally managed a little better overall, and we all know who the good managers of the forum are.

In a perfect world we would have good campaign managers for all the campaigns, but that's never going to be a reality unless restrictions are placed on posting signature campaigns.

I'd prefer the merit system to be used as intended, and only reward merit based on good quality posts made by the user. Just because you know what a good quality post is, and can approve it doesn't mean you write quality posts yourself. Approving posts would be much easier than writing good quality content yourself, and therefore this would be abused to rank up. So I would be completely against the idea of implementing a merit reward system.

Mitchell's is custom coded, and I'm not entirely sure of the contents of it. However, its been pretty effective in finding spam posts. The thing is with automated systems there is a margin of error, and they will hit false positives. That's why Mitchell's script doesn't ban or anything like that. I've seen some of the automated reports coming in, and you can tell which ones they're.

Although, this is an interesting statistic to look at, and vaguely base it off. However, when considering the amount of exposure Bitcoin has since then, and the popularity that its gained through price surges, and whatever else. I wouldn't consider that a fair test. No doubt bounties bring a huge amount of traffic to the forum, however that's also part of the cryptocurrency world now, and I'm not sure if I'm willing to class that as bad traffic. After all, not everything in that area of cryptocurrency is dodgy. There's a lot of shit to wade through, but its got some promising ideas among all of that.

We only have to look at the top sections for total amount of posts on the popularity of those. However, considering bounties require users to make multiple posts that figure is also a little skewed. Some threads in the altcoin section you can literally go through a whole topic, and end up reporting 99% of the thread which is like 60+ pages long. This has generally reduced recently, and older threads are more subject to this.

Also, when comparing the amount of posts from the altcoin section to the Bitcoin section we have to consider there are a lot more alternative coins out there which appeal to a larger audience than just Bitcoin. This would then attract a larger audience generally. Although, Bitcoin is considered THE cryptocurrency by many, a lot of users will be looking to invest in new, and upcoming alternate coins because they offer something different. This is why we've seen such success with coins offering lower transactions fees, and faster confirmation times.

My original point is that signature campaigns aren't the sole reason of the vast activity difference between the Bitcoin sections, and the alternative coin sections. Although, of course its going to have some sort of impact on those figures its just hard to gauge how much of an impact that has had.

A kind of democracy sort of input could potentially prevent too much abuse, and any posts that do get through could then be handled by the moderators. I guess its something in theory that could work. It would be interesting how many users would be willing to put time, and effort into this though for no return other than making the forum cleaner. Looking at the reporting statistics that theymos recently released there isn't too many users that are reporting a high amount of reports when compared to the size of the forum. So, I think we would still have the problem of many users not actually approving posts, and probably only the select few which already do report regular would contribute to that.

Then we would have complaints about their posts not being approved. I think certain sections such as meta shouldn't have this filter, because this section is generally where users come to complain about something, and that shouldn't really be moderated via an approval system.

Sure, if theymos wished too. Although, the issues with that is they're pretty much doing what a moderators responsibility is, and this could easily be abused via higher ranked accounts allowing their alternative accounts to get passed the system by approving them. There's also the issue of higher ranked members themselves not posting the greatest quality content, and allowing rubbish to get through effectively making the shadow ban ineffective. Higher ranked users aren't necessarily good at finding and spotting good quality content, and knowing the forum rules.

The best way would be to have the highest quality users, and those that are familiar with forum rules too approving posts, because that's when it would be most effective. Then again, they might post good quality content, but might not be familiar with the forum guidelines. If this was ever implemented then it would make sense to have a bigger moderating team who are familiar with the rules so that its as effective as possible. As a moderator you sort of learn the ins, and outs of the guidelines more than a normal user. I'm still learning a great deal.

Go to your profile, and there's a setting that can be clicked called "Ignore Board Preferences". Here you can check what sections you want to ignore.

This link should work for you: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1410401;sa=ignoreBoards

If not then just follow the instructions.

Depends on the specific thread I guess. I don't deal with a lot of reports within these sections so I can't really pitch in without seeing them myself. Although, if they're links to articles then generally press is more suited. However, if they're just copying the articles text, and pasting a link this could potentially be deemed a duplicate if there's other threads like it. I would favour higher quality threads over ones with just links, and no input or anything.

If they're obviously advertising, and its of low quality it might just be outright removed.

You can ignore whole sections within your settings on the forum. Also, the shadow ban system that you're implying here has been discussed to death, and the only logical way this would work is if there was more moderators or merit sources were allowed to approve threads. However, this really isn't a merit sources job, and I'm not sure if merit sources would be willing to go through queues of threads. Generally, a lot of merit sources are just browsing the forum like they would, and meriting as they come across good quality posts.

We have several different users reporting a large amount in several sections of the forum, however when compared to the amount of spammers its a drop in the ocean. Although, I definitely for one appreciate everyone that reports! It makes our moderating responsibilities easier. If users want to be more efficient when they report within my sections, then they can report with "Spam post; More in the thread" instead of reporting all the individual spam posts. I'm willing to go through the entire thread with any posts that are reported like this. Although some other moderators might prefer individual reports I don't really mind either way, unless it's bumps then the oldest bump can be reported, and state there's multiple old bumps within the thread that need deleting.

We apparently have a few users now automating reports, and reporting high amounts of posts. These automated posts seem to be decent enough with only a few bad reports mixed in. I can only speak about my sections as that's the only reports I see, and those reported that are newbies. I've personally seen a rise in reports the last few weeks compared to a few months ago where we had a little more of a dry spell in reporting. Must be the summer holidays everyone took.

Mitchell does have a bot which automatically finds certain spam posts that they have inputted in their script. There are also users automating reporting.