In addition to this it would be nice to see the top amount of users who have given that last bit of merit to rank someone up. I'm not sure the amount of work which would be required for this so shall we say a top 10?

Its good practice although probably unnecessary to check whether the tor browser is leaving any fingerprints, and to check it with sites like these. Just in case you've changed a setting which compromises it. Remember, things like maximizing the window on tor browser can compromise privacy when you're browsing sites which collect that information. 

I believe theymos has stated before that it isn't traffic he's worried about when concerning signatures, and has even hinted that in the future they might even be removed. If my memory serves me correctly what he did say was it would be a shame to sort of remove a ecosystem within the forum. Although, I haven't got the links/quotes on me now I can see if I can find them later on when I have a little more time on my hands.

My advice would be if you care about privacy then don't substitute Tor Browser for firefox extensions, and settings. Tor Browser is bulit on the firefox browser, but has been refined to do exactly what needs to be done to keep your privacy intact. You can't emulate that with extensions or settings without having the same issues Tor Browser is subject too.

There are settings within Tor Browser to make it restrictive, and therefore improve browsing experience for some websites.

I would agree that a project failing doesn't mean it's a scam. These are called investments for a reason, however this of course means that a project stuck to its promises, and it simply failed because it wasn't as successful as they originally planned. This is where the area gets gray though. What if the intentions of the project was to scam from the beginning, and we have evidence of that, but there's no evidence of the project manager being involved. I would probably lean on the side of innocent until proven guilty on that one, but this is why I believe putting your name to a project that you aren't personally involved in is a pretty risky move because you don't know the intentions of these projects. Managing a signature campaign is different, you're effectively promising to pay the participants for advertising the service as long as you carry out that you aren't really tied to the project, unless you're willingly advertising a scam project which again is a different scenario.

By running exact copies you're assuring that the code hasn't been altered, and the Blockchain hasn't been altered in anyway. There isn't any malicious transactions such as spending on one network, but not spending on another. The copies simply verify that everyone has the same Blockchain. They check against each other for any abnormalities.

I was referring to the campaign manager. Lets say we disallow new accounts from opening threads on the altcoin section, and we only allow Full members, and beyond. If that project turns bad for legitimate reasons or not should the campaign manager be held responsible too? They are not only managing the campaign, but they're also posting the announcement thread for the project.

I bring up the issue because I know that a lot of campaign managers do not care for the ethnics behind the project, and only care about the money that the job brings. Being a campaign manager brings in some decent money for the amount of work that's required of you. Especially, since it's quite obvious that some projects in the altcoin section especially are using automatic ways of enrolling users, and counting posts.

Personally, from my stand point if I were a campaign manager I would be micromanaging every aspect of it, and I'd probably be a little bit too strict, but at the end of the day your image, and the companies image is everything, and if you're allowing low quality spammers posting around the forum that doesn't look good. I know this isn't the way advertising works, and spamming actually brings results, however from a personal moral standpoint if you're getting paid to do something you better be doing it right, and to the best of your ability.

The only issue of higher ranked members accepting payments for posting an announcement for them they're effectively promoting that business. The owners of the coin are using the reputation, and age of the user who posts for them. Despite what I think, and what others might think that age of account doesn't mean squat when it comes to advertising or vouching for a service or whatever. From a newbie perspective they're generally going to trust those higher leveled accounts. This then begs the question, should we tag those that are advertising these projects? I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't be willing to put my name to any old project.

I do agree that the moderation of the current signature campaigns from the signature managers point of view is an issue. However, I feel combining copper membership, and the required to pay the forum a yearly amount or something to be able to post their thread would prevent most issues. Although, not all startup projects are going to have the funds necessary for this, and they might well be decent projects.

They're still a big part of the forum, especially within the altcoin section. Bounties are crazy, and there's new ones popping up every hour. Bitcoin signature campaigns are dying out slowly probably due to the fact that Bitcoins price is fluctuating so much, and its considered more valuable. Now that ICO's know that they can offer their coin shares instead of Bitcoin which might very well never amount to anything they are opting for that approach. Being a Bitcoin forum I'd like to think these campaigns should be required to pay in Bitcoin or at least pay a fee to the forum in Bitcoin like already mentioned.

Possibly going through the list of profiles with the most trust, recognition, and the other statistics on the Vod's BPIP could be a good idea if users here are too humble to request their profiles to be converted into a infographic

Not sure how you're going to wade through thousands of posts per user to find substantial quotes by them though. That would be an achievement in its own right. Take these for example:

Username                        Posts
philipma1957       30766
Amph                       28909
BADecker               26676
Lauda                       25251
deisik                       22011
Phinnaeus Gage       21967
ChartBuddy               21804
Gleb Gamow               20486
hilariousandco       20398

For such a small amount of users that's a lot of posts to wade through.

My personal stand on the situation is; Yeah put limitations on signature, and bounties which aren't paying in Bitcoin. Make it mandatory that they either pay Bitcoin to the forum as a payment to advertise or pay its participants in Bitcoin. Possibility even combining the two.  This would in my opinion remove most of the scam projects which likely don't have any Bitcoin to their name, and therefore promise that their coin is going to boom, and you'll be rich through the minuscule shares they're offering. I'm generally not one for putting restrictions on users, however what's the alternative? Eventually, theymos will likely have enough, and end up banning signature campaigns period, and despite all the problems they're currently causing that would be a shame. I wouldn't be entirely against the idea of banning them completely though, honestly.

For the projects that do have the funds, then great this likely won't affect them too much, and generally those that are paying in Bitcoin are of higher quality. (I say generally as I know what the counter argument will be concerning a recent Bitcoin paying signature campaign)

It does state where you can find them on the post editing page right below the "post", and "preview" buttons. Shouldn't be too hard to miss, but generally I don't think they're needed to be used by the majority of users, and are there only for a just in case scenario. Managing our own drafts probably isn't needed as up to 100(?) drafts can be stored, and they get deleted automatically.

IP's are kept depending on the way they're recorded, and the settings you've enabled.

Full IP is usually around 6 months, if you haven't selected limited retention which is then usually around 3 months. Partial IP is kept for around 2 years. City geolocation probably to assist with recovery is kept for longer than the others, and that's around 6 years. As mentioned above this can be found at: https://bitcointalk.org/privacy.php

Standardizing payouts is an interesting one. Although, I'm not sure how that would work considering that most altcoins are paying out with shares of their tokens which are generally worth next to nothing. I'd like to see altcoins required to pay either in Bitcoin or pay the forum to be able to run a signature campaign. Same goes for bounties, I believe they should be paying to advertise on the forum. The amount of issues that prop up from these sort of campaigns are probably the majority of reports we have. This has been discussed before, and as far as I remember theymos wasn't entirely against the idea, but would probably make a few changes to fit within his vision for the forum.

It's what people do. People often use blanket statements to be more effective in the way their words are perceived. It's alright saying "there are good posts there but the majority of it is spam" when "Altcoin Discussion is a spam section" has a much more active, and aggressive way of saying it. It's all about impact. Obviously, there's some really good discussion in every section of this forum about various different things.

This is my stance on things. When creating my reporting thread that wasn't primarily kept on the forum drafts, and I only used it to preview it to find any formatting issues. Other than that it was created in a text editor, and saved periodically. I think the drafts feature is good enough as it is, and we don't really need anymore functionality to it.

Although, it would be a shame to ban something which in itself is fine, and the only reason its become a problem is because users are abusing it. However, if it were to get limited/banned then I probably wouldn't have an argument, because of the issues its currently causing the forum. There would be a whole load of users who would feel hard done by due to it being a minority, but maybe we should be looking at the campaign managers who are managing the participants. 

I don't even know how much is in my cold storage as I haven't accessed it in a number of years. Although, I don't actually own a mobile wallet due to my precautions when dealing with anything mobile. I do have a wallet which stores a few hundred stored on my a computer which isn't regularly accessed. I'm not the type of Bitcoin fanatic which trades or sends transactions regularly though.

Yeah, you can put this in the report field, and this will usually either be ignored until a global moderator picks it up or it will be sent to someone with enough privileges to ban someone who has certain activity/rank. This user can't be just dealt with by a moderator, and only a global moderator or admin can issue a ban.

Good point. For an example of this if you were to get robbed on the street of your cash you would likely be willing to give up some pocket change to prevent any harm being done, but you're not exactly giving away your whole bank account. This is why I truly believe in having multiple wallets to store your funds. Everyone has their own tolerance of risk, and I don't really keep anything more than a few Bitcoin in my wallets at a time, and this will likely evolve as the Bitcoin price changes.