In Theymos' announcement on the 17th, I noticed throughout the thread that many people were recommending the idea of allowing people to "purchase" Junior membership. I know Theymos implemented the ability to purchase Copper membership.
I thought a little further into it. Normally, I don't see much gain from that idea. As the funds would just be counted as donations and I don't know if they would actually go towards the prevention of spam (instead of other operating costs OFC). While I do agree the mods do a great job (and do deserve compensation), I think there's a possibility here for a bit more of a targeted response:
I posted this in the following thread, and I apologize if re-copying it here is a mistake. I just know that the thread is probably going to sway away from my response, or my response may get lost in the thread. I wanted to sort of discuss the idea further in it's own thread.
If the idea is completely useless, I understand. If mod's think I shouldn't have made a new thread to discuss, by all means let me know and I can delete the thread...:
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I've been working and I'm going to be working on scripts/bots to detect spam, I would be able to pickup abuse of 3 merits easier than 1 merit.
I noticed the mention of the idea of buying Junior membership. There's only 1 way I like that idea:
If the funds collected from the purchasing of junior membership is funnelled into the mods and developers contracted on behalf of BitcoinTalk to create scripts/bots which detect spam and try to prevent future spam. I'm currently working on some bots/scripts on my own time volunteer wise, but if BitcoinTalk was able to hire developers to create these spam prevention methods, I know a lot of good developers would join in and help (myself included, I'd be able to put a lot more time towards it). Doesn't have to be a hiring procedure, could be a bounty ("First developer to create a way to prevent xyz gets X.XX BTC)
This almost creates sort of a task force against spam, through advanced detection. It would make it easier on moderators, and make it less worth creating spam accounts.
And believe me, I'm not just saying this because I'm a developer. While I'd definitely bid to help, I'm going to be creating scripts/bots to detect against this regardless. I just think the motivation of developers to help out would be greatly increased. Sort of like the BountySource effect.
The nice thing about bots/scripts that scrape BitcoinTalk is that they don't require admin access. And it could be a really cool system. For example: BitcoinTalk could give out a API for reporting of spam (obviously to only select contractors). The amount collected by Junior memberships would be divided by this project/mods. The amount (hereby called "the pot") would be up for grabs by the developers creating these scripts. The amount of successful spam reports by these bots/scripts would give them a stake of "the pot" on a per weekly basis (or other timeframe)
IDK, just a thought. I think it'd be a cool way to promote developers to fight the spam on BitcoinTalk using computing power, even if it is a minimal amount.
Now I know people may suggest that I'm only recommending this because I'm a developer. That's not the case, but if there is a conflict of interest, I'm more than willing to sacrifice my ability to "make a bid" on these contract positions.
I just think it's an interesting idea to promote developers to create anti-spam scripts.
Let me know what you think?
