Is it allowed to register just to post in 1 giveaway thread over and over?

[Your Point Is Invalid]

That 777 thread is mostly just used by account farmers not to mention I don't believe it even pays out any more and hasn't for months, but even if it does it's only occasionally and people do not get paid for every post that they have made but they don't care because they still get paid from their campaigns or can rank up their accounts easily. I've contacted Lightlord several times about it but got no response. 

That's one of the problems that are indirectly caused by this. Essentially, one could take up e.g. 10 accounts and post only in these giveaways daily until they farm them all up. Technically, they could argue that what they're doing is "legit" even though the idea behind it is account farming and spamming in signature campaigns in the future. I guess it may be time to introduce some sort of pruning (especially for daily threads). E.g. delete all entries older than 7 days (this should prevent post padding without preventing certain ranks from entering). Are there any potential cons to this idea?

Yes, since that section is for giveaways, limit it to full members and up

[Lauda]

This is a private forum. The owner can basically do what he thinks is right.

This is correct. It seems many fail to realize this. However, theymos has not voiced their opinion regarding this.

Yes, since that section is for giveaways, limit it to full members and up

I can see people complaining about that, however I think that giveaways should be meant for the people who are already on the forum. I would definitely agree to either:
a) Having a minimum rank for giveaways.
b) Pruning the threads every X days (dependent on the frequency of the giveaways).
If anything, this would render post-padding like that useless.

[hilariousandco]

I wouldn't be against Newbies or maybe Juniors not being able to post there to stop people just botting or abusing it with multi acounts but at the same time that section could be useful for newbs to bitcoin just wanting to get their hands on their first little bit of coins. A better suggestion would be posts in there not count towards post-count or activity.

[ajareselde]

I wouldn't be against Newbies or maybe Juniors not being able to post there to stop people just botting or abusing it with multi acounts but at the same time that section could be useful for newbs to bitcoin just wanting to get their hands on their first little bit of coins. A better suggestion would be posts in there not count towards post-count or activity.

I doubt that would help, because it would just move spam (if user is indeed spamming) to another place.  If people are cheating in the way of expoiting the giveaway
with multiple accounts, it could be solved by checking double IP addresses on the sites that are in question. Forum wise - you can't do much without doing more harm than good.

[Joel_Jantsen]

I doubt that would help, because it would just move spam (if user is indeed spamming) to another place.  If people are cheating in the way of expoiting the giveaway
with multiple accounts, it could be solved by checking double IP addresses on the sites that are in question. Forum wise - you can't do much without doing more harm than good.

Why should we care if the people are cheating in the giveaway's by multiple accounts ? Isn't that up to lightlord or the op's of the threads to do the curation ? Anyway they don't really care,all that bothers us is the forum spamming and I think hilariousnadco has a good suggestion,the posts in g and r shouldn't be counted towards potential activity.

[ajareselde]

I doubt that would help, because it would just move spam (if user is indeed spamming) to another place.  If people are cheating in the way of expoiting the giveaway
with multiple accounts, it could be solved by checking double IP addresses on the sites that are in question. Forum wise - you can't do much without doing more harm than good.

Why should we care if the people are cheating in the giveaway's by multiple accounts ? Isn't that up to lightlord or the op's of the threads to do the curation ? Anyway they don't really care,all that bothers us is the forum spamming and I think hilariousnadco has a good suggestion,the posts in g and r shouldn't be counted towards potential activity.

I don't care, hence i said exactly that -  "it could be solved by checking double IP addresses on the sites that are in question" (not on our side)

I think you should re-read my comment above - if you stop counting posts there (or any other section) - that will only move that spam to other places.
The only way all these discussions can be stopped and solved is to disable signatures once and for all, plus the forum would probably get more commission from their AD sales.

[Lauda]

A better suggestion would be posts in there not count towards post-count or activity.

I wouldn't mind pruning nor that.

I doubt that would help, because it would just move spam (if user is indeed spamming) to another place.  

I've heard this argument so many times, and I generally disagree with it. Should we not do anything in any section because the spam may move towards another section? The only section that can be used for post-padding without getting banned for spam are these giveaway threads. If we make it much harder to do so or render it useless, you can't expect those very same farmers to continue doing that just as easily. I also suspect that some of them are using bots to post in specific intervals (depending on the giveaway type). In other words, it would take a lot more effort to create an equal amount of posts (being created in these threads) in another section.

The only way all these discussions can be stopped and solved is to disable signatures once and for all, plus the forum would probably get more commission from their AD sales.

No. Punishing everyone because some people are abusing something is generally not the right way to proceed. From what I gather, the consensus is more oriented towards finding solutions and not removing the feature altogether.

[Joel_Jantsen]

The only way all these discussions can be stopped and solved is to disable signatures once and for all, plus the forum would probably get more commission from their AD sales.

You do know right ,stopping the signature campaigns would drastically reduce the traffic incoming to the forum.People are keen on advertizing on bicointalk just because of the traffic.A drop down in the traffic won't interest them anymore in advertizing here.I'm afraid if the signature campaigns are stopped on this forum,another forum could enable it on their site and with quite ease they can direct the traffic from here.

[ajareselde]

A better suggestion would be posts in there not count towards post-count or activity.

I wouldn't mind pruning nor that.

I doubt that would help, because it would just move spam (if user is indeed spamming) to another place.  

I've heard this argument so many times, and I generally disagree with it. Should we not do anything in any section because the spam may move towards another section? The only section that can be used for post-padding without getting banned for spam are these giveaway threads. If we make it much harder to do so or render it useless, you can't expect those very same farmers to continue doing that just as easily. I also suspect that some of them are using bots to post in specific intervals (depending on the giveaway type). In other words, it would take a lot more effort to create an equal amount of posts (being created in these threads) in another section.

I'm confident you're wrong. There is nothing you can do to stop account farming, you can only make it harder for them, but at price of making the forum even more censored (referring to deletion of comments)

The only way all these discussions can be stopped and solved is to disable signatures once and for all, plus the forum would probably get more commission from their AD sales.

No. Punishing everyone because some people are abusing something is generally not the right way to proceed. From what I gather, the consensus is more oriented towards finding solutions and not removing the feature altogether.

Consensus is biased. If we are to indeed look for the greater good of the forum, this is the correct way to do it.

The only way all these discussions can be stopped and solved is to disable signatures once and for all, plus the forum would probably get more commission from their AD sales.

You do know right ,stopping the signature campaigns would drastically reduce the traffic incoming to the forum.People are keen on advertizing on bicointalk just because of the traffic.A drop down in the traffic won't interest them anymore in advertizing here.I'm afraid if the signature campaigns are stopped on this forum,another forum could enable it on their site and with quite ease they can direct the traffic from here.

The forum was doing just fine before the campaigns came along. You're giving too much credit to them.

[Lauda]

I'm confident you're wrong. There is nothing you can do to stop account farming, you can only make it harder for them, but at price of making the forum even more censored (referring to deletion of comments)

I may be wrong on whether and how effective this may be. However, I'm not wrong when it comes to bots. It would be very easy to code-up a bot that only posts the same message every 24 hours (e.g.) in a singular thread (or multiple ones). We have all kind of bots on the forums that are more complex than this.

Consensus is biased. If we are to indeed look for the greater good of the forum, this is the correct way to do it.

I'm talking about consensus within the staff-members. Just because you say "this is the correct way to do it" that does not make it so. This was discussed several times before, and I'm pretty sure that theymos does not want to remove signatures.
Making it harder for them is the direction in which we should be heading. However, even without signatures it wouldn't be bad to prune that sub-forum or exclude it from counting.

[InvoKing]

i see some of you think that this guy (or others like him) is (are) just spamming? farming account?
so do you really think that not counting posts there or even removing it would help?
i don't think so especially if such users are just creating accounts to obtain a tiny rewards to gamble with it.
my statement may be inaccurate but from what i read here few users went so far... just neglect him (them) or added a neutral trust about a possible farming account and move on...

[Lauda]

i see some of you think that this guy (or others like him) is (are) just spamming? farming account?

A individual user doesn't really matter in this case. The idea behind the thread was to generally gain insight into the situation in the particular section.

so do you really think that not counting posts there or even removing it would help?

Generally, it would prevent people from abusing that section to farm up their accounts without hurting the people that genuinely just want to participate in a giveaway.

i don't think so especially if such users are just creating accounts to obtain a tiny rewards to gamble with it.

The solution won't have an effect on those, since they should not care about the activity and post count if they're genuine participants.

just neglect him (them) or added a neutral trust about a possible farming account and move on...

We should neglect account farmer or add neutral trust? This does nothing at all.

[InvoKing]

just neglect him (them) or added a neutral trust about a possible farming account and move on...

We should neglect account farmer or add neutral trust? This does nothing at all.

nah i mean neglect the genuine participants  
for the accounts farmers i think a neutral trust would have an impact...well not a big one but will prevent members from buying it in the future.

For the other answers i think that we share the same ideas
thanks Lauda