Account selling - A suggestion

[btvGainer]

we all know forum accounts are sold and bought here frequently and we all have differnt opinions on it.Some of us are in favour of it and some completly oppose it while others have neutral views.
I have a suggestion that might go well with everyone.Disallow selling of account below Sr.Member.This will reduce the number of creating multiple accounts for account farming to aome extent.Whats your thoughts?

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[The Sceptical Chymist]

And why not ban all account sales?  Never mind,  don't answer that.  It's been brought up before and answered ad nauseam.   I wouldn't be opposed to your suggestion at all.  I just think it doesn't go far enough.   And high-ranked accounts are even more of a problem because those are the ones you can scam better with.

[minifrij]

This suggestion is all well and good, but how would this be enforced?
How would you prove that a lower ranked account had been sold? You couldn't go from IPs, since people browse this forum through Proxies or TOR. This means that not only would be IPs be essentially untraceable, but anyone else using the same Proxy network or TOR could be punished due to their account being 'sold'. You couldn't go from signing a staked message, since very often addresses are not staked or private keys to staked addresses are transferred with the sale of the account.
In addition to this, what would happen if the account was found to be sold? Banning wouldn't be too great, since any false positives due to the reasons above would mean innocent people would be affected. Restoring the account back to the original owner could be problematic as not only does it take a lot of time and effort to do so, but the original owner would have to be verified as being the legitimate owner. Otherwise, hacked accounts could simply be sold and restored back to the hacker to sell again.

It is very nice coming up with 'solutions' like these, but you have to think about it from a logical point of view.

[Doamader]

The most and recent accounts being sold at auctions are or potencial senior or senior and hero, this makes the things even more harder, today i saw one green trust account being auctioned, soo the question is how to be safe and secure dealing with high ranks accounts that can be purchased from any scammer, i would trust into green trust user some extra coins if he ask me a loan. But those is past already, currently im afraid to deal with big accounts as the market to dump accounts at lendings is growing or atleast these will happen soon or later.

[InvoKing]

i always think that banning or restricting btctalk accounts sales isn't a solution, people could buy it from any other place and it is gonna be too hard to figure it then.
the only effective solution i found is to continue banning spammers or maybe tagging farmed accounts with a red +/- neutral trust since it would affect its price

[botany]

we all know forum accounts are sold and bought here frequently and we all have differnt opinions on it.Some of us are in favour of it and some completly oppose it while others have neutral views.
I have a suggestion that might go well with everyone.Disallow selling of account below Sr.Member.This will reduce the number of creating multiple accounts for account farming to aome extent.Whats your thoughts?

The problem is with implementation.
The reason that account sales (senior, junior, whatever) is not explicitly banned is that it would be difficult to implement. Account sales would just move outside the forum if you try to police it too much.

[Darcius9]

Why not ban signature campaign so that people like you stop creating nonsense and redundant threads.

[Xenophoto]

Wouldn't help at all. Imagine that the whole issue is a tree. Yeah, a tree. And OP basically suggests that we have to cut a branch of a tree. If you want the issue to be fixed, why not disallow the whole thing? Anyway, people would just use another place to buy/sell their accounts. I think the major problem in this is the spam that is being created. If only some campaigns out there would stop accepting spammers, then the spammers would somehow stop spamming. They only post here to get paid anyway.

[Joel_Jantsen]

Why not ban signature campaign so that people like you stop creating nonsense and redundant threads.

Redundant ? Please link me to a thread where the same suggestion was posted ? I can't seem to recall it.
For a newbie you do know a lot about signature campaigns,don't you ? Ahh...I forgot you have other 10 shill accounts scamming the shit out of this forum.Does the post bother you ? Maybe it ruins your selling "accounts business".

[hilariousandco]

I have a suggestion that might go well with everyone.Disallow selling of account below Sr.Member.This will reduce the number of creating multiple accounts for account farming to aome extent.Whats your thoughts?

Lol. It wont stop anything. People would just farm them up to Senior which most will do anyway. Besides, even if we banned all account sales that wouldn't stop anything just move it off site so banning the sale of ranks under Senior is even more pointless.

Why not ban signature campaign so that people like you stop creating nonsense and redundant threads.

Redundant ? Please link me to a thread where the same suggestion was posted ? I can't seem to recall it.

Of course it's redundant because his suggestion would do nothing and is even a worse idea than all the other "ban account sale" threads that pop up every month.

[NeuroticFish]

we all know forum accounts are sold and bought here frequently and we all have differnt opinions on it.Some of us are in favour of it and some completly oppose it while others have neutral views.
I have a suggestion that might go well with everyone.Disallow selling of account below Sr.Member.This will reduce the number of creating multiple accounts for account farming to aome extent.Whats your thoughts?

The selling/buying of accounts is "legal" because it cannot be stopped. If they will not sell here, they'll sell on another place/forum.
Now, with this in mind, I don't see how your idea could be enforced....

[ColderThanIce]

Why not ban signature campaign so that people like you stop creating nonsense and redundant threads.

That would be a very poor financial move for the forum. Signature campaigns increase traffic to the website, and in turn, the number of impressions that are seen by ads. Removing campaigns would result in a drop in traffic as well as a drop in ad revenue for the forum.

[gentlemand]

That would be a very poor financial move for the forum. Signature campaigns increase traffic to the website, and in turn, the number of impressions that are seen by ads. Removing campaigns would result in a drop in traffic as well as a drop in ad revenue for the forum.

There's a balance to found in there somewhere. If every single poster is posting junk in search of dust, that's not going to make the advertisers any money. The more committed users will become disenchanted and shop elsewhere.

[ajareselde]

That would be a very poor financial move for the forum. Signature campaigns increase traffic to the website, and in turn, the number of impressions that are seen by ads. Removing campaigns would result in a drop in traffic as well as a drop in ad revenue for the forum.

There's a balance to found in there somewhere. If every single poster is posting junk in search of dust, that's not going to make the advertisers any money. The more committed users will become disenchanted and shop elsewhere.

U're totally right. This "traffic" is useful to no one.
Both account sales (multi accounting included),and campaigns should be straight out forbidden. Quality over quantity. Until then, it's wild west.

[ColderThanIce]

U're totally right. This "traffic" is useful to no one.

Not true. When theymos runs auctions for ad spaces on the website, he also includes data as to how many impressions previous ads have seen. Removing signature campaigns would decrease the impressions that ads see, and in turn, the amount of money brought in from ads for the forum.

U're totally right. This "traffic" is useful to no one.
Both account sales (multi accounting included),and campaigns should be straight out forbidden. Quality over quantity. Until then, it's wild west.

I agree with you on the possibility of banning account sales. I think that would do good around here to cut down on the number of signature spammers there are going around posting absolute trash and cluttering up topics. The problem with banning account sales is that you're banning the sale of Bitcointalk accounts on this forum. There's nothing stopping these dealings from going on elsewhere, and accounts still changing hands.

I don't agree with you on banning signature campaigns. Although there are lots of users simply spamming for satoshis, there are plenty of users who actively contribute valuable content to the website and who wear paid signatures too. It makes sense to me - if you're already going to be posting on this website, why not get paid a little bit for doing what you're already doing?

[actmyname]

U're totally right. This "traffic" is useful to no one.

Not true. When theymos runs auctions for ad spaces on the website, he also includes data as to how many impressions previous ads have seen. Removing signature campaigns would decrease the impressions that ads see, and in turn, the amount of money brought in from ads for the forum.

U're totally right. This "traffic" is useful to no one.
Both account sales (multi accounting included),and campaigns should be straight out forbidden. Quality over quantity. Until then, it's wild west.

I agree with you on the possibility of banning account sales. I think that would do good around here to cut down on the number of signature spammers there are going around posting absolute trash and cluttering up topics. The problem with banning account sales is that you're banning the sale of Bitcointalk accounts on this forum. There's nothing stopping these dealings from going on elsewhere, and accounts still changing hands.

I don't agree with you on banning signature campaigns. Although there are lots of users simply spamming for satoshis, there are plenty of users who actively contribute valuable content to the website and who wear paid signatures too. It makes sense to me - if you're already going to be posting on this website, why not get paid a little bit for doing what you're already doing?

After skimming through the data, it seemed that the only times that the past was competing with current impressions is back when the price skyrocketed during 2013, and unique ips were triple what we have right now (300k!)

However, I would like to state that logged-in users make up about 12.5% of the total impressions, and perhaps ~40% of those are in signature campaigns? (Hard to tell.) That would not cut off too much traffic relatively, though it would be noticeable.

[ajareselde]

U're totally right. This "traffic" is useful to no one.

Not true. When theymos runs auctions for ad spaces on the website, he also includes data as to how many impressions previous ads have seen. Removing signature campaigns would decrease the impressions that ads see, and in turn, the amount of money brought in from ads for the forum.

U're totally right. This "traffic" is useful to no one.
Both account sales (multi accounting included),and campaigns should be straight out forbidden. Quality over quantity. Until then, it's wild west.

I agree with you on the possibility of banning account sales. I think that would do good around here to cut down on the number of signature spammers there are going around posting absolute trash and cluttering up topics. The problem with banning account sales is that you're banning the sale of Bitcointalk accounts on this forum. There's nothing stopping these dealings from going on elsewhere, and accounts still changing hands.

I don't agree with you on banning signature campaigns. Although there are lots of users simply spamming for satoshis, there are plenty of users who actively contribute valuable content to the website and who wear paid signatures too. It makes sense to me - if you're already going to be posting on this website, why not get paid a little bit for doing what you're already doing?

I think you're wrong. That's why i also said "quality over quantity" ;  While it's true that paid posting increases the number of impressions, it's also true that most of the users
in such campaigns are not interested in the ads themselves. (They are not part of the targeted audience)

I would like to see something like a test period of let's say 3 months where all signatures would be disabled, and only forum ads were left alive. - That would show the correct path to follow.

[Relnarien]

we all know forum accounts are sold and bought here frequently and we all have differnt opinions on it.Some of us are in favour of it and some completly oppose it while others have neutral views.
I have a suggestion that might go well with everyone.Disallow selling of account below Sr.Member.This will reduce the number of creating multiple accounts for account farming to aome extent.Whats your thoughts?

Banning account trading isn't enforceable. As have been mentioned throughout the thread, there is no 100% verifiable way to prove original ownership of an account, nor any way to stop anyone from transferring over "ownership" of an account to another. Unless you can provide us a means to employ fingerprint verification, retinal scanning, DNA verification, or a combination thereof as a way to access the accounts, then your suggestion is pretty much meaningless.

If you're still having trouble understanding, then consider the case of MMORPGs. High value accounts are sold everyday despite the various efforts made by large (and medium-sized) companies to hinder the act. If account trading in general can be stopped in an efficient and non-disruptive way, then it would have been done a long time ago.

[btvGainer]

Why not ban signature campaign so that people like you stop creating nonsense and redundant threads.

You are not wearing signature because you are a newbie and not many campaigns available for your rank.I am sure you would also join some campaign if accepted.
Dont blame it on my signature.I created it because I thought that would help remove some trash

[Jannn]

Disallow selling of account below Sr.Member.

How? Bitcointalk does not know when an account is sold.