Proactive fighting with spammers. Doing it the right way

[1Referee]

Assigning personal responsibility to campaign managers in regard to what users enrolled in their campaigns post should work better. Kicking a spammy user from a signature campaign would most certainly make him stop posting altogether without banning him directly. Die-hard spammers who are spamming regardless of whether they are wearing signature or not should be the mods' concern, of course. I'm curious if you understand that your posts are considered as spammy simply because you post under the signature campaign which is claimed to encourage shit posting?

Personally, I'm free from such prejudices, but there are different opinions

I understand your point. I am part of the Bitmixer campaign for the simple reason that I like the service that they offer since I use it very frequently, and I like the fact that it is an automated campaign with barely any issues.

Do I get bothered by other spammers from Bitmixer? Yes, of course, but these people should either get a heavy warning to up their quality to a level where people can understand what they are saying, and that their posts are at least related to the OP or the post that they quote, or they should simply have their signatures removed by an administrator or a global moderator (if it's at least within his power) including with a temp ban or a full ban depending on the intensity of the shitposts

Now we have a service which does something good to the whole Bitcoin ecosystem directly as well as indirectly by allowing a lot of users to earn bitcoins and thus letting them get involved with the Bitcoin community. We have users who are actively advertising this service in a constructive way. And then someone wants to ban it simply because some (well, a lot of) users promoting this service are posting shit...

Would that do any good to Bitcoin?

We all agree that something has to be done about this whole spam thing. But the thing people don't seem to agree on is what the solution to this whole problem will be. Whether spammers get banned or not, there are always people who agree to this with much satisfaction, and another group of people who think it's a way too drastic solution. Either way, all these threads about spammers have not lead to anything yet.

[deisik]

I would venture a guess and say that banning these users would be an abuse of the ban-hammer. Yes, they are mostly posting total shit, but this is evidently not enough to start giving out bans

No, it is not. Read the list of forum rules properly. People have been getting banned for years because of this.

Unlike many others, I've actually read the forum rules. As they themselves say they are just guidelines, and the ultimate decision in respect to banning someone is still on the mod. Anyways, here's an example from another thread:

I will not mention any because I believe that if I play any gambling games, I will win and lose. The scenario is most likely happening on luck based game like dice. It doesn't mean that if I won several times, I am already good at dice, right? Same case on others, I think it's not only me. This is just my point of view though. Of course, on games like sports betting, poker or the like, skills are also used. However, we can't deny the fact that luck will always be part of every game

Could this post be considered as a shit post? I guess this is exactly what a shit post might look like. But I don't think that a sane mod would ban this poster. How come? Because judging what makes a shit post is totally subjective, and if the mod decided to ban users for making such useless posts, he would inadvertently end up heavily abusing his powers. Let's face the facts and cut the crap, had the rules been meticulously followed, most users would have soon been banned for just being off-topic here and there...

Because of the rule #2 (no off-topic posts)

[achow101]

As Fedor Dostoevsky said, better acquit ten guilty men than punish one innocent. I understand that forum administration has the right to do what they want, but would this be quite in line with their own Constitution and ten Commandments?

Or are laws carved in stone rewritten in blood?

What does that have to do with anything?

I have to disagree, for the sake of justice. Bitmixer.io is not part of BTCT, so they cannot possibly be found guilty or faulty by the forum laws. But if we extended the forum rules on them, even in that case they cannot be convicted and sentenced. Why should they try to enforce their own anti-spam rule if this is exactly what mods should do? I don't like shit posters maybe even more than you, but you are evidently trying to first humanize and then villainize the service. Right now I can't come up with a decent solution in respect to how resolve such and similar issues, but outright banning services would be highly counterproductive...

Think of it this way. The participants in the sig campaign are like employees of the company who are hired in and work in a "foreign country" (bitcointalk). According to the doctrine of Respondeat superior, the employer (bitmixer.io) is responsible for any illegal actions of the employee as long as the actions were done within the scope of the employer-employee relationship. In this case, that relationship is that the employer wants the employee to post on Bitcointalk. The "laws" of Bitcointalk state that you are not allowed to shitpost, and that "law" falls under the scope of the employer-employee relationship for sig campaigns. Thus the service is responsible for their sig campaign participants and any "illegal" actions that the participants engage in while posting on this forum (i.e. shit posting).

If the service has been warned multiple times that their participants are shit posting but do nothing about it, then what are we supposed to do? If we leave them alone, more shit posters will continue to join. If we continue to ban the shit posters, more shit posters will still join. The only way to stop that endless cycle is to prevent shit posters from joining. The only way to do that is to outright ban their signature campaign, not necessarily ban them from the forum, but ban them from creating a sig campaign so that they are no longer paying people to shit post.

That's what I suggest myself. But banning services just doesn't cut it. Punishing whole campaigns themselves would essentially mean that you openly admit your failure to resolve the issue efficiently and effectively

And what do you suggest is solving the problem "efficiently and effectively"? Banning a signature campaign outright solves the problem very efficiently and probably very effectively. It completely shuts down the incentives that those shit posters have to continue to post. It incentivises other campaigns to step up their game so that they themselves won't be banned too.

Assigning personal responsibility to campaign managers in regard to what users enrolled in their campaigns post should work better.

We are assigning personal responsibility to both the campaign managers and the service that they are hired by. The service is still responsible for the participants and for hiring a competent campaign manager. If both of them are warned about shit posters and nothing happens, then both should be punished as they are fail to properly manage their campaign.


Keep in mind that banning the campaign is a last resort. That will only happen if the campaign manager and the service continuously ignores our warnings to clean up their campaign.

[hilariousandco]

I think we need more mods and more good mods that deserve better salary. Banning by association is like North Korean Laws. Your banning the managers, but what about those members that follow the rules? They will be ruined too without doing any mistakes. This a conflict of interest on your part because you have own signature campaign firm.

We are not employees and the money staff get paid is not a salary but just a thanks for helping out, but with the amount of spam that is caused by sig spammers it is unmanageable and you would probably need ten full time and fully paid mods just to deal with it but we shouldn't have to be dealing with it if businesses would run their campaigns properly. The problem here is entirely down to greedy/lazy businesses who want to get the cheapest advertising possible with little to no effort on their part.

I think the best thing to do is _ban_ all the signature campaign, it will resolve the problem (I'm sure).

Why not try for 1 month?

I've suggested we try an outright ban if not on this forum then with the launch of the new one. Probably wouldn't help much if people know it's only temporary but it would be an interesting experiment to see how much traffic dropped off.

Even if all they care for is only exposure, this still doesn't mean that they are deliberately encouraging spammers. I think that any service would prefer good posters to spammy ones. There may be just not enough good posters currently looking for participation or the payment is too low that only compulsive spammers get attracted by such a campaign. But in any case, it is a campaign manager who first agrees to manage a signature campaign for the service and then indiscriminately accepts participants into it...

Therefore, the campaign managers are the ones who should be dealt with and where it will be most effective

Of course they're encouraging spammers by their ineptitude and inadequacy to properly run their campaign. They pay people to post shit. People wouldn't be posting streams of crap if they weren't going to get paid for it. If campaign operators did their job efficiently there would be no issue in the first place but what happens when there is no manager? What do we do then? Let's take bitmixer for example. As others have said they will pay anyone for any post as long as it's over 75 characters regardless of content. They would literally pay a user for posting I don't know what to write but as long as it's a minimum of 75 characters I'll get paid or aaaaaaasssssssddddddfffffffgggggghhhhhjjjjjkkkklllllppppoooiiiiuuuuyyyytttrreew wqqqaaassddffghhhjjjkkkll;;ppoiuyttrewqqasdgf in every thread if staff didn't intervene. This cannot be acceptable and this shouldn't be left up to staff to clean up. If you pay people for whatever crap they post with nobody checking it then it is going to be abused and you are paying for it to happen so they're liable and this needs to stop. It's rare that you see anyone on bitmixer write more than a sentence or two because why would they? And most campaigns don't really care about the content because one post is one advert of theirs being shown regardless if it's one word or a ten paragraphs.

Bitmixer.io's signature campaign is the perfect case study of this. Their thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=425135.0 was started by the service themselves. It is wholly managed by them, and their bot.

They accept, check posts, and pay out, via a bot on their website. The BITMIXER.IO user has not been online since September, and he last posted in July. He has been PM'ed warnings multiple times by the mods but he has never responded. They are doing absolutely nothing to curb spam from their sig campaign participants. Even punishing the BITMIXER.IO account wouldn't do anything because that account is not really used and everything is done entirely through a bot.

The only thing that could really be done with bitmixer is to completely shut down their campaign by trashing the thread, blocking the bot, and forcibly removing their signature from all participants.

I don't think that shutting down the whole campaign makes sense since that would in effect be equal to cancelling signatures altogether in the most indiscriminate way. It is obvious as well that not all users enrolled in this campaign are evil spammers, but this doesn't in the least mean that there are no spammers without any signature, either. It might well be the case that this service attracts the greatest number of shit posters across the forum, but this alone doesn't make it anywhere near guilty for them posting outright spam. Since you can always find a number of die-hard spammers who wear no signature at all. On the other hand, nothing prevents all these Bitmixer.io spammers from starting posting sense (or at least refrain from posting garbage) if they really wanted to. As you can see, their failure to comply with the quality standards of the forum is not Bitmixer.io's fault...

Do you have an army of alts on bitmixer or something? How is it not bitmixers fault? Of course it is. They are paying people to do this. So what do we do? Just let bitmixer continue to pay people to shit all over the forum and we as staff are meant to waste our time day after day running around after them cleaning up their mess? Don't be silly. If you have a leaky toilet pipe squirting shit all over in the every direction do you just run around like a madman trying to put a bucket under every hole that appears to catch the waste and then say problem solved? No. You fix the source of the problem. Shit campaigns are the problem. Bitmixer do nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. And because of that 95% of their users post utter rubbish. It doesn't matter if they have a handful of posters who make good posts. That's irrelevant. They can find other campaigns. Staff are not here to babysit bitmixer and every other campaign who do nothing but pay people to post spam. We shouldn't have to clean up their mess because it shouldn't be happening in the first place. We ban dozens of spammers a day but it doesn't do anything when the campaigns do nothing but keep encouraging it by paying users for whatever crap they can be bothered to do and this is the solution. If they can't run a campaign properly then you can't advertise here in such a way any longer and if you want to continue advertising here in such a way then get your shit together and stop paying people to crap everywhere.

[deisik]

As Fedor Dostoevsky said, better acquit ten guilty men than punish one innocent. I understand that forum administration has the right to do what they want, but would this be quite in line with their own Constitution and ten Commandments?

Or are laws carved in stone rewritten in blood?

What does that have to do with anything?

Obviously, I was referring to forum rules and guidelines, or "laws" as you yourself call them. Did you really not get it?

I have to disagree, for the sake of justice. Bitmixer.io is not part of BTCT, so they cannot possibly be found guilty or faulty by the forum laws. But if we extended the forum rules on them, even in that case they cannot be convicted and sentenced. Why should they try to enforce their own anti-spam rule if this is exactly what mods should do? I don't like shit posters maybe even more than you, but you are evidently trying to first humanize and then villainize the service. Right now I can't come up with a decent solution in respect to how resolve such and similar issues, but outright banning services would be highly counterproductive...

Think of it this way. The participants in the sig campaign are like employees of the company who are hired in and work in a "foreign country" (bitcointalk). According to the doctrine of Respondeat superior, the employer (bitmixer.io) is responsible for any illegal actions of the employee as long as the actions were done within the scope of the employer-employee relationship. In this case, that relationship is that the employer wants the employee to post on Bitcointalk. The "laws" of Bitcointalk state that you are not allowed to shitpost, and that "law" falls under the scope of the employer-employee relationship for sig campaigns. Thus the service is responsible for their sig campaign participants and any "illegal" actions that the participants engage in while posting on this forum (i.e. shit posting)

Okay, but why we don't see users banned in massive amounts for shitposting who don't wear any signature at all? For example, a good part of new users are posting complete junk, but I don't see any of them banned for just that. As I see it, the mods are shrinking from banning users (and that's good in fact) and just trying to shift responsibility to a service which is not in any way affiliated with Bitcointalk. But why would the service care if the Bitcointalk moderators themselves are not following their own "laws" in respect to shit posters. This seems to be the primary reason why services such as Bitmixer are made into scapegoats...

Could I call that a sort of guilt sublimation?

If the service has been warned multiple times that their participants are shit posting but do nothing about it, then what are we supposed to do? If we leave them alone, more shit posters will continue to join. If we continue to ban the shit posters, more shit posters will still join. The only way to stop that endless cycle is to prevent shit posters from joining. The only way to do that is to outright ban their signature campaign, not necessarily ban them from the forum, but ban them from creating a sig campaign so that they are no longer paying people to shit post

But if the service is legit as it seems to be, allegedly does a lot of good to Bitcoin as well as attracts a lot of new users into it, would banning it do more harm than good in the long run even if the majority of their posters are posting pure crap?

In this way, punishing the service itself looks counterproductive, but I seem to repeat myself

[Lauda]

But if the service is legit as it seems to be, allegedly does a lot of good to Bitcoin as well as attracts a lot of new users into it, would banning it do more harm than good in the long run even if the majority of their posters are posting pure crap?

In this way, punishing the service itself looks counterproductive, but I seem to repeat myself

That's like the primary reason for which the campaigns are not completely banned. They let newbies earn a little, and provide bonuses to people that truly contribute. That said, whether a service is useful or not is irrelevant. Rules are rules and should be applied to all as equally as possible. That said, Bitmixer is a bad centralized service that will get replaced by Joinmarket anyway. They should be the first one to be completely blacklisted.
Read the post from hilarious. Also: This spam causes a lot more damage than good. Quality members are either completely ignoring certain sections or jumping the ship.

[achow101]

Okay, but why we don't see users banned in massive amounts for shitposting who don't wear any signature at all? For example, a good part of new users are posting complete junk, but I don't see any of them banned for just that. As I see it, the mods are shrinking from banning users (and that's good in fact) and just trying to shift responsibility to a service which is not in any way affiliated with Bitcointalk. But why would the service care if the Bitcointalk moderators themselves are not following their own "laws" in respect to shit posters. This seems to be the primary reason why services such as Bitmixer are made into scapegoats...

Oh really? You have no idea how many users are constantly being banned. But users wearing sigs are more likely to be banned and are more noticed as more people tend to report them. Those not wearing sigs tend to get a little leeway because they are not reported as much. However the staff still bans them as we see them.

[deisik]

Okay, but why we don't see users banned in massive amounts for shitposting who don't wear any signature at all? For example, a good part of new users are posting complete junk, but I don't see any of them banned for just that. As I see it, the mods are shrinking from banning users (and that's good in fact) and just trying to shift responsibility to a service which is not in any way affiliated with Bitcointalk. But why would the service care if the Bitcointalk moderators themselves are not following their own "laws" in respect to shit posters. This seems to be the primary reason why services such as Bitmixer are made into scapegoats...

Oh really? You have no idea how many users are constantly being banned. But users wearing sigs are more likely to be banned and are more noticed as more people tend to report them. Those not wearing sigs tend to get a little leeway because they are not reported as much. However the staff still bans them as we see them.

Really-really. Just because it makes no particular sense banning them (I mean novice users). They will just register one more time and start posting crap all over again (likely even more aggressively), and we are essentially back to square one. But if you don't ban them, there is still a slight chance that they will try to join a decent signature campaign and start posting sense...

Or will have to start posting sense before they might have a chance to join such a campaign

[Lauda]

Tl;dr: OP started this thread to suggest fighting spam by punishing campaign managers. Now, they are defending the banning of users/services and disagree with any other methods.
What's the secret agenda here?

[achow101]

Really-really. Just because it makes no particular sense banning them (I mean novice users). They will just register one more time and start posting crap all over again, and we are essentially back to square one. But if you don't ban them, there is still a slight chance that they will try to join a decent signature campaign and start posting sense...

Or will have to start posting sense if they decided to join one

First of all, the bans usually aren't permanent, especially the first time. The ban is a warning for the user to post better. Not banning the users and warning them that their post quality is bad is completely counterproductive. Those users who are shit posting and aren't banned are not likely to increase their post quality of joining a sig campaign because the only ones they can join are ones who don't care about post quality (like bitmixer). Do some cost-benefit analysis. The cost of not banning users greatly outweighs any potential benefits. You can't just hope that people are going to change their behavior, that isn't how the world works.

[deisik]

Do you have an army of alts on bitmixer or something? How is it not bitmixers fault? Of course it is. They are paying people to do this. So what do we do?

Let's not be hypocrites. At the end of the PrimeDice signature campaign we all had been posting crap and then posting about how many posts we made during the month. I made over 1,000 posts, you claimed making even more than that (which might well be the case). In fact, after the PrimeDice signature campaign had ended, I joined Bitmixer's one and was soon kicked out for alleged spamming, lol (to be honest, I left myself having been underpaid after they had retroactively changed the rules). So if this campaign gets banned after all, I will be quite happy personally...

But this is not the way to go

You can't just hope that people are going to change their behavior, that isn't how the world works.

Haven't seen your post before submitting mine, but as you can see, the road is open to everyone, and people do change the ways they behave (and some even become global moderators at that)

Tl;dr: OP started this thread to suggest fighting spam by punishing campaign managers. Now, they are defending the banning of users/services and disagree with any other methods.
What's the secret agenda here?

I'm against banning services as being counterproductive and overall harmful, especially the ones that are said to contribute to Bitcoin in a meaningful way. I'm not so much against banning individual users as I don't see much sense in it. Just in case, you would have to ban half the forum should it get moderated for real. In this way, punishing lazy campaign managers seems to be the only viable alternative, at least currently. There is no hidden agenda really...

Are you pretty?

[Lauda]

This thread has become counterproductive. Almost no useful suggestions have been provided nor have you sucessfully argued against the mentioned methods. Time to start blacklisting services.

[achow101]

Haven't seen your post before submitting mine, but as you can see, the road is open to everyone, and people do change the ways they behave (and some even become global moderators at that)

That doesn't mean that they weren't banned at some point. As I said earlier, most bans are temp bans which serve as warnings for that user to increase their post quality or risk longer bans and eventually permanent bans.

As far as I can tell, Lauda actually received temp bans during their earlier days before being promoted to staff. So yes, the road is open to everyone, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't ban people at all.

[deisik]

Haven't seen your post before submitting mine, but as you can see, the road is open to everyone, and people do change the ways they behave (and some even become global moderators at that)

That doesn't mean that they weren't banned at some point. As I said earlier, most bans are temp bans which serve as warnings for that user to increase their post quality or risk longer bans and eventually permanent bans.

As far as I can tell, both hilariousandco and Lauda actually received temp bans during their earlier days before being promoted to staff. So yes, the road is open to everyone, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't ban people at all.

As pointed out earlier, I'm not against banning individual users (permanently or temporary). In fact, there are a few cases where the lifetime ban is a must. Usually, I refrain from reporting on anyone unless their posts affect myself personally, for example, if they start copying my own posts. Such acts entail instant permanent ban, and that I can hardly question. On the other hand, would it be proper to ban users who are posting along these lines:

I will not mention any because I believe that if I play any gambling games, I will win and lose. The scenario is most likely happening on luck based game like dice. It doesn't mean that if I won several times, I am already good at dice, right? Same case on others, I think it's not only me. This is just my point of view though. Of course, on games like sports betting, poker or the like, skills are also used. However, we can't deny the fact that luck will always be part of every game

I have already quoted this post before but no one criticizing my stance here wanted to reveal their attitude over this

[achow101]

This is getting way off topic.

I will not mention any because I believe that if I play any gambling games, I will win and lose. The scenario is most likely happening on luck based game like dice. It doesn't mean that if I won several times, I am already good at dice, right? Same case on others, I think it's not only me. This is just my point of view though. Of course, on games like sports betting, poker or the like, skills are also used. However, we can't deny the fact that luck will always be part of every game

I have already quoted this post before but no one criticizing my stance here wanted to reveal their attitude over this

That whole thread should be trashed. Actually, IMO the entire Gambling Discussion section is just a place for spammers and should be trashed.

[deisik]

This is getting way off topic.

I will not mention any because I believe that if I play any gambling games, I will win and lose. The scenario is most likely happening on luck based game like dice. It doesn't mean that if I won several times, I am already good at dice, right? Same case on others, I think it's not only me. This is just my point of view though. Of course, on games like sports betting, poker or the like, skills are also used. However, we can't deny the fact that luck will always be part of every game

I have already quoted this post before but no one criticizing my stance here wanted to reveal their attitude over this

That whole thread should be trashed. Actually, IMO the entire Gambling Discussion section is just a place for spammers and should be trashed.

Being trashed is one thing and being banned is quite another. So what is your stance on this? Would you ban (temporary or whatever) users for posting such comments or refrain from doing that? You see, I'm quite explicit about my attitude here and don't beat about the bush. As I said it as well, if mods start banning users (with or without a signature) for shit posting (and that post is an instance of just that), they will end up heavily abusing their power. And would have to ban half of the forum users in the interim at that...

That's why I'm rather skeptic about individual bans just for shit posting (meaningless comments adding nothing to a discussion)

[achow101]

Again, Off topic. I will stop answering after this until we get back on topic.

Being trashed is one thing and being banned is quite another. So what is your stance on this? Would you ban (temporary or whatever) users for posting such comments or refrain from doing that? You see, I'm quite explicit about my attitude here and don't beat about the bush. As I said it as well, if mods start banning users (with or without a signature) for shit posting (and that post is an instance of just that), they will end up heavily abusing their power. And would have to ban half of the forum users in the interim at that...

That's why I'm rather skeptic about individual bans just for shit posting (meaningless comments adding nothing to a discussion)

I would ban him and everyone else who constantly shit posts. They would get the usual treatment, 7, 14, 30, perma. It is not an abuse of power, it is doing their jobs. A mod's job is to clean up and prevent spam. That means that most of those shit posts would be deleted or trashed, and the users tempbanned as a warning. If they continue to shitpost, then eventually they will be permabanned.

[Joel_Jantsen]

It is beyond doubt that the quality of posts has massively gone down during the last few years primarily due to the influx of shit posters -------snipe

I got your point after reading this much.Well,in my humble opinion,it all starts and ends with signature campaign managers.They're the ones to pay shit posters.I'm not taking names here but it should come off as an initiative from every campaign manager (Lutpin/SFR10 actively does it) to recruit a few quality posters than an army of spam.Imagine,if every campaign manager only hired above average or say best posters who actively intend to contribute to the forum,there would be no place for shit-posters in the campaign.The spam would reduce drastically.

[bbc.reporter]

The campaign managers are paid to run the campaign right? So they should do a better job in choosing who to hire in their campaign. If they cannot do it then they should risk getting their account a negative rating just like an escrower's account.

[deisik]

It is beyond doubt that the quality of posts has massively gone down during the last few years primarily due to the influx of shit posters -------snipe

I got your point after reading this much.Well,in my humble opinion,it all starts and ends with signature campaign managers.They're the ones to pay shit posters.I'm not taking names here but it should come off as an initiative from every campaign manager (Lutpin/SFR10 actively does it) to recruit a few quality posters than an army of spam.Imagine,if every campaign manager only hired above average or say best posters who actively intend to contribute to the forum,there would be no place for shit-posters in the campaign.The spam would reduce drastically.

The campaign managers are paid to run the campaign right? So they should do a better job in choosing who to hire in their campaign. If they cannot do it then they should risk getting their account a negative rating just like an escrower's account.

It is not that simple. There were, and most likely still are, huge signature campaigns that recruit hundreds of users while there may be not so many good posters, thus the campaign managers which are chosen to run these campaigns might not have any other option left but to accept almost anyone who knows how to sign up for a campaign and not make a dozen mistakes therewith...

On the other hand, the services may be more interested in the sheer exposure their ads get than in the quality of posts the enrollees make