Cleaning up this forum

[AndrewBuck]

I would like to put out a call to others to see if there is interest in cleaning up this subforum.  There is a lot of scammy, and potentially illegal, services being offered here and very little response from the moderators or the community to call this out.  I am really surprised there are not rules about what kinds of things can be posted and that stuff that is obvious scams continue to be offered with no reprisal.

Partly I am just ranting and venting my frustration, but it saddens me to see how this forum has devolved over time.  Years ago, this was a place for people to find honest work and be paid in bitcoins.  Can we maybe have a bit more of that and less of the "best new signature campaign - earn $$$$" kind of nonsense?

-AndrewBuck

[Joel_Jantsen]

There is a lot of scammy, and potentially illegal, services being offered here and very little response from the moderators or the community to call this out.

and less of the "best new signature campaign - earn $$$$" kind of nonsense?

So you mean signature campaigns are potentially illegal and scammy? 

I am really surprised there are not rules about what kinds of things can be posted and that stuff that is obvious scams continue to be offered with no reprisal.

Yes,scams are not moderated and it's left upto the members to find out if they're not getting scammed.

Partly I am just ranting and venting my frustration, but it saddens me to see how this forum has devolved over time.  Years ago, this was a place for people to find honest work and be paid in bitcoins. 

I still find honest work and get paid in bitcoins.As said,it's upto you to decide if the job is rightful thing to do.

[AndrewBuck]

I am not saying the sig campaigns are scams themselves, but it is hard to find more than a handful of posts here that are not "make money doing nothing" kinds of things.  The fact that we have hundreds of those going on leads to just a flood of posts that have almost no value to the forum, just so people can up their post count on their campaign.

-AndrewBuck

[panju1]

There are a lot more obvious scams, like ponzi schemes operating here. Scams are not moderated and it is up to people to be careful.

Years ago, this was a place for people to find honest work and be paid in bitcoins. 

If you want to dig through the services section, you will still be able to find jobs. Years ago, you didn't have the micro earnings section. That way, this board is a lot more cleaner now.

[Joel_Jantsen]

I am not saying the sig campaigns are scams themselves, but it is hard to find more than a handful of posts here that are not "make money doing nothing" kinds of things.  The fact that we have hundreds of those going on leads to just a flood of posts that have almost no value to the forum, just so people can up their post count on their campaign.

There is nothing much you can do about it,can you ? Campaigns managers have been successful reducing the spam in the last few months after implementing strict hiring policies.We'd only see it's been further reduced in the coming days.You can always report the shit posters to their campaign managers or report them to the moderators.
Btw,I don't understand what exactly you're ranting about,the spam on the forum or the obvious scams ?

[AndrewBuck]

I am sad to see how this forum has devolved.  It used to be a place for people offering actual services - programming, web development, consulting, legal services.  Now that is gone almost entirely and what little there is gets buried in a flood of "get rich quick" schemes.  I am glad to here the sig campaigns have been cleaned up a bit, and my focus is not on them specifically, they are just one example that came to mind.  What bothers me more are the other things I laid out in my email like captcha cracking, or paying people to sign up under referral links in MLM schemes, etc.  These things are possibly illegal, definitely against the terms of use of the sites they attack, and just general asshattery.

Do we want this forum, and bitcoin in general, to be known to the world as the reason every blog post everywhere gets flooded with spam because any spammer can buy 2 dollars worth of some BS altcoin, make a post here, and get 10,000 captchas cracked so they can spray their fake viagra posts all over the internet?

-AndrewBuck

[NeuroticFish]

There was discussion about this, actually such discussion happens from time to time, especially on obvious scams (Investor based games, heh).
The conclusion was basically that moderating / checking everything is too much of work and it would restrict the freedom of speech.
So basically people has to use their own brain.

About the amount of spam, yeah, it's quite a job. Obvious spam (like the link-only threads) is removed by the mods and I can guess that's a lot of work there, unpaid work, you know.
Then there are a lot of newbies asking ... things ... and it's not so easy to tell which questions are genuine and which are trolling or sig-spam targeted questions.

Another long discussion was about limiting the newbies and the conclusion was that will add too much work and not much benefit, while genuine newbies with genuine problems will not be helped.

So with all the good intentions it wasn't found anything better than what we have now...


Edit: I see now that you wanted only this subforum cleared. Well, most of what I said still applies. Reporting everything you/we find fishy is a step, but for the reasons I wrote most (even obvious scams) may not be deleted.
Edit2: This is an answer to the post after this: there is, for example, an altcoin called Raiblocks, which is mined by solving captchas. Many recruit workers to mine Raiblocks and pay in BTC so it's a legit, cryptocurrency related service. Of course, this was the good example. One of the few...

[AndrewBuck]

@NeuroticFish I guess this makes sense, and thank you for the reasoned response.  Like I said in my original post, I guess I am just ranting and somewhat frustrated.  I came back to the forum after a long time away and it just saddens me to see how this forum is used now, compared to how it used to be.  I understand moderating is a thankless job, even to just deal with true spam (like viagra posts and whatnot that I am sure they are flooded with), but that is why I am kind of surprised to see things like captcha solving being allowed on the forum.  Why are we making it easy for people to create spam that our own moderators (and everyone elses) has to clean up?  Why are there not rules about this kind of thing?

-AndrewBuck

[AndrewBuck]

As another example, there is a thread where someone is trying to find someone else to get their adsense account verified because they don't have enough traffic to their own site to meet google's criteria for activation.  This is outright fraud just on its face, and could be blocked on those grounds, but furthermore it is not too hard to imagine that once they do get their account verified they will be using it for nefarious purposes.

-AndrewBuck

[bitcoin revo]

I am sad to see how this forum has devolved.  It used to be a place for people offering actual services - programming, web development, consulting, legal services.  Now that is gone almost entirely and what little there is gets buried in a flood of "get rich quick" schemes.

I looked through the front page of Services and I don't see (m)any (depends on criteria) of those schemes you mentioned. There are threads that offer money making methods, but that doesn't mean that there is a flood of them nor that they are necessarily illegal/blackhat.

There is illegal activity around the forum, and I don't believe that we are making a very active push against it. The forum is, however, banning illegal sales in Digital Goods, and most people who are involved in those illegal schemes are tagged with a negative trust by a member who has, by default, trust ratings visibly shown.

[Reid]

I dont think you should worry about the signature campaigns. The managers are really getting strict about this.
It is now about the members here. Will they join a campaign that is not handled by a good manager just so they could create money by spamming without control.

I will agree with you with the other things that should be cleaned up.
I have one that I experienced with sign up and account hacking. I dont think the moderators can do much about this by checking every threads that will be made specially here in services.
Examining each will really be a hard task.

[LoyceV]

There are a lot more obvious scams, like ponzi schemes operating here. Scams are not moderated and it is up to people to be careful.

As long as people want to believe scams, scams will exist. Example: cloud mining! The last big "mining" ponzi I've seen took off with thousands of Bitcoins. New ones instantly popped up, and people jump in again.
Sure, some people actually profit from these scams, and these people have a huge interest in getting more people to join, but in the end "investors" lose everything they have in there. You can warn them, but if people choose greed over warnings, it's up to them.

[AndrewBuck]

That is what I think is the problem though, the idea that because scams happen and people fall for them then we should just let them post here and search for new rubes.  And furthermore that there is not even a sticky post with rules like "Straight up ponzi schemes are not allowed".  There are rules that could be enforced that would cut out a lot of the more obvious kind of nonsense.  Rules like "posts asking people to make fraudulent statements like signing up accounts under a false name will be banned".  It is a simple rule and easy enough to enforce.  It doesn't necessarily take just the moderators to enforce this, rather the whole community should be in favor of stamping out this kind of stuff.  We are all here because we support bitcoin, why are we letting its reputation be tarnished by this kind of crap.

-AndrewBuck

[agustina2]

I would like to put out a call to others to see if there is interest in cleaning up this subforum.  There is a lot of scammy, and potentially illegal, services being offered here and very little response from the moderators or the community to call this out.  I am really surprised there are not rules about what kinds of things can be posted and that stuff that is obvious scams continue to be offered with no reprisal.

Partly I am just ranting and venting my frustration, but it saddens me to see how this forum has devolved over time.  Years ago, this was a place for people to find honest work and be paid in bitcoins.  Can we maybe have a bit more of that and less of the "best new signature campaign - earn $$$$" kind of nonsense?

-AndrewBuck

That is what I think is the problem though, the idea that because scams happen and people fall for them then we should just let them post here and search for new rubes.  And furthermore that there is not even a sticky post with rules like "Straight up ponzi schemes are not allowed".  There are rules that could be enforced that would cut out a lot of the more obvious kind of nonsense.  Rules like "posts asking people to make fraudulent statements like signing up accounts under a false name will be banned".  It is a simple rule and easy enough to enforce.  It doesn't necessarily take just the moderators to enforce this, rather the whole community should be in favor of stamping out this kind of stuff.  We are all here because we support bitcoin, why are we letting its reputation be tarnished by this kind of crap.

-AndrewBuck

Above all of this, may I ask you a question, are you new to this forum thing? Scams are everywhere and the concern here is the people's view about that scam thing.

Some of a newbie knows what is an obvious scam others just want to have some instant and quick profits. You can see that it's really depend on how a person will look into a certain program.

People involved in an online forum must adjust rather than the forum itself will adjust for them. Moderators and staff can minimized those risk but they can't fully control it 100% so we have to accept the fact that scam thing are really associated especially in online world.

[seven.71]

I think the same is also what you think Andrew, her special on ANN tread lot of ICO project scam
plus the participant Signature Campaign which has rules in post, which makes the participants to be more active in posts in this forum post when the quality is not constructive, all they do is post to reach the target post in the signature campaign

[kidoseagle0312]

I would like to put out a call to others to see if there is interest in cleaning up this subforum.  There is a lot of scammy, and potentially illegal, services being offered here and very little response from the moderators or the community to call this out.  I am really surprised there are not rules about what kinds of things can be posted and that stuff that is obvious scams continue to be offered with no reprisal.

Partly I am just ranting and venting my frustration, but it saddens me to see how this forum has devolved over time.  Years ago, this was a place for people to find honest work and be paid in bitcoins.  Can we maybe have a bit more of that and less of the "best new signature campaign - earn $$$$" kind of nonsense?

-AndrewBuck

I do agreed that many of the forum now in this industry has being used by the obvious scammers/ spammers, and its really frustrating that many scam coins has been rise up in crypto world. But for the past few months many rules and policies that has been changed especially in different signature campaign more campaign managers also became more careful on choosing their participants in the campaign that they are going to handle it during the whole event project. But still in the last there are few left campaign that are legitimately operating it up to now.

[SFR10]

There is a lot of scammy, and potentially illegal, services being offered here and very little response from the moderators or the community to call this out.  I am really surprised there are not rules about what kinds of things can be posted and that stuff that is obvious scams continue to be offered with no reprisal.

Although scams aren't moderated by forum moderators and admins, the community (DT1 and DT2 members) do everything they could in order to notify others by leaving appropriate ratings.
This is where the rules are stated: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0

I am not saying the sig campaigns are scams themselves, but it is hard to find more than a handful of posts here that are not "make money doing nothing" kinds of things.  The fact that we have hundreds of those going on leads to just a flood of posts that have almost no value to the forum, just so people can up their post count on their campaign.

Since on your 1st post, you mentioned "this subforum" then Services sections would always contain such threads and posts. For quality posts and discussions, you should look at other boards although I agree with the fact that the quality has been lower than what it used to be in the earlier years.

It used to be a place for people offering actual services - programming, web development, consulting, legal services.  Now that is gone almost entirely and what little there is gets buried in a flood of "get rich quick" schemes. 

It's still the same place but as you said, it gets buried quite soon (few hours on page 1, then those threads go down to page 2 and so on). Services section should have it's on different sections (it's very disorganized).

so they can spray their fake viagra posts all over the internet?

(like viagra posts and whatnot that I am sure they are flooded with)

I think you're mixing posts made by bots to those made by humans.

That is what I think is the problem though, the idea that because scams happen and people fall for them then we should just let them post here and search for new rubes.  And furthermore that there is not even a sticky post with rules like "Straight up ponzi schemes are not allowed".

There used to be a warning on top of "Investor-based games section" about warning everyone in general but I can't see it anymore. Regardless of it, people should do their own work into identifying things and learn to not get involved (although were talking about people and in general majority always fall for such things).

[olushakes]

I would like to put out a call to others to see if there is interest in cleaning up this subforum.  There is a lot of scammy, and potentially illegal, services being offered here and very little response from the moderators or the community to call this out.  I am really surprised there are not rules about what kinds of things can be posted and that stuff that is obvious scams continue to be offered with no reprisal.

Partly I am just ranting and venting my frustration, but it saddens me to see how this forum has devolved over time.  Years ago, this was a place for people to find honest work and be paid in bitcoins.  Can we maybe have a bit more of that and less of the "best new signature campaign - earn $$$$" kind of nonsense?

-AndrewBuck

I agree with you and I understand how frustrated especially if you had been involved in the forum in earlier years. Although, I joined not too long ago but I have equally seen alot of efforts being done here by the moderators and even managers trying to sanitise the forum as much as possible. But the issue is in as much as  they are trying to sanitise the forum, I believe alot of the blame is on individuals trying to damage the reputation of the forum. And for those who have been scammed, I believe there are lots of warnings by the moderators to guide against this but greediness I guess overshadowed alot of people sense of thinking.

[royalfestus]

maybe Andrew should give a suggestion on how to reduce scam, it might help. One thing am sure of is that scam cant be eradicated it can only be reduced

[AndrewBuck]

The way you reduce scams is to delete the threads that are scams.  This thread right here... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1798996.0 is a scam.  It outlines a nonsense business proposition, it was called out by the very first poster in the thread, it was created by a user with no posts, it is a scam; and yet there it is, visible in this forum, just waiting for someone to be suckered by it.  Now I am citing that thread as a particular example, but it is far from the only one.  When you leave scam threads available and just cover your eyes and say "it is up to the people reading not to get scammed", no... that is not enough.  If you know people are using your platform to scam people and you don't try to stop it, then other scammers come in and you ruin the platform.

The current policy seems to be, "well, we will just let people comment in the thread saying it is a scam to warn people".  The problem with that is every post doing that just brings the scammer back to the top of the forum and puts them right in front of more gullible people who ignore the warnings in the thread and get scammed.

-AndrewBuck

Edit:  Here is another example:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1670537.0   This is clearly someone who is running some kind of scam.  Now the scam is not that they are not paying the people, they probably are paying the 15 cents per person that signs up... this is not the scam.  The scam is that they are filling some fake site with fake profiles somewhere so they can scam other people somehow.  Not sure what they are doing exactly, but its pretty hard to imagine an altruistic reason to populate a site with fake profiles.  And here is the thing: this forum is complicit in that.  Whatever money they steal from subscribers to that site, or from investors who think the site is popular, or whatever they are doing, this forum played its part in helping them do that.  Why do you want to be a part of that?  Why do you want to enable that?