Ideas for improving post quality?

[Wendigo]

Terminate all signatures altogether and the problem will go away instantaneously. Keep the banner ads. No incentivizing to post means there will be much less fluff and more on point and concise conversations. As it stands now, it's all artificially inflated chit-chat with zero value.

[1713997218]

1713997218

[1713997218]

1713997218

[hilariousandco]

Theymos has said multiple times including the op of this thread that getting rid of signatures altogether is not likely to happen:

What are everyone's ideas for improving post quality?

I have mostly ruled out:

- Removing signatures or sig ads globally.
 - Requiring payment to wear sig ads.
 - Banning account sales.

[se150401317]

Okay here are a couple of ideas that I could think of:

1. Start banning users that post 5+ posts a day that can be termed as spam.

2. Require unique phone number authentication for every user.

[cellard]

Terminate all signatures altogether and the problem will go away instantaneously. Keep the banner ads. No incentivizing to post means there will be much less fluff and more on point and concise conversations. As it stands now, it's all artificially inflated chit-chat with zero value.

You already said that and I already applied some logic as to why that is a mistake, I would like a counterargument to my thesis instead of simply repeating yourself:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2605767.msg26559219#msg26559219

Like I said, apply game theory. SEO is SEO, and we don't want Roger Ver ranking bitcoin dot com's forum as the first bitcoin forum that shows up when you google "bitcoin forum". Bitcoin is only going to keep getting more popular, once the (real) mainstream arrives, you want this forum on top, not his.

Add sections to the forum where signature campaigns are not allowed for high level discussion and leave the rest as it is, ban obvious 100-post-a-day 3rd worlders: forum becomes tolerable and everyone is happy. Maybe add a newbie jail again too.

What needs the most priority right now is account recovery. We can't have 2 guys taking care of that only, leaving people waiting for ages to get their accounts back. The meta section is filled with people posting address signatures and waiting to be recovered. I wouldn't like to be on their shoes seeing how unreliable the system is.

Okay here are a couple of ideas that I could think of:

1. Start banning users that post 5+ posts a day that can be termed as spam.

2. Require unique phone number authentication for every user.

1. You could post 20 times and still wouldn't be spam if it isn't spam. If you are having a conversation replying back and forth with someone on a thread the count can easily go up for example. I post in other forums where I make 0 money and this is the case (I post way more there than here). Please don't ruin the forum for everyone else.

2. Nonsense. Bitcoin is supposed to be anon friendly, this forum should remain anon friendly as well.

[family934]

There will be a few two factor alternatives on the new gathering so I get why he hasn't tried coding them for this one, yet in the event that the new discussion is still 1+ years away I figure it would be advantageous executing asap. Requiring email check would be another progression in restricting or backing off record cultivating as it's simply one more band to bounce through.Should be Checked the interset rate of every members.

[Wendigo]

People who are genuinely interested in Bitcoin have visited this forum, educated themselves and left already. It's not so hard to figure out what Bitcoin is and where you can buy some. You can do that in 30 minutes tops. People who are posting here on a daily basis like myself, yourself and mods and admins and everyone else is doing this for money. We know what Bitcoin is and what to do with it. Have you asked yourself why the heck are we still here? Because $$$ lol.
So if you want to curb the amount of new people looking for $$$ like us you either have to remove the payment system or reduce the number of people looking for $$$. Which one seems easier to achieve between these 2?

[Mometaskers]

I like both of this ideas. I think they are a good start.

1. To attain ranks above Member, you'd have to earn some number of merit points. Merit points would be awarded in a monthly vote on best posts of the previous month, with various measures (TBD) to prevent gaming of the vote. Winning merit points might also come with a BTC prize.

How do you plan to conduct the voting? Forum members ranked "Member" probably number in the thousand now. Are you planning to add an Upvote feature for posts and use the results to determine who ranks up? That might be prone to Like farming like what is happening in Youtube and FB.

As for the BTC prize, I'd rather not have money involved here.

2. Create or designate some sections as "serious discussion" sections, with no signatures. In those sections or maybe in different ones, also have poster restrictions such as Member rank or above only. And/or allow topic-creators to set these restrictions on their topics, similar to selfmod topics.

I'd go along with the topic-creators modding their own threads.

Okay here are a couple of ideas that I could think of:

1. Start banning users that post 5+ posts a day that can be termed as spam.

2. Require unique phone number authentication for every user.

Hmm, with #1 there must be a criteria on what would constitute a spam post and people should be able to vote on it and then the mods can review the ban request first. I mean, I've seen users who have beef with each that start having arguments whenever they meet in a thread so it's not unlikely they'll keep downvoting each other.

#2 might make some uncomfortable but I'm personally fine with it. There are exchanges that require it anyway. I also like that it might protect users against hacking if the authentication is required every log-in.

[hilariousandco]

There will be a few two factor alternatives on the new gathering so I get why he hasn't tried coding them for this one, yet in the event that the new discussion is still 1+ years away I figure it would be advantageous executing asap. Requiring email check would be another progression in restricting or backing off record cultivating as it's simply one more band to bounce through.Should be Checked the interset rate of every members.

Anyone notice anything wrong with this post?

Why there is no 2FA on the login? If you have sms authentication and long process for changing your initially registered mobile number it will be difficult for people to register 100 account and reduce the account selling.

There will be several two factor options on the new forum so I get why he hasn't bothered coding them for this one, but if the new forum is still 1+ years away I think it would be worthwhile implementing asap. Requiring email verification would be another step in limiting or slowing down account farming as it's just another hoop to jump through.

theymos, this is a perfect example of the beast you have created by linking signatures with activity. Remove signatures from activity and this nonsense stops immediately. How can we compete against bots doing this? Currently anyone can create an unlimited amount of accounts and when users are using bots like he is to just copy a post and change a few words for synonyms it's often very hard to notice. I've just banned this account but how many others does he have doing the same? It's utterly pointless banning accounts if he's got 200 others that I've missed that will still be botting away. Things need to change. Do me favour and look into this user and just tell me how many alt accounts you can find. There are dozens upon dozens of individuals farming thousands of accounts this way and it's only going to get worse over time. The worst thing about this is once they hit a sufficient rank they can get paid by lazy ICO campaigns for merely copy and pasting and they'll never notice the abuse.

What needs the most priority right now is account recovery. We can't have 2 guys taking care of that only, leaving people waiting for ages to get their accounts back. The meta section is filled with people posting address signatures and waiting to be recovered. I wouldn't like to be on their shoes seeing how unreliable the system is.

I've told him numerous times workload needs to be distributed between staff and that we also need another admin for this as there's far too many people who have been waiting months to get their accounts back even with verifiable info posted. There's also dozens of other things that need looking into that never get sorted as well. If he doesn't trust anyone else to do it for whatever reason he should consider paying himself a reasonable wage and do administration duties himself full-time as it's badly needed and the forum's problems grow worse every day.

[subSTRATA]

theymos, this is a perfect example of the beast you have created by linking signatures with activity. Remove signatures from activity and this nonsense stops immediately. How can we compete against bots doing this? Currently anyone can create an unlimited amount of accounts and when users are using bots like he is to just copy a post and change a few words for synonyms it's often very hard to notice. I've just banned this account but how many others does he have doing the same? It's utterly pointless banning accounts if he's got 200 others that I've missed that will still be botting away. Things need to change. Do me favour and look into this user and just tell me how many alt accounts you can find. There are dozens upon dozens of individuals farming thousands of accounts this way and it's only going to get worse over time. The worst thing about this is once they hit a sufficient rank they can get paid by lazy ICO campaigns for merely copy and pasting and they'll never notice the abuse.

if theymos could implement a script for determining something along the lines of 'merit points' asscoated with general post quality, i wouldn't be against the idea of signatures being linked to those points instead, it would provide an initial incentive for good post quality from the start an account is created, and provide a long term incentive for maintaining a good post quality. if theymos can also implement other factors in, suchas deleted posts for not following forum rules, it'll also push members towards following the general forum rules. maybe even diminishing returns on merit points (or whatever they're to be called) can be used for people with alt accounts, or accounts on the same ip.  just some rambling thoughts.

[TheBeardedBaby]

theymos, this is a perfect example of the beast you have created by linking signatures with activity. Remove signatures from activity and this nonsense stops immediately. How can we compete against bots doing this? Currently anyone can create an unlimited amount of accounts and when users are using bots like he is to just copy a post and change a few words for synonyms it's often very hard to notice. I've just banned this account but how many others does he have doing the same? It's utterly pointless banning accounts if he's got 200 others that I've missed that will still be botting away. Things need to change. Do me favour and look into this user and just tell me how many alt accounts you can find. There are dozens upon dozens of individuals farming thousands of accounts this way and it's only going to get worse over time. The worst thing about this is once they hit a sufficient rank they can get paid by lazy ICO campaigns for merely copy and pasting and they'll never notice the abuse.

if theymos could implement a script for determining something along the lines of 'merit points' asscoated with general post quality, i wouldn't be against the idea of signatures being linked to those points instead, it would provide an initial incentive for good post quality from the start an account is created, and provide a long term incentive for maintaining a good post quality. if theymos can also implement other factors in, suchas deleted posts for not following forum rules, it'll also push members towards following the general forum rules. maybe even diminishing returns on merit points (or whatever they're to be called) can be used for people with alt accounts, or accounts on the same ip.  just some rambling thoughts.

Or just simply make a subscription fee for all the users or just for participation in spesific forum sections like the bounty and signature once. So in order to participate in a bounty or signature campaign the user have to pay some fee to the forum and those money can be ivested in moderators. The high rank members can have lower fees, higher for newbies. It's just an idea. The forum is a grate place for me and I am willing to pay what it takes to make it even better.

[Crypto Chips]

for theymos,
I think to prevent multiple acounts should be given mandatory rules to create a signature campaign, such as making a report per day their post link, with it multiple accounts will trouble to use the cheating way, because it reports every post they post is very confusing and make tired

[Cobalt9317]

for theymos,
I think to prevent multiple acounts should be given mandatory rules to create a signature campaign, such as making a report per day their post link, with it multiple accounts will trouble to use the cheating way, because it reports every post they post is very confusing and make tired

I can't imagine how a one person can control a 200 account in a day or two.

But this brilliant idea can make an account farmer lost his/her head.

[coolcoinz]

Or just simply make a subscription fee for all the users or just for participation in spesific forum sections like the bounty and signature once. So in order to participate in a bounty or signature campaign the user have to pay some fee to the forum and those money can be ivested in moderators. The high rank members can have lower fees, higher for newbies. It's just an idea. The forum is a grate place for me and I am willing to pay what it takes to make it even better.

If you believe a fee would discourage spammers you're wrong. It would only impact the economy as paid posting would become a little less profitable. Instead of 0.1BTC per month a spammer would be getting that - the fee, e.g. 0.08BTC. Still worth it! It would also discourage new users because not everyone is able to pay a fee from the start, while the long time spammers (who just have to be rich by now) would keep doing it anyway. 

[Quickseller]

Anyone notice anything wrong with this post?

This is fairly concerning. I would agree that post very well could have been made by a bot. However it will be very difficult to moderate (spot) those types of posts. I would be willing to say you probably would not have spotted this if you had not written, or at the very least interacted with, that post. That person may or may not have a large number of accounts, however at the very least, the likely plan may have been to eventually ramp up his operation to many accounts (he could have been testing his bot, AI, etc.,).

One solution to the spambot problem would be to require a captcha to post until you have made x post, have y activity, or some combination of the two. The units of evil system could be incorporated to influence the x and y values.

[Dinda mayasi]

I am agree.. for me, I think it will can decrease some people that make spamming and not good in make post or just want to get hight level only. As far as I joined thidls forum, I am not an ambisious or agressive people to fast get hight level by make bad post. I am agree to apply that rules. Welcome Sir..and welcome.

[hilariousetc]

theymos, this is a perfect example of the beast you have created by linking signatures with activity. Remove signatures from activity and this nonsense stops immediately. How can we compete against bots doing this? Currently anyone can create an unlimited amount of accounts and when users are using bots like he is to just copy a post and change a few words for synonyms it's often very hard to notice. I've just banned this account but how many others does he have doing the same? It's utterly pointless banning accounts if he's got 200 others that I've missed that will still be botting away. Things need to change. Do me favour and look into this user and just tell me how many alt accounts you can find. There are dozens upon dozens of individuals farming thousands of accounts this way and it's only going to get worse over time. The worst thing about this is once they hit a sufficient rank they can get paid by lazy ICO campaigns for merely copy and pasting and they'll never notice the abuse.

if theymos could implement a script for determining something along the lines of 'merit points' asscoated with general post quality, i wouldn't be against the idea of signatures being linked to those points instead, it would provide an initial incentive for good post quality from the start an account is created, and provide a long term incentive for maintaining a good post quality. if theymos can also implement other factors in, suchas deleted posts for not following forum rules, it'll also push members towards following the general forum rules. maybe even diminishing returns on merit points (or whatever they're to be called) can be used for people with alt accounts, or accounts on the same ip.  just some rambling thoughts.

How would this work though? Wouldn't that just be gamed? People could still just copy and paste 'quality' posts in order to get merit points, right? I think it would just cause more headaches than problems it solves to be honest.

for theymos,
I think to prevent multiple acounts should be given mandatory rules to create a signature campaign, such as making a report per day their post link, with it multiple accounts will trouble to use the cheating way, because it reports every post they post is very confusing and make tired

I can't imagine how a one person can control a 200 account in a day or two.

But this brilliant idea can make an account farmer lost his/her head.

It can easily be done with bots if all they do is copy a post from earlier on in a megathread. There are numerous individuals that have been caught with hundreds of accounts and many more that I suspect are doing it that have been reported but not looked into by an admin going on all year (some use bots and others just post of copy and paste manually). One Russian guy had a little over 200 accounts and all they did was rehash their previous posts reworded slightly post after post account after account. The entire Vietnamese sub board thread had to be locked because 99% of the accounts posting in there were just copy and pasting random text from online and of course to anyone not speaking Vietnamese nobody was any wiser....until I noticed it of course. The worst thing is Sylon (the worst campaign manager on these forums despite what his avatar claims) was paying them all to do it and continues to pay spambot accounts because he never checks anyone's post quality at all.

Anyone notice anything wrong with this post?

This is fairly concerning. I would agree that post very well could have been made by a bot. However it will be very difficult to moderate (spot) those types of posts. I would be willing to say you probably would not have spotted this if you had not written, or at the very least interacted with, that post. That person may or may not have a large number of accounts, however at the very least, the likely plan may have been to eventually ramp up his operation to many accounts (he could have been testing his bot, AI, etc.,).

It will have been made by a bot. That's why it doesn't make much sense as he's just used a program to swap a few words for synonyms and that doesn't always work out right. I spot them often, but you're right, it's easier to spot when they've copied your own posts and many people only report their own that have been copied when they notice it. The sad thing is the copy and pasters often stand out like a sore thumb because they tend to copy a well thought out or 'long' post and these stand out a mile over all the one/two line shitposters that have become pretty standard.

One solution to the spambot problem would be to require a captcha to post until you have made x post, have y activity, or some combination of the two. The units of evil system could be incorporated to influence the x and y values.

This is something I've considered and I think it could be worthwhile trying - as annoying as it will be to new users - but I think captchas can also easily be bypassed, but I think it should be considered for maybe all newbie accounts to enter before each post up until they hit maybe 14 activity or Junior status etc.

Or just simply make a subscription fee for all the users or just for participation in spesific forum sections like the bounty and signature once. So in order to participate in a bounty or signature campaign the user have to pay some fee to the forum and those money can be ivested in moderators. The high rank members can have lower fees, higher for newbies. It's just an idea. The forum is a grate place for me and I am willing to pay what it takes to make it even better.

If you read my other posts in this thread you will see that is exactly what I've suggested. I don't think making people pay $100 or so to get a signature will affect traffic very much if at all. People would just pay it because they know they can make it back in a week or so so it's a worthwhile investment. Even impoverished people could probably beg, borrow or steal that money to invest in an account here and it would be worth it.

Or just simply make a subscription fee for all the users or just for participation in spesific forum sections like the bounty and signature once. So in order to participate in a bounty or signature campaign the user have to pay some fee to the forum and those money can be ivested in moderators. The high rank members can have lower fees, higher for newbies. It's just an idea. The forum is a grate place for me and I am willing to pay what it takes to make it even better.

If you believe a fee would discourage spammers you're wrong. It would only impact the economy as paid posting would become a little less profitable. Instead of 0.1BTC per month a spammer would be getting that - the fee, e.g. 0.08BTC. Still worth it! It would also discourage new users because not everyone is able to pay a fee from the start, while the long time spammers (who just have to be rich by now) would keep doing it anyway. 

I think you're wrong and are probably just basing it off the fact that you don't want to have to pay anything to be able to earn here. Do you think a spammer is going to pay $100 to have a signature on each of his 100 accounts? Of course not, but if you can create 100 accounts for free then it will continue to be abused en mass and by people with hundreds of accounts. Charge to have a signature and this abuse will stop almost instantly or be drastically curbed by about 99%. We really can't continue to just let people have dozens to hundreds of accounts because it gets worse day by day and there's not enough manpower or hours in the day to deal with it now, nevermind months down the line as the problem grows exponentially.

[Here4Trades]

What are everyone's ideas for improving post quality?

-snip-

What do you think of these ideas, and what other ideas do people have?

What about adding voluntary managers to the huge threads with +500 replies, the volunteers  should be able to lock certain threads, move others to trashcan leaving link to existing one, scalate certain accounts to be taken  over a review from the Staff.
I'm sure there are  old and trustwhorty members willing to help in their free time, I have no idea if Staff members get paid or work as volunteers but in any way whatsoever, if you need them to be more active you could give or add some extra BTC as reward.
This may look as simple but isn't at all, at least til staff and volunteers get used to it, this addition : coding some bots to  checking for spams, making private messages to these volunteers to review accounts and decide if scalte or not.

EDIT  : About given ideas I don't like any at all, but I have  simpathy on the idea of charging ICO's but to add other features like  create certain rules to avoid spammers and abusers upon they'r signup, likely creating a new subform only for ICO's, anyway  is simply a suggestion based in my time around.

[subSTRATA]

theymos, this is a perfect example of the beast you have created by linking signatures with activity. Remove signatures from activity and this nonsense stops immediately. How can we compete against bots doing this? Currently anyone can create an unlimited amount of accounts and when users are using bots like he is to just copy a post and change a few words for synonyms it's often very hard to notice. I've just banned this account but how many others does he have doing the same? It's utterly pointless banning accounts if he's got 200 others that I've missed that will still be botting away. Things need to change. Do me favour and look into this user and just tell me how many alt accounts you can find. There are dozens upon dozens of individuals farming thousands of accounts this way and it's only going to get worse over time. The worst thing about this is once they hit a sufficient rank they can get paid by lazy ICO campaigns for merely copy and pasting and they'll never notice the abuse.

if theymos could implement a script for determining something along the lines of 'merit points' asscoated with general post quality, i wouldn't be against the idea of signatures being linked to those points instead, it would provide an initial incentive for good post quality from the start an account is created, and provide a long term incentive for maintaining a good post quality. if theymos can also implement other factors in, suchas deleted posts for not following forum rules, it'll also push members towards following the general forum rules. maybe even diminishing returns on merit points (or whatever they're to be called) can be used for people with alt accounts, or accounts on the same ip.  just some rambling thoughts.

Or just simply make a subscription fee for all the users or just for participation in spesific forum sections like the bounty and signature once. So in order to participate in a bounty or signature campaign the user have to pay some fee to the forum and those money can be ivested in moderators. The high rank members can have lower fees, higher for newbies. It's just an idea. The forum is a grate place for me and I am willing to pay what it takes to make it even better.

fee or not, as long as the spammers can still net a profit from shitposting with their 100 accounts every day, they'll continue to do so. there wouldn't be any incentive here to make better posts, since they'd pay a fee anyways. they'd make a bit less, sure, but that's not what the goal is here.

theymos, this is a perfect example of the beast you have created by linking signatures with activity. Remove signatures from activity and this nonsense stops immediately. How can we compete against bots doing this? Currently anyone can create an unlimited amount of accounts and when users are using bots like he is to just copy a post and change a few words for synonyms it's often very hard to notice. I've just banned this account but how many others does he have doing the same? It's utterly pointless banning accounts if he's got 200 others that I've missed that will still be botting away. Things need to change. Do me favour and look into this user and just tell me how many alt accounts you can find. There are dozens upon dozens of individuals farming thousands of accounts this way and it's only going to get worse over time. The worst thing about this is once they hit a sufficient rank they can get paid by lazy ICO campaigns for merely copy and pasting and they'll never notice the abuse.

if theymos could implement a script for determining something along the lines of 'merit points' asscoated with general post quality, i wouldn't be against the idea of signatures being linked to those points instead, it would provide an initial incentive for good post quality from the start an account is created, and provide a long term incentive for maintaining a good post quality. if theymos can also implement other factors in, suchas deleted posts for not following forum rules, it'll also push members towards following the general forum rules. maybe even diminishing returns on merit points (or whatever they're to be called) can be used for people with alt accounts, or accounts on the same ip.  just some rambling thoughts.

How would this work though? Wouldn't that just be gamed? People could still just copy and paste 'quality' posts in order to get merit points, right? I think it would just cause more headaches than problems it solves to be honest.

i realize that for this idea to actually work well in practice, there would have to be a lot of other additions, such as better quality control of users (which could just translate into more staff), which i could see as the biggest issue with this. it's not a great idea, but it's not the worst either. if the issue of users copy pasting posts could be handled in the first place, this idea might seem a bit more viable, but there isnt a sure way of combating that without a script in the site's server checking every submitted post for that (and this would consume way too much resources for it to be practical).

It can easily be done with bots if all they do is copy a post from earlier on in a megathread. There are numerous individuals that have been caught with hundreds of accounts and many more that I suspect are doing it that have been reported but not looked into by an admin going on all year (some use bots and others just post of copy and paste manually). One Russian guy had a little over 200 accounts and all they did was rehash their previous posts reworded slightly post after post account after account. The entire Vietnamese sub board thread had to be locked because 99% of the accounts posting in there were just copy and pasting random text from online and of course to anyone not speaking Vietnamese nobody was any wiser....until I noticed it of course. The worst thing is Sylon (the worst campaign manager on these forums despite what his avatar claims) was paying them all to do it and continues to pay spambot accounts because he never checks anyone's post quality at all.

i dont like this idea much personally, but maybe maintaining a staff - approved sig campaign manager list could be an effective measure. this would require both additional work from the staff (and probably occasional, regular monitoring of these approved users) and the staff essentially having a small link to the campaigns, which i suspect is something theymos does not want at all, but it would eliminate most spammers from even  being allowed into campaigns. i realize this isnt a great idea, or one that might even be considered, but im just throwing ideas out there.

more so than post quality, i think one of the major issues that need to be addressed first is the copy pasting; if solved, it could weed out a lot of the shitposters, and possibly make the issue of low post quality easier to solve. we really do need more mods tho.

[cellard]

I've told him numerous times workload needs to be distributed between staff and that we also need another admin for this as there's far too many people who have been waiting months to get their accounts back even with verifiable info posted. There's also dozens of other things that need looking into that never get sorted as well. If he doesn't trust anyone else to do it for whatever reason he should consider paying himself a reasonable wage and do administration duties himself full-time as it's badly needed and the forum's problems grow worse every day.

He should definitely hire extra people to take care of the account recovery demands. The queue of people wanting their account back is growing at exponential levels, two people can't take care of an huge community. By not delegating you end up creating a mess.

I don't see where the problem of trust is. The user that losses an account, signs a message from an address that belongs to the hacked or lost account in a post that's unedited or in a closed thread. This is all public for everyone to see, so there's no possibility of scam there, the person either controls the private key or doesn't. The person hired for the job would only need to verify the signature and then give access to the account to through the new requested email. The user recovers his account and stops cluttering the meta section, everyone is happy.

I would like to apply for that job myself. I run a safe node on a linux machine which I could use to verify all the signatures.

[coolcoinz]

If you believe a fee would discourage spammers you're wrong. It would only impact the economy as paid posting would become a little less profitable. Instead of 0.1BTC per month a spammer would be getting that - the fee, e.g. 0.08BTC. Still worth it! It would also discourage new users because not everyone is able to pay a fee from the start, while the long time spammers (who just have to be rich by now) would keep doing it anyway.  

I think you're wrong and are probably just basing it off the fact that you don't want to have to pay anything to be able to earn here. Do you think a spammer is going to pay $100 to have a signature on each of his 100 accounts? Of course not, but if you can create 100 accounts for free then it will continue to be abused en mass and by people with hundreds of accounts. Charge to have a signature and this abuse will stop almost instantly or be drastically curbed by about 99%. We really can't continue to just let people have dozens to hundreds of accounts because it gets worse day by day and there's not enough manpower or hours in the day to deal with it now, nevermind months down the line as the problem grows exponentially.

You're right about me not wanting to pay if $100 was on the line. My campaign is paying me about $300 a month. Giving $100 upfront to be able to potentially get $300 if I keep posting throughout the month, not get a ban, negative trust, and the campaign doesn't shut down, is not the most lucrative deal, although I'm sure some people would go for it.
Enough with me. I said what I said because there are campaigns that pay people over $1000 a month and I'm pretty sure your $100 rule isn't going to hurt those people.
Can you start to see the problem? Set the fee at $20 a month, you'll only discourage members from joining those low paid campaigns. Set it at $100, the campaigns will be forced to increase the rates because people won't be willing to join them.
If you make the fees low, you'll only reduce low ranked spam and increase the market price of high ranks. Make them too high and you'll make the campaigns hero/legendary exclusive and make those accounts worth more on the market.
Setting fees will make the market adapt like it always does. It will make it harder to earn anything if you're completely broke, starting your forum career, are a low ranked member, or a member of a low paying campaign. What about the spam that comes from the accounts that are being leveled up for sale? How high should the fee be to be just for everyone?