Ideas for improving post quality?

[jambola2]

Could work too, but removing their ability to wear a signature would be enough in my opinion because it removes the motivation to spam.

Also, they would have the opportunity to improve the quality of their posts and ask the tagger to remove the tag, or others to untag him.
If the user is banned then he can't improve because he just can't post.

Or maybe it could have 2 levels depending on the number of people tagging him, the first one would remove the ability to wear signatures and the second one would ban him.

Hmm I was thinking something along the lines of warning/temporary bans rather than immediate permanent action.
I guess my issue is that a good deal of users might try to build up post/activity count to join signature campaigns later, despite having their signature enabled.

Actually, since the people causing this issue usually just try maximizing metrics (post count/activity)... I wonder if freezing those could work too.

[ruthbabe]

Punishing lazy campaigns and their managers would go a long way or just blacklisting their signatures would help (which is what was meant to happen with the Signature Guidelines thread). It can't be acceptable for campaigns to do nothing about spam at all and if they started having their accounts banned and/or threads trashed they'd soon get the idea. I also don't think it would be a bad idea charging ICOs a fee to make their Announcements here or to run a signature campaign as it's these lazy crapcoin campaigns that are causing the most headaches and 99% of spam and staff workload and they should have to compensate for that. The forum loses revenue every time someone chooses to run a signature campaign over bidding on forum ad slots and the worst thing is staff have to clean up their mess for free whilst they rake in millions.

This is a nice idea. I would suggest it should be given top priority and be implemented as soon as possible. ICO projects are flooding the Altcoins section every week if not daily, and I think the great majority of these ICOs are scams, robbing investors and participants of their hard-earned money. I have doubt they're the same people that keep on coming back because they find it's so easy here to rake millions of dollars rather than robbing any establishments or banks which they find it costly and risky.

[dogbackwards]

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned but a character limit should be introduced in post counts. Character limiting can be annoying, yes.. but it's worthwhile in the end. It's relatively easier to pick out people that are just trying to increase their post counts when their characters are limited.

 I see a lot of posts from some members only posting with images, which is stupid.

Personally that is not a good post. This is a bulletin board, not an image board. I do not see problems with images when they're about the topic at hand, but images to reply as a bash or something is stupid.

Another suggestion is to restrict junior members even more by taking away that outbound link in their signatures. This forum is mostly being used as a means to make money with signature campaigns.

I have nothing against that, of course. But..I'm sure it would discourage some account creations solely made for sig farming... Keyword is some.

Character limiting and more restrictive signatures on lower members is worthwhile. I have nothing against lower levels.. we all start at the bottom but if we stick around we eventually rank up.

[Thirio]

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned but a character limit should be introduced in post counts. Character limiting can be annoying, yes.. but it's worthwhile in the end. It's relatively easier to pick out people that are just trying to increase their post counts when there characters are limited.

 I see a lot of posts from some members only posting with images, which is stupid.

Character limiting is a good idea, pros would be: it'll force people to post until a specific character quota is achieved. This will also include those posts who only contain links, without any description or such. But the cons would be, for high members who posts a lengthy one, including the mods and campaign managers, this would greatly affect their work, assuming that it'll be like twitter and not the "minimum of x numbers of character to post" or "post is too short".

Another suggestion is to restrict junior members even more by taking away that outbound link in their signatures. This forum is mostly being used as a means to make money with signature campaigns.

Correct me if I am wrong but I think links on junior members are already gone.

[dogbackwards]

Correct me if I am wrong but I think links on junior members are already gone.

I see they have a form of linking. Not as sophisticated as say a full members, but check out this thread for reference... a lot of jrs posting.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3006322.0

Hell block signatures till people have a total post count of 150 or even 250. Thats incentive enough they're here for the forums! I'm just throwing out ideas.

[hilariousetc]

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned but a character limit should be introduced in post counts. Character limiting can be annoying, yes.. but it's worthwhile in the end. It's relatively easier to pick out people that are just trying to increase their post counts when there characters are limited.

 I see a lot of posts from some members only posting with images, which is stupid.

Character limiting is a good idea, pros would be: it'll force people to post until a specific character quota is achieved. This will also include those posts who only contain links, without any description or such. But the cons would be, for high members who posts a lengthy one, including the mods and campaign managers, this would greatly affect their work, assuming that it'll be like twitter and not the "minimum of x numbers of character to post" or "post is too short".

It really isn't and has been proposed by people numerous times but also shot down as a viable suggestion. Character count doesn't help to quantify a constructive post as people will just cheat the system by waffling on for however many characters their post requires to count or even just add hidden junk to their posts and this is what already happened with signature campaigns that requested posts be over x amount of characters. Users just added invisible characters to the end of their post in order to game the bot that checked. The next best thing to do to cut down on spam is to punish the campaigns and lazy signature campaign managers that do nothing as it's them that are the problem in the first place. If we would have done this already we probably wouldn't have needed to implement the merit system. 

[Alex_Sr]

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.

A couple of ideas that have been floating around in my head:

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.

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.

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

1. Remove all signatures except Hiro and Legends, give out ban to all spammers. And the forum will be cleaner IMHO - leave all the fans a quick profit.
2. And in the sections with all ICO and Bounty publications to make a paid

[Jet Cash]

Hell block signatures till people have a total post count of 150 or even 250. Thats incentive enough they're here for the forums! I'm just throwing out ideas.

A simple post count check doesn't work. It just encourages active spamming to up the count. This is the advantage of the activity ranking. only one post per day counts towards your upgrade - well that's a bit over-simplified of course.

Not allowing, or restricting signatures until a responsible rank is achieved would avoid that problem.

[hilariousetc]

1. Remove all signatures except Hiro and Legends, give out ban to all spammers. And the forum will be cleaner IMHO - leave all the fans a quick profit.
2. And in the sections with all ICO and Bounty publications to make a paid

If you did this then all you would do is encourage account farming and the value of Hero accounts and above would go through the roof. As I've suggested in this thread I still think we should offer paid memberships that give you the signature privileges of certain ranks. Something like Silver Member gets you everything a Full Member has and Gold everything a Hero does. If we offered these memberships then it would pretty much kill account farming and sales because nobody would bother when they can just buy the rank they really want from the forum instead.

[alrez]

I like your idea, which I want to underline is the point of holding a tire for account sales. I think this activity which selling and buy an btt acount make this forum be a bad quality.

I think we have to stop selling and buying an btt account.

[hilariousetc]

I like your idea, which I want to underline is the point of holding a tire for account sales. I think this activity which selling and buy an btt acount make this forum be a bad quality.

I think we have to stop selling and buying an btt account.

I wouldn't be against prohibiting users from selling their accounts here as the majority of people doing so are either straight up scammers or shitposting spammers, but giving people the option of being able to purchase the signatures from us with membership would essentially all but kill the market for them instead. Sales could also be banned as well to pretty much put the nail in the coffin of account sales here.

[krishnaverma]

I wouldn't be against prohibiting users from selling their accounts here as the majority of people doing so are either straight up scammers or shitposting spammers, but giving people the option of being able to purchase the signatures from us with membership would essentially all but kill the market for them instead. Sales could also be banned as well to pretty much put the nail in the coffin of account sales here.

I really could not understand how will this be banned ? I means one can take actions on members using this forum to such sale or purchase. But what about the members selling outside the forum. How will they be caught ? For instance, suppose a seller has made a website for selling accounts and gives account details after payment. How will th admin catch such members ? It is not possible to ban this.

[Jet Cash]

If the IP country and the email address changes, and the posting quality drops, then the chances are that the account has been sold.

[hilariousandco]

I wouldn't be against prohibiting users from selling their accounts here as the majority of people doing so are either straight up scammers or shitposting spammers, but giving people the option of being able to purchase the signatures from us with membership would essentially all but kill the market for them instead. Sales could also be banned as well to pretty much put the nail in the coffin of account sales here.

I really could not understand how will this be banned ? I means one can take actions on members using this forum to such sale or purchase. But what about the members selling outside the forum. How will they be caught ? For instance, suppose a seller has made a website for selling accounts and gives account details after payment. How will th admin catch such members ? It is not possible to ban this.

It's easy to ban their sale here but obviously we cannot do anything about their sales elsewhere but that's irrelevant just like we can't stop the sales of drugs off site but we can here. Most people won't be aware of such sites selling accounts either and most will be scams anyway like they currently are. Besides,and as I already mentioned, if people can purchase bigger signatures with donator ranks the accounts market will be all but dead anyway.

[Alex_Sr]

I wouldn't be against prohibiting users from selling their accounts here as the majority of people doing so are either straight up scammers or shitposting spammers, but giving people the option of being able to purchase the signatures from us with membership would essentially all but kill the market for them instead. Sales could also be banned as well to pretty much put the nail in the coffin of account sales here.

I really could not understand how will this be banned ? I means one can take actions on members using this forum to such sale or purchase. But what about the members selling outside the forum. How will they be caught ? For instance, suppose a seller has made a website for selling accounts and gives account details after payment. How will th admin catch such members ? It is not possible to ban this.

It's easy to ban their sale here but obviously we cannot do anything about their sales elsewhere but that's irrelevant just like we can't stop the sales of drugs off site but we can here. Most people won't be aware of such sites selling accounts either and most will be scams anyway like they currently are. Besides,and as I already mentioned, if people can purchase bigger signatures with donator ranks the accounts market will be all but dead anyway.

You should start with a ban on the sale of accounts on this forum.
Ban at change of IP to make it is problematic-there are those who moves or travels and they will appear in a risk zone.

As a measure of shit posting is possible to introduce a system of black marks and bans. When I was a admin of a local forum - we have done so.
1 shitpost - ban for a week and 1 black mark in the profile
2 shitpost - ban for a month and 2 black marks in the profile
3 shitpost - ban for a year and 3 black marks in the profile.
Amply and understandable.

The merit points system shows what post need in this forum, and the system of black marks will show some post are not needed

P.S. Sorry for my English ))

[mdayonliner]

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.

A couple of ideas that have been floating around in my head:

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.

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.

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

Creating the "serious discussion" section can be good idea before removing signature globally. If it can be done without this poster restrictions then that would be better (everyone should have equal right).

Before removing the signature or sig ads globally we need to have a practical idea of the possible output we could expect on the entire forum from it. - No doubt signature and ranking up are connected with each others and people want to rank up because they will get better payment from the signatures campaigns. Removing sig ads may drop the traffic of the site dramatically. Provably you will see only those people who will constantly post or participate on the "serious section" only.

By the way, I see merit as a success to improve post quality. It's doing a great job. The only problem we are seeing is - people are misusing it. If we can figure out how to stop misusing merit then we won't need any other fix to improve post quality (If that is the only concern for the time being).

I wounder if you were able find any use from these suggestions.

[hilariousandco]

Creating the "serious discussion" section can be good idea before removing signature globally. If it can be done without this poster restrictions then that would be better (everyone should have equal right).

This has already been created: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=250.0

[solovev]

If the IP country and the email address changes, and the posting quality drops, then the chances are that the account has been sold.

You gave a really nice suggestion but you know the spammers are quite smart these days. Here are some possible issues with this solution:

1) Regarding IP country change, there are tools to manipulate this. One can use proxy or VPN to show the IP of the country from where account was created. This is  a common practice for accessing purchased accounts of all kinds like Facebook accounts.

2) Regarding post number decreasing, this is a good way to find such accounts. But we will also have to consider the fact that some of the users might not be able be post from their account due to sudden busy schedule.

[romanovst]

You should start with a ban on the sale of accounts on this forum.
Ban at change of IP to make it is problematic-there are those who moves or travels and they will appear in a risk zone.

As a measure of shit posting is possible to introduce a system of black marks and bans. When I was a admin of a local forum - we have done so.
1 shitpost - ban for a week and 1 black mark in the profile
2 shitpost - ban for a month and 2 black marks in the profile
3 shitpost - ban for a year and 3 black marks in the profile.
Amply and understandable.

I am not in favor of making too much restrictions on the members. When you start punishing users with 1 week ban for 1 shitpost, they will simple leave the forum unless they have some important purpose to be here. On the other hand something like merit system is more on the side of rewards. This means that members not able to get merits here can still post here and use other functions like PM. They will thus keep using the forum and we do not want them to go away or join alternative forums. Regarding that IP ban, that is not practical because of the reason you mentioned.

[Blue Tyrant]

If the IP country and the email address changes, and the posting quality drops, then the chances are that the account has been sold.

You gave a really nice suggestion but you know the spammers are quite smart these days. Here are some possible issues with this solution:

1) Regarding IP country change, there are tools to manipulate this. One can use proxy or VPN to show the IP of the country from where account was created. This is  a common practice for accessing purchased accounts of all kinds like Facebook accounts.

2) Regarding post number decreasing, this is a good way to find such accounts. But we will also have to consider the fact that some of the users might not be able be post from their account due to sudden busy schedule.

Disabling account features due to an IP change or due to a lack of activity would be pretty harsh on users. About the IP based restrictions, people who either using VPNs, Proxies or Tor (I personally use Tor and Cloudflare and Google's reCaptcha already make logging into the forum hell, heck I had to pay to be able to post here thanks to the entire evil IP system.) Any more restrictions due to IP address would probably make legitimate members of this forum quit.

As for the post count decreasing there can be several reasons anyone can not posts much. Life being busier than usual is one of the commonest reasons. Not to mention a fall in overall interest (possibly due to the drop in quality of the posts) can reduce post count too.