A radical idea to partially clean up sig spamming.

[Bitfort]

Killing bees leads nowhere. What we need is to burn the hive and kill the queen.

What a stupid thing to say. If there were no bees, ther would be virualy no food in the world. Honey is one of nature's great health foods as well.

We need more bees here, and fewer of the incompetents spraying verbal pesticides on them.

Apparently misunderstood the meaning. Just replace word bees with wasp or hornet ...  and you'll get it.

[1715032794]

1715032794

[1715032794]

1715032794

[1715032794]

1715032794

[fxstrike]

....
The problem isn’t that signatures would be annoying or seductive. The problem is that the opportunity to advertise in the signature leads spammers to spew garbage posts that clutter up the forum, making it less useful and less enjoyable.

I second that.
Problem are campaigns requiring users to make given number of posts a week (or in general encouraging them to make more posts). That's the source. Baning or reporting/redmarking users does not help at all (they go and buy another account and all repeats).

Killing bees leads nowhere. What we need is to burn the hive and kill the queen.

Most of the campaign specifically want the post to be at certain board only and avoid violating forum rules to be counted, I think this forum will have significantly less participation if it is stopped, just look at Technical Support Board or Project Development Board very few post everyday I check there, reply also mostly under 10, most developer discuss about issues at github directly and rarely post anything here. except for wallet and website developer sometime do discuss things here.

Simply close Alternate Cryptocurrencies will stop most of this

[Bitfort]

....
The problem isn’t that signatures would be annoying or seductive. The problem is that the opportunity to advertise in the signature leads spammers to spew garbage posts that clutter up the forum, making it less useful and less enjoyable.

I second that.
Problem are campaigns requiring users to make given number of posts a week (or in general encouraging them to make more posts). That's the source. Baning or reporting/redmarking users does not help at all (they go and buy another account and all repeats).

Killing bees leads nowhere. What we need is to burn the hive and kill the queen.

Most of the campaign specifically want the post to be at certain board only and avoid violating forum rules to be counted, I think this forum will have significantly less participation if it is stopped, just look at Technical Support Board or Project Development Board very few post everyday I check there, reply also mostly under 10, most developer discuss about issues at github directly and rarely post anything here. except for wallet and website developer sometime do discuss things here.

Simply close Alternate Cryptocurrencies will stop most of this

No doubt such actions (ban signatures and alts) would drasticaly reduce the activity. But that's the point. Quality simply can't go hand in hand with quantity.

Personaly would be much happier to see less active forum full of knowledge and quality informative posts than some ultra active forum full of crap.
On the other hand I fully understand that's not what admin would like to have so he's trying to find more suitable solution to raise quality not affecting the traffic (must say introduction of the merit system impressed me and it seems to be working well given all the complains I saw so far).

 

[fxstrike]

No doubt such actions (ban signatures and alts) would drasticaly reduce the activity. But that's the point. Quality simply can't go hand in hand with quantity.

Personaly would be much happier to see less active forum full of knowledge and quality informative posts than some ultra active forum full of crap.
On the other hand I fully understand that's not what admin would like to have so he's trying to find more suitable solution to raise quality not affecting the traffic (must say introduction of the merit system impressed me and it seems to be working well given all the complains I saw so far).
 

Interestingly, sometimes I find something good discussed on alt board, given that all Bitcoin only related board also spammed with posting about alt, disabling alt would fairly bring small changes without significantly moderating the board itself manually, what we can do is give users selection to turn off sig at some seriously need high mental concentration board discussion so users can selectively choose how they experience their stay here, but OP concern is about first time Guest visitor perception, so that can only be done by turning sig off sitewide by default or put small link for Guest to click once to turn off sig from their view.

Merit do promote Quality post but did not stop spamming post on every board the main concern bring forward by OP. Probably incentive greater than risk of having rank slow down, even informative website owns by the user have adsense on it that incentivise posting fairly low Quality post to bring some traffic to their site

[Jet Cash]

Interestingly, sometimes I find something good discussed on alt board, given that all Bitcoin only related board also spammed with posting about alt,

That is a failure of moderation.

[Emilyearl]

How about a blacklist of sites then?

Again who will compile and verify the blacklist   I believe after using the forum for sometime we will be able to shoot our attention directly to the juicy part of the post and able to avoid landing our eye to the sig.

One way is, giving each user setting to filter or turn off sig on his view so he will be able to have clean slate view of the discussion text/image only, without any sig and personal text maybe.
That way we don't have to go hostile towards Newbie that probably in later time will contribute to the wealth of discussion

- A domain that is owned and hosted by the poster, and proof of ownership should be provided if requested.

Ask user to embed their BTC address on the their webiste metadata, therefore we know he owns the website if it match with the BTC address mention on their profile.

    I couldn't agree with you less on this. I think this individual approach will be a better option. It's then left for the user to decide for themselves if they want signature to show on their pages then they leave it on and if they don't want, they turn it off.

[squatter]

It isn't so much the members who are at risk - I use ignore more and more frequently these days. It's the lurkers and other visitors who don't have any control over viewing. Bad or scammy links give a very bad image to the forum, and this is reflected in the comments on some other forums.

FYI, this is the disclaimer below every paid forum ad:

Advertised sites are not endorsed by the Bitcoin Forum. They may be unsafe, untrustworthy, or illegal in your jurisdiction. Advertise here.

So, it doesn't seem like admins and staff are overly concerned with policing paid forum ads, let alone user signatures.

- A domain that is owned and hosted by the poster, and proof of ownership should be provided if requested.

Ask user to embed their BTC address on the their webiste metadata, therefore we know he owns the website if it match with the BTC address mention on their profile.

Requires too much manual work -- the same goes for any curated whitelist. Any policy should be automatic. Any manual whitelisting, etc. takes too much time. I also don't like the privacy implications of such a policy.

Members can disable signatures. Higher-ranked members can disable forum ads. I'm not overly concerned with lurkers who can't be bothered to create a throwaway account for tailored viewing.

[BTCforJoe]

I think it's just a matter of time. While we do have thousands and thousands of members here with existing ranks to be able to participate in signature campaigns, the new accounts that are created for the sole purpose of ranking up to (a)join a signature campaign and (b)farm ranked users will become less and less common. I think in due time, signature campaigns will have fewer selection of participants to choose from, especially as the existing pool stops posting because they find it too difficult to rank up their accounts.

Yes, there's an underlying problem with signature campaign managers who manage these campaigns to low standards, so may I propose that we unofficially set a standard system to only allow acceptance of users with a minimum level of merit? This system can be enforced at a later time (after fair warning is given) by having several DT users place a red tag on the profiles of signature campaign managers who do not adhere to this new policy. It can be removed at a later time, but it may be an easy way to identify which campaign managers obviously don't give a shit about the level of quality of the campaign's participants' posts.

Yes, this is a bit of work to enforce, but it's a hell of a lot less than trying to monitor URL types from any given user's signature.

[romani245]

This system can be enforced at a later time (after fair warning is given) by having several DT users place a red tag on the profiles of signature campaign managers who do not adhere to this new policy. It can be removed at a later time, but it may be an easy way to identify which campaign managers obviously don't give a shit about the level of quality of the campaign's participants' posts.

Yes, this is a bit of work to enforce, but it's a hell of a lot less than trying to monitor URL types from any given user's signature.

The merit system already addresses the member incentives underlying signature spam. I think a bigger problem is the "minimum post" requirements that campaigns have. I think requiring a minimum of 25-30+ posts per week absolutely incentivizes spam. Managers like it because it makes post counting easier (no need to thoroughly check posts to determine exact number of qualifying posts). Advertisers like it because they are guaranteed a minimum number of spots that will likely be exceeded.

But the forum staff should dislike it because it turns people into spammers. I see otherwise good posters padding their post counts to reach their minimums all the time. If it were me, and I already made 25 good posts but was 5 short of my minimum with a deadline approaching? I would churn out some crap to make sure I got paid. I wouldn't do that in a pay-per-post campaign because struggling to produce shitty content isn't worth upping my pay 17%. It is worth it if I lose 100% of my pay for not reaching the minimum.

It creates a situation where the problem is not only spammers, but the fact that most campaign managers are exacerbating the problem rather than reigning it in. Props to Chipmixer, Coinroll, YOLOdice and others who aren't part of the problem.

[Tyrantt]

Just putting in the requirement of +10 merit, or something like that, to signature campaigns will decrease the number of people that are eligible and with that will decrease the spamming. Since signature campaigns are playing the huge part of this forum, in terms of why people are staying/coming.

[Cobalt9317]

We could also award someone with bitcoin upon achieving a certain amount of merit, however bitcoin payments were only happening in the sig camp, and I doubt anyone has a spare btc to someone. a lost bitcoin is a donation to everyone :-D

All day we spend our time to make the community a good place and new ranking system was introduced, hence the possibility of spammers in this community will be lessen in a year.

[BTCforJoe]

I think a bigger problem is the "minimum post" requirements that campaigns have. I think requiring a minimum of 25-30+ posts per week absolutely incentivizes spam. Managers like it because it makes post counting easier (no need to thoroughly check posts to determine exact number of qualifying posts). Advertisers like it because they are guaranteed a minimum number of spots that will likely be exceeded.

But the forum staff should dislike it because it turns people into spammers. I see otherwise good posters padding their post counts to reach their minimums all the time. If it were me, and I already made 25 good posts but was 5 short of my minimum with a deadline approaching? I would churn out some crap to make sure I got paid. I wouldn't do that in a pay-per-post campaign because struggling to produce shitty content isn't worth upping my pay 17%. It is worth it if I lose 100% of my pay for not reaching the minimum.

It creates a situation where the problem is not only spammers, but the fact that most campaign managers are exacerbating the problem rather than reigning it in. Props to Chipmixer, Coinroll, YOLOdice and others who aren't part of the problem.

I completely agree with you. I'd say we should implement another unwritten standard that outlaws signature campaigns from having a "minimum post" requirement and only adhere to pay-per-post standards, but then you're eliminating a lot of genuine companies who don't have budgets that are as high as the big dogs on the forums. I think it all comes down to the campaign managers. Maybe we could suggest having one overall campaign manager 'moderator', if you will, that all signature campaign managers have to check-in with before launching any kind of signature campaign here? This would essentially create less work than having a bunch of moderators try to control signature campaign requirements, but it also mean that another paid moderator position needs to be introduced to the staff roster.

Maybe it would be worth it, however, to help eliminate the onslaught of shitposting campaigns that are introduced on a daily basis, though... Just a thought.