Suggestions to improve the forum and limit shitposting - the easy way

[Piggy]

Since i have been in here for a while now and i saw all sort of fine spam techniques, i have some suggestion that maybe can help limit it.

As we know most of the spam comes from low rank accounts, that is a fact, most of them are throwaway account which are used to do anything just because doesn't matter if they get banned, is a loosing battle against these; On this matter, i have seen a worryingly number of new topic created by brand new account for all sort of purposes: fake airdrop, shit airdrop, scams, referral and all sort of bad stuff.

- The first suggestion is to require at least 1 to 5 merits (2 is already enough imo), to be able to open a thread. Or limit it directly based on rank.

- The seconth suggestion is to limit the number of posts anybody can make in a day based on your rank, something on the line of this:

• Brand New: 1 a day
• Jr Member: 2 a day
• Member: 4 a day
• Full Member: 10 a day
• Sr Member: 15 a day
• Hero/Legendary: unlimited

With these two suggestions alone we may be able to solve most of the problems with minimal changes, since these features are already present in the forum, they just need to be applied to other ranks and slightly modified.

Thoughts?

[1713935060]

1713935060

[1713935060]

1713935060

[xolxol]

So do you think the lower rank accounts here doesnt deserved to participate signatures? what if we remove the signatures permanently? so that there will be no spam? purely discussion to the forum? no bounties,no shit DT trust abusers,no shitposting and no shit suggestions like yours? you are a bias piece of shepard because you allocated 15posts per day for your rank so that you will be able to participate the signatures which is the main reason why the shitposting has gotten worst., fart me if you want.

[Slava79]

There is, in fact, limit for number of posts per day, according to this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178608.0

Code:

waittime = 360;
if(activity >= 15)
        waittime = (int)(90 - activity);
if(activity >= 60)
        waittime=(int)(34.7586 - (0.0793103 * activity));
if(activity >= 100)
        waittime = max((int)(14-(activity/50)), 4);

Also, what would restrict someone from creating gazillion accounts?

[BTCeminjas]

So do you think the lower rank accounts here doesnt deserved to participate signatures? what if we remove the signatures permanently? so that there will be no spam? purely discussion to the forum? no bounties,no shit DT trust abusers,no shitposting and no shit suggestions like yours? you are a bias piece of shepard because you allocated 15posts per day for your rank so that you will be able to participate the signatures which is the main reason why the shitposting has gotten worst., fart me if you want.

That I bolded it means signature campaign?
I thought you are an admin here.
Well, that was probably the problem here those bounty/signature campaign maybe CM's has the big responsibility for that matter.

- The seconth suggestion is to limit the number of posts anybody can make in a day based on your rank, something on the line of this:

• Brand New: 1 a day
• Jr Member: 2 a day
• Member: 4 a day
• Full Member: 10 a day
• Sr Member: 15 a day
• Hero/Legendary: unlimited

Newbie has a right to create a thread if they have something to ask or need to be discussed.
And we guide them for sharing ideas, not for criticism. They are still a human that hoping to have profit here.
If they got mistake? "Report to Moderator" is the solution to be deleted their shitpost thread.
Be biased to all.

[loicuagio1979]

So do you think the lower rank accounts here doesnt deserved to participate signatures? what if we remove the signatures permanently? so that there will be no spam? purely discussion to the forum? no bounties,no shit DT trust abusers,no shitposting and no shit suggestions like yours? you are a bias piece of shepard because you allocated 15posts per day for your rank so that you will be able to participate the signatures which is the main reason why the shitposting has gotten worst., fart me if you want.

Dear mate,
I agree with you completely. Low rank doesn't mean low knowledge, low quality writing, low market understanding etc. Spamming, shit posters are the different story of this forum. Let's see what the shitposts of the same rank member ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=207430 ) with the author have posted since October 2017
His/her posts feed were full of what?
Terrible!

[TheQuin]

Limiting the number of posts isn't going to help. Most of the shitposting comes from bounty signature campaigns. They usually only have a requirement of 20 or 25 posts a week but people farm them with hundreds of accounts. The best way to stop it is to get rid of the ICO campaigns. They just create the tokens they pay with out of thin air so it is all free advertising to them and that means they don't care about the quality. The throw enough shit against a wall and some of it will stick theory. Other than that a stricter moderation policy and banning spammers would help although it would need more moderators to do it.

[Jet Cash]

A lot of the senior members came here because they wanted to ask a question. I came here because I wanted advice in setting up a wallet, and the forum members were extremely helpful. At that time there was a problem with faucet spam, but it was nowhere near as serious as the current spam problem. Genuine new members should be encouraged, and this can be done on a moderated beginners board. The existing system is quite well thought out, and has evolved as the interest in Bitcoin and Crypto has increased.

I believe that restricting new accounts to signature-less posting on starter boards, and only allowing them to post on the main boards once they had been awarded 5 merits ( say ) would be the simplest solution.

[xolxol]

So do you think the lower rank accounts here doesnt deserved to participate signatures? what if we remove the signatures permanently? so that there will be no spam? purely discussion to the forum? no bounties,no shit DT trust abusers,no shitposting and no shit suggestions like yours? you are a bias piece of shepard because you allocated 15posts per day for your rank so that you will be able to participate the signatures which is the main reason why the shitposting has gotten worst., fart me if you want.

Dear mate,
I agree with you completely. Low rank doesn't mean low knowledge, low quality writing, low market understanding etc. Spamming, shit posters are the different story of this forum. Let's see what the shitposts of the same rank member ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=207430 ) with the author have posted since October 2017
His/her posts feed were full of what?
Terrible!

Dear mate,first  i am not your partner so dont call me mate,obviously i am joking to what i have said earlier,clearly i am not in this position to be the man who has all the knowledge to become someone else.Second i am not here to do shitposts,would you consider me as a shitposter ? as i doing my best for these people to understand what i am pointing out? oh crap ! this is shitpost hate myself now LOL!

[HeRetiK]

A lot of the senior members came here because they wanted to ask a question. I came here because I wanted advice in setting up a wallet, and the forum members were extremely helpful. At that time there was a problem with faucet spam, but it was nowhere near as serious as the current spam problem. Genuine new members should be encouraged, and this can be done on a moderated beginners board. [...]

I concur. There's already posting restrictions for new accounts in place. While we may argue about whether these restrictions are tight enough, completely preventing new accounts from being able to open a new thread sounds like a bad idea to me; as it would very likely also shut out new members that are genuinely interested in the matter. For an interested newbie crypto can be already intimidating enough, pre-emptively shutting them out completely would make matters only worse. After all we also want the community to grow.

I remember when I started out in 2013 newbies where only restricted to certain sections -- is this still the case? It seemed to work rather well back then.

[TheQuin]

I remember when I started out in 2013 newbies where only restricted to certain sections -- is this still the case? It seemed to work rather well back then.

I had to go through Newbie Jail as well. It was done away with a long time ago but I don't why that was as I wasn't really following Meta at that time.

[Piggy]

Setting limitation for people genuinely interested in discussing/learning offcourse sucks, but this problem is not really going away by itself on the contrary as more money and attention will come to the crypto the worse will become here.

For what concern me, even removing any ICO bounties entirely from the forum can be a viable option, the doctor didn't prescribe me to do them and i suppose this is true for anyone else here.

Beside the obvious spamming for the signature campaigns, now we are also facing other problems imo, since the forum can give you very high visibility anybody can just open appealing threads with the only reason to make some profit/scamming, this is really easy to do at the moment with zero risks and it's fucking annoying.

[hilariousetc]

A lot of the senior members came here because they wanted to ask a question. I came here because I wanted advice in setting up a wallet, and the forum members were extremely helpful. At that time there was a problem with faucet spam, but it was nowhere near as serious as the current spam problem. Genuine new members should be encouraged, and this can be done on a moderated beginners board. The existing system is quite well thought out, and has evolved as the interest in Bitcoin and Crypto has increased.

I believe that restricting new accounts to signature-less posting on starter boards, and only allowing them to post on the main boards once they had been awarded 5 merits ( say ) would be the simplest solution.

Yeah, I don't think we should restrict them 100% from being able to create threads anywhere but I wouldn't be against some sort of Newbie Jail coming back where maybe they can only create a thread in Beginners and Help and Meta at first or something. It's getting too much with thousands of people flocking here that are have no idea at all about bitcoin but are just here to earn by posting and it just leads to utterly mind-numbing crap being posted day after day: "what is bitcoin for you" "how did you hear about bitcoin/bitcointalk" "why is the price going up/down" "should I mine or trade?" etc etc every day and it just gets worse as time goes on. Just look at the mess that is in Off Topic and Politics because those two subs are the go-to boards for people who don't know about anything else. I don't think those two boards should be accessible to lower ranks because why would someone even come here just to discuss Politics in the first place?  

[mdayonliner]

Yeah, I don't think we should restrict them 100% from being able to create threads anywhere but I wouldn't be against some sort of Newbie Jail coming back where maybe they can only create a thread in Beginners and Help and Meta at first or something. It's getting too much with thousands of people flocking here that are have no idea at all about bitcoin but are just here to earn by posting and it just leads to utterly mind-numbing crap being posted day after day: "what is bitcoin for you" "how did you hear about bitcoin/bitcointalk" "why is the price going up/down" "should I mine or trade?" etc etc every day and it just gets worse as time goes on. Just look at the mess that is in Off Topic and Politics because those two subs are the go-to boards for people who don't know about anything else. I don't think those two boards should be accessible to lower ranks because why would someone even come here just to discuss Politics in the first place?  

I am also in favour of Newbie jail idea. Restrict them only on few boards like you mentioned: Meta (since it's the place where anyone can ask stuffs about the forum) section.

What I understand visiting the Beginners and Help section is: It's about mostly bitcoin support i guess. (I might be wrong since I only thoroughly scanned it)

Whatever the board or boards they will be restricted the mod of those boards should be focusing on encouraging the members to read at least the first 6 sticky on the meta board.

[TrumpD]

The idea of a newbie being limited to creating a brand new thread can work to an extent, because most of the questions they probably want to ask, have already been asked before, so they can use the search feature to try and locate them. However, limiting the amount of posts per day for each level could not be favorable, in the sense that if there is a potential for an engaging conversation (back-and-forth ) to take place it wouldn't happen. And these sort of conversations can happen in different threads.

[STT]

Used to be the newbie was just part of the beginners section and we could post there mostly.

For an interested newbie crypto can be already intimidating enough, pre-emptively shutting them out completely would make matters only worse. After all we also want the community to grow.

I remember when I started out in 2013 newbies where only restricted to certain sections -- is this still the case? It seemed to work rather well back then.

Yea I remember that, the idea being to read more then you speak since you are new.   I guess thats a fair bias, we have 2 ears and only one mouth for a reason
I also found it a bit frustrating that we had to just 'do your time' when reading the forum, we couldn't post everywhere.   So if I had a specific question I would just google it instead quite often, so long as there is readable FAQ thats ok.  Or back then alot of people were in a mining pool and so I could ask my fellow miners alot of stuff because it was such a low level thing back then not just big farms.

The seconth suggestion is to limit the number of posts anybody can make in a day based on your rank, something on the line of this:

Brand New: 1 a day
Jr Member: 2 a day
Member: 4 a day

Posting is naturally sporadic I think so this seems a bit harsh for the entire forum.   If it was a restriction on certain areas and the mods requested that then it makes more sense.   I feel like the ALT sections struggle with alot sometimes.  Im not exactly sure which areas see the most traffic but it should probably in tune with that not so much a blanket restriction.

[Piggy]

Important thing is to act on something, offcourse compromises are needed but really doesn't make any sense newbies account being able to open threads under certain sections.

[HeRetiK]

For an interested newbie crypto can be already intimidating enough, pre-emptively shutting them out completely would make matters only worse. After all we also want the community to grow.

I remember when I started out in 2013 newbies where only restricted to certain sections -- is this still the case? It seemed to work rather well back then.

Yea I remember that, the idea being to read more then you speak since you are new.   I guess thats a fair bias, we have 2 ears and only one mouth for a reason
I also found it a bit frustrating that we had to just 'do your time' when reading the forum, we couldn't post everywhere.   So if I had a specific question I would just google it instead quite often, so long as there is readable FAQ thats ok. [...]

That's the thing though. Most of the questions that get asked over and over again are already covered in stickies -- or countless other threads on the same topic. So if something like a newbie jail actually encourages people to use the search function or google first, that's a plus in my book.

[Craigjohnstone]

Is there anyway the forum can verify an account? Such as linking to Facebook - telegram? This would make shit posters life a lot harder.

[bitart]

...

That's the thing though. Most of the questions that get asked over and over again are already covered in stickies -- or countless other threads on the same topic. So if something like a newbie jail actually encourages people to use the search function or google first, that's a plus in my book.

This is my opinion also, you can check this post:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3345485.msg35112842#msg35112842
Using google if something is needed is not a big deal, but it doesn't increase the post count, so it's an evil thing

...
I believe that restricting new accounts to signature-less posting on starter boards, and only allowing them to post on the main boards once they had been awarded 5 merits ( say ) would be the simplest solution.

+1 for this. Taking part in signature/bounty campaigns should not be a right but a merit...
(this is not that Merit )

[HeRetiK]

Is there anyway the forum can verify an account? Such as linking to Facebook - telegram? This would make shit posters life a lot harder.

No.