Auto-lock of topics after a week or 100 posts to solve spammer problem?

[bitart]

I read the Bitcoin Discussion board most of the time, and my observation is that if a there's no post in a topic for a few days (a week, maybe), than the topic is over and noone will reply to it, only spammers who don't have any problem with replying to topics after years of no activity in the topic...
Also, if a topic has about 100 (or 50 or 250 or I don't know the exact post count) posts already, most of the information has already been posted and normal members won't have anything to add to the discussion, but the spammers has of course...
So why not auto lock the threads after reaching the 100 replies (or more if needed or if there's no activity for a week) and only open back if someone writes a decent post and asks the topic's moderator to let him post that into the locked topic and the moderator will open the thread again for e.g. 2 days again.
Any thoughts how spammers could exploit this idea? Will this cause opening much more spam threads to have enough topics to spam, if a topic auto-locks after 100 posts?

[Cobalt9317]

Asking a moderator to reopen the thread again hmm not likely to happen.
The constant complain is such a pain in the head moderators will not worry about the thread that could be necrobump. They are more worried about how to stop spamming from within not a temporarily solution that could be exploited nonetheless.

And we all know that Bitcoin Discussion is all about increasing your activity and such a like before but when merit system introduced that what's you called a frog pond nowadays.

[mdayonliner]

~

Not a bad idea to lock a post after x amount of posts. Leave the unlocking to the topic creators hand so if they want then they can unlock the topic anytime then again autoLock after y amount of posts.

[hugeblack]

Not every topic exceeded a certain level of replies is spam [example₁,example₂,example₃,...etc.]
I do not know about Bitcoin Discussion because most of the posts are in the form of a discussion "assessment varies from person to other".
Also, locking topics will not solve this problem "you can create new topics."
decentralized systems can solve this problem such as Up/down voting system [When the topic gets many negative points, will be locked.]

[theyoungmillionaire]

-snip-

We already got a system that says:
Warning: this topic has not been posted in for at least 120 days.
Unless you're sure you want to reply, please consider starting a new topic.

Since we have this system + Merit system, I may suggest that only members with 100+ merits can reply in such topic. At least we can use our existing system rather than to copy on other forums system.

asks the topic's moderator to let him post that into the locked topic and the moderator will open the thread again for e.g. 2 days again.

Additional workload for moderators is not necessary.

EDIT: I have also read about Newbie Jail, we can implement it again.

[speem28]

Since we have this system + Merit system, I may suggest that only members with 100+ merits can reply in such topic. At least we can use our existing system rather than to copy on other forums system.

asks the topic's moderator to let him post that into the locked topic and the moderator will open the thread again for e.g. 2 days again.

Additional workload for moderators is not necessary.

That is a pretty good idea. That way, we can somehow ensure that only good and contributive content will be posted if we will only allow users who have a high amount of earned merit to post to a specific board. It will also prevent newbies from spamming or necro-bumping an old thread.

[FFrankie]

Since we have this system + Merit system, I may suggest that only members with 100+ merits can reply in such topic. At least we can use our existing system rather than to copy on other forums system.

asks the topic's moderator to let him post that into the locked topic and the moderator will open the thread again for e.g. 2 days again.

Additional workload for moderators is not necessary.

That is a pretty good idea. That way, we can somehow ensure that only good and contributive content will be posted if we will only allow users who have a high amount of earned merit to post to a specific board. It will also prevent newbies from spamming or necro-bumping an old thread.

I think the only thread this would cause issues with would be the wall obverser thread and any good alt coin ANN

[hilariousetc]

This has been discussed/proposed before. It doesn't really matter about automatically locking them because the same threads pop up day after day already. People will just open up a new one as soon as it's locked to continue discussion.

-snip-

We already got a system that says:
Warning: this topic has not been posted in for at least 120 days.
Unless you're sure you want to reply, please consider starting a new topic.

This isn't really about old topics being bumped but spam mega threads that are just populated by your average bounty hunter who is here just to churn out his one liners for payment. The sad thing is, even good discussion threads can get turned into these so there isn't really any solutions other than to make sure campaign managers don't pay for generic responses in spam threads. If they didn't they'd stop getting made.

[bitart]

...

This isn't really about old topics being bumped but spam mega threads that are just populated by your average bounty hunter who is here just to churn out his one liners for payment. The sad thing is, even good discussion threads can get turned into these so there isn't really any solutions other than to make sure campaign managers don't pay for generic responses in spam threads. If they didn't they'd stop getting made.

This is true, usually I read the topics for the first 10 or 20 posts, because after all the newbies start to post their oneliner smart thoughts (which usually have no useful information, or totally misleading...)

In connection with the Newbie Jail, as I've read in meta topics this was also proposed but there were some answers that it won't be implemented again.
Also there were some posts about a similar thing, a so called Merit Jail, and I would support this, not to let the 0Merited newbies and other spammers (on any rank, with the default merit count) post in serious threads, but only in ANN and Off topic or somewhere where they don't disturb the serious members.
I know that somehow we need to solve the problem of the few newbies who really want to join in the serious discussions (and are not spammers), but I hope that somehow we will find a solution for this sooner (and not later...).

How is it possible to force the bounty managers to allow only quality posts in their campaign?

[hilariousetc]

How is it possible to force the bounty managers to allow only quality posts in their campaign?

The only way is to issue punishments to those that don't meet an acceptable standard. If it's clear that campaigns aren't doing enough or nothing at all then they should receive bans on their accounts, their signatures blacklisted, and threads trashed. It's privilege for users to be able to announce their coins here for free but it shouldn't be exploited or taken advantage of and ICO campaigns really should start pulling their weight otherwise they should face the consequences. If there's punishments for those that do little to nothing people will soon take notice and start doing what they should.

[Welsh]

This isn't really about old topics being bumped but spam mega threads that are just populated by your average bounty hunter who is here just to churn out his one liners for payment. The sad thing is, even good discussion threads can get turned into these so there isn't really any solutions other than to make sure campaign managers don't pay for generic responses in spam threads. If they didn't they'd stop getting made.

I think this is the case already with the majority of campaigns it's the fact that people are too stupid to realize what a megathread is I think or simply think they'll get away with it. Judging by the campaigns most of them do indeed get away with it. We either tackle campaigns themselves or the people running them. How we do the latter I'm not sure, but I imagine theymos wouldn't want to ban etc those who aren't doing their job in signature campaigns.

[bitart]

How is it possible to force the bounty managers to allow only quality posts in their campaign?

The only way is to issue punishments to those that don't meet an acceptable standard. If it's clear that campaigns aren't doing enough or nothing at all then they should receive bans on their accounts, their signatures blacklisted, and threads trashed. It's privilege for users to be able to announce their coins here for free but it shouldn't be exploited or taken advantage of and ICO campaigns really should start pulling their weight otherwise they should face the consequences. If there's punishments for those that do little to nothing people will soon take notice and start doing what they should.

I can fully agree with this. Who will decide and when if this can be started?
If we manage to somehow stop the campaign managers who allow spammers to post their one liners everywhere, we can get rid of the major part of the spam.
Is it possible to somehow create statistics from the reported posts and connect the signature/bounty campaign they take part in? The bounty campaign that receives the most reported post e.g. in a week should have the manager punished somehow, and after the first few punishment, the news will spread and hopefully make managers to stop what they were doing or to adapt themselves to the new requirements.
I really hope that this is possible.

[AdolfinWolf]

decentralized systems can solve this problem such as Up/down voting system [When the topic gets many negative points, will be locked.]

+1, Although i don't really think the reddit model fits on this forum, as every topic gets bumped not by votes but by replies/relevance.

I'd love to see a system similar to that of Stackexchange/stackoverflow, where more veteran users can vote to close a topic. ( Obviously not a copy of their system, but something that fits a bit more into Bitcointalk.)

[speem28]

How is it possible to force the bounty managers to allow only quality posts in their campaign?

-snip-

Maybe moderators on the Altcoin Discussion can make a sticky thread so that campaign managers will be aware? I don't know if they will surely see the new rules but responsible and established ones will see it. We could also limit the number of participants in a certain campaign. We don't have a problem with bitcoin campaign managers as they surely pick the best applicants before letting them participate.

[coin5haker]

Then I'm afraid we'll have many similar topics and bunch of locked ones. I don't know which is better, avoiding this monstrous spam threads with 100+ pages or seeing many similar ones crowding Altcoin and Bitcoin sections.

[bitart]

Then I'm afraid we'll have many similar topics and bunch of locked ones. I don't know which is better, avoiding this monstrous spam threads with 100+ pages or seeing many similar ones crowding Altcoin and Bitcoin sections.

This is why we should not let every newbie to open several threads daily, and:
1.) they will be forced to go to the beginner's board to open topics and we can redirect mods from the discussion boards to the beginner's board to have a look at the new topics (newbie or merit jail), or
2.) they will be only allowed to open 1 topic daily/weekly (if there's really important to mention, and there's no specific topic already, not just a new spam topic)

[The Sceptical Chymist]

This has been discussed/proposed before. It doesn't really matter about automatically locking them because the same threads pop up day after day already. People will just open up a new one as soon as it's locked to continue discussion.

I get OP's frustration in Bitcoin Discussion, because it's really bad right now.  Autolocking threads will basically have no effect on spam whatsoever for the reason you mentioned. 

Not only will they create new threads asking the same tired old questions, the spammers are already creating new threads when they already exist.  They're doing that in other sections, too, and it would be laughable how little they read if it weren't so irritating.  Most of the time I suspect they're not genuinely asking a question with these topics--they're creating threads so they don't post multiple times in the old ones and thus their spamming doesn't stand out as much.

[pugman]

Serious discussion isn't working out very well(its purpose is working very well,but the discussions aren't involving a lot of people),for a lot of people don't use it because it not including signatures,but it would be actually great if we have a sub-board to bitcoin discussion,which is heavily moderated.

[digaran]

Serious discussion isn't working out very well(its purpose is working very well,but the discussions aren't involving a lot of people),for a lot of people don't use it because it not including signatures,but it would be actually great if we have a sub-board to bitcoin discussion,which is heavily moderated.

Hint for merit sources: when you merit posts on Serious discussion your sMerits would increase, that was what I felt at least back in the days when I was a source. lol.

If merit sources only merit members posting in serious discussion and Ivory tower and if there is a strict moderation on posts in there, if politics and society moderator gives the members some freedom, forum members would stop to migrate to serious discussion from P & S.

Auto locking of topics is a stupid thing to do, why do we have moderators? though suggesting it is not stupid.
Even if signatures are disabled in SD, if you could get a significant amount of merits for posting there, you would go there and post.

[pugman]

Hint for merit sources: when you merit posts on Serious discussion your sMerits would increase, that was what I felt at least back in the days when I was a source. lol.

....
I seriously can't make out if this is sarcasm or genuineness.

If merit sources only merit members posting in serious discussion and Ivory tower and if there is a strict moderation on posts in there, if politics and society moderator gives the members some freedom, forum members would stop to migrate to serious discussion from P & S.

Merit sources most likely won't stick only to boards like serious discussion/Ivory tower,they would rather spread their merits all across the different boards of the forum. Flying Hellfish and even theymos give a lot of freedom to users all across the boards,let alone Politics and Society. Sure some moderators delete stuff related to anti-christ stuff but there is freedom. You should be knowing better than anyone else. Don't you think?

Auto locking of topics is a stupid thing to do, why do we have moderators? though suggesting it is not stupid.
Even if signatures are disabled in SD, if you could get a significant amount of merits for posting there, you would go there and post.

Maybe yes. But autolocking would be great if the thread is created for an enquiry and not for a discussion,so that the enquiry threads can be locked when the issue is solved. So yeah,its not required. Mods can handle that,possibly. 
Seriously,why is everyone caring so much about merits? Give it a chill man. If you're true bitcoiner,you wouldn't give a shit about merits,even if they have monetary worth.