Thing is, when ICOs will realize that the field of paying by useless tokens are dead then they will focus more in quality than quantity since they will have to pay by real currency (BTC, ETH, LTC etc)
It would be interesting if this is actually happening, i.e. if the number of ICO campaigns (in relation to "real-cryptocurrency-paid-campaigns") is decreasing. Maybe some work for our "stat gurus"
Restrict creating ALT accounts unless necessary to apply for locked/banned accounts. Once the main account will be recovered then lock the alt account.
I guess the reason why such a rule isn't enforced is that it would be very difficult to control, and thus too much work for the forum staff. I never ran a spambot software but I guess it's trivial to run these bots from several cheap "lowendbox"-type VPS or even botnets to avoid to be traced by the IP address.
I would ban ICOs from advertising on the forum altogether. They've already been banned for bidding in the forum banner advertising auctions so why not extend that that to signatures?
I would support at least a ban for "ICO-token-only" payments for signatures. They could continue to offer tokens as a bonus, like some are already doing, but at least a basic payment in a traditional cryptocurrency should be made, so there are incentives to control quality. And if they want to offer token-only bounties they should do these campaigns at Facebook, Twitter et al.
If the forum banned ICO projects entirely from advertising then I can imagine a (still pretty) big traffic source would dry up, so I don't know if this will happen.
That looks to be the approach being taken. It is a slow process but many ranked up accounts get banned each day and it is very difficult for them to be replaced.
I addition I'd like to see signatures removed from Newbie and Jr. Members. Most of the copy paste bots I report are Jr. Members enrolled in an ICO bounty signature campaign.
Could be a good idea. It's restrictive, as some honest Jr. members would not be able to fully use their forum account, but I would support it as a temporary measure until the spam problem is mitigated.
The merit system helps and is a huge step in the right direction but it does nothing about lower ranked accounts spamming away who are still able to get on to alt coin campaigns (and half of them will accept anyone of any rank because it's still better than having nobody advertise for them).
Right. That would be another point for TheQuin's proposal to restrict signatures from Jr./Newbie accounts.
These are all things I've suggested before and as long as there's no rules or regulations for signature campaigns they will continue to be greedy and lazy and pay people to spam but until there are punishments for poorly run campaigns and their managers then nothing will change.
I guess you're right. I would also strongly support an enforceable "ruleset" for bounty campaign managers. The problem is to find a solution that scales, i.e. that doesn't mean too much work for the forum staff. But on the other hand, the control of signature campaign management should be less hard than for example the control of reflink spam which seems to work now. So I don't see it impossible.
@LoyceV: Agree.
@Heisenberg_Hunter: Read my OP again, this is not an initiative against ICO tokens in general, but against the way they advertise them, like TheQuin already wrote. And I believe that ...
If such a thing is implemented, almost all the spammers and bounty managers would join and conduct bitcoin campaigns which would deter the quality of forum even more as almost all the bitcoin campaigns (excluding chipmixer) demand a minimum post of 20-25.
... there is no reason why a Bitcoin- (or "independent-blockchain altcoin") based campaign could not implement lower post minimums.
I still don’t get why ICOs do not get the idea that Brand needs to be built, and is bases upon many pillars, one of which is reputation. Having your brand name tossed around in the hands of spammers is plain silly to do.
Good post, I am wondering the same ... but TheQuin's answer, unfortunately, seems to be true: these projects are often of such low quality that they don't care about reputation.
Since the Forum wants/needs to have signature campaigns, perhaps it could create a proprietary logotype that enhances the visibility of those campaigns that explicitly and voluntarily commit to an anti-spamming policy, just as we have logotypes for safe e-commerce, green power, ISO certified and so on.
Looks good! I would fully support such an initiative.
(I was thinking about technical restrictions for non-adhering campaigns, but I think that would dilute the spirit of that idea - to reward positive action, not so much to punish. And it would also restrict individuals with non-paid signatures.)
