The core of Bitcointalk's spam problem

[qwk]

I think we all agree that the spam amount at Bitcointalk still is too high.

Yep.

The reason, in my opinion is related to [...] signature campaigns [...]

I'm actually not so sure about that anymore.
Most "Spam" I see nowadays is actually zero-(or super-low)-content one-liners just to "push" an "ANN"-thread of some ICO.
Signatures are no longer "en vogue", it's the number of "pushes" for your "ANN".

This is primarily a problem of the "Altcoin"-subforums, which is why we tend to ignore it.
Not sure what to make of it, I've kind of given up all hope for a Spam-free forum

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[Theb]

Solutions?

- One could restrict campaigns, e.g. only allow campaigns that pay out in Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency that has an independent blockchain and is not an ICO token.
- Stricter control of Bounty managers.

Both solutions would require additional efforts by the forum staff.

I think the 2nd option is a more realistic solution in the forum. The kind of payment is not the problem as even though it literally cause them nothing it doesn't mean that the developers are the ones who are picking the campaign participants, except if they have their own bounty manager. The 2nd approach is a better one as bounty managers who are allowed and trusted by the forum can successfully screen the campaign participants as well as monitor their status weekly by doing so they can remove and even put the members on a blacklist if they started spamming in the middle of the campaign. By having a trusted bounty manager this developers who are paying ICOs must hire them as they are the only ones allowed to create a bounty campaign in BCT.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

The merit system doesn't really stop spam, it just stops users being able to rank up with spam/poor contributions so most now put more effort into their posts.

If bitcointalk were to introduce a rule whereby only Sr. Members and above were eligible to advertise in their signatures--or better yet, have any signature space at all--you better believe the merit system would stop spam.  That would remove the incentive for people to keep creating new accounts to shitpost with.  They would have no incentive to do so once they figured out they weren't going to earn any merits.

Account sales would boom, I'm sure, but that could be managed and I think the problem would burn itself out with time.  Fewer higher-ranked accounts would be created, and some would naturally drop out due to attrition.  Anyway this has been suggested before, but I don't think Theymos wants to do anything so drastic.

Signatures are no longer "en vogue", it's the number of "pushes" for your "ANN".

I don't argue that the latter is true, but I strenuously disagree with the former.

[ArkiCrypto]

One could restrict campaigns, e.g. only allow campaigns that payout in Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency that has an independent blockchain and is not an ICO token.

Well most of the ICO's pay token and most of the participants to the bounty campaigns are... yes it's true are spammers and new members that doesn't read or care about the forums rule and all they want is the bounty rewards.

But for what I've read here in the forum is that we can't just simply stop the campaigns that pays token because it will result of a low volume of users here in the forum and in result the traffic of the forum will reduce and the profit will reduce also that's why I think moderator/s didn't approve to stop running a bounty campaign here in the forum.

It gives a lot of traffic.

[d5000]

Most "Spam" I see nowadays is actually zero-(or super-low)-content one-liners just to "push" an "ANN"-thread of some ICO.
Signatures are no longer "en vogue", it's the number of "pushes" for your "ANN".

This is primarily a problem of the "Altcoin"-subforums, which is why we tend to ignore it.
Not sure what to make of it, I've kind of given up all hope for a Spam-free forum

But sub-forums like "Bitcoin Discussion" and "Economics" are full of spam, too. These posts are usually a little bit more elaborated than the spambot one-liners in the altcoin forum, but they continue to be completely trivial, and it's really not fun anymore to visit these sub-forums (you have to search a lot actually for really interesting topics). There isn't really any forum, for example, to discuss things like the social impact of Bitcoin in English (maybe Ivory Tower, but I was disappointed, until now, by the topics there).

About the altcoin spam, this problem has probably no solution, but as you do, I tend to ignore it because I only follow some specific threads in the Altcoin Announcements forum. It would be nice to have a "Cryptocurrency technology" sub-forum however, where one could discuss technical topics not related directly to Bitcoin.

Solutions?

- One could restrict campaigns, e.g. only allow campaigns that pay out in Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency that has an independent blockchain and is not an ICO token.
- Stricter control of Bounty managers.

Both solutions would require additional efforts by the forum staff.

I think the 2nd option is a more realistic solution in the forum. The kind of payment is not the problem as even though it literally cause them nothing it doesn't mean that the developers are the ones who are picking the campaign participants, except if they have their own bounty manager. The 2nd approach is a better one [...]

I also think it's the better one, but it means also a bit more work for the forum staff. They would have to set up a mechanism to agree on "trusted" bounty managers and control that only these are managing campaigns. If they could simply set up a rule like "ICO token-paid signature campaigns are banned", then there is no need for additional infrastructure. Users could simply report non-complying campaigns - threads would be closed and managers banned or at least they would receive an admonishment.

At the end, if a decision had to be made with only these two options, the forum staff would have to take into account this trade-off:
- more traffic but more work (control bounty managers)
- less traffic but almost no additional work (ban ICO-token paying signature campaigns)

Other bounty campaigns (Twitter, Facebook ...) would not be affected at all, as they don't really affect the quality of topics in the forum.

If bitcointalk were to introduce a rule whereby only Sr. Members and above were eligible to advertise in their signatures--or better yet, have any signature space at all--you better believe the merit system would stop spam.  That would remove the incentive for people to keep creating new accounts to shitpost with.

I think such a measure is pretty harsh, but I would support it as a temporary measure until the spam problem has been "dried out".

But for what I've read here in the forum is that we can't just simply stop the campaigns that pays token because it will result of a low volume of users here in the forum and in result the traffic of the forum will reduce and the profit will reduce also that's why I think moderator/s didn't approve to stop running a bounty campaign here in the forum.

One could at least require them to pay out a part of the campaign rewards in Bitcoin or another full-fledged cryptocurrency. That would already solve the incentive problem, and most serious ICO projects would be able to afford that. It would probably only mean a small traffic decrease, if any.

I favour the model to control bounty managers, however, or to create an infrastructure for "approved campaigns" like DdmrDdmr proposed. However, I don't know if the forum staff is willing to invest the necessary work - banning ICO-paid campaigns would be cheaper, like I explained above.

[bitart]

I think we all agree that the spam amount at Bitcointalk still is too high. The merit system perhaps has improved the situation a little bit, but even that is debatable.

The merit system doesn't really stop spam, it just stops users being able to rank up with spam/poor contributions so most now put more effort into their posts. 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).
...

The first level of the new merit system has been reached, the initial merits were given out and most of the spammers and account farmers has managed to trade some merits, but from now on, it will be extra hard for them to get merit (if I understand the situation well).
A solution could be to have a look at the average spammer account rank now, e.g.:
- Are most of the spammers newbies (or brand new)
- Or, most of the spammers are juniors, because they managed to rank up, but they stucked at this rank
- Or, more spammers are above junior level, because they have managed to rank up to e.g. member level, because of the farming/abusing, etc.

If we can strike a line between two ranks (e.g. juniors are (mostly) spammers, but members are (mostly) not, we can tell that there will be no signature for juniors, but only for members and up.
If the juniors won't have a chance to rank up to member without posting quality (and earning merit with it), it can solve the spam problem.

[hilariousetc]

We need to give the bounty managers some tools to help them to regulate their spammers.

I think the bounty managers/campaigns are the ones who should be using or developing their own tools to help manage their campaigns better or more efficiently.

It's not tools they lack it is desire. They just want that URL plastered all over bitcointalk.org where Google will see it and give their site a higher ranking as a result.

I'm sure that's true of most managers, but it seems there are a few who are prepared to pay extra for quality posting.

For a shitcampaign there's no difference between someone writing a thesis or bashing their head against the keyboard. Both are still posts that bare their advertisement which is all they want and require at the end of the day. It obviously shouldn't be acceptable for them to pay for people bashing their head on keyboard but until there's repercussions for those that do then nothing will change and campaigns will continue to be lazy and pay for anything.

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.

They're not trying to build a brand. These ICOs are not here to stay. They're fly by night scammers (or for however long the duration of their ICO lasts). All they want is their ICO to be promoted as fast as possible, take as much money in as possible, then disappear or onto the next scam. Rinse and repeat.

The merit system doesn't really stop spam, it just stops users being able to rank up with spam/poor contributions so most now put more effort into their posts.

If bitcointalk were to introduce a rule whereby only Sr. Members and above were eligible to advertise in their signatures--or better yet, have any signature space at all--you better believe the merit system would stop spam.  That would remove the incentive for people to keep creating new accounts to shitpost with.  They would have no incentive to do so once they figured out they weren't going to earn any merits.

I've suggested this before. I don't think lower ranks should be able to have a signature or at the very least a very minimal one (though there are still campaigns that will pay for those).

Account sales would boom, I'm sure, but that could be managed and I think the problem would burn itself out with time.  Fewer higher-ranked accounts would be created, and some would naturally drop out due to attrition.  Anyway this has been suggested before, but I don't think Theymos wants to do anything so drastic.

Signatures are no longer "en vogue", it's the number of "pushes" for your "ANN".

I don't argue that the latter is true, but I strenuously disagree with the former.

It would still be very difficult for people to farm accounts this way. You'd have to spend a lot of time and effort on each account and there's no guarantees you would every get the required merit. I still think the forum should offer paid Memberships like Copper but Silver and Gold ones etc that give you the same benefits of a Senior and Hero account. You can either offer these ranks alongside being able to rank up naturally or they're the only way you can get a signature.

[kenzawak]

I'll repost what I said in another thread.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4480507.msg40516875#msg40516875

I believe the spam problem comes from the non-English speakers who post outside of their local boards.
Why do they do it ?
Because that's what BMs ask them to do.
In order to get rewards for signature campaigns, a certain amount of posts per week is required... and most of them (if not all of them) have to be done outside of local boards.

If you change that rule in bounty campaigns, I'm pretty sure you won't see those broken English posts or useless posts like "good project sir" anymore.

Let them do their "thing" in local boards, the rest of the forum will be much cleaner.

And that won't hurt the projects. Most of them are unknown to local communities because of that rule.

[LoyceV]

I believe the spam problem comes from the non-English speakers who post outside of their local boards.
Why do they do it ?
Because that's what BMs ask them to do.
In order to get rewards for signature campaigns, a certain amount of posts per week is required... and most of them (if not all of them) have to be done outside of local boards.

If you change that rule in bounty campaigns, I'm pretty sure you won't see those broken English posts or useless posts like "good project sir" anymore.

Signature campaigns don't reject posting in certain boards, they just don't pay for it. I don't think you can require a company to pay for advertising that doesn't work for them.
My signature for instance doesn't pay for posts on a few boards, that doesn't stop me from posting there.

[kenzawak]

I believe the spam problem comes from the non-English speakers who post outside of their local boards.
Why do they do it ?
Because that's what BMs ask them to do.
In order to get rewards for signature campaigns, a certain amount of posts per week is required... and most of them (if not all of them) have to be done outside of local boards.

If you change that rule in bounty campaigns, I'm pretty sure you won't see those broken English posts or useless posts like "good project sir" anymore.

Signature campaigns don't reject posting in certain boards, they just don't pay for it. I don't think you can require a company to pay for advertising that doesn't work for them.
My signature for instance doesn't pay for posts on a few boards, that doesn't stop me from posting there.

Yes but YOU speak English. 
Most spammers do spam because there is no other way for them.

Who decides of the rules for a campaign ?
I see most managers always have the same criterias for the campaigns they run so I think they're the ones who decide, companies just hire them because of their reputation and then they let them do things their own way.

If you think about it, I'm sure that many people chose their signature because of that specific rule, so that they don't have to post outside of their local boards.
That's the case in the French section where almost everyone wears the same signature. Hence, there are many projects we don't hear about there. If you change that rule, I believe there will be less spamming in the whole forum and projects will also benefit from it.

The fact is you can't really get rid of the whole "signature system", you have to find a way to manipulate it in order to get a cleaner forum.
I think this could be a good start.

[LoyceV]

Yes but YOU speak English. 
Most spammers do spam because there is no other way for them.

If you report posts in very bad English, they may be banned.

Who decides of the rules for a campaign ?
I see most managers always have the same criterias for the campaigns they run so I think they're the ones who decide, companies just hire them because of their reputation and then they let them do things their own way.

That does make sense

If you think about it, I'm sure that many people chose their signature because of that specific rule, so that they don't have to post outside of their local boards.
That's the case in the French section where almost everyone wears the same signature. Hence, there are many projects we don't hear about there. If you change that rule, I believe there will be less spamming in the whole forum and projects will also benefit from it.

I can imagine the French section gives a higher ROI than many other local sections, as they have more money to spend on average.

[stompix]

Who decides of the rules for a campaign ?
I see most managers always have the same criterias for the campaigns they run so I think they're the ones who decide, companies just hire them because of their reputation and then they let them do things their own way.

This is one thing I've been always wondering about...

If a bounty campaign manager is seen paying for shitposts, in some cases even by tagged shitposters, shouldn't that campaign manager also get a tag? After all, he is not properly doing his job, he is paying people for spam, he is incentivizing people to pay crap and so on...

Was there a case of a bounty manager getting a red trust for this?

We have lists like SMAS but shouldn't we have lists like that for those so-called managers?

[bitart]

Who decides of the rules for a campaign ?
I see most managers always have the same criterias for the campaigns they run so I think they're the ones who decide, companies just hire them because of their reputation and then they let them do things their own way.

This is one thing I've been always wondering about...

If a bounty campaign manager is seen paying for shitposts, in some cases even by tagged shitposters, shouldn't that campaign manager also get a tag? After all, he is not properly doing his job, he is paying people for spam, he is incentivizing people to pay crap and so on...

Was there a case of a bounty manager getting a red trust for this?

We have lists like SMAS but shouldn't we have lists like that for those so-called managers?

In the end, those (so called) companies (scammers, spammers, etc...) are hiring the bounty managers, but I don't really think that a red trust on a bounty manager would stop these "companies" hiring a red tagged bounty manager, if he offers a really cheap price for the service and can deliver a similar visibility as the 'normal' but more expensive managers...
As long as they are allowed to continue their service, they won't stop, why would they...
If you want to regulate the bounty managers (e.g. whitelist, etc...), you can be tagged as a 'centralist' in this decentralized forum, so it's not easy to find a working solution for the situation.

[joulion86]

Solutions?

- One could restrict campaigns, e.g. only allow campaigns that pay out in Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency that has an independent blockchain and is not an ICO token.
- Stricter control of Bounty managers.

- I totally agree with point 1. ICOs inflate the spam by creating value out of nothing. (Remember why we all love Bitcoin?)
- But I'm not sure about point 2 though. Bounty managers are really just the middleman stuck between hundreds of people that want to get paid and a company that wants to get heard.
And I very highly doubt that the "company getting heard" part is any efficient. From what I can see, signatures get next to no clicks what so ever.

How about implementing a "social influence" sub-category of publicly visible profile stats, that simply tracks things like how often someone cites you, how many views your post get, how many clicks links in your signature receive. Based on these numbers Bounty managers could actually pick people for their campaigns which are doing a lot right. Right now all they see is how many posts they make and how many merits they gathered in the last 120 days, which is an ok start but never really tells the whole story.

[bitart]

...
How about implementing a "social influence" sub-category of publicly visible profile stats, that simply tracks things like how often someone cites you, how many views your post get, how many clicks links in your signature receive. Based on these numbers Bounty managers could actually pick people for their campaigns which are doing a lot right. Right now all they see is how many posts they make and how many merits they gathered in the last 120 days, which is an ok start but never really tells the whole story.

Scammers, spammers would farm thousands of accounts to click on their main account's signature, in order to rank up their account to be able to join the campaigns...
Normal people don't think like this but you have to think it over from the evil's point of view, because if something is abusable, spammers and scammers would abuse it, that's for sure...

[TheQuin]

Scammers, spammers would farm thousands of accounts to click on their main account's signature, in order to rank up their account to be able to join the campaigns...

They wouldn't even do that they would use thousands of bots to do it.

[d5000]

- But I'm not sure about point 2 though. Bounty managers are really just the middleman stuck between hundreds of people that want to get paid and a company that wants to get heard.

You're right - it would be an "indirect" solution, while "banning ICOs" would be a more direct attack to the core problem (that "printing tokens" doesn't cost nothing). However, controlling Bounty managers in a stricter way would benefit ICO projects that do the things right - i.e. control participants' posting quality. And I understand that ICO advertising is a traffic source the forum staff would like to preserve. So it may be the less controversial solution - although it requires a little bit more staff work.

How about implementing a "social influence" sub-category of publicly visible profile stats, that simply tracks things like how often someone cites you, how many views your post get, how many clicks links in your signature receive. Based on these numbers Bounty managers could actually pick people for their campaigns which are doing a lot right. Right now all they see is how many posts they make and how many merits they gathered in the last 120 days, which is an ok start but never really tells the whole story.

Related: I had somewhen thought about "pay per click" campaigns in the style of Google AdSense. But unfortunately I think abuse control would be very difficult. The companies advertising in the forum would need a middleman with the power of Google to detect "script clickers".

Merit is currently the only indicator with some value for "social influence", and selection based on merit is already happening - mainly in Bitcoin-paid campaigns. One could make a merit requirement mandatory for signature-bounty campaigns. The rest of the indicators you mention, as TheQuin and bitart said, are too easy to abuse, I think.

[vlom]

some interesting thoughts here. but i dont like all the merit related ideas. because i think that the merit system did not improve anything here. thats why I have to admit that i stopped to visit the forum every day and i almost stopped posting.

[d5000]

but i dont like all the merit related ideas. because i think that the merit system did not improve anything here. thats why I have to admit that i stopped to visit the forum every day and i almost stopped posting.

Even if it didn't "improve anything", it also didn't make nothing worse, don't you think? At least for "honest" forum members who want to contribute something here, and are not only writing because they're paid by a bounty campaign ...

In my opinion, since Merit's inception, the spam situation is improving a bit. In the most spam-plagued subforums (Bitcoin Discussion, Altcoin Discussion, Economics) there are now usually some interesting topics - 3-4 months ago all of them were almost instantly buried by spam megathreads. That may be, however, also a side effect of the cryptocurrency bear market, so it is too early to tell if Merit is the reason.

Maybe we can simply wait and see ... but the ideas discussed in this thread are worth been taking into account by the forum staff, I think.

[coinnumber]

 I think merits has drastically reduce the rate of spam in the forum. Most of the signature participates now read and post constructive meaningful post at least it now make the forum lively for investors to visit because the will see something good while they are here. Some forum members lack English which makes their post not to look organised.