The Reality of this forum

[green547]

The reality of this forum

There has been a lot of controversy these past few months regarding the spammers that flock to this forum in order to obtain money.   The merit system helps but most of these "legendary" and "hero" spammers got there by shitting out one liners the past few years.

The obvious solution is to remove signature campaigns all together.   This will undoubtedly get rid of the people who are here for the wrong reasons.  But Theymos and mods know this will absolutely kill the traffic to this website and ad revenue would absolutely plummet.

A lot of the boards don't even have real discussion. I guarantee a lot of these guys just skip to the last page, post something that is somewhat relevant to the topic and dip to the next thread to fulfill there bounty quotas.

The best boards in my opinion are the mining sections.  Great insight, no spammers, no trolls, barely any paid sigs in the mining boards.

The reality is this place is excellent money for those living in poorer countries.  Why work 12 hours a day making iphones in a factory when they can get $500 a week posting from their 10 alt accounts.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

Wall Observer in Speculation sub is my favourite thread, sigs are blanked out (hidden) & we mainly discuss what we’re all here for - bitcoin & the current & future price.

Give it a go, I’ve formed some good online friendships with a few people there. It’s a hood laugh too a lot of the time.

[actmyname]

The best boards in my opinion are the mining sections.  Great insight, no spammers, no trolls, barely any paid sigs in the mining boards.

Mining sections have less spam than general discussion but you will still get megathreads and vague, pointless discussion.

The fact of the matter is, unless the section requires a degree of sophisticated knowledge, you will get posters who will spam the same redundant common-sense crap everywhere.
Something something bitcoin trends go up.
Something something house edge.
Something something merit is good.Technical Discussion might be the most spam-free part of the forum because (let's face it) most people here still don't know how Bitcoin works. On the flip-side, you have the spam-ridden "good project sir" Altcoin Discussion sections, which should be set ablaze.

(Technical Support is half-half. You'll only get good discussion when the thread is not about "my transaction isn't coming through!")

[green547]

Yes I forgot about technical discussion and serious discussion. Those are great boards.  The bounty boards and altcoin boards.... You are so right,   "Good project when moon," "good luck dev" etc

[dx5]

Funny, just a few minutes ago I was thinking of when I first joined this forum 4 years ago. And the pro Bitcoin, banks are out to get us posts, and just a few minutes ago I thought, "those post were probably not sincere." They were probably people trying to fill a posting quota.

[darklus123]

This problem is i think a never ending problem with this forum. As long as there are bounty threads there would always users who will take advantage on it. Tho after all there are alot of users here who were fighting spammers like the signature campaign managers. Theymos and the other mods were also providing new strategies if not to totally solve  but to atleast lessen the problem.

[Flying Hellfish]

There has been a lot of controversy these past few months regarding the spammers that flock to this forum in order to obtain money.   The merit system helps but most of these "legendary" and "hero" spammers got there by shitting out one liners the past few years.

Perhaps there is a little truth to that but it is dwarfed by comparison to the mountain of shit by jr and lower accounts.

The obvious solution is to remove signature campaigns all together.   This will undoubtedly get rid of the people who are here for the wrong reasons.  But Theymos and mods know this will absolutely kill the traffic to this website and ad revenue would absolutely plummet.

I used to think this as well.  I even made a post with that sentiment a few months ago

I've done a bunch of thinking on this issue and have made a few conclusions that I have yet to see addressed, so here they are!

1)  After considering it a lot I realized that theymos has done almost nothing to increase the revenue streams of the forum as it's gained popularity and climbed Alexa!  We have the same 9 slots available to advertise that we have had for as long as I can remember.  He has not added any other banner ads or referral ads/links in fact he appears to have done none of the traditional things a "for profit" business running the site would do with the increasing popularity of the site to grow the revenue stream.

This site could be an absolute cash cow for theymos, yet he has not done a single thing to indicate that is his primary motive.  So to me either he is the worst business man on the planet because even a 12 year old could take a site ranked this high and make hundreds of thousands a month OR he has another reason or values the traffic differently.

Consider also that the financials of the forum are available for anyone that can search.  When I found the financials it isn't hard to see that the forum is a very early adopter of BTC and as such has been tremendously fortunate if one views it in terms of fiat...

Based on the fact that I now felt that the driving force behind theymos' decisions was not $ I began to wonder what value the traffic could have to him.

I wondered why not just get rid of the sigs and go back to a better ratio of signal to noise, what value does the traffic have??

I think the value is that new people are finding there way here, Bitcoin is growing.  Bitcoin is affecting and changing peoples lives for the better, especially people who weren't lucky enough to be born in the first world...  The more people know about it the better chance it has of changing the future.  Honestly isn't it great that someone can make as much money (without abusing alts) posting here learning about BTC than a week in manual labour??

I honestly believe he is making every effort to encourage as many new people to the forum and bitcoin as possible while doing his best to keep out the straight up whores.  What a difficult balancing act because one of the worst things would be to stagnate new users.  If a user comes here for the wrong reason but learns about BTC and becomes a decent user, that's good IMO.  If spam is the consequence of growing bitcoin can we deal with it??

I'm not suggesting to not work on the spam problem at all.  I think the merit system shows that he is hearing us about the spam but it is clearly not an easy fix if you don't want to stagnate growth.

I am not trying to speak for theymos and I have never spoken to him about this.  I came up with these (for good or bad myself and are my personal opinions).

To be honest I think is shows that it was a good decision to give BTCT to theymos as I'm sure that many people wouldn't have been able to resist the temptation to turn this site into a full on for profit business and make fucking bank!

With that being said perhaps this will help when people are trying to think of ways to fight the spam.  I honestly think if you could present a workable solution to theymos that WON'T stagnate new growth or affect normal users you would probably get a lot of support from him (IMHO).

[hugeblack]

Compulsory solutions = Fast results, absolute failure or absolute success.
If you have an injured foot, do you cut it or treat it slowly? "Same with the Spam problem."[If everyone does well, there will be no problem]
Campaign managers must set a minimum of merits, and then force participants to earn one merit per week to get their full payment." will reduce advertising costs and increase good posts."

Why work 12 hours a day making iPhones in a factory when they can get $500 a week posting from their ten alt accounts.

After the merit system, it will be difficult to manage ten accounts, especially if there are high limits to participate in campaigns and points every week.
Also, your income will significantly reduce which will push you to find another job or focus on high-quality posts from one account.

-snip-

Read -----> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg29540717#msg29540717

[KingScorpio]

The reality of this forum
The reality is this place is excellent money for those living in poorer countries.  Why work 12 hours a day making iphones in a factory when they can get $500 a week posting from their 10 alt accounts.

why you say that? you want to attract more account spamming?

people are already drifting into alternative communities its also why bitcoin drops in price.

we will have to develop a new cryptoeconomy anyway, and there are people having their signatures like me that represents their project

regards

[theymos]

Based on the fact that I now felt that the driving force behind theymos' decisions was not $

Right, I don't care about making money from the forum personally. (I've actually thought about getting rid of the forum ads, since it's often a big headache and the forum has enough reserves for a long time, but operating at a significant loss while there's money basically just sitting on the table feels wrong, even if the level of loss is sustainable for quite a while.)

The things on the forum which encourage spam are allowed mainly because it's part of the forum's mission to be as free as possible. Eg. banning bounties would undoubtedly reduce spam, but that'd be destroying an entire economy/population/culture which has been able to develop due to the forum's freedom. I am willing to take this sort of action, but only as an absolute last resort. It's always preferable to handle these problems by reshaping the environment to make them non-problems, rather than removing some freedom.

It's wonderful when someone is able to constructively do something on the forum instead of continuing with whatever they were expected to do under the status quo. Enabling that sort of thing is exactly why Bitcoin and this forum were created. Though bitcointalk.org is not a worldwide welfare organization, and people are not entitled to make money.

Limiting newbie participation is very harmful for a community. Newbie jail will never return: I consider the newbie-jail period to have been extremely damaging to the forum. When barriers to participation are too high, then the best people often just won't go to the trouble of joining, and the people who are willing to jump through the hoops are often people who aren't good for the community: people with nothing better to do, scammers, get-rick-quickers, etc. Having a permanent newbie jail policy would improve things a lot in the short-term, but would end up being a fatal poison to the community.

The low signal-to-noise is a real issue which seriously annoys me and is often on my mind. But as you mention, fixing it non-destructively is difficult.

[BitNaija]

Based on the fact that I now felt that the driving force behind theymos' decisions was not $

Right, I don't care about making money from the forum personally. (I've actually thought about getting rid of the forum ads, since it's often a big headache and the forum has enough reserves for a long time, but operating at a significant loss while there's money basically just sitting on the table feels wrong, even if the level of loss is sustainable for quite a while.)

The things on the forum which encourage spam are allowed mainly because it's part of the forum's mission to be as free as possible. Eg. banning bounties would undoubtedly reduce spam, but that'd be destroying an entire economy/population/culture which has been able to develop due to the forum's freedom. I am willing to take this sort of action, but only as an absolute last resort. It's always preferable to handle these problems by reshaping the environment to make them non-problems, rather than removing some freedom.

It's wonderful when someone is able to constructively do something on the forum instead of continuing with whatever they were expected to do under the status quo. Enabling that sort of thing is exactly why Bitcoin and this forum were created. Though bitcointalk.org is not a worldwide welfare organization, and people are not entitled to make money.

Limiting newbie participation is very harmful for a community. Newbie jail will never return: I consider the newbie-jail period to have been extremely damaging to the forum. When barriers to participation are too high, then the best people often just won't go to the trouble of joining, and the people who are willing to jump through the hoops are often people who aren't good for the community: people with nothing better to do, scammers, get-rick-quickers, etc. Having a permanent newbie jail policy would improve things a lot in the short-term, but would end up being a fatal poison to the community.

The low signal-to-noise is a real issue which seriously annoys me and is often on my mind. But as you mention, fixing it non-destructively is difficult.

We have to commend the Admins for creating the truly democratic platform in the world. All shades of opinion and full expression are accommodated, yet regulated.

[Quickseller]

I think there are certain things that should be done as far as monetization that would be good for the forum as a whole. One example would be to charge to enable features such as the ability to have a signature/avatar, or to enable certain signature related features. This would force users to pay for the ability to earn money via the forum, and eventually users who know they are unable to meet forum standards for post quality will be unwilling to pay for signature features.

Proof of captcha is a decent way to fight spammers, however proof of money is significantly superior. 

I think the merit system had good intentions, however far too frequently, I see posts with merit that I believe received merit because the sender agreed with the content of the post, and not the underlying effort put into the post. I believe that over time, the merit system will only contribute and encourage groupthink. 

[Jet Cash]

That was an interesting post by Theymos, and I'm grateful to him for clarifying some of the policies and motivations behind Bitcoin Talk.

There are a number of things that responsible members can do to help the forum. One thing is to try to maintain an efficient flow for thread readers. For example, a poster of member rank should be aware that full quotes are usually redundant, so the quote by BitNaija immediately after the post by Theymos is both redundant and annoying. I'd like to revisit this thread, so I put him on ignore to save wasting my time when scrolling.

I'd like to make a couple of suggestions with regard to posting permissions. I believe that it would be worthwhile to restrict thread starting in the serious discussion board to members and above. In fact it may be worth reviewing the permissions for thread starting.

The combination of merit and reputation tagging seems to be having a beneficial effect, but there are still some abuses of the awarding of merits. The awarding of merit for reporting posts is discouraging for members who want to see the merit system working to improve the quality of posting. It allows low quality spammers to improve their ranking without contributing to the growth of information available in the forum. Account and merit selling is a rising industry here, and it prompted me to try to build a database for merit awarders to use. Hopefully this would deprive the new underworld of merits, and reduce the profitability of their ventures. I think it would be better if the forum staff controlled this, as there is too much scope for errors if is administered privately.

[vphasitha01]

I think the merit system had good intentions, however far too frequently, I see posts with merit that I believe received merit because the sender agreed with the content of the post, and not the underlying effort put into the post. I believe that over time, the merit system will only contribute and encourage groupthink. 

I also think merit system needs some tweaks in order to achieve it's utmost goal. As far my knowledge merits should not only given if the sender agreed with the post.
That is chopping opportunities for getting merits whose thinking out of the box and that will ultimately produce some kind of groups of members who blindly agreed with the OP in order to gain merits.

[Jet Cash]

As far my knowledge merits should not only given if the sender agreed with the post.
That is chopping opportunities for getting merits whose thinking out of the box and that will ultimately produce some kind of groups of members who blindly agreed with the OP in order to gain merits.

I assume that you mean that merit awards should not be restricted to posters who agree with the philosophy of the awarder. The diversity amongst the merit sources, and the ability of those who have received merit to award merit, means that anybody creating a decent post should be able to reap a reward. It falls down if awarders don't use post quality as the primary criterion.

This was something that concerned me when I became a merit source. I have quite a few English opinions and standards, and I felt that these should be modulated in an International forum ( well a little bit anyway). This is why I created a chat room for merit sources and mods, and I hope that they have created a more tolerant attitude in me. I don't respect sycophants and beggars, so I hope that I don't create such groups. In fact I believe that "Great minds don't think alike, they think for themselves".

LoyceV has created some interesting research tables, and they seem to be used to highlight members who are awarding merits for personal promotion, rather than for the benefit of the forum. I hope that the next stage will be for merit awarders to use this research to starve the abusers of sMerit to award.

[criz2fer]

Limiting newbie participation is very harmful for a community. Newbie jail will never return: I consider the newbie-jail period to have been extremely damaging to the forum. When barriers to participation are too high, then the best people often just won't go to the trouble of joining, and the people who are willing to jump through the hoops are often people who aren't good for the community: people with nothing better to do, scammers, get-rick-quickers, etc. Having a permanent newbie jail policy would improve things a lot in the short-term, but would end up being a fatal poison to the community.

I think this means every newbie that would really aim for the interest of learning in the forum will go through scammers and spammers just to gain "Knowledge"

I'd like to make a couple of suggestions with regard to posting permissions. I believe that it would be worthwhile to restrict thread starting in the serious discussion board to members and above. In fact it may be worth reviewing the permissions for thread starting.

Hope this request will be granted. It would be great to join a discussion with real members rather than spammers that would only shit post.

50 merit requirement could be a great ceiling for a member rank. Just an opinion.

[actuallytwolamas]

There are a number of things that responsible members can do to help the forum. One thing is to try to maintain an efficient flow for thread readers. For example, a poster of member rank should be aware that full quotes are usually redundant, so the quote by BitNaija immediately after the post by Theymos is both redundant and annoying. I'd like to revisit this thread, so I put him on ignore to save wasting my time when scrolling.

Never had a thought that full quotes are redundant and makes hard to read answers, and I always used them, but now when I thought about it, it really makes sense. You live and learn.

[TheQuin]

50 merit requirement could be a great ceiling for a member rank. Just an opinion.

I think 10 is hard enough without discouraging genuine posters. The main problem I'm seeing lately is the Jr. Member copy paste spambots all signed up to signature bounty campaigns. Maybe a 1 or 2 Merit requirement for Jr. Member would be more useful.

[lordquanta]

OPs comment looks less of an insight and more of a rant from the person who missed the train. There are forum-members who are working on improving traffic and contents, whereas some are just here for making good money. Current rules for profile have been enforced to make the forum a better place. Just because a new member finds it difficult to make progress in ranking due to these rules does not mean the reboot of forum should be implemented. This kind of attitude only underlines the lack of conscience and nothing else.
It is better to accept the reality as it is and move on.

[evlogii]

You have highlighted one aspect of the forum and I agree that those useless posts are a problem especially for readers looking for some reliable information.

But there is also a lot of positive here and that is why the forum is so much popular. You get to read the posts and experience of people who are associated with the launch and development of bitcoins for free. Any campaign posted here is exposed to thorough examination by so many experienced members and many scam are caught in the process. Similarly, there are many other benefits of using this forum.