The Reality of this forum

[tranthidung]

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.

I suggest to lift up current merit requirements of lower ranks, 10 merits for Junior member and 25 merits for member.
Full member and above ranks remains current merit requirements.
This new lift-up merit requirements for Junior and Member rank will reduce spamming endemic, which has not stopped yet after the launch day of merit system.

[vphasitha01]

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.

While we will not be directly moderating this, I encourage people to give merit to posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with.

I only want to highlight the point what "Theymos" said at the first place when he introduced "merit" system for the forum. Is there any mods who reviewed ( at least randomly) how the merit sources send their sMerits? Someone can argue that " I can send my sMerits by my own way" and do you believe that's fair when we look at the big picture of making forum less spammy.

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).

I'm also agree with you that English opinions and standards matter when it comes to the international forum though I'm not a Englishman and my native language is not English either. But since I have joined this forum I think I am able to improve (actually I can't say only from my  view) my English knowledge which is a added benefit for my professional career also. So to be honest I feel why I didn't know about bitcointalk before?

[Jet Cash]

I'm shocked by the alt announcement board. I've decided that I'll create my own coin at some time in the future, and I decided I'd post a statement of intent in the Alt coin section. I looked at one board, and the first two pages were full of threads that had been updated within the last 10 minutes. I didn't bother to look at any of them, and I decided that the whole board was a waste of computing resources. I wonder what Google thinks of the threads. I'm also having issues with the mining boards. It looks as if they are focused on earnings potential, and have forgotten that Bitcoin Talk used to be a learning resource.

[mdayonliner]

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.

Spot on mate.

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.

Absolutely. I had the same thinking of not monetizing the forum but seeing the response from theymos had me no doubt that the motivation behind running this forum is far more noble than making it a cash machine. 

mainly because it's part of the forum's mission to be as free as possible.

It's always preferable to handle these problems by reshaping the environment to make them non-problems, rather than removing some freedom.

The motivation is the freedom of doing that you want to do. Problem is there are people who will take advantages from anything.

[AverageGlabella]

I'm shocked by the alt announcement board. I've decided that I'll create my own coin at some time in the future, and I decided I'd post a statement of intent in the Alt coin section. I looked at one board, and the first two pages were full of threads that had been updated within the last 10 minutes. I didn't bother to look at any of them, and I decided that the whole board was a waste of computing resources. I wonder what Google thinks of the threads. I'm also having issues with the mining boards. It looks as if they are focused on earnings potential, and have forgotten that Bitcoin Talk used to be a learning resource.

Google indexs them fine annoyingly. They are likely getting hits off google which is driving a lot more people to their thread and to this forum this might sound like a good thing but its exactly the problem we are currently having with these people registering accounts and spamming the altcoin board in order to earn shares in their altcoin. I am not sure what Google thinks of this as its just generating traffic on their side. But if they go the route of banning adverts of icos like Facebook and other companies have done then we could see a reduction of users signing up and the spam.

[shield132]

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.

Don't want to be rude but almost everyone from the creation of forum talks the same shit about this forum, brain is just....
Yeah people spam here but don't read shit topics if that makes you anxious and why to read something unvaluable? Also did you ask question and not get answer? Has that ever happened? I bet noo... Community is amazing here, I know some people who helped me a lot, really a lot. Just ignore spammers and keep using forum...

[olumyd]

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.

Correct me if am wrong.

While the bitcointalk.org community was established to create a knowledge-base system for bitcoiners and future adopters of the cryptocurrency model, monetizing, bounty as an economical by-product has helped the community grow so large.

While we may not all have equal access to internet money making ventures that work, I'd say that this forum has brought about freelancers, professionals, dreams and redefined purposes. And putting a cap on that, might not be the best option.

There are many out there who would be the next Satoshi or Vitalik or even you, who can contribute immensely to this great economic revolution and should be given that opportunity even if they don't have the 'necessary resources' to get there in a jiffy.

There are still some high ranking 'shit-posters' (pardon my tongue), who scaled that bridge and had their ranks 'hero-ed'(not epic at all), and while I know that they are carefully being watched, they still have their ways around the system, or don't they?

The obvious solution is to expand/enforce the administrative responsibilities to include calling bounty managers to do due diligence and report shit posters, having specific ordinances that govern bounty hunting with a specific level of service to the BTT community or the larger crypto-family as a whole. - I'm also afraid that it might centralize this once so 'free' and 'democratic' society - but it's all for the greater good ai.

The idea of a ranking/merit system should be one of value, whereby when you see a Hero/Legendary post, it should mean something as priceless as experience and the other ranks should be able to hold such to account.

People still create newbie accounts when they want to comment outside 'their usual self', and you could tell that this person isn't a newbie at all.

I should suppose the ideal state of a newbie is someone who is ignorant and wants to learn more about what cryptocurrencies, bitcoin, altcoins, trading and the sorts are all about. And as they learn, they can contribute their own perspectives, and results should be growth not just in activities but also in rank, to be able to establish their well being in the community.

Practically, a good number of good [informative and educative] posts can catch the eyes of 'meriters', you'd even find merits being wasted on comments that truly add no value. (would love to draw examples here, but no need to be petty).

Finally, we must be aware of the real state of affairs, bitcoin may be popular, cryptocurrencies may have been widely spread, but adoption is the goal and still dependent on the reliability of this still developing 'cryptographic economics'.

[madnessteat]

I agree with the author that the prohibition bounty on the forum will reduce traffic. You can close the main Board from advertising and to develop a forum.

[actmyname]

There are many out there who would be the next Satoshi or Vitalik or even you, who can contribute immensely to this great economic revolution and should be given that opportunity even if they don't have the 'necessary resources' to get there in a jiffy.

If you're trying to say a bounty hunter is the next Satoshi then I will disagree with you 99.999% of the time. If they spend their time in useful sections outside of megathreads then they may have potential. Other than that, they're just shitposting.

There are still some way too fucking many high ranking 'shit-posters' (pardon my tongue), who scaled that bridge and had their ranks 'hero-ed'(not epic at all), and while I know that they are carefully being watched, they still have their ways around the system, or don't they?

FTFY. I would estimate that 95% (at least) of Hero+ members post garbage.

The obvious solution is to expand/enforce the administrative responsibilities to include calling bounty managers to do due diligence and report shit posters, having specific ordinances that govern bounty hunting with a specific level of service to the BTT community or the larger crypto-family as a whole. - I'm also afraid that it might centralize this once so 'free' and 'democratic' society - but it's all for the greater good ai.

There's nothing wrong with having rules. We're not made better with having fewer regulations.

If managers cared who was advertising for their campaign, none of them would allow negative-trusted members to participate.
If managers cared about the spam on the forum, none of the bounty threads would reach the ridiculous page lengths that a lot currently do.
If managers cared about post quality, then 30% of the forum would be cleaner. None of the useless, redundant, garbage posts would be accepted and the spammers would have to move on or learn that they would need to increase their quality.

The idea of a ranking/merit system should be one of value, whereby when you see a Hero/Legendary post, it should mean something as priceless as experience and the other ranks should be able to hold such to account.

Exactly. Which is why when newbies come to Bitcointalk and see all the Hero and Legendary members act so inexperienced, it's disheartening.

I should suppose the ideal state of a newbie is someone who is ignorant and wants to learn more about what cryptocurrencies, bitcoin, altcoins, trading and the sorts are all about. And as they learn, they can contribute their own perspectives, and results should be growth not just in activities but also in rank, to be able to establish their well being in the community.

A lot of new members come here just to earn money from bounties. It's sickening.

Practically, a good number of good [informative and educative] posts can catch the eyes of 'meriters', you'd even find merits being wasted on comments that truly add no value. (would love to draw examples here, but no need to be petty).

A lot of this is abuse. It'll eventually dissipate.

[gensol]

This is the best piece I have read today and I am glad hearing that the reason behind the forum was not based on milking money but was based on genuine desire to let many people in on the blockchain technology and cryptocurrency at large. And truly by far, that goal is being achieved. I personally have been able to learn one or two things ever since I joined the forum and to that, I am most grateful. Who knows if payment was required before having entrance into the forum, people like me might not have been able to make it here.

[hilariousetc]

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.)

I don't disbelieve you when you say that you don't care that much about making money from here as there could have been numerous ways that you could have personally enriched yourself both legitimately and illegitimately from the forum over the years and I've even suggested that you pay yourself a reasonable wage and do admin duties here full time before because one is badly needed, but saying things like you've thought about getting rid of ad slots baffles me. Why? Because they're too much of a hassle and headache for you to organise? If so, can't you either automate the procedure of people buying them or delegate a staff member to be in charge of advertisements instead of just considering removing them completely? Delegating workload to various people will seriously free up your time to do much more productive things and stop you from being pestered about things you don't have the time or energy to do (and other staff members are then pestered who don't even have the means or authority to help). The forum shouldn't be losing money or throwing it away and even more ad slots wouldn't hurt (especially when the forum is covered by sig ads that the vast majority only contribute to the deterioration of the board). Even if we don't need the money the reserve funds won't last forever, but you could even put the money made to good use. Use it to finance worthwhile projects that will benefit bitcoin or even the world, or even give it all away to charity. Nearly 500 people died in floods in Kerala, India last month. We could make sure it gets into the hands of people who actually need it there. What's even worse is that you always get scumbags popping up here trying to use various tragedies to scam by asking for donations. Happens with every natural disaster. I'm sure if we had some sort of official donation drive many people would contribute to it in knowing that the money will actually get to the right people and make a difference.

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.

This forum is probably one of the most free and liberal on the internet, but there are rules here and without rules or when they're not enforced efficiently it just descends into pure chaos and anarchy and that is what we have now. There needs to be some basic laws for a functioning society and this forum is a perfect example of what happens when you do away with law and order and let people do largely whatever they want. You say you don't want to destroy the economy, but the forum has already practically been destroyed as it's unfit for its original purpose and is now mostly populated just by spammers and scammers. This shouldn't be the culture here and it can change, but it won't as long as we do nothing. There are numerous compromises we can make that don't even encroach on anyone's freedom to post here. Everyone should be able to post and I agree with your reasoning for removing things like Newbie jail, but I don't think everyone should be able to earn here straight away and especially by contributing little to nothing, especially those who literally have no idea or interest in bitcoin other than somebody has just told them they can earn money here for posting. This is what leads to the wall-to-wall illiterate spamming and copy and pasting which ruins the true purpose of this forum in the first place. What do you even expect them to do? If you have little to no interest in bitcoin and can't speak English very well if at all but you want to get paid here then that's a recipe for disaster. That's why we should look at things like punishing ICO campaigns that are financing it in the first place and removing signatures completely from Junior Members and/or requiring them to get a minimal amount of merit to become one. That is not too much to ask and isn't restrictive to anyone posting here at all. We really should start 'reshaping the environment' before it's too late. I don't think we should ever fully ban signature campaigns, especially when a compromise can be found without impinging on anybodies right to post, but if we continue to do nothing then removing them will likely be our only option eventually. To make that work efficiently though you would also have to remove avatars and personal texts because people would still utilise them for adverts. The logical explanation to me is to do something about it now and we can do so in various ways that are not at all oppressive to people posting.

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.

I agree, but the problem is that not many people are doing it constructively. I've always said I think it's awesome that people can earn here, but there needs to be a compromise and we can't just let both ICOs and spammers and bots do whatever they want. People can't be getting paid for generic one liners and bots copy and pasting content over x amount of accounts each. Where do we draw the line and when do we say enough is enough? I've been saying for years that's it's not going to be long before the only people posting here are spammers and bots just earning their 'daily needs', but that already happened long ago. Go into any thread and spend a few minutes reading the replies and you'll see this how bad it is.

This is probably the best example I've seen recently about how bad things have got here:

 

There's so many things wrong with that post:

1) He's a haiki/doge bot.
2) He's a Junior Member.
3) He's on a signature campaign.
4) He's posting in the Howeycoins thread about how great it and its team are: A non-existent fake ICO with a non-existent team.
5) That will just be one of dozens/hundreds/possibly thousands that never get looked into. How many others is he getting paid on?

This is another:

I received a PM today with a typical excuse:

Hello sir,
I'm representing my friends to appeal about our accounts that you give negative trust due to this post.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4650049.0
I wish to inform you that those accounts not belong to a single person, we are making a community to perform bounty campaign.
Does working on bounty campaign with our own individual account against the rules?
About the those wallet that are connected to each other, we used it to safe the fee of transaction.
Some of our team today (the other member are working at home, at the moment):

here is our website : http://kidoelkempoel.com/index.html
Please kindly reconsider, and please remove the negative trust on our account.
Thank you.

That's a picture someone provided to prove that they weren't alts and are all separate people posting away. Just check their posting history. All generic one/two liner spam. Sadly, the forum has actually become some sort of "worldwide welfare organization" and that is literal picture proof of it. The longer we sit back and do nothing the worse it gets.

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.

But what about when the barriers to join are too low and anyone can get paid just by singing up with an account here? A bot can even do it and get paid as evidenced by the haiku/doge bot above. Also, what about all those who come here to actually discuss bitcoin or get some help and they just leave because it's useless and full of barely decipherable spam and wrong information? I've lost count of how many times I've seen people giving wrong advice on something they know nothing about or complaining about all the lazy, generic crap that gets posted everywhere purely for payment or ranking up.
 

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.

It annoys everyone other than those making and profiting from it, but I don't think it is difficult to curb. If you keep paying people to spam then you're not allowed to advertise here. Simples. If you remove signatures from lower ranks like Juniors or require some sort of merit amount to become one then that stops the worse of the worst getting paid to bot and spam. Those are two very simple suggestions that could be implemented today and would have a tremendous effect on lowering spam and stopping people from earning by posting drivel. It's acceptable to do this because we allow it. Please change this culture before it's too late.

[athanz88]

@hillariousetc

Shit i believe that picture is coming from my country and i am really in shame now. That is what happens when you treat something wrong. This is a forum and should be treated like that, and getting money should be the least priority (bonus) for their self, but it is like they are making money by doing a shit work which a kid even do. They deserved to be labelled as a spammer. We can accept it if they do some work like excellently managing a campaign as a team, translation as a team, but they made a spamming service as a team and selling them to the bad managers who want to hire them, that is the next level play.

[Direwolve735]

The reality of this forum

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.

I agree with you that very often signature campaigns are the reason for shitposting, because people just want to fulfill bounty quotas. But at the same time, signature campaigns can be a motivation to write better and more qualified posts. The problem is not in the existence of signature campaigns, as such, but in the fact that they put forward different demands on their participants.

There are campaigns that take everyone in a row, but there are those which set a high bar. And if the participant doesn`t reach it (not enough merits, bad history of posts, etc.), then he doesn`t get into the spreadsheet. Perhaps, instead of eliminating the very phenomenon of signature campaigns (which will have a bad effect on the website's traffic), it is necessary to establish certain rules for recruiting participants. If the bounty breaks them and reduces the set bar, then the admins will close it.

[hilariousetc]

@hillariousetc

Shit i believe that picture is coming from my country and i am really in shame now. That is what happens when you treat something wrong. This is a forum and should be treated like that, and getting money should be the least priority (bonus) for their self, but it is like they are making money by doing a shit work which a kid even do. They deserved to be labelled as a spammer. We can accept it if they do some work like excellently managing a campaign as a team, translation as a team, but they made a spamming service as a team and selling them to the bad managers who want to hire them, that is the next level play.

The country is irrelevant really and you shouldn't feel shame for the acts of others just because they're compatriots, but when people can't speak English very well, don't know much about bitcoin if anything at all and are doing this over multiple accounts each and as a full time job then that's when it becomes a huge problem and just leads to the utter degradation of the forum. I've made the comparison before that it's like someone going to Chinese-speaking Lamborghini forum to talk about Lambos, when you don't care about cars, can't drive, and can't speak Mandarin, but you can get paid to talk about them so people do and in their droves. It's a recipe for disaster. People should be able to earn here, but there needs to be some standards because the practice is destructive and the poor/barely decipherable posts ruin the experience for everyone else. It's like doing a job that you're in no way qualified to do but people are paying you for your shoddy jobs day after day with no penalties for the job even getting worse as time goes on. That needs to change. Theymos says this board isn't a welfare system for people, but the truth is that's pretty much all this place has become. We can easily change this. Newbies and Juniors shouldn't be able to advertise and a small merit requirement should be implemented to get a signature. ICOs who pay for spam need to be punished and people who can't speak English very well should be urged or suggested that they stick to their local board. If people only got paid for decent contributions then this place would clean itself up dramatically, but the longer we do nothing the worse it's is going to get.

[lukeburchill]

Shit i believe that picture is coming from my country and i am really in shame now.

Why are you ashamed of them, it's not your fault, and I'm not ashamed even though I come from the same country because they and I are different in "looking at this forum". instead, we have to prove that not all members are from Indonesia like them. who only searched for .002 BTC / week by breaking the forum rules (Spammer).

[Direwolve735]

@hillariousetc

Shit i believe that picture is coming from my country and i am really in shame now. That is what happens when you treat something wrong. This is a forum and should be treated like that, and getting money should be the least priority (bonus) for their self, but it is like they are making money by doing a shit work which a kid even do. They deserved to be labelled as a spammer. We can accept it if they do some work like excellently managing a campaign as a team, translation as a team, but they made a spamming service as a team and selling them to the bad managers who want to hire them, that is the next level play.

The country is irrelevant really and you shouldn't feel shame for the acts of others just because they're compatriots, but when people can't speak English very well, don't know much about bitcoin if anything at all and are doing this over multiple accounts each and as a full time job then that's when it becomes a huge problem and just leads to the utter degradation of the forum. I've made the comparison before that it's like someone going to Chinese-speaking Lamborghini forum to talk about Lambos, when you don't care about cars, can't drive, and can't speak Mandarin, but you can get paid to talk about them so people do and in their droves. It's a recipe for disaster. People should be able to earn here, but there needs to be some standards because the practice is destructive and the poor/barely decipherable posts ruin the experience for everyone else. It's like doing a job that you're in no way qualified to do but people are paying you for your shoddy jobs day after day with no penalties for the job even getting worse as time goes on. That needs to change. Theymos says this board isn't a welfare system for people, but the truth is that's pretty much all this place has become. We can easily change this. Newbies and Juniors shouldn't be able to advertise and a small merit requirement should be implemented to get a signature. ICOs who pay for spam need to be punished and people who can't speak English very well should be urged or suggested that they stick to their local board. If people only got paid for decent contributions then this place would clean itself up dramatically, but the longer we do nothing the worse it's is going to get.

When people are poor and live in terrible conditions, they take any job that brings them money, even if they don`t understand it. They are forced to do this and this behavior can be understood. The situation is the same with shitposting. Many folks have heard that this forum allows you to earn money through signature campaigns. And since many bounties don`t make the right demands, many newcomers who don`t understand the subject are gladly accepted for such work.

I don`t justify those who write low-quality posts only in order to fulfill bounty quotas. I'm just saying that such people can be understood. And the forum community can help them. In order to do a good job, people should be interested in it. The primary goal of this forum is to unite crypto-enthusiasts from around the world, to create a platform for free communication of those who are fond of crypto-currencies. But over time, a lot has changed and now the forum is filled with people who pursue material goals and who don`t have the desire to understand the crypto sphere, because they are not interested.

I believe that it is the duty of the leaders of this forum, of those who really are crypto-enthusiasts, to interest newcomers, who initially think only of easy earnings. Admins can set more stringent merit rules, participants can continue to create an endless array of topics about how they are fed up with spammers, but the latter won`t go away without our help. Instead of increasing the propensity between those who serve the original purpose of the forum (sharing news, discussing developments in the market, making predictions, increasing their knowledge of crypto-currencies), and those who are pursuing the goal of simply earning on signature campaigns, we should try to interest the latter, so that they aspire to improve the quality of their posts.

In order for this theory to work, it is necessary to create and consolidate topics for beginners about the initial mission of this forum, about how the crypto-currencies changed the lives of the bitcointalk participants, how to write quality comments, where to look for crypto information resources, etc. When people are interested in some field of activity, they are improving. We can help beginners and together make the forum better.

[hilariousetc]

When people are poor and live in terrible conditions, they take any job that brings them money, even if they don`t understand it. They are forced to do this and this behavior can be understood. The situation is the same with shitposting. Many folks have heard that this forum allows you to earn money through signature campaigns. And since many bounties don`t make the right demands, many newcomers who don`t understand the subject are gladly accepted for such work.

It's actually worse than that. There's no repercussions for doing a shitty job here. Even if they took some job doing menial work in their own country like cleaning toilets or packing products into boxes, they'd be fired pretty quickly if they showed up to work whenever they wanted and did the worst job imaginable and cut every corner they could possibly do and that's essentially what happens here. People are unqualified for the 'work' or tasks that they're doing. I wouldn't be able to work in a factory or office in Indonesia because I can't speak Indonesian, so I'd be useless. The same applies here but obviously they're not going to be fired because ICOs are happy to have them on board promoting their crap which only ruins the forum in the process and puts money directly into both their pockets so they all have a financial incentive to keep doing it.

And I know exactly why they do it. I totally understand and don't even begrudge them for it, especially those that live in poverty and I accept that poverty can make people do desperate or even unscrupulous things, but there's also a lot of greed going on here. I think it's a beautiful thing if this forum makes a huge difference to people's lives (as it has mine) but people can't be earning here at the expense of the utter deterioration and degradation of the forum. If I was in their position then I'd likely be doing the same, but it's more of an issue with the administration and rules (or lack thereof) as we not only let them get away with it but have created a culture where it's acceptable to do so and there's mostly no punishments for abusers and rule breakers. You can come here, bot or farm as many accounts as you want and earn from them by either writing drivel or copy and pasting and we allow campaigns to pay for it with zero repercussions. At this point we might as well rename or rebrand the forum to icospamtalk.org or getpaidtopost.org because that's what this board has become. I'm all about making it better for everyone here and it can happen without it being restrictive to those who just want to post. If you want to be able to earn here via posting then you should earn that right through merit and ranks (or cough up for Copper/Silver/Gold member etc). If people who can't speak English very well want to earn here then they should either stick to their local board or just collecting bounties. It wouldn't be ok for me to go posting in the Spanish board when I can't speak Spanish to an acceptable standard and people there would rightly get annoyed if I was being nuisance and shitting up the place because it is both incredibly disruptive and annoying. Also, ICO campaigns and those that spam on them need to face punishments because otherwise nothing will change and as long as Juniors can get paid for copy and pasting or writing drivel then they will continue to do so and over god knows how many accounts.  It's not that difficult to find a compromise here that benefits everyone, but doing nothing as we usually do isn't going to help.

[Alone055]

In order for this theory to work, it is necessary to create and consolidate topics for beginners about the initial mission of this forum, about how the crypto-currencies changed the lives of the bitcointalk participants, how to write quality comments, where to look for crypto information resources, etc. When people are interested in some field of activity, they are improving. We can help beginners and together make the forum better.

There is definitely nothing more all of us want than the betterment of the forum and getting rid of what has, unfortunately, become a nightmare for all of us, but such theories actually don't work as much as we think they might. I totally understand that most of the spammers are from third-world countries, having no sources of income and are forced mentally to do all this in order to earn something, but a very large majority of this is too ignorant to grasp the things that you have mentioned to be done to help them. Where some of them might have even a little knowledge about what they are doing, there are some who doesn't even know what is a Cryptocurrency or what is Blockchain, but all they know is that if they post 20 times a week, they will get x number of tokens which they later can exchange for money. Or, if they tweet/retweet/share x number of Social Media shares, they will get x number of tokens which will turn into real money later sometime. I can even guarantee you that about 70% - 80% people participating in Bounties doesn't even know what ERC-20 stands for and how it works. All they know, or learn from others that are already in it, is that they would require an Ethereum wallet to receive the tokens.
The point is, you can only teach the people who come for learning, not the ones who are not even interested in it.

[mu_enrico]

T.T

Deep condolence mate, that's my country too. I don't mind what they are doing as long as they are not shitposting or break the rules. It's not different than being in an internet cafe and chill (IP wise). But, I'm pretty sure that they were the culprits who contribute to my 99.99% report accuracy.

Let's imagine that they were actually scripting bitcoin or design fancy bitcoin wallet. Just kidding.

[chocolah29]

Shit i believe that picture is coming from my country and i am really in shame now.

Why are you ashamed of them, it's not your fault, and I'm not ashamed even though I come from the same country because they and I are different in "looking at this forum". instead, we have to prove that not all members are from Indonesia like them. who only searched for .002 BTC / week by breaking the forum rules (Spammer).

As long as you're not doing what they do and you're not adding garbage in the forum then you're free from guilt likewise some part of nationalism is getting hurt here.

~
And if the participant doesn`t reach it (not enough merits, bad history of posts, etc.), then he doesn`t get into the spreadsheet. Perhaps, instead of eliminating the very phenomenon of signature campaigns (which will have a bad effect on the website's traffic), it is necessary to establish certain rules for recruiting participants. If the bounty breaks them and reduces the set bar, then the admins will close it.

This may need ton of work from the staff to monitor a lot of bounty campaigns which obviously popping everyday. However, if this will push through we can see this forum the way it's used to be.

Also the bounty managers will get the full responsibility to this or else he'll be the one who will get in trouble. And to lessen the spam posts, manager will require their participants to at least have a particular merit, in this way people will force to improve their post quality. Or the least we can do is to review the post history of the participants before it gets accepted just like what we have in bitcoin campaign.