Disable signatures/bounties til a user reaches full member status.

[Welsh]

Newbies - only 1 post per day, can't post if its not more than a hundred words ( if the post is good  as shit then it would be deleted immediately )
Jr. Member - only 1-3 post per day ,can't post if its not more than a hundred words ( if the post is good  as shit then it would be deleted immediately ), 5 Merits Requirement Before joining campaigns, Only from this rank with Merit can put some signatures for the campaign
Members-1-5 post per day, 15 Merits Requirement Before joining campaigns
Full Member 1-5 post per day, 120 Merits (or depends if the 100 Merits is accumulated not by default ) Requirement Before joining campaigns

Some of these suggestions are similar to what the newbie jail was. Instead, of restrictions on where they can post you are limiting how many times they can post. This harms the legitimate users, and 1 post per day is incredibly low. Also, requiring a certain character count is just pointless. Some replies just require a few words. In fact, I honestly think the character requirement for signature campaigns isn't needed. A constructive post can be said, and done within a couple of words, and not necessarily 100 characters. It just invites unnecessary padding of a post.

Just Make The Merits Be A Requirement For Joining Campaigns

And I think it is the CM's job to evaluate the campaign member's post whether it is a useless or not.

Many Threads should be locked up first before implementing such rules.

Yeah, it should be their responsibility, and they should already have some pretty strict guidelines for the best possible users joining. However, this isn't the case because there's no actual downside of them enrolling anyone, and everyone. The person who is hiring them is happy because they are getting crazy amount of traffic because their website is being spammed across the forums, and the campaign manager is happy because they are getting paid for minimal work.

There either needs to be punishments handed out to the campaign managers as well as the the members participating in the campaign or implementation of restrictions. I'm actually more inclined to try out punishing campaign managers, and see if the quality improves.

To sum up this post : Ban Signature Campaigns, forum is sorted (and dead)

Is banning signature campaigns not a sort of restriction in itself, though? This should be the last resort. Fundamentally, it isn't a problem that users can earn from posting. There is a problem in how this is affecting the forum, and how its currently being handled.

[cabalism13]

1 post per day is incredibly low.

Yes, indeed. But for the sake of these communtiy it should be limited just for the newbies.

Also, requiring a certain character count is just pointless. Some replies just require a few words. In fact, I honestly think the character requirement for signature campaigns isn't needed. A constructive post can be said, and done within a couple of words, and not necessarily 100 characters. It just invites unnecessary padding of a post.

You have a point, but still we can't deny that the majority of the single liner posts are irrelevant and unacceptable to some topics.
And if that will be the case, CMs are just the only ones who can take action to this.

There either needs to be punishments handed out to the campaign managers as well as the the members participating in the campaign or implementation of restrictions. I'm actually more inclined to try out punishing campaign managers, and see if the quality improves.

Easier said than done. Punishments can be handled easily but the improvements regarding the posts, I don't think it will be seen as quickly as possible. There would be more cry babies will pop out because they can't construct such posts and having problems with the english language.

[yahoo62278]

My thoughts on this subject were more towards rewarding users for reaching a certain level vs being able to come right in and join the campaigns. First of all, users need to learn about bitcoin and the forum before they pop in to come earn. The biggest thing is they need to learn how to read and prove they can read.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4505246.msg40559490#msg40559490 For example. It's clearly stated in this bounty thread on the twitter and facebook sections, that users need to fill out the form to get credit for their stakes. I don't know if users are just too lazy to read, cannot read English, or do not care about rules posted in bounties, but obviously 76 pages later you can see that quite a few do not follow the rules.

Maybe I need to be more of an asshole?

I am just thinking that users need a period when joining to where they need to l earn how the forum works. Must read certain stickies. Learn about bitcoin. Maybe even take a test before they're allowed to post in certain areas or earn a penny. The test itsself would need to be alot of different random questions about the forum, it's rules, and anything else in general whomever creates the test would wanna throw in. I would not suggest just using the same test for every single user because some dude will make a youtube video about the test and the answers and render the test worthless. It would need to be constantly changed up.

[coinlocket$]

~

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4505246.msg40559490#msg40559490 For example. It's clearly stated in this bounty thread on the twitter and facebook sections, that users need to fill out the form to get credit for their stakes. I don't know if users are just too lazy to read, cannot read English, or do not care about rules posted in bounties, but obviously 76 pages later you can see that quite a few do not follow the rules.
~

That's because many users uses bots to post and they are multiaccounts.
Page 66-67 of your bounty 20 of 40 post are from 1 abuser already redtrusted.
Also page 79-80 to many people use this when they report

WEEK #3 (05 july-11 july)  

I strongly suspect they are alts the odds, they all use the exatly same words WEEK #3 (05 july-11 july), with no capital letters, with no spaces with no numbers (is more logical for human brain write 07 istead july since is faster to type) are very low
Yes they are probably alts but is 4 AM here and it takes too much time now to check all of them

OR

Week 3 ( 05/07 - 11/07)

With exatly the space after the 1st (

Want some proofs?

They use diffent eth addresses collector but is quite obvious





I can do a deeper investigation but it will takes a lot of hours.

As you can see I've opened only 4 pages of 80 (the lasts 2 and 2 random) of your bounty and the majority of those post are from newbie/jr abuser/suspicius abusers that they probably use bots to posts on forum and to do social media activities.

[yahoo62278]

~

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4505246.msg40559490#msg40559490 For example. It's clearly stated in this bounty thread on the twitter and facebook sections, that users need to fill out the form to get credit for their stakes. I don't know if users are just too lazy to read, cannot read English, or do not care about rules posted in bounties, but obviously 76 pages later you can see that quite a few do not follow the rules.
~

That's because many users uses bots to post and they are multiaccounts.
Page 66-67 of your bounty 20 of 40 post are from 1 abuser already redtrusted.
Also page 79-80 to many people use this when they report

WEEK #3 (05 july-11 july)  

I strongly suspect they are alts the odds, they all use the exatly same words WEEK #3 (05 july-11 july), with no capital letters, with no spaces with no numbers (is more logical for human brain write 07 istead july since is faster to type) are very low
Yes they are probably alts but is 4 AM here and it takes too much time now to check all of them

OR

Week 3 ( 05/07 - 11/07)

With exatly the space after the 1st (

Want some proofs?

They use diffent eth addresses collector but is quite obvious





I can do a deeper investigation but it will takes a lot of hours.

As you can see I've opened only 4 pages of 80 (the lasts 2 and 2 random) of your bounty and the majority of those post are from newbie/jr abuser/suspicius abusers that they probably use bots to posts on forum and to do social media activities.

I wouldn't mind seeing you investigate further and posting all your proof here so that the whole forum may get a view of whats going on. Just so ya know, newbies and jrs will earn nothing on that bounty campaign. It's limited to member and above. Just more proof of the lack of reading skills by those users.

[Quickseller]

My thoughts on this subject were more towards rewarding users for reaching a certain level vs being able to come right in and join the campaigns. First of all, users need to learn about bitcoin and the forum before they pop in to come earn.

I don't think it is the administrations place to say who can and cannot earn money, especially if they are not doing anything on the forum except making a post in a specific section not designed for actual discussion.

There is a reason why the people behind ICOs want broad exposure on social media -- because they want many people to see posts (that are really advertisements) for their ICO, and hopefully have one of their #hashtags go trending for some people. I would not be surprised if some of the mass accounts are actually hired by the people behind the ICO to manipulate social media, and the other mass accounts are still providing social media exposure to the ICOs anyway, so those behind the ICOs usually wont care one "person" (more likely a bot) is claiming their bounty 100 times.

Regardless of the above, I don't see why someone who isn't very active on the forum but is active on other social media platforms shouldn't be able to participate in bounties. If someone wants to tweet about ICOs or talk about ICOs with their friends on Facebook, let them, and let them earn money doing so. If we force people to rank up to participate in bounties who have no real interest in posting here, they will only post crap they put little effort into, and will go around begging for merit so they can rank up. If they have no interest in posting here, let them post what they want on social media.

Paying for signatures is a little different. I wouldn't agree that the merit system could be removed if signatures would be put behind a paywall either. I think the merit system is a pretty good system, regardless if there's other limitations on signatures or not. Its not perfect by all means. However, those that haven't earned any merit since the introduction of the system are fairly easy to spot. I've also supported hilariousandco's suggestion of a pay for signature type system in the past. I think it would be mostly beneficial. Of course, the price of this would need to be carefully considered. Too low, and users won't care about spamming, and getting banned, because they'll likely earn their investment back before they get caught, and they'll just reinvest on another account. Too high, and your just pricing out legitimate users out of the usage of a signature. Several users like to link to their personal projects within their signature, and other interesting projects by others. We shouldn't be removing the ability of users to do this.  I'm not 100% for the idea of a paid signature, and don't see it as the best solution, but more of a compromise due to something needed done about the issues.

When you charge people to enable signatures, people will quickly learn they will lose their investment if they post nonsense. More effort could be put into banning multi-accounters when they are posting crap, and maybe even the threshold to ban them should be lower, so someone with 10 accounts might risk $200 instead of $20 if they post even a little bit of low quality posts.

Non paying users might be able to have very basic signature functionality. Maybe users could have some signature features enabled for free if they self-certify their signature is not being used for commercial purposes each time they change their signature, and if they are caught with a commercial signature after certifying their signature is not commercial, their signature privileges can be revoked for a year, or however long.   

[The Cryptovator]

I was share before some day almost your similar idea. Reduce spam and scam by accepting only Bitcoin for signature campaign. . I think it will be helpful for reduce spam.

Another thread was Disable sign. camp. officially to prevent spam & know true value of merit system . I was mention at least signeture should be disable for Jr. Member's below.  For mebers should be merit required 15 . So for existing member's should also qualified, initials member's can't participate. This is the strong reason for spam on forum. Theymos should consider some implements.

Edit:  Another idea to avoid more spam just disable signeture campaign for initials merit holder's even he is legendary. He should earn minimum merit like 10 or 20 to participate signeture campaign. If some one initially got 1000 merit it doesn't mean he is not spammer.  So that every one will try to make quality post. I think this way 80 % spam we can prevent

[Piggy]

Doing some rapid calculation and going straight to the point. At the moment between new, jr and member there are about ~10k users that ever received some merit, all togheter they  got something like ~60k merits, so is 6 merit each in average.

Without even considering the new and existing users in the mix, is going to be needed a major injection of merits for something like this to be sustainable.

[joniboini]

-snip-
Edit:  Another idea to avoid more spam just disable signeture campaign for initials merit holder's even he is legendary. He should earn minimum merit like 10 or 20 to participate signeture campaign. If some one initially got 1000 merit it doesn't mean he is not spammer.  So that every one will try to make quality post. I think this way 80 % spam we can prevent

I like this idea. In fact, I'm seeing a lot of spam posts from those users with initial merits (even after ~4 months since merit was introduced). Reporting is quite tiring as they can just post in another thread and still fulfill their minimum signature post to get paid.

[SuiMikira]

We discussed about this several times. It can reduce spam a little but the merit market outside this forum will become eventful than ever. Also, there are thousands of full member and above rank shitposters out there, they have been on this forum for years, not all of high rank members are quality posters.

[Talk merit]

Re: signatures - I don't post much in a forum which doesn't allow an active link in my signature. Whilst I don't push my signature for much commercial gain, I do use it for various person projects and promotions. I wouldn't pay for a signature, I think of a signature as a 'thank you' for participating in the forum. Your choice of signature is a reflection of your morality. If you promote a scam or fraudulent product, then you should receive a red tag for it. Members should take responsibility for all their interactions with the forum.

Re: necro-bumps. Some of the new spam fests are the results of necro-bumps. I think that any thread that hasn't received a post for 30 days should be locked. If new information appears, then start a new thread, and link to the old one.

Re: mega spam threads. These are going to happen, so why not have one designated thread in a few of the major boards, and allow members to post (fairly ) freely in a chit-chat thread. Newbie introductions could be one, the wall in stats is another. A hardware/software chat in technical could also be useful. Any thread that starts to degenerate outside the chit-chat ones could be locked when it stops having value.

Re: serious discussion. Restrict it to members and above.

Re: newbie restrictions. Don't allow them to start threads outside a couple of designated boards ( beginners for example)

Re: banned accounts - created a new sub-board under Meta for the removal of ban restrictions, red tags and other associated topics.  Thread starting on Meta could then be restricted to members and above.

Re; alt accounts - all alts should be disclosed, and the main account identified publicly.

Re: account sales - these completely negate the benefits from the trust and merit system. They should be banned.

[Naida_BR]

Disable signatures-bounties until a user reaches full member rank is not a bad idea itself.

IT IS a bad idea itself. A shitposter does not have to do with his rank. Of course "low ranks" post and spam in a bigger frequency but this does not mean that there are not Full Members- Sr. Members that are not posting shit.


In my opinion, we need more moderators in forum in order to keep the quality posts and get rid of the others.

[DdmrDdmr]

Campaigns are a business for the forum, and it looks like a necessary deal. That does not mean that they cannot be regulated to a certain extent, or at the very least "favour" some over other if they comply with a spam-free policy. If enforcement is not on the plate, then voluntary commitment to a spam-free policy with benefits could help. The question would then be what benefits to give to anti-spam committed campaigns, acting through their campaign managers, and how to control that they keep to their word. Some of these matters were discussed last month on a post by d5000 ( The core of Bitcointalk's spam problem ), so a few additional ideas can be rescued from that thread alone.

One often commented feature would be to include a gained merit pre-requisite for joining campaigns. A few already do, but this is not a general practice yet. The concept behind being that if you’ve earned “enough” merit, your posting habits should be better and your knowledge of how the forum works more so, with a higher likeliness to be committed to an anti-spamming policy not because the campaign enforces/controls it, but because of one’s own nature as a merited person. Not all campaign attendants will be of this nature, but the chances are logically better than if this requirement is not placed. Of course merit trading will rise and at higher prices, but that’s a different side matter for now.

If gained merit were to be introduced into the equation somehow (the 120 profile visibility limit may or may not be a an issue here, but there are options to get the full history from LoyceV, Piggy and myself at least), the first premise would be to consider whether there is enough user base for the campaigns to actually keep their publicity being deployed, regardless of how that is being done.
Currently (as of las Friday), there are 17.335 people that have been awarded at least 1 Merit. Now out of those, not all are willing to participate wearing a signature, and quite a few of the signatures are of a personal nature and not tied to a specific ICO. Last time I checked, about a month ago, around 75% of the merited user base was wearing a signature (re: Is it easier to earn Merit without a signature? ), so the potential max. user base for campaigns with at least 1 sMerit is in the 13K range currently.
Now let’s say that a conservative average for users per campaign is of 200 users (I don’t have the real number here, so I’m estimating a low average from looking at report sheets). That would allow, with the current numbers, for 13.000/200 = 65 concurrent campaigns max. Over time, the base should grow, but currently at a slow pace, since were getting an average of 250 newly merited users per week (never merited before), as can be seen on the Merit Dashboard.   
Is that enough base, considering the amount of campaigns in the Ann thread and bounty thread?  Not even close. There are roughly 30 pages of ICOs that have a last post placed between today and yesterday. That is 1.200 active bounty threads at least!

Now if the requirement is stepped up to requiring 10 sMerits as a prerequisite or 20 as I’ve seen on this thread, the numbers would look like this:

10 gained sMerits:
nUsers: 4.864 -> Number of simultaneous campaigns (avg.200; 75% merited interested): 18

20 gained sMerits:
nUsers: 1.778 -> Number of simultaneous campaigns (avg.200; 75% merited interested): 7

What my hypothesis tells us is that introducing gained merit in campaigns as a mandatory pre-requisite would, with the current numbers, result on insufficient user base for the campaigns (especially if the gained sMerits required was high(ish)). Many would crave for this to happen, but as mandatory feature I don’t think we’ll see it; not with the current gained merit numbers.

But where it may get interesting is by trying to set a trend. If forum benefits are given to campaigns that commit voluntarily and declaratively to a spam-free policy, then a trend could be started. Benefits should probably be in the line of a better visibility for their campaign:

<...>
I would rather prefer for them to compete for the space than to pay for it. We could bring Merit in to the equation here. For example, we could play with positioning based on three variables:
-   Accumulated pre-signature Merit of Campaign´s signatories (this could be gained Merit and not Airdropped Merit for the signatories instead).
-   Accumulated Merit of Campaign´s signatories during the actual campaign.
-   Natural bumps.

The algoritm would create a scoring based on those three variables, being the second and third more relevant. For example, whenever a signatory is merited, the score for the positioning would be incremented, and thus the ICO’s positioning thread within the Ann section. Gained merit would have more weight than a bump, and a longer time effect in the positioning algorithm.
The above would play on the lines of basing positioning both in terms of participation (natural organic bumping) and quality/interest based by the signatories posting capabilities. Good posters would draw more attention to their signature through their natural activity, whilst rising collaterally the ANN thread’s position. Crappy posters would benefit the Campaign on neither accounts.

[coinlocket$]

Disable signatures-bounties until a user reaches full member rank is not a bad idea itself.

IT IS a bad idea itself. A shitposter does not have to do with his rank. Of course "low ranks" post and spam in a bigger frequency but this does not mean that there are not Full Members- Sr. Members that are not posting shit.


In my opinion, we need more moderators in forum in order to keep the quality posts and get rid of the others.

This is partialy true BUT I think the main reason to limit the campaing is to AVOID scammers and not shitposters (they can be removed later when manager will review the posthistory), just think when people abusing with 100+ accounts like https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4415441.msg39323752#msg39323752.

[audaciousbeing]

In contributing to this, I think that the bounty section of the forum needs more attention because to a large extent since the beginning of the merit system, things have improved. It is not perfect but its has as people who are serious about the forum and like to see things get better invest more time in churning out quality posts to help the community while some others who decides that the best way is to cheat the system, they all have their days in the reputation section of the forum with various 'policing' activities being done by reputable members of the forum.

I think the main reason why we still battle with spam to a large extent is due to the managers managing bounties for signature campaigns as they are the ones only required to post. On the bitcoin section, we have seen quality managers that makes things happen but for alt, its just different people coming up as campaign managers while they themselves if they participate in campaign, they would be kicked out. I think there should be minimum rank and activity/merits for someone to manage a campaign. When we get that point right, more than half of the issue would have been solved.

[Jet Cash]

Maybe the promotion of all ICOs should be banned. They are getting a pretty bad press at the moment.

[The Cryptovator]

Maybe the promotion of all ICOs should be banned. They are getting a pretty bad press at the moment.

Exactly you are right. Problem is even I caught some scam ICO with fake team picture and report to moderator but they can't lock their thread or delete. I have also post with fake team details. Even though they post the thread self moderated. And they are bumping thread. But no action from admin or moderator. So how promotion will stop I have no idea. Recently many case find that ICO are using fake photo from stock image. If there is strong proof admin shouldn't delete or lock thread ?

[coinlocket$]

@yahoo this is exactly what I wrote about, I have the original links on my screenshot but I removed them for obvius reasons and this is why all managers needs to do what you are doing.

[ridertiger]

I'd like to see all bounty managers adopt this practice but of course I cannot make that happen.

Yeah, that is what I have been saying, the bounty managers should change their behavior. It is way harder to try and change thousands of people. If you bring a rule that says bounty managers should not ask for weekly reports for twitter, they will use a simple api and everyone will be happy.
Users will get used to the new system quickly.

[escalante28]

Your idea sir is really helpful to prevent spamming on this forum but this kind of restriction is too much. There are some way to minimize it and we have to find out and not in this way.

In my opinion maybe the BM should put more restriction when conducting a signature campaign.
Maybe admin of this forum should add a special  moderators in each section and strictly implement the rules of spamming.
How would you define spamming on this forum?  Obviously those nonsense post,reply and an off topic. I believe those violation has penalty and the answer is strictly implement and add task force anti spamming team.