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

[Strufmbae]

There are also full members who does not know what is like having a forum etiquette, most participants doesn't even read whitepaper when joining a sig camp, and what makes it worse is there are full members who post much worst than newbies,  i mean not being a racist but english is a second language why not just stick to their local boards. 

I think there should be a position which should be named as " shitposter moderator" specifically for shitposting problem.  Negative feedback is not enough i guess.

And the second option as a suggestion that i also want to voice out is lessen the page of a thread by 10 or 20.  I see threads which has 1000 to two thousand pages and up and the title is all about prediction.

[1713899318]

1713899318

[1713899318]

1713899318

[1713899318]

1713899318

[1713899318]

1713899318

[1713899318]

1713899318

[jointherevolution]

I would not support this. We new users are stuck at lower levels. It is unfair what you propose to new members.

[Jet Cash]

How about allowing affiliate links in signatures? This would allow bounty managers to reward affiliates based on the effectiveness of their signatures, and not just based on their skills as graffiti artists and polluters.

[Quickseller]

How about allowing affiliate links in signatures? This would allow bounty managers to reward affiliates based on the effectiveness of their signatures, and not just based on their skills as graffiti artists and polluters.

I don’t understand why so many people around here think it is okay to tell people how to conduct business and how they should be saying things.

This forum is an advocate for freedom and likes to give people as much freedom as possible.

[linesretweetG]

How about allowing affiliate links in signatures? This would allow bounty managers to reward affiliates based on the effectiveness of their signatures, and not just based on their skills as graffiti artists and polluters.

I don’t understand why so many people around here think it is okay to tell people how to conduct business and how they should be saying things.

This forum is an advocate for freedom and likes to give people as much freedom as possible.

I agree with you, but I think bitcointalk has to do something against this huge amount of spammers/bots.
They keep posting everywhere just for increase their rank (or they're trying to...) and this will penalize the entire community.
That's why maybe making strict rules for signatures would be great for the community.

[bitart]

Let's implement an ignore system (which is not mandatory to use) with different levels, like this:
- No ignore (freedom)
- Small ignore (ignoring only blatant spammers, scammers, etc...)
- Medium ignore (ignoring more spammers, scammers)
- Strong ignore (ignoring nearly every spammer, scammer)
- Reversed ignore (whitelist, everyone else is ignored automatically).

If it's not mandatory to use the ignore list, people fighting for freedom can't have any argument, because people will be free to choose if they want to ignore spammers or not...

This needs some (or a lot of) users to maintain the ignore lists.

But on the long run (when the merit system will be fine tuned) we can set up the ignore system like this:
- No ignore (can see everyone)
- Small ignore (ignoring users with default merit, who haven't gathered additional merits)
- Medium ignore (ignoring those who gathered less than 10% additional merits for their rank)
- Strong ignore (ignoring those who gathered less than 30% additional merits for their rank)

In this case, ignore lists are not needed, it can be automated (and still not mandatory to use, to let people choose if they really want to read shitposts...)
This needs the merit system to work as expected, so it needs time, but it can be a kind of automated solution.

EDIT:
I've changed my mind.
Why not to implement the second solution immediately, to test it? If it's not mandatory, people can not complain about it.
For newbies, who had no chance to gain merits, there will be the merit sources (with no ignore list activated of course) so they will have the chance to gather some merits to escape the ignore lists.

[Quickseller]

This forum is an advocate for freedom and likes to give people as much freedom as possible.

But it is being abused. And I guess freedom is the real issue here  , am i wrong?

The problem is that there are incentives to do bad things in the forum, such as paying people to advertise while making crap posts as said advertising creates exposure for what is being advertised and there are no real consequences to doing this. This is in addition to incentives for people to make low effort posts they are being paid for by the number of posts.

There is no easy solution because most solutions will affect those who are not causing harm.

[Welsh]

There are also full members who does not know what is like having a forum etiquette, most participants doesn't even read whitepaper when joining a sig camp, and what makes it worse is there are full members who post much worst than newbies,  i mean not being a racist but english is a second language why not just stick to their local boards.  

English is a second language to me. Although, it's a little different as I learned Welsh, and English at the same time growing up. Although, initially I predominately spoke Welsh. That isn't the case anymore, because of the amount of people speaking Welsh is dwindling, and thus my Welsh is becoming rusty/forgotten. Point being as long as they can string up a sentence which is comprehensible it isn't a problem if it's their 2nd or 10th language.

I think there should be a position which should be named as " shitposter moderator" specifically for shitposting problem.  Negative feedback is not enough i guess.

It's really not needed. I would say that the majority of the work the moderators do is dealing with spam.

[Mpamaegbu]

About the full member status:

The restriction is a tad too much. For those who don't read the rules/terms of bounties, put them in SMAS/delete their replies and don't pay them. Enforce a new rule/term: If any post is made with twitter and facebook links, that user shall be banned from further bounties/campaigns and he shall not be paid.

Honestly, I have often been in bewilderment as to why this hasn't been implemented. Posters dropping comments without even bothering to read the OP (this is more rampart in signature bounties/campaigns). I hope CM would start negging such stupid blind posters.

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

I don't think shitposting is ICO specific. It's just that those who manage the campaigns are too lazy to follow up what posters put out there on the threads. I sincerely wish those who manage bounties would sit up and do the needful.

a shitposter is a shitposter, no matter the rank.  

This is sadly true! I have seen legendary members make unbelievable shitposts.

[helmiadanie01]

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.

Yes, I think this is not a good thing for forums, because I also find members with Full Member rank and even hero accounts in this forum who become spammers, Maybe we can think of a better solution,

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

I would rather agree with this, so if he is a member and having 15 merit that means he is a person who has quality in the post and although this is not entirely true but I think this way is much better than banning accounts under full member using signature,

[boltz]

I have a big problem also. Why do we need to have pages and pages with people posting their twitter/facebook reports instead of having a google sheet report when they can upload manually the reports ? Also in my opinion, bounties should be restricted to a certain number of people and I can agree with the fact that a full member status must be achieved in order to join in any bounties but the main problem is still the hundreds of accounts posting only twitter/facebook reports. I remember good old days of bounties, when you checked the bounty thread just to see others opinions about the project,bounty situation and many others but now all I can see is this spam of social media reports and today I saw a full page of just one post with twitter reports that simply made me sad.

[Mila52]

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.

The forum can't refuse Campaigns-it's business. It's no secret that most of the forum users are people who have to earn their miserable cents in the advertised here  projects. Remove these components and the forum will turn into an elite club of crypto-currency lovers.
You can not impose any restrictions, people are enterprising, will find ways to circumvent the prohibitions.
Moreover, it is impossible to introduce a fee-this will cause a growth in negative feedback and negative attitudes towards the forum.
The most reasonable solution against spam is the organization of work following the example of Yahoo:
1.The publication of authentication in the teem  and the publication of reports in the form.
2. Means from bots is adding to the own post of authentication the  captcha-answer,
 for example:
link to the topic of the forum: the 1st word in the 5th sentence.
Thus, each user will learn to read articles about the crypto-currency).

[coinlocket$]

I have a big problem also. Why do we need to have pages and pages with people posting their twitter/facebook reports instead of having a google sheet report when they can upload manually the reports ? ~

Its simple.
Because most of newbie /jr can be bots.

@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.

[pugman]

I'm quite passionate about the forum as you might of gathered, and I'm only nitpicking so that we can actually come up with a solution rather than proposing some, and not really going into depth about them, and then this type of thread resurfaces again in a few weeks, and we circle around the issue again.

A handful of them are, and so am I. I am all down, for new changes, that might help this forum. Especially because I have learnt so much, the only way I can repay is by helping it out,in its desperate times.

Altcoin section literally has only one mod appointed to it. Kudos to mrprep for moderating that board for years, but there won't be another mod in that board, unless one or more users start reporting aggressively. So the problem is both.

I know that there's several people who are spending their time reporting in that section. You only have to take a look at the modlog to see that there are hundreds of posts every day getting removed.

I've recently considered making a Discord/Telegram account just so I can join their groups, and see if they are offering an incentive to post on their threads, because it seems to be the trend right now. Investigating the thread whether they are offering an incentive to post is time consuming enough, let alone if they aren't, and you have to report each post individually.

Yeah, mprep is the only moderator assigned, and he's a Global moderator too. But, it definitely spills over to other moderators from time to time. I received a personal message from cyrus about a specific report so I know that he deals with reports from time to time.

That wouldn't be of much use, I really want to know how good the autoreply bot is, tons of alt accounts can be operated from there, without logging in. People just might prefer that.

The restriction is a tad too much. For those who don't read the rules/terms of bounties, put them in SMAS/delete their replies and don't pay them. Enforce a new rule/term: If any post is made with twitter and facebook links, that user shall be banned from further bounties/campaigns and he shall not be paid.

Getting the bounty managers to enforce this would be difficult. Especially, because the list is subjective. I think it's a good movement personally, but it is subjective. Unless, theymos is willing to specify certain guidelines for campaign managers to follow, and actually enforce it we won't be able to get them to follow certain things that would make the campaign less spammy, because they simply don't care.

I have been saying this for months now, theymos should just make a guideline for signature campaigns and an official set of rules. There are just a few stickies here and there(by theymos) saying what is allowed and what isn't, but it would be really helpful, if he compiles one list, with new issues coming by everyday, that list could really help sorting things out.

A few lazy managers caused this spam, and now legitimate people shouldn't pay for this. And the likeliness of theymos implementing this is almost zero. He did say that this would be his last resort(banning signatures overall if merit system fails). But he is apparently swamped with things and is currently looking to start a company with the same intent as a forum,and to hire a CEO for that.

I agree. I don't like restrictions either as it normally impacts on the legitimate users more than the malicious users.

And literally, any suggestions that anyone is coming up is related to restrictions. There should be another possibility without having those restrictions.

If there were a way for theymos to limit the number of alt accounts a person can have, that could solve a huge problem. Bots could be controlled and so could be shitposting. I don't see any legitimate reason for a person to have more than 3 alt accounts other than just to shitpost. Accessing hundreds of accounts using TOR would be almost impossible, for TOR takes a few minutes just to bypass recaptcha. So most shitposters won't likely use TOR. It'd take a lot of time.

Right, even if we did try, and limit it. Several users use public wifi, and VPNs. Especially, in countries which the government isn't so friendly to Bitcoin. It would be incredibly difficult to find alternate accounts without them exposing themselves or by taking an in depth inestigations per account. Most of which would have to be done by an admin, and considering both theymos' words, and the account recovery issue right now I don't think they'll have the time too.

I don't see how governments being unfriendly towards bitcoin, is related to people using a VPN to access bitcointalk.

In a few countries where VPN is banned, I have heard stories that random officers started checking people's phones to see if they had VPN installed or not. I don't believe that story, but I can see them doing that.

So only the VPN issue exists, blacklist the most common VPN IPs?

There's several pieces of software out there which hundreds of new VPNs are coming online, and being used. They could just use them. There would be no way to regulate this AFAIK. The users registering multiple accounts aren't likely using the most common VPNs because these have likely already accumulated too much evil points to make it feasible.

The new softwares that come out don't work well, they mostly use the same blacklisted IPs the other VPNs do.

But on the long run (when the merit system will be fine tuned) we can set up the ignore system like this:
- No ignore (can see everyone)
- Small ignore (ignoring users with default merit, who haven't gathered additional merits)
- Medium ignore (ignoring those who gathered less than 10% additional merits for their rank)
- Strong ignore (ignoring those who gathered less than 30% additional merits for their rank)

In this case, ignore lists are not needed, it can be automated (and still not mandatory to use, to let people choose if they really want to read shitposts...)
This needs the merit system to work as expected, so it needs time, but it can be a kind of automated solution.

EDIT:
I've changed my mind.
Why not to implement the second solution immediately, to test it? If it's not mandatory, people can not complain about it.
For newbies, who had no chance to gain merits, there will be the merit sources (with no ignore list activated of course) so they will have the chance to gather some merits to escape the ignore lists.

How does this help with the Spam problem? Its just personal preference. And there are legit users who haven't earned little or any merits, who have more than average level of posts. I don't think this would be that great of an idea.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Overall though we will get rid of a bunch of trashposters and maybe they will take down the signs in their internet cafes that read, "Go to bitcointalk.org to feed your family"

I'm glad someone else has voiced the thought that I've had for some time now.  These shitposting bounty hunters have to get referred to bitcointalk from somewhere, and it's goddamn ridiculous.  I picture billboards along unpaved highways all over Asia & Africa advertising how much wealth can be achieved with little work, and I'm sure word of mouth must be huge as well.

I fully support this suggestion, as well as the one hilariousandco made that newbies should have to earn at least 1 merit in order to rank up to Jr. Member. 

The merit system has improved things in so far as people who are capable of making good posts have really started to make excellent ones, but I don't think it's cut down on the shitposting at all.  Bitcoin Discussion, Economics, and a handful of other sections are still full of awful, incoherent nonsense.  I do think that in order to combat this, there needs to be more restrictions put in place for noobs. 

And it's not like all of the suggestions would have to be implemented all at once.  Theymos could try something like what Yahoo62278 suggested here, or what hilariousandco and others have suggested--put in place one thing and see what happens.  If it has a minimal effect, try another suggestion.

[bitart]

...

But on the long run (when the merit system will be fine tuned) we can set up the ignore system like this:
- No ignore (can see everyone)
- Small ignore (ignoring users with default merit, who haven't gathered additional merits)
- Medium ignore (ignoring those who gathered less than 10% additional merits for their rank)
- Strong ignore (ignoring those who gathered less than 30% additional merits for their rank)

In this case, ignore lists are not needed, it can be automated (and still not mandatory to use, to let people choose if they really want to read shitposts...)
This needs the merit system to work as expected, so it needs time, but it can be a kind of automated solution.

EDIT:
I've changed my mind.
Why not to implement the second solution immediately, to test it? If it's not mandatory, people can not complain about it.
For newbies, who had no chance to gain merits, there will be the merit sources (with no ignore list activated of course) so they will have the chance to gather some merits to escape the ignore lists.

How does this help with the Spam problem? Its just personal preference. And there are legit users who haven't earned little or any merits, who have more than average level of posts. I don't think this would be that great of an idea.

This is why I wrote that it should not be mandatory to use this ignore function, and it will be useful when the merit system will work 100% as it was designed and every legit user gets the merit he deserves, in that case this would be an easy solution to let people avoid shitposts.
As soon as people start to use this ignore function, bounty managers would realize that the shitposters' posts won't show up at all in the forum, so they won't pay for them. This would stop a part of the spam, not all of them.
I know it's not the near future, it was just an idea

[Naida_BR]

How about allowing affiliate links in signatures? This would allow bounty managers to reward affiliates based on the effectiveness of their signatures, and not just based on their skills as graffiti artists and polluters.

I don’t understand why so many people around here think it is okay to tell people how to conduct business and how they should be saying things.

This forum is an advocate for freedom and likes to give people as much freedom as possible.

I agree with you, but I think bitcointalk has to do something against this huge amount of spammers/bots.
They keep posting everywhere just for increase their rank (or they're trying to...) and this will penalize the entire community.
That's why maybe making strict rules for signatures would be great for the community.

How does a signature avoid a low rank member spamming in bitcointalk? I really cannot understand that.

A low rank member will keep spamming and posting shit with or without a signature. I agree that stricter rules are necessary and this can be done by the forum side. Meaning more moderators that can keep the quality of the forum in a high level.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>How does a signature avoid a low rank member spamming in bitcointalk? I really cannot understand that.
A low rank member will keep spamming and posting shit with or without a signature. <…>

A signature does not avoid spamming, it has the opposite effect seen from a global perspective. Signatures normally require you to post a certain minimum amount of posts per week in specific sections. In order to comply, spammers tend to post quick gibberish posts with disregard to the actual conversation going on. This, done on a large scale, becomes a spam fest. Obviously this attitude is not restricted to specific ranks on the whole, but it is present with larger representation on the lower ranks than on the higher rank.

The idea behind making it more difficult to bear a signature (be it by rank, merit, whatever other mechanism), is to lower the overall spam. The principal being that, by doing this, spammers will have more of a Haw attitude and move on elsewhere to find their cheese, than a Hem attitude that deems them to stay put spamming, even though the cheese is running out ('who moved my cheese' allegory in case someone’s not following here).

[xolxol]

Disable all the signatures,dont be biased,there is no one here in the right position to remove the ability to earn of anyone.
Being here first doesnt mean that you are in a good position to tell us what to do.If theymos really wanted this thing a long time ago why he didnt tried to? because its unfair to the newcomers.

[Jet Cash]

A signature does not avoid spamming, it has the opposite effect seen from a global perspective. Signatures normally require you to post a certain minimum amount of posts per week in specific sections. In order to comply, spammers tend to post quick gibberish posts with disregard to the actual conversation going on. This, done on a large scale, becomes a spam fest. Obviously this attitude is not restricted to specific ranks on the whole, but it is present with larger representation on the lower ranks than on the higher rank.

It's the global persective that makes it difficult to control signatures. Individual members ignoring posters or signatures don't really make much difference. The search ranking, and guest views are far more significant, and are the reason that scammy signatures and spammy posts are so damaging to Bitcoin Talk. If a guy hunting for crypto information clicks on a a link to a rubbish thread, as a result of good SE placement for his search phrase, he is likely to ignore BT in the future as a result of its apparent low grade content.