Proposal: Disallow Ads in Signatures

[roslinpl]

The easiest solution seems to be stopping them from paying per post.  Salty has the right idea.

This is not a good idea

1. Do you realize how many Bitcointalk users are earning money for their posts while they are unemployed? I know that many, many of them.

2. There always will be a spam somewhere - you cannot get rid of it just by disallow ads in signatures - sure, you will get out few spammers, but there will be more and more even with no adv in sigs.

3. If you will disallow ads in sigs users like me will be very sad and mad at you because this is the way to spend very nice time @bitcointalk and earn money at a same time - I spend @bitcointalk about 3-5 hours daily - sometimes more.
 And sorry, but if I will lost my job as a sig seller I will not be able to spend here so many hours ... because I will need to find a way to earn money

You might say to me "So you are posting just because of earnings?! Ban him!"
I will say to you "No.. I am posting so much because I love it - and I need money too so this is so great to earn money while posting!

I believe people like me can make @bitcointalk better - bigger forum ever!
So Bitcointalk is earning something from those Sig sellers too! Yes? Yes!

anyway... I hope @bitcointalk will never disallow ads in signatures ...

[1715093106]

1715093106

[1715093106]

1715093106

[1715093106]

1715093106

[1715093106]

1715093106

[1715093106]

1715093106

[1715093106]

1715093106

[SaltySpitoon]

The easiest solution seems to be stopping them from paying per post.  Salty has the right idea.

This is not a good idea

1. Do you realize how many Bitcointalk users are earning money for their posts while they are unemployed? I know that many, many of them.

2. There always will be a spam somewhere - you cannot get rid of it just by disallow ads in signatures - sure, you will get out few spammers, but there will be more and more even with no adv in sigs.

3. If you will disallow ads in sigs users like me will be very sad and mad at you because this is the way to spend very nice time @bitcointalk and earn money at a same time - I spend @bitcointalk about 3-5 hours daily - sometimes more.
 And sorry, but if I will lost my job as a sig seller I will not be able to spend here so many hours ... because I will need to find a way to earn money

You might say to me "So you are posting just because of earnings?! Ban him!"
I will say to you "No.. I am posting so much because I love it - and I need money too so this is so great to earn money while posting!

I believe people like me can make @bitcointalk better - bigger forum ever!
So Bitcointalk is earning something from those Sig sellers too! Yes? Yes!

anyway... I hope @bitcointalk will never disallow ads in signatures ...

Well, if we cant find a suitable solution, signatures all together could be banned, or a slightly less radical approach would be to just ban paid sig advertising all together. If you are earning enough money by posting to support yourself financially, chances are you will be banned before your first payday. You are correct, there will always be spam, but paid advertising made the amount of spam go through the roof. Volume of posts does not equal quality of posts. If someone is posting a lot, but they are rubbish, they are making the forum worse, not better. A lot of vets who helped build the forum to what it is today are leaving and its just getting spammier. Our best course of action would be my original suggestion and have paid signature payout rates based on activity rather than post count. If you have 20x more posts than activity, your chances of getting banned are astronomical. We see those huge post counts and check through your last posts with a fine toothed comb. If there is a significant amount of junk, you are banned indefinately. Pre Signature Advertising, there were a few people banned per day, now they are a few peopled banned per 30 minutes. By doing it based on activity, paid signature advertising beneficiaries only need to post once per day, or 14 times per two week period, that means they can post 14 quality posts, rather than one word answers and faces.

[roslinpl]

Well, if we cant find a suitable solution, signatures all together could be banned, or a slightly less radical approach would be to just ban paid sig advertising all together.

If you are earning enough money by posting to support yourself financially, chances are you will be banned before your first payday.

And what you mean by that? Am I doing something wrong by supporting myself financially by selling my sig and posting?
I had first payday already so chances are 0% for that
And I don't see a reason to ban people "because they are sig sellers - not spammers"
Maybe I misunderstood your quote..?

You are correct, there will always be spam, but paid advertising made the amount of spam go through the roof. Volume of posts does not equal quality of posts. If someone is posting a lot, but they are rubbish, they are making the forum worse, not better. A lot of vets who helped build the forum to what it is today are leaving and its just getting spammier. Our best course of action would be my original suggestion and have paid signature payout rates based on activity rather than post count. If you have 20x more posts than activity, your chances of getting banned are astronomical. We see those huge post counts and check through your last posts with a fine toothed comb. If there is a significant amount of junk, you are banned indefinately. Pre Signature Advertising, there were a few people banned per day, now they are a few peopled banned per 30 minutes. By doing it based on activity, paid signature advertising beneficiaries only need to post once per day, or 14 times per two week period, that means they can post 14 quality posts, rather than one word answers and faces.

Oh is it my fault that you can earn only +14 activity per two weeks?
Oh so this is wrong that I am posting a lot yes?
My activity is 70 and I have >2000 posts.
Is it wrong?

So read my posts. All of them. Find a offtopic posts, "+1", "agree" and other shits like that. You wont.
I am reading threads and posting replies just like I was doing it before I've started to sell my sig.
Just after I did sell my sig I can read and post MORE! Because I buy some time for me so I can do it more than 30min daily.

Do what you want.
Ban all of us.

We will see how many users will stay here.

I understand problem with a spam. I really do. So try to figure out some other way to fix this!

My proposition:
1. Make longer delays between posts - like at least 3min.
2. Talk to SIG BUYERS and tell them that THEY will be BANNED if they will pay people who spam for their BTCperpost.
So they will be more careful and maybe they will check their sig sellers more often to check spam possibility.
3.If this is FORUM - make a voting - democracy! - let people with +150 activity vote about "ban ads in sigs"

I know I am willing to save my income and I am willing to be able to spend @bitcointalk many hours daily because this is my hobby - as a Bitcoin enthusiast.


Kind regards.

[t3a]

And what you mean by that? Am I doing something wrong by supporting myself financially by selling my sig and posting?
I had first payday already so chances are 0% for that
And I don't see a reason to ban people "because they are sig sellers - not spammers"
Maybe I misunderstood your quote..?

He means that posting isn't lucrative and to support yourself you would need an incredible number of posts. To reach this number you would probably need spam.

Oh is it my fault that you can earn only +14 activity per two weeks?
Oh so this is wrong that I am posting a lot yes?
My activity is 70 and I have >2000 posts.
Is it wrong?

So read my posts. All of them. Find a offtopic posts, "+1", "agree" and other shits like that. You wont.
I am reading threads and posting replies just like I was doing it before I've started to sell my sig.
Just after I did sell my sig I can read and post MORE! Because I buy some time for me so I can do it more than 30min daily.

Do what you want.
Ban all of us.

We will see how many users will stay here.

I understand problem with a spam. I really do. So try to figure out some other way to fix this!

The best way to fix the spam is to not give people monetary incentive to increase their post count.

[roslinpl]

And what you mean by that? Am I doing something wrong by supporting myself financially by selling my sig and posting?
I had first payday already so chances are 0% for that
And I don't see a reason to ban people "because they are sig sellers - not spammers"
Maybe I misunderstood your quote..?

He means that posting isn't lucrative and to support yourself you would need an incredible number of posts. To reach this number you would probably need spam.

I live in Poland - to earn in poland 2000zł in legal job you must be lucky to find it.

If I spend here half - more than a half of the day by posting (after reading) I can earn about 2000zł (maybe a bit less) without making a spam I am very fast typewriter and I know english good and I can read - so I am doing my best to write constructive posts, help people when they ask about something etc. And I am giving my best as I want to earn btc and not be banned...

Oh is it my fault that you can earn only +14 activity per two weeks?
Oh so this is wrong that I am posting a lot yes?
My activity is 70 and I have >2000 posts.
Is it wrong?

So read my posts. All of them. Find a offtopic posts, "+1", "agree" and other shits like that. You wont.
I am reading threads and posting replies just like I was doing it before I've started to sell my sig.
Just after I did sell my sig I can read and post MORE! Because I buy some time for me so I can do it more than 30min daily.

Do what you want.
Ban all of us.

We will see how many users will stay here.

I understand problem with a spam. I really do. So try to figure out some other way to fix this!

The best way to fix the spam is to not give people monetary incentive to increase their post count.

This will not fix it. It will help to decrease a number of spam but will not fix it.

Anyway... I am waiting for some informations from Moderators about what @bitcointalk will do about it...

[SaltySpitoon]

He means that posting isn't lucrative and to support yourself you would need an incredible number of posts. To reach this number you would probably need spam.

Yes I mean that.

Oh is it my fault that you can earn only +14 activity per two weeks?
Oh so this is wrong that I am posting a lot yes?
My activity is 70 and I have >2000 posts.
Is it wrong?

More often than not, yes. If you have 70 activity and >2000 posts, the vast majority of users spammed their way there and deserve bans. Its not a clear and cut, "if you post this many posts in this many days you are a spammer" but there is a very direct correlation. You may be one of the rare ones, and of course you wouldnt be banned if your posts are quality posts, my point is that not many people with that many posts are as dedicated as you might be, and would rather spam short useless replies, rather than thoughtfully respond.

Like I said, we have been discussing this for months, and hopefully we can make a minor change, rather than removing paid advertising or signatures all together. The fact of the matter is that something needs to change, we just have yet to figure out how to change as little as possible, but still get the results we need.

[btcton]

I would more specifically say that something has to be done against spammers. There need to bee stricter rules against it. A post may not necessarily be spam, but just plainly not constructive. Those are the kind of posts people are using to boost their post count since spamming will obviously get them banned.

[NLNico]

I agree.

That might seem ironic since I have an ad in my sig. But yeh I have been looking in these ad sig topics and all had "weekly posting requirements", for me that just seems wrong so I never joined that. This current ad didn't have any posting requirements (for full members) so I thought it's ok. It's and easy BTC0.02 - $12 in a week without any effort, so yeh sorry guys

I do think generally ads in sig promote spamming tho. I think disallowing ads completely is ok (unless it's your own site or perhaps just a referral link) But another solution would be: no weekly posting requirements, no min. post requirements, only min. activity requirements allowed. This way the the websites still can select people who have a bit of posts (obviously paying someone who has 0 posts is also useless.) And since activity includes time the spamming should be much less. I think for most part this will help. Even tho people might start selling/buying accounts more to get the time requirement of activity :X but I guess it can be worth a try first.

[BadBear]

I think we can all agree it's a problem, we just need a good solution that isn't a waste of time. Banning paid sigs is easy to say but how? They'll just do the offer on their own website instead. Sigs only to one's own site? Great, good luck finding someone to waste hours of their time enforcing that though.

Only clean solution I see is to remove sigs altogether, it's a shame people need to abuse it. It's not a good solution but at least it would work.

[TheButterZone]

I wonder if mods would even have to enforce the rule. Can the footer <hr> line be changed to something like "This is my stuff, ask me about it!" Then if people put non-personal stuff in it, they'd get annoyed having to answer questions about third-party services, and remove the links. Basically everyone would annoy everyone else into compliance.

[btcton]

I wonder if mods would even have to enforce the rule. Can the footer <hr> line be changed to something like "This is my stuff, ask me about it!" Then if people put non-personal stuff in it, they'd get annoyed having to answer questions about third-party services, and remove the links. Basically everyone would annoy everyone else into compliance.

I highly doubt that would work.
To everyone before me, as I said before, it is not a matter of getting rid of signatures, it is a matter of being stricter against spammers. If you feel like someone posted just to increase their post count and not to add to the thread, just delete it. Seems like the best solution to me. Enforcing other rules wouldn't work as BadBear said, since they could just do it on their own websites.

[MakeBelieve]

I think Salty is on to something basing it on activity would probably solve a lot of the issues because I know that the signature advertising has been helping a lot of people earn a little extra money even though I probably wouldn't post as much as I do now if I wasn't advertising so I think it's a good idea to do it based on activity.

[hjbuell]

The most obvious solution to this is not to count posts of less than 50 words towards post count. (19 words)

Problem solved. People can still make short, one word posts - they just won't contribute to post count. More importantly, the required '50 posts' that people need to make won't happen nearly as quickly, as short posts won't bump the number. (40 words)

Barring that, penalize the advertisers. If an advertiser is generating enough income from posts here, then they can do a better job of checking people using their signatures. (28 words)

(87 words in total)

[MakeBelieve]

The most obvious solution to this is not to count posts of less than 50 words towards post count. (19 words)

Problem solved. People can still make short, one word posts - they just won't contribute to post count. More importantly, the required '50 posts' that people need to make won't happen nearly as quickly, as short posts won't bump the number. (40 words)

Barring that, penalize the advertisers. If an advertiser is generating enough income from posts here, then they can do a better job of checking people using their signatures. (28 words)

(87 words in total)

This would require more staff to moderate this though or the signature advetiser to moderate this because it would take a very long time each day to find out who is posting less than 19 words and who isn't.

[hjbuell]

The most obvious solution to this is not to count posts of less than 50 words towards post count. (19 words)

Problem solved. People can still make short, one word posts - they just won't contribute to post count. More importantly, the required '50 posts' that people need to make won't happen nearly as quickly, as short posts won't bump the number. (40 words)

Barring that, penalize the advertisers. If an advertiser is generating enough income from posts here, then they can do a better job of checking people using their signatures. (28 words)

(87 words in total)

This would require more staff to moderate this though or the signature advetiser to moderate this because it would take a very long time each day to find out who is posting less than 19 words and who isn't.

I was assuming that in this modern day and age, these things could be automated. 

Also, the (19 words) in my post was just to give those who aren't writers an idea of how long 50 words is. Each section of my post lists the word counts, so people get an idea of what the word counts are.

Many forum systems have the ability to prevent posts less than 10 characters. One assumes it should be relatively easy to implement. If not, then as suggested, penalize the advertisers. When advertisers request posts of 50 words or more quality content to qualify, then the spammers have no reason to post. The community is served, and also polices itself.

Of course, Theymos is making the Dr. Evil of all forum rebuilds, so maybe he could provide a solution to it for, say, $100,000 perhaps? It can't be that hard for Wangbus to code. He could probably do it between stops.

[txbt]

So the main problems created by ads in signatures are:

- a difficulty of properly following threads because of a great number of posts (short and/or not connected with the thread itself) submitted  with the sole purpose of making an easy coin

- a negative impression because of ads written in BIG, bold, coloured fonts

Those can be solved with partial automated, partial manually methods:

1. Regulating the size, bolding and colours allowed in a signature (maybe  even in the post itself) in order to be visible but more discreet.

2. Initiating a cooperation between advertisers and mods (moderators should be paid by advertisers for their activity - for example 10% of the coins that are totally paid should be received by mods). In this way will be possible to easier ban spammers so everybody wins excluding "professional spammers". It is very probable that even users (with adds in their signature) postings will be paid more/post even if theoretically they loose the 10%.

3. Requiring a minimum number (40) of words / post.

4. Involving users in reporting spam. The incentive for them could be
- an improved activity formula (for example adding a number proportional with valid spam posts reported). I know it's not pleasant tu use the reporting system (that's why i usually avoid it) but the trash has to be dealt with otherwise the place becomes to smelly
- a better trust level, etc.

Note: some users will still want to make a short (justifiable) post and this can be achieved by
- allowing a quick removal of their signature
- or even better an alias user with no signature in it / an alternative (non add) signature
- displaying a warning message for short posts if an corresponding option is checked in users profile

[qwk]

Only clean solution I see is to remove sigs altogether, it's a shame people need to abuse it. It's not a good solution but at least it would work.

A little less radical solution: disallow hyperlinks (maybe allow bitcointalk-internal ones), color, bolding etc. in sigs. And just a single line of text.

[abacus]

As some mods have said, I also think that pay-per-post method in signature advertising will end in spam proliferation. If not spam, surely there will be a lower average of quality posts.
On the other side, some other methods of revenue seem viable to me, like pay-per-activity for example.

That might seem ironic since I have an ad in my sig. But yeh I have been looking in these ad sig topics and all had "weekly posting requirements", for me that just seems wrong so I never joined that. This current ad didn't have any posting requirements (for full members) so I thought it's ok. It's and easy BTC0.02 - $12 in a week without any effort, so yeh sorry guys

I agree with you. The other one adv I am using, pays weekly a small amount multiplied with your activity number.
Without minimum posts requirement, it seems quite fair to me and, most important, sustainable for the forum.

The most obvious solution to this is not to count posts of less than 50 words towards post count. (19 words)

Problem solved. People can still make short, one word posts - they just won't contribute to post count. More importantly, the required '50 posts' that people need to make won't happen nearly as quickly, as short posts won't bump the number. (40 words)

Barring that, penalize the advertisers. If an advertiser is generating enough income from posts here, then they can do a better job of checking people using their signatures. (28 words)

(87 words in total)

In the case that pay-per-post will remain allowed, I think your idea is simply wrong.
Please let me quote myself, just as one of many and better examples (edit: from other users), with a post I wrote some minutes ago:

Bitcoin is not a safe investment anymore.

FTFY.

I wrote one single word (5 characters, full stop included).
Why shouldn't it be counted as valid post? Should it be cosidered spam or valueless?
I don't think so, and with only one word it carried my message, what i want to make explicit, quite well.

[txbt]

I wrote one single word (5 characters, full stop included).
Why shouldn't it be counted as valid post? Should it be considered spam or valueless?
I don't think so, and with only one word it carried my message, what i want to make explicit, quite well.

The problem is (are) not of course your concise and clear message(s) but the overproductive spammers posts. What do you propose to get rid of those and validate yours? How do you propose to solve the problems bellow? Could (realistically) mods, advertisers, users have a role? But the first question is: Do you think there is a problem?

So the main problems created by ads in signatures are:

- a difficulty of properly following threads because of a great number of posts (short and/or not connected with the thread itself) submitted  with the sole purpose of making an easy coin

- a negative impression because of ads written in BIG, bold, coloured fonts

[SaltySpitoon]

Only clean solution I see is to remove sigs altogether, it's a shame people need to abuse it. It's not a good solution but at least it would work.

A little less radical solution: disallow hyperlinks (maybe allow bitcointalk-internal ones), color, bolding etc. in sigs. And just a single line of text.

That was an option we thought of as well. I personally dont care about paid advertising, however I understand others do and some people aren't abusing it, so I'd rather we not ruin it for everyone. I am quite against removing signatures all together however, as I like having a link in my sig to advertise my own goods/services. I dont even need to spam to get my own advertisements out there, just post responsibly and people that read/reply will see my sig.

If it was an issue of just the actual signatures being annoying with their big bright letters, it wouldn't be a problem, because individuals can turn off signatures so that they cant see them. They can't however turn off the tens of thousands of posts that people are slapping all over the place at an attempt to make some extra coin.