Proposal: Disallow Ads in Signatures

[amitrwt]

Why not allow link usage to all tiers but block the first two or three tiers from using known paid advertisements sites.
You could blacklist those URLs and make them automatically redirect to bitcointalk.org
Link shorteners too would be blocked for those tiers and would redirect to bitcointalk.org

This will allow personal sites and would block usage of paid links.
This would take some time to blacklist the people though.

Hmm just because you are a Full member, you mentioned  above three tiers..! I would have liked your suggestion if you would have said to assign signature privileges only to sr.members or above :p

[1715362807]

1715362807

[1715362807]

1715362807

[apsvinet]

Why not allow link usage to all tiers but block the first two or three tiers from using known paid advertisements sites.
You could blacklist those URLs and make them automatically redirect to bitcointalk.org
Link shorteners too would be blocked for those tiers and would redirect to bitcointalk.org

This will allow personal sites and would block usage of paid links.
This would take some time to blacklist the people though.

Hmm just because you are a Full member, you mentioned  above three tiers..! I would have liked your suggestion if you would have said to assign signature privileges only to sr.members or above :p

Of course everyone's gonna suggest what benefits themselves the most, lol.

[gourmet]

I'd vote for keeping things as they are...

I find is useful that poeple who mindlessly rent their sigs as spam openly demonstrate that they can be bought dirt cheap and have no principles or conscience.
It tells alot about someone who does that, thus I consider it useful info.

Yes. I think it's the simpliest soluiton that works. Anyone (including me) can decide to ignore them. :-))

[apsvinet]

I'd vote for keeping things as they are...

I find is useful that poeple who mindlessly rent their sigs as spam openly demonstrate that they can be bought dirt cheap and have no principles or conscience.
It tells alot about someone who does that, thus I consider it useful info.

Yes. I think it's the simpliest soluiton that works. Anyone (including me) can decide to ignore them. :-))

And that's why the changes were nonsense. Just check the box that says "ignore other's signatures" and nobody gets bothered.

[BawsyBoss]

I'd vote for keeping things as they are...

I find is useful that poeple who mindlessly rent their sigs as spam openly demonstrate that they can be bought dirt cheap and have no principles or conscience.
It tells alot about someone who does that, thus I consider it useful info.

Yes. I think it's the simpliest soluiton that works. Anyone (including me) can decide to ignore them. :-))

And that's why the changes were nonsense. Just check the box that says "ignore other's signatures" and nobody gets bothered.

The problem with simply ignoring those people - including me - is that not all of us make bad posts or such. That is why I believe this move to be a step in the right direction.

[kjj]

This forum is in peril.

Trolls and morons have already driven most of the developers away.  Spam (and people padding their stats for future spamming) are killing old threads and making some boards nearly useless.  I monitor a bunch of old threads, and I don't even bother reading half of them when they pop up with new posts any more because I've learned that they are filled with "Me too" and "neat!" posts.

This place is a tool to foster communication.  Incentives should align with that goal.

Paid advertising in sigs and posts gives people incentives to hurt the community through hard and soft spamming, and should be stopped.

I propose a few options.

Option 1:  Disallow commercial advertising in sigs, even unpaid.  Any link to a product or service that isn't both free and Free, or text describing or pointing to same, is "commercial".  Give one warning and clear out their sig.  If they put it back (or a different ad), permanently disable their signature.

Option 2: Disallow all advertising in sigs.  Same as above, but even disallow mentions of free and Free projects (such as mine).

The second one would be much easier to enforce, with less effort from moderators and less whining from violators.

Neither one would put an end to the flood of useless posts, but they would help.

And that's why the changes were nonsense. Just check the box that says "ignore other's signatures" and nobody gets bothered.

This only helps a little.  Even when one user blocks sigs, they still see all of the posts that are used to bolster the user's activity to enable better advertising for the people that haven't blocked sigs.

[Lethn]

Wow this thread has gotten pretty long, I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with sig advertisement but what is wrong is the moronic terms that the people who pay for these advertisements do, it's like with these referral links and marketing schemes, the people behind them are perfectly happy getting attention no matter how negative it is even if that means hiring other users to spam the shit out of forums. What the moderators should do if they want to get rid of these guys is force them to pay on an hourly/daily/monthly basis, they wouldn't be able to pay people based on per post, I guarantee you it will make more than half of them just give up and leave because they're just doing this as a cheap way to get attention.

Marketing people don't care about what others think of them, they just want to get as many views/sales/signups as possible, even if it means annoying the fuck out of people, so the best way to get rid of them is make it too expensive and unprofitable for them to sign up users to their programs, the only reason so many of them are doing this is because people are selling their signatures for such a low cost, you could also do some kind of blacklist against the people who are advertising based on Pay Per Click/Pay Per Post/Pay Per Signup and put a whitelist for those who choose not to.

[Sat0shiSlot]

It's increasing the amount of registerations and the amount of people posting and keeping this forum active also I'm hoping to get 10 Bitcoin to donate to the forum 

It's lowering the quality of the forum if anything. The general Bitcoin Discussion for example has never had lower quality than now.

[apsvinet]

I think it's nice that there's one established way to earn
bitcoins left online that's profitable for both the user and
the owner.
PTC sites and whatnot are only profitable for the owner
of the site.
If we remove this we'll be seeing a lot of new spam posts coming in when people try to make money in other ways, scams, ponzis, etc.
I didn't like the signature re-construction at first but after using it a while I'm pretty satisfied with it. There's less spam from newbies.

[btcton]

Wow this thread has gotten pretty long, I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with sig advertisement but what is wrong is the moronic terms that the people who pay for these advertisements do, it's like with these referral links and marketing schemes, the people behind them are perfectly happy getting attention no matter how negative it is even if that means hiring other users to spam the shit out of forums. What the moderators should do if they want to get rid of these guys is force them to pay on an hourly/daily/monthly basis, they wouldn't be able to pay people based on per post, I guarantee you it will make more than half of them just give up and leave because they're just doing this as a cheap way to get attention.

Marketing people don't care about what others think of them, they just want to get as many views/sales/signups as possible, even if it means annoying the fuck out of people, so the best way to get rid of them is make it too expensive and unprofitable for them to sign up users to their programs, the only reason so many of them are doing this is because people are selling their signatures for such a low cost, you could also do some kind of blacklist against the people who are advertising based on Pay Per Click/Pay Per Post/Pay Per Signup and put a whitelist for those who choose not to.

I am sure many have thought of this before. The only issue with it is the fact that this wouldn't be able to be enforced adequately.

[apsvinet]

Wow this thread has gotten pretty long, I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with sig advertisement but what is wrong is the moronic terms that the people who pay for these advertisements do, it's like with these referral links and marketing schemes, the people behind them are perfectly happy getting attention no matter how negative it is even if that means hiring other users to spam the shit out of forums. What the moderators should do if they want to get rid of these guys is force them to pay on an hourly/daily/monthly basis, they wouldn't be able to pay people based on per post, I guarantee you it will make more than half of them just give up and leave because they're just doing this as a cheap way to get attention.

Marketing people don't care about what others think of them, they just want to get as many views/sales/signups as possible, even if it means annoying the fuck out of people, so the best way to get rid of them is make it too expensive and unprofitable for them to sign up users to their programs, the only reason so many of them are doing this is because people are selling their signatures for such a low cost, you could also do some kind of blacklist against the people who are advertising based on Pay Per Click/Pay Per Post/Pay Per Signup and put a whitelist for those who choose not to.

I am sure many have thought of this before. The only issue with it is the fact that this wouldn't be able to be enforced adequately.

I doubt we're gonna see much more changes than this. Seems to be working for everyone, the owners, the users, the moderators.
Spammers still exist, still get reported and still have their posts deleted. Advertising campaigns still exists, some lower rates than others.

[bitpop]

I don't get paid by post you piece of shit

[mgburks77]

If people are willing to provide a service in exchange for btc that can only help spread adoption as a valid currency. It's one of the few legitimate ways people can earn anything in the new digital economy so it's valid from the standpoint of adding fundamental value to btc etc.

The ability to earn btc via providing a service of some kind is more beneficial to the chances of adoption in the long term than only being able to acquire btc through speculation at a crooked exchange so the high minded thinking expressed by some kind of falls flat if you really consider the big picture.

The signature campaigns add valid small scale economic activity to a market that is buoyed mainly by speculation.

[kjj]

FYI, this thread is hilarious when you ignore everyone with paid advertising in their sigs.

[freedomno1]

FYI, this thread is hilarious when you ignore everyone with paid advertising in their sigs.

Lol imagines the thread is like 5 - 10 posts tops ha-ha

But then you miss B!Z joke lol

[brush242]

FYI, this thread is hilarious when you ignore everyone with paid advertising in their sigs.

I was thinking that very same thing, quite some time ago. Please look no further than this sentence in this post. Do not read the first sentence either.

[bitco.in]

At least they are not removing the formatting if you already had it enabled prior to the new rules taking effect.  You just have to earn your spot back.  Could have been worse.

[apsvinet]

FYI, this thread is hilarious when you ignore everyone with paid advertising in their sigs.

Lol imagines the thread is like 5 - 10 posts tops ha-ha

But then you miss B!Z joke lol

And why would that matter? Do you think, in a scenario were there were no signature advertisements at all, that -none- of the people who chose to comment who currently has one of those, would've commented?

[paulsonnumismatics]

FYI, this thread is hilarious when you ignore everyone with paid advertising in their sigs.

I was thinking that very same thing, quite some time ago. Please look no further than this sentence in this post. Do not read the first sentence either.

I'm convinced that eventually the market will fix itself. The ad operators will only demand people with activity, presence AND quality comments. Thats why ive asked before about a thumbs up/down comment voting system or something like that. I know, we can end being a circus of numbers, pops, balls, stars and oh my but...
At the end it will get better. Lets see. The forum will evolve, i hope.

[freedomno1]

FYI, this thread is hilarious when you ignore everyone with paid advertising in their sigs.

Lol imagines the thread is like 5 - 10 posts tops ha-ha

But then you miss B!Z joke lol

And why would that matter? Do you think, in a scenario were there were no signature advertisements at all, that -none- of the people who chose to comment who currently has one of those, would've commented?

Depends how interested they are in the topic really signatures aside although sigs are a part of the forum design even if they are unpaid ones.