It really breaks my heart when I visit 'Bitcoin Discussion' board and see the amount of spam there. And believe me, I'm not saying this only to show that I care for the forum, though I do, but I really mean what I'm saying right now and it is really saddening to see this, honestly.

The amount of spam and spammers are increasing all over the forum, but it seems like that board has become their ultimate destination to spit their shit and increase their activities or meet their post thresholds for their campaigns or whatever their reason is behind this. The situation hasn't been this bad before maybe, but now, you cannot find a single thread/topic that hasn't turned into a SMT (Spam Mega Thread), and it takes only a few hours for that to happen. That is how much spam they generate in that board.

I know that almost every single person knows all the things that I just said, but what compelled me to start this discussion is that I wanted to ask everyone that why have we left that board just for them? I know they are way more in quantity than us, but that doesn't justify leaving them all alone, so that they do whatever they want and we won't even touch that board at all.

The forum is named "Bitcointalk" which technically means "Talking about Bitcoin" or something like that. And the place to do that (Bitcoin Discussion board) is covered totally with useless discussions that we don't even want to see. I know that we can't just get them out of there, but at least we can discuss our own things, separately, in that board. That is what Moderated Threads are all about.

I just wonder how nice it would be to have some nice and qualitative Bitcoin discussions with the people that I see and read in Meta or other sections of the forum. What if all of them come together, discussing something regarding Bitcoin? A topic, totally free of spammers, with only quality posters. We can achieve that by creating Moderated Threads in Bitcoin Discussion board where we have the power to delete unsubstantial posts and only leave the ones that contribute something to the discussion.

We should not leave that board only to them. It deserves way more attention from the ones who care for the forum than what it is getting right now.

The quality is dropped because we have stopped trying to get our hands in there anymore. Starting useful and constructive discussions in moderated mode can still show up some quality discussions in that board but only if we try.
And, of course, not every single person, wearing a paid signature, is a spammer. I'm wearing one too, and I can totally speak out about me not being a spammer.


Appreciate that! We need more people doing the same, and along with reporting, you should also think of initiating some discussions that can catch attention of some of the good posters and hopefully we will see some quality in that board again, soon. Just make the threads moderated to not let spammers get in.

I venture in to Bitcoin Discussion fairly regularly. I find that sorting by newly created topics (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=1.0;sort=first_post;desc) can help to find some actual discussion - it effectively filters out all the spam mega-threads.

The problem is every thread gets taken over eventually. I might get a couple of good back-and-forth discussion points going within a few hours, but within a day or two there will be a page or two of spam posts appearing between thoughtful posts. At this point I usually unwatch the thread and never return - I have no desire to filter through pages of trash to find the next original thought worth responding to.

I guess my point is that there is still some genuine discussion happening, it is just being drowned out by the crowd. I guess self-moderated topics might be the way to go? I might create a couple sometime.

The problem is not paid signatures in general. When the merit system was implemented, juniors were removed of clickable signatures. But they can still have (non-clickable) signatures, and many bounties pay them for posting crap with those. So the spam didn't decrease (much?).

Signatures up to junior member of even to member have to be removed completely, and there have been other many good proposals that they will never be implemented or will take ages until they do.

That's exactly what happens there. A day before, I visited that board and posted on a topic that was almost newly started and didn't have a lot of replies, and I thought it kind of deserves to post something on it and I did it, but what I found today is that topic has grown to 5 to 6 pages already, in a single day, and all you can find there are useless replies from extremely useless spammers. Now, who would open every single page of such a thread to see if there is a post worth reading?


That's what I suggested. Self-moderated threads can have a very big effect on the quality of that board. People starting useful discussions making the threads self-moderated to clean the incoming spam can give us some hope.


I don't completely agree with that since I'm a Member, and I believe I deserve to wear a signature because I have earned my position. I was a Newbie when Merit system was introduced, and I reached this rank because, I think, I have been contributing something to every discussion that I have been a part of. Removing signatures for Jr. members can do the work because they cannot reach Member rank without earning Merits, and if someone can manage to earn at least 10 Merits, I believe they deserve to have the right to wear a signature.

All you can see are bounty and restrict the bounty. But bounty is not the root of the problem. Assume that theymos will remove all bounties for member and lower ranks, what's then? Bitcoin Discussion will become a dead zone? I was expecting the OP could end up with some solution for this question


Though I agree with your bolded words but your first sentence makes me less respect you. Why don't you just ask against him: "Hey, what about remove all the bounties for full member and lower ranks?". LOL

A better solution would be to crack down on the ICOs campaigns that are paying them to post rubbish in there. I've also been saying for years that that board needs at least one dedicated mod. I've messaged theymos about this probably 3-5 times over the past month or two alone. I managed to get a list of the top reporters in there from him about two months or so ago, but no action has been taken so far to implement one. In fact, I even messaged him about it yesterday. The longer theymos doesn't act on these things the worse it gets. Assigning a mod probably takes a few clicks from him and the benefits would be self-evident with no further action required from him. You can even just promote an existing mod to there if there's an issue with adding new people (though we should probably do both).

Three things can be done to help this situation which don't require much effort from theymos:

Assign some dedicated mods to trash spam threads on sight and help clean up the place.

Punishments for campaigns that are consistently paying spammers to churn out junk in there.

Remove signatures from lower ranks completely and/or make a merit requirement to become a Junior. Ideally you wouldn't be able to have a signature until you've become a Member which requires ten merit. The forum is being over-populated with clueless kids who have little to no knowledge about bitcoin but are churning out nonsense just to get paid. This can't be acceptable. If you can't acquire ten merit then you shouldn't be able to earn here and these people should stick to claiming bounties until they can earn the merit.


I don't think they're biased; they're logical. Newbies and Juniors who can barely speak English and know little to nothing about bitcoin shouldn't be able to get paid to post here. This is the campaign's fault for not doing their job properly so we need to force them to do this and removing signatures from lower ranks is the only way to do this. They barely have a signature anyway and it's pretty much useless to pay them for it, but ICOs don't care. They pay people in tokens they've created for free so they might as well pay as many people as they can because they still get their name out there even if it is minimal. The ICOs and the spammers they pay have ruined this forum and that needs to change. Remove signatures from lower ranks so bots and the worst of the worst can't get paid for writing crap or copy and pasting. Either prove your worth here by getting ten merit or purchase a Copper Membership if you want to be able to earn.

Theymos has said that this forum isn't a welfare system for people but that's what it has sadly become. We need to find a compromise here and removing signatures from lower ranks and punishing ICOs that pay for rubbish are one of the only two ways I can think of that will tackle this effectively. This doesn't effect anybodies ability to post here - just earn, and that shouldn't be a right for everyone, especially those who aren't qualified to do so and also do it at the detriment of the forum.

I like this one. We can easily spot campaigns that are paying spammers for their project by just visiting Alt Section and I'm sure that we can catch a lot of campaign that were doing such activities. If this one were only applied, I think I'm hunting shit campaigns right now.

The main root of the problem comes from those shit Bounties and irresponsible bounty managers. Shitposters are not the only one we should blame and punished, those very irresponsible managers should receive enough consequences too because they are the one who were encouraging spam for the first place.

Not only for Bitcoin Discussion but if we base it on statistics, Bitcoin Discussion is just below to Altcoin Discussion. Speculation and Economics section too is sort to be the spot where they hone their shitty posts to increase their post counts.

These days, there are so many threads complaining about the level of spam in most threads.
And frankly, it's becoming a repetitive topic, similar to the spam being complained about.

It's obvious, bounties, and multiple account users limit the amount of quality post as users have a post target.
If the more experienced users contribute more in these threads, it would go a long way in raising it from the mud.