Forum suggestion for countering low quality

[RussaX]

I have been around this forum for some time and even though I am not very active I just like to read about crypto and learn about potential trade opportunitys.
That being said I find it difficult to read constructive thread without someone junk posting and causing disruption. I started to use this forum mainly because of quality opinions on projects that I consider investing in.


There are just so many low quality posts that sometimes makes me feel as if nobody reads the topic but rather just rambles non constructive answer based on topic title. I have noticed a lot of times when bot would pick up year old topic and suddenly low quality members would just post nosense without ever reading topic or realising that it is dead.
Another annoying thing that I feel might be more easy to solve are new members or low rank members who advertise scam, post refferals or act as bumps.

I that it would be a good idea to add further limitations.

Rank  

Newbie	-    Should not be able to open their own topics, should not be able to post links, with current 360s between posts they should also have daily limit.
Jr.Member	-    Should not have signature or personal text, longer time between posting, daily limit on new threads and posts.
Member	-    Should not have signature

With cutting off new profiles from easy access to basic features it should demotivate some of the people who like to spam links or participate in bounty campaigns.

In addition I would like to see feature that would act as merit/activity karma which would reduce members merit or karma every time their post/thread gets removed. By that I don't mean losing stats gained by the specific thread but rather penalty that would punish members for low quality content. This would have effect on all ranks and make you think twice before posting.

All current spam defeats the purpose of sig campaigns in the first place. I remember that if I find someone making a quality post/s I would check their other threads, I would check signature because I build expectation of this person making quality decisions while in the other hand nowdays you have shitposters who probably barely earn anything and main reason is just that because nobody will ever get interested to check someones sig or website if all of their content is junk.

[LoyceV]

With cutting off new profiles from easy access to basic features it should demotivate some of the people who like to spam links or participate in bounty campaigns.

I doubt that. They'll just create more accounts to continue spamming.

I don't think theymos will impose more Newbie restrictions:

Limiting newbie participation is very harmful for a community. Newbie jail will never return: I consider the newbie-jail period to have been extremely damaging to the forum. When barriers to participation are too high, then the best people often just won't go to the trouble of joining, and the people who are willing to jump through the hoops are often people who aren't good for the community: people with nothing better to do, scammers, get-rick-quickers, etc. Having a permanent newbie jail policy would improve things a lot in the short-term, but would end up being a fatal poison to the community.

[bones261]

    Bitcointalk already tried to implement a "karma" system that was abandoned. The problem with a karma system that gives out negative merit is that whistleblowers are likely to accumulate a bunch of negative karma when they take on the perpetrators. We should not punish people here with decreased functionality just because they spout out unpopular opinions. We already have a trust system in place, anyway. I really do not believe we need to compound the "scarlet letter" that these negative trust member already have with decreased functionality. Some of the big negative trust members are actually good posters and are still capable of giving valuable input.

[The Cryptovator]

Topic has been discussed many time and eventually theymos implemented new merit system for Jr. members. I am agree with that posting own topic for newbie could be disable for few specific board, like Altcoins Announcement. All newbie account there bumping thread and spamming. Disable signature up to Jr. member is appropriate. Member should be allow for wear signature.

I don't thing theymos will change current system lately. And merit system is working fine. I do not expect any change for now.

Why do you want to impede people from announcing their new coins that they created? There are many reasons someone may want to use a fresh account to announce their new altcoin.

That's why lots of scam projects are announcing there. By the way there is copper member to post Announcement new projects. I discourage to reply on ANN board for newbie. On the other hand account buy isn't so easy now. Actually whatever you see account sale post most of them are just scammer. They never have any account really.     

[Yeahpro]

There have been a lot of suggestions about how to improve the forum and majority of them are directed at newbies and limiting their activity and participation on the forum

Firstly, the forum can be improved without targeting a specific rank range. And such restrictions would only place more emphasis on merits and build the forum around it.
This would create an elite few and a large number trying to get across to the other side.
And we could have a situation where the merit distribution would not be able to cater for all quality members yet to rank up.

[jonemil24]

-

Member

-    Should not have signature

-

nobody will ever get interested to check someones sig

Let me be honest with you.

For about a year of my existence on this forum, only Vod and digaran's signature caught my attention.

If only theymos would get rid of the ICO Ann bounty, no more signatures for them and no more posting of social media links, the problem with spam could've been solved.

[Jet Cash]

The best solution is to encourage quality posters to make more posts, and for the mods to clean up the bad posts. This can be done regardless of rank, merit, or inside leg measurement.

[bones261]

Topic has been discussed many time and eventually theymos implemented new merit system for Jr. members. I am agree with that posting own topic for newbie could be disable for few specific board, like Atcoins Announcement. All newbie account there bumping thread and spamming. Disable signature up to Jr. member is appropriate. Member should be allow for wear signature.

I don't thing theymos will change current system lately.

     Why do you want to impede people from announcing their new coins that they created? There are many reasons someone may want to use a fresh account to announce their new altcoin. I realize there is a great deal of shitcoins that are created. Most are just scams and schemes. However, the great thing about cryptocurrency is that it is permissionless. Besides, all this would encourage is account sales. I would rather have a coin be announced by a fresh account than some account that someone bought with "legendary" status that they didn't really earn.

[RussaX]

I doubt that. They'll just create more accounts to continue spamming.

I agree with that they can create new accounts for bumping but at the same time that is the only thing they will have.
About restrictions for new accounts... I don't think that normal user would notice it. There are certain patterns that shitposters follow.

   Bitcointalk already tried to implement a "karma" system that was abandoned. The problem with a karma system that gives out negative merit is that whistleblowers are likely to accumulate a bunch of negative karma when they take on the perpetrators.

I understand your concern but that could be aimed specificly on the OP while the rest would be unaffected. So if I make this shitty thread and you all report it, moderator removes it and I would get negative activity or merit while the rest of you would just lose post count.

For about a year of my existence on this forum, only Vod and digaran's signature caught my attention.

This is the point if signature does not catch your attention it means that it is too saturated. It defeats the purpose of advertisment. But my main reason of removing sig from low ranks is to disencourage joining forum just for those campaigns.

[DdmrDdmr]

With the 1 merit requirement for Jr. Members, and the subsequent demotion back to newbies of a great amount of accounts, the number of signature candidates to cover all campaigns a fair share. Reducing the pool of candidates even more is a very strategic decision that is not single dimensional (spam), but rather imbricated in a multidimensional scenario (spam, website number of users, website traffic, derived income, and so forth). 

In terms of potential signature candidates, your proposal would be cutting current candidates by just over half:   

Code:

Rank	        nUsers(*)
Legendary	1506
Hero Member	2100
Sr. Member	4128
Full Member	7749
Member	        10346
Jr. Member	6433
(Newbie	       106944) 

(*) nUsers active (logged-in at least) between 01/10/2018 and 06/12/2018.

So we've got:
Legendary+Hero+Sr. Members + Full Members (*):  15.483 (these would remain signature candidates)
Member + Jr. Members (*):                                    16.779 (these would no longer be candidates)
Newbies with >= 30 Activity:                                  26.884 (these have already been chipped-out of signatures with the 1 Merit requirement).

Personally, I do not know, nor even have a hint, as to how effective signatures are. That would be interesting to see somewhere, broken down by rank bearer. Signatures can have a direct impact (click-through to promoted site) as well as indirect impact (i.e. awareness, top of mind, etc.), so it’s not trivial to measure how effective they are. One would say that the better the poster, the more chance of it getting noticed, but sheer visual aggregate volume of viewable signatures also leads to awareness, and that is not directly measurable.

[JusticeForYou]

All current spam defeats the purpose of sig campaigns in the first place. I remember that if I find someone making a quality post/s I would check their other threads, I would check signature because I build expectation of this person making quality decisions while in the other hand nowdays you have shitposters who probably barely earn anything and main reason is just that because nobody will ever get interested to check someones sig or website if all of their content is junk.

Signature campaigns are in the spirits of Bitcointalk forum and it has also increased the amount of engagement of people on the forum and just removing it would not be a solution to this problem but yes imposing specific rules for the Bounty Managers and participants can reduce the spam at some extent. There are also examples of some projects which have become very popular through signatures campaigns held on this forum and they are still running and you should not ignore this fact.

Rank  

Newbie	-    Should not be able to open their own topics, should not be able to post links, with current 360s between posts they should also have daily limit.
Jr.Member	-    Should not have signature or personal text, longer time between posting, daily limit on new threads and posts.
Member	-    Should not have signature

Yes, I think implementing this restristions to ranks can make huge diffrence in the amount of spam occurinng currently but its alredy suggested many time on the forum and theymos is yet  to considere it in the long list of "YET TO BE APPLIED SUGGESTION"

[o_e_l_e_o]

As stated, theymos is generally against any more restrictions to new members posting, so you are unlikely to see any daily limits, longer delays or being unable to open their own topics. Some newbies sign up to the forum to ask a specific question or with a specific issue - we don't want to stop these people from posting.

I think the logical next step (as I've said before in other threads), is to remove signatures from Junior Members in addition to Newbies, effectively meaning that a user has to earn 10 merit before they are allowed to display a signature. We are starting to see many shitposters with exactly 1 earned merit, suggesting it is too easy to gain 1 merit from either begging, buying, or trading.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

There are just so many low quality posts that sometimes makes me feel as if nobody reads the topic but rather just rambles non constructive answer based on topic title.

I hear you totally.  I've been involved in a thread in the Economics section, one that hasn't turned into a mega spam thread yet and one I'm interested in enough such that I requested help from smarty-pants math and economics members.  I just posted this yesterday:

Have you ever considered inflation?

You've got to be joking, you shitposter.  Obviously you haven't read this entire thread or even all of the first page, where I mentioned it and made it a sticking point for this entire thread.  You're a great example of why things can't be discussed in Economics reasonably, because it's not a discussion, it's a shitpost-a-thon

And that's not the first time I've written a response like that or noticed that someone was answering a question in a thread that had been answered 100 times already.  I even noticed it in my early days here with that (in my brain) infamous bitcoin for cupcakes thread.

A lot of what you suggested has pretty much been written before, and I'm fairly sure that Theymos knows what possible solutions he could implement.  He tweaks the system in small ways with long intervals in between changes.  Since he just made the 1-merit requirement for ranking up to Jr. Member, I figure he's going to see how that works before doing anything else.  Your suggestions aren't bad; they're just not new.

As stated, theymos is generally against any more restrictions to new members posting

*sigh*

Putting a restriction on newbie's signatures doesn't keep any of them from posting.  It just keeps them from earning money from their output, which is usually a bunch of shitposts.  If the solution was merit-based, a legitimate newbie member ought to have no problem earning whatever the requirement is, albeit probably slowly--but that was anticipated since the beginning of the merit system anyway.

[TheBeardedBaby]

The only restriction you may see in the near future will be in the Altcoin section and it will affect only the newbies.
This is the only signals we got from theymos regarding further possible restrictions.
So don't be surprised if one day newbies are banned from the Altcoin section.

[o_e_l_e_o]

So don't be surprised if one day newbies are banned from the Altcoin section.

In my opinion, an outright ban on newbies posting in the Altcoin boards would be a bad move. Yes, the Altcoin boards are a mess - they are a total spam-fest, there is almost zero real or genuine discussion going on, and most senior or sensible members don't even visit those boards, let alone post in them. However, banning newbies from posting in Altcoin boards isn't going to slow them down on their endless quest for that one elusive merit. Yes, it might force bounty managers to move to Google Forms for all their reporting, but I fear it would have the side effect of increasing the spam in other boards significantly.

[mikeywith]

I don't understand why many people relate poor quality / shitposts /spam posts to newbies or lower rank members. this is 100% wrong.

why would you limit a newbie who has a huge amount of knowledge just because he recently joined the forum?

look around the technical and series discussion, you will be amazed , many members who joined recently are top notch geeks.

allow everyone to post, let the members decide who is worthy and who is not,  by merting and commenting on quality posts.  

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I don't understand why many people relate poor quality / shitposts /spam posts to newbies or lower rank members. this is 100% wrong.

why would you limit a newbie who has a huge amount of knowledge just because he recently joined the forum?

look around the technical and series discussion, you will be amazed , many members who joined recently are top notch geeks.

allow everyone to post, let the members decide who is worthy and who is not,  by merting and commenting on quality posts.  

Does what you just wrote above contradict anything I just wrote a couple of posts above you?

Putting a restriction on newbie's signatures doesn't keep any of them from posting.  It just keeps them from earning money from their output, which is usually a bunch of shitposts.  If the solution was merit-based, a legitimate newbie member ought to have no problem earning whatever the requirement is, albeit probably slowly--but that was anticipated since the beginning of the merit system anyway.

 
It certainly fits what OP wrote and what I gave a personal example of in my post:

There are just so many low quality posts that sometimes makes me feel as if nobody reads the topic but rather just rambles non constructive answer based on topic title.

In other words, you're making a non-argument and I'd already written how restricting newbies/Jr. Members from being able to advertise in their sig space doesn't prevent them from making all of those brilliant posts you claim they do.

look around the technical and series discussion, you will be amazed , many members who joined recently are top notch geeks.

If that's true, then they shouldn't have a problem advancing in rank if that's important to them.  But if you think it's not the low-ranked members who are the primary problem, obviously you haven't ready many threads in Altcoin/Bitcoin Discussion.  Not to mention the rest of the altcoin section, the ANN, bounties, and tokens parts in particular.  The shitposting noobs have also started to infest Economics, Trading Discussion, and Speculation as well.  Go read some threads in all those sections and then tell me if you disagree with me 100%.

[mikeywith]

look around the technical and series discussion, you will be amazed , many members who joined recently are top notch geeks.

If that's true, then they shouldn't have a problem advancing in rank if that's important to them.  But if you think it's not the low-ranked members who are the primary problem, obviously you haven't ready many threads in Altcoin/Bitcoin Discussion.  Not to mention the rest of the altcoin section, the ANN, bounties, and tokens parts in particular.  The shitposting noobs have also started to infest Economics, Trading Discussion, and Speculation as well.  Go read some threads in all those sections and then tell me if you disagree with me 100%.

I clearly mentioned this "look around the technical and series discussion"

here are a few examples

> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5032987.0
> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3459858
>https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2258344.0
>https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4768828.0
>https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5079681.0
>https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5089384.0

These members with low ranks along with many others have many great posts. the reason you see the low-ranked members as the source of problem is probably mainly because of the number of the low-ranked compared to the high-ranked.

for every good newbie there are probably 10 shitposters newbies posting in the same topic, it's mainly a matter of low-rank to high-rank ratio that gives this perspective.

everyone was a newbie at once, and i believe they all should have the same chances like those previews newbies who now ranked up.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

everyone was a newbie at once, and i believe they all should have the same chances like those previews newbies who now ranked up.

Chances to do what? Rank up?

You've been here since April and I don't think you understand why the merit system was put in place or why the 1-merit requirement to rank up to Jr. Member was implemented.  You just said that shitposting noobs vastly outnumber the good ones--that's the exact reason why those things were done, and the problem was much, much worse before January 2018.  The good noobs will rank up, the bad ones won't.  That's fair, and I'll say it again: all noobs can post as they please.

Or did you mean noobs should have the same chance to join signature campaigns?  It's not quite clear what you're arguing here.

[mikeywith]

yes i have been on the forum since April but only started to be active like last month or so , and i do know how the merit system works. my statement was not a reply to anything you said in particular, it was mainly to the op suggesting the limit of newbies.

for example this

Newbie

-    Should not be able to open their own topics, should not be able to post links, with current 360s between posts they should also have daily limit.