What to do about Bump Bots

[nutildah]

I know this has been discussed here before but I don't see the solution for how to effectively deal with Bitcointalk bumping services.

Take a look at this thread, its quite obvious that they hired such a service, not to mention its to promote a scam token:

"Short Bitcoin" token: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5087584 (starts around post #11)

As far as I know they're not breaking any actual rules besides Spamming maybe, so I don't know how I should report them to get them banned / nuked. It's apparent which ones are the bump bots as they are all noobs that tend to have low post counts and no merit.

Is there a master meta thread where these types of threads can be reported?

Thanks.

Just irritating watching people promote scams in such a cheesy manner.

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[Coyster]

Nothing other than reporting such spam bots to the moderator,and you can also report spam posts and mega threads in this topic spam busters

Just as you said there is as of yet no more new or effective method to handle the situation,but reporting those threads works just fine

[Upgate]

Cryptocurrency ico has received massive influx of scam project even the once that has not yet been Considered as a scam in the long run turns out to be so.

So if there where to be punishment for promoting scam project a lot of users world be a victim because of the various signatures being worn by users of which most a scam or bad project.
Well the only way you can help is if you have a quality prove you can table it and may be the victim would be red tag that is if it was a deliberate act of scamming users

[marlboroza]

I know this has been discussed here before but I don't see the solution for how to effectively deal with Bitcointalk bumping services.

Nothing much except to report post by post or create thread, list all accounts and bump it every day until one of the members of moderator council bitcontalk notice it and nuke/ban accounts.

As far as I know they're not breaking any actual rules besides Spamming maybe

Not maybe, they are spamming and building quote pyramids which are also against forum rules.
I'll list couple accounts from that thread spamming and bumping other ICO announcement threads:

angercoin --> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1186096;sa=showPosts
nothappend --> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1188949;sa=showPosts
kocheg --> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=917721;sa=showPosts
wandi70 --> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=562529;sa=showPosts
cabe29 --> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=837654;sa=showPosts
vadiuha07 --> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=716535;sa=showPosts
RinrtA07 --> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=17642;sa=showPosts
conklinliane --> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=21040;sa=showPosts
bharathirajan10 --> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=855317;sa=showPosts

[bones261]

   The only way to deal with bumping bots is to use the report to moderator function. Many bots post insubstantial posts. (This is against the rules and can result in the post getting deleted. Multiple offenses could get the account a temporary ban.) More sophisticated bots post more substantial posts by engaging in a fake conversation. However, many times this conversation is reused and if the bot runner is having different accounts posting the same "conversation," the later conversations could result in the alt accounts getting permabanned for breaking the copy/paste rule. Unfortunately, bot runners learn from the posts that get banned and they will eventually program bumping bots that are more sophisticated.

[tmfp]

Here's a few threads infested with bots from the same service.
I got left negative trust by the ETH777 manager/shill for my critique of NELUNS.

Evencoin
Neluns
Sexycam
ETH777
SafeInsure

There's also a related meta thread which has got buried in the shit somewhere.
Their spinning is sophisticated enough to avoid (self) plagiarism and mods have proved to be reluctant to delete posts en masse previously, so I gave up reporting them.

The middle three on that list are also self moderated, which means about 300 pages of echoing shills, with any other POV silenced.
How far from the initial function of a forum thread have we travelled, to get to this?

[suchmoon]

so I gave up reporting them.

Please don't. That's like quitting your job during the busiest season. Shitty unpaid (how are those badges coming LOL) job but still.

The middle three on that list are also self moderated, which means about 300 pages of echoing shills, with any other POV silenced.
How far from the initial function of a forum thread have we travelled, to get to this?

I consider the alt section not so much part of the forum but more like an outhouse. Unfortunately the shit needs to be cleaned out but there are still good discussions going on elsewhere on the forum. Now if we could reclaim Bitcoin Discussion that'd be awesome.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Now if we could reclaim Bitcoin Discussion that'd be awesome.

I'm hesitant to say it, but I do think Bitcoin Discussion is getting slightly better, based on the hours I spend in there going on reporting sprees. A useful thing to do is to sort by new posts (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=1.0;sort=first_post;desc), and report all the trash threads that get created before they have time to take off, and reporting spam threads for locking rather than individual posts if you don't have enough time to trawl through pages and pages of spam.

As issue I am finding is that the spam posts get deleted promptly, but the reports to actually lock threads sometimes take a week to be acted upon (I assume these reports are being left for a higher mod?). In that time, the thread has filled back up again with another 5 pages of spam. Until we can get these threads locked down promptly, it is an endless game of whack-a-mole. Although I wish more people would actively report, I honestly can't blame people who are running out of steam over the whole thing.

[bitart]

Also, what would be a big big advantage for reporters (and has been discussed/proposed many times before) to just hide the 'Report to moderator' button for the post that has been reported already...
This won't be noticed by the majority of the members but would help those who report...

[hilariousandco]

There's a few things we can do. Certain posts/accounts not bumping the thread to the top or the thread can only be bumped once a day regardless of posts would help. We could do away with the alt coin section as it is and any alt coin that wants to list here gets their own sub board (and they should probably have to pay a fee to do so). If that happened then paid bumping would largely be useless.

[HODL2090]

Admins could nuke any newbie account associated with such activity, but the ease of opening new accounts makes it not so effective, the users do not mind losing such accounts with little activity and no merits.

It has been suggested that account creation process by tightened, but Theymos does not plan on making it any more difficult considering the legitimate users willing to join.

[stompix]

Here's a few threads infested with bots from the same service.

Sexycam

Hmm, can it be that they are just a bunch of ....friends discussing? 

friends, the presence of masternodes in this project

friends, let me explain what the advantages of the project

friends, it seems to me, everything

friends, let me add that in addition to the above goals,

friends, I would like to discuss

friends, if I correctly understand the information

friend, if under a limited purchase

As for what to do other than reporting I don't see anything other than praying Theymos will change his mind and do it soon

But probably the market will kill those bumping services before we see it done.

[tmfp]

...
As for what to do other than reporting I don't see anything other than praying Theymos will change his mind and do it soon

My very simple, immediately implementable solution in that other thread was drowned in a sea of complexity of merits, bumping time limits, payments, algos etc.
Here it is again.
The [ANN] topics should remain static, schemes stay listed chronologically as they are originally posted. When a user wants to see what's new, the front page will tell him at a glance.
Every new offering gets longer front page "new scheme here" exposure, bumping is nullified and users can follow threads of interest by bookmarking them. 
Cheating by duplication could be dealt with by allowing only accredited representatives of the actual scheme to start its single [ANN] thread, which would also make the OP responsible for verifying any information given in it.

[bill gator]

There are legitimate uses for Bump-Bots, and therefore I don't believe that they should be outlawed. I don't think that they negative effects of the abusive Bump-Bots are enough to justify focusing more resources than necessary to remove them entirely.

The rules we already have in-place are sufficient to deal with any abusive Bump-Bots. Plagiarism, Bumping too often, irrelevant conversation, etc. I would see little issue with punishing the owner of a Bump-Bot if the account breaks the rules.

I just don't think there is much to be done about Bump-Bots in particular other than enforcing the same rules we all operate under. I agree they take away from the experience, but a realistic implementation for preventing them would remove a highly utilized feature.

[suchmoon]

...
As for what to do other than reporting I don't see anything other than praying Theymos will change his mind and do it soon

My very simple, immediately implementable solution in that other thread was drowned in a sea of complexity of merits, bumping time limits, payments, algos etc.
Here it is again.
The [ANN] topics should remain static, schemes stay listed chronologically as they are originally posted. When a user wants to see what's new, the front page will tell him at a glance.
Every new offering gets longer front page "new scheme here" exposure, bumping is nullified and users can follow threads of interest by bookmarking them.  
Cheating by duplication could be dealt with by allowing only accredited representatives of the actual scheme to start its single [ANN] thread, which would also make the OP responsible for verifying any information given in it.

You mean like this?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0;sort=first_post;desc
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=240.0;sort=first_post;desc

So for altcoins it's about a day and a half on the front page and for tokens more than a week.

[nutildah]

Here's a bump bot ring I just documented pretty thoroughly because they were pissing me off:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5114958

Please feel free to do your reporting/tagging/banning as you see fit.