Signature advertisers: suggestions?

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

So if you use signatures for advertising, what are your suggestions for forum improvements in that area?

If we can tackle campaign managers, we have solved half of our problem so my suggestion goes like this. Before a user gets a privilege to manage a campaign he/she must have a past record of been meritef for quality posting  e.g a Legendary member applying to be a campaign manager must have earned 50% of the current legendary merit requirement to be eligible to manage a campaign.i.e user must have earned  1500merit for equality posting. This will make then take their job seriously as they can lose the privilege.

Secondly, there should be selected altcoin used for altcoin  bounty campaign payment. I am against the idea of banning all altcoin bounty leaving only paid bitcoin signature. The forum has grow more than just bitcoin. I believe that's why we have grin as a payment option now.  So this is my suggestion, every altcoin bounty should pay their participates in the token of the blockchain their project are developed on.
Example, If your project is based on ETH or EOS blockchain and you want to run a bounty campaign participates will be paid in ETH or EOS  and not your worthless token. I believe this will also have an impact as they got something to lose if shitposters are been paid.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

There are four actors involved here: the campaign (manager), the signature bearers, the ad consumers, and the forum as an entity.

Creating a sort of signature CMS for campaign managers could clearly be interesting for them, providing flexibility to try out different messages overtime, and use A/B tests to optimize their signature ads. From a marketing point of view, that is very interesting, although to be able to exploit that properly you’d need to know a bit about dynamic marketing ads and how to optimize them.
The signature content could even change depending on the board section you are in (I’m specifically thinking about displaying the signature in the local language for those that bear one and post on their local board – after all, it would be easier to understand the message if the signature add was displayed in the language of those that are potential targets).

That does sound like a fair share of work to create, and while the signature campaign yes/no debate could go on and crystalize in a ‘no’ further down the road, the truth is that they are a core driver for traffic to the site, albeit all the counter-effects. Ideas such as a CMS for signatures probably would enhance the forum’s position versus other competing sites that promote campaigns.


The signature bearers for the most would not care about a change in content of his signature billboard from time to time, pushed by the campaign manager. Most likely, they have never even bothered to take a look into what they are passively advertising, so the way it is done is of no real concern in general. There is though a rarer segment that does, and will not flash any add on their signature space. CMS would therefore need to be an opt-in/opt-out feature to cover both scenarios, and it would be up to the campaign manager to reward each scenario according to campaign rule discretion.

Creating a set of forum endorsed campaign rules, and tying merits dynamically to being able to bear a signature have all been discussed above, and are interesting to consider (although impact has to be measured on all ends).


The ad consumers, any of us potentially, would probably notice the change of content derived from a dynamic signature CMS, simply because our sight is not trained to ignore new content that easily.
Whatever spam accompanies the signature would still be the poster’s prerogative, and only limited by personal standards, campaign supervision (currently only in a few selected cases) and forum constraints (forum current set of unofficial/official rules).
A nice perk at some point could be to include, under specific requirements, an opt-in/out switch on the user profile to see signatures on the whole.


Lastly, the forum as an entity, while not wishing to get involved with how campaigns are rolled-out (aside from the general forum unofficial/official rules) could monetarize features such as the signature CMS. I mean, it would require a development which is non-trivial, and it would give campaigns an interesting potential set of options.

BTC payment has been mentioned above, be it to the forum and/or the campaign signature bearers. That would at least place something real at stake on behalf of the campaigns, and in many cases, it could lead to better campaign management and, above all, supervision of the content being posted in order to get some ROI out of the campaign.

[mu_enrico]

@admin, maybe you could think this way: signature campaign and altcoins, in general, brought more people to this blockchain ecosystem and eventually benefiting bitcoin. For example, I came to this forum because of the claymore miner problem that I need to solve. It's a shame though that I know blockchain because of ethereum, not bitcoin.

The problems are about spam, low-quality posts, and enormous scams like others have mentioned.

[elda34b]

If we can tackle campaign managers, we have solved half of our problem so my suggestion goes like this. Before a user gets a privilege to manage a campaign he/she must have a past record of been meritef for quality posting  e.g a Legendary member applying to be a campaign manager must have earned 50% of the current legendary merit requirement to be eligible to manage a campaign.i.e user must have earned  1500merit for equality posting. This will make then take their job seriously as they can lose the privilege.

I don't think merits is the right metric for this. A (signature) manager should be able to distinguish between quality post and garbage post, but it doesn't get reflected on their merits. For example, one of Indonesian local moderator (which is also a bounty manager for some projects in the past) doesn't have 1500 merits, simply because he's too lazy to make a post and instead focus on tackling our reports. But his judgment is good, better than maybe most altcoin campaign out there.

Secondly, there should be selected altcoin used for altcoin  bounty campaign payment. I am against the idea of banning all altcoin bounty leaving only paid bitcoin signature. The forum has grow more than just bitcoin. I believe that's why we have grin as a payment option now.  So this is my suggestion, every altcoin bounty should pay their participates in the token of the blockchain their project are developed on.
Example, If your project is based on ETH or EOS blockchain and you want to run a bounty campaign participates will be paid in ETH or EOS  and not your worthless token. I believe this will also have an impact as they got something to lose if shitposters are been paid.

I honestly doubt they will be able do that. It's much profitable to give their tokens that were created out of thin air for payments.

[hilariousetc]

Either just ban them outright or tighten the restrictions on how they can operate here and give punishments for those who can't run them efficiently. Problem solved either way. I'm not sure why you would waste time with the update thing though. People shouldn't be having their signature possibly modified without their consent and that would just open up a potential huge security concern (if I've understood is properly). All campaigns need to do is clean up their act and the only thing the forum needs to get involved with is warning and punishing those that don't.

Ask yourself this: Do you ever see any shitposts from the Chipmixer campaign? Nope. Why? Because they've got a manager who does his job properly and how it should be done. And then we've got all the shitcoin campaigns who do absolutely nothing and it's them that have ruined it for everyone else. If signature campaigns were banned then all the problem users and campaigns would leave instantly never to return thus leaving all the quality posters who would stick around out of pocket and having the bonus of getting paid for their quality contributions taken away. It just seems like the worst of the community will have ruined a good thing for everyone else. Take a look at the highest merited users of all time. If you take you (theymos) and satoshi out of the equation then in the top ten highest merited users of the forum 5 of them are wearing a Chipmixer signature. That should tell you a lot. Chipmixer is pretty much the only campaign known for it's quality participants. Now, imagine if all campaigns were run like this and all campaigns were known for their quality posters (and the ones that weren't were handed punishments). There would be no issue with signatures at all then. I've said multiple times before over the years that signature campaigns could actually help improve the quality of the forum and Chipmixer is proof of that, but when we allow users and campaigns to pay people just for bashing their head against a keyboard what do you think is going to happen?

It's not just about signature campaigners being out of pocket and restricted either. There's lots of people who conduct business here and use their signature to advertise their own goods and services and they'd also be screwed and lose out (unless there was some sort of whitelist for certain users).

I think enforcing Signature Campaign Guidelines will do the forum more good.

Absolutely, 100% agree. 

This should have been done long ago and it looked like some progress was being made when I finally got theymos to agree to the Guidelines, but then nothing happened and all requests for blacklists were ignored. If theymos doesn't have time to issue sig blacklists then I think he should probably code an interface instead that would allow Globals to be able to do so (or a special team of sig campaign mods or whatever).

I think enforcing Signature Campaign Guidelines will do the forum more good.

Has there ever been any enforcement with this stuff? Take this, for example:

If you are running a campaign and it becomes blatantly obvious to Staff that you are doing little to nothing to stop spam on your campaign you will be issued a PM warning by a Global Moderator that you need to make immediate improvements to curb low-quality posts. You will have 7 days to remove low-quality posters and respond to the message detailing what you are going to do to make changes to your campaign to reduce the amount of spam. If improvements are not noticeable within 21 days of that and Staff do not believe you are doing enough to prevent low quality posts your signatures will be blacklisted from the forum by an Admin and you will no longer be permitted to advertise here in such a way.

No. I gave a few warnings out initially but most just ignored it completely and when I requested certain campaigns signatures to be blacklisted nothing happened. It really won't work without theymos' input otherwise they're just hollow threats and with bans they can just run campaigns off site. If it became public knowledge that we don't tolerate lazy campaigns most will just clean their acts up in the first place so warnings, bans and blacklists will probably have to be issued less and less as time goes on.

However: the forum will never intermediate these transactions. We will not touch the money involved or perform any sort of "screening", etc.

There are about 20 new " ICO managers/Teams" popping up weekly. I'm not saying the forum should "screen" all of them per say, but maybe some Merit restrictions and rank restrictions should be put into place before anyone can offer managing services?

I don't think think it's out of the question to require teams to use a forum escrow or must hire a manager from an approved list.(There is no actual list unless you count https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5032713.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4412712.0 these) An official list could be made but then the forum is basically endorsing the users put on the list, or the forum could ask a disclaimer to be added to any list be made by the community.

Users that have shown interest in the quality of their posts and posting habits IMO are more likely to actually care about the campaigns they manage. More likely to care about spam.

I also like the suggestion of no token paying signature campaigns allowed. Maybe also include translations as well. I think facebook, twitter, youtube, instragram, reddit, blogs etc are fine as they are not spamming the forum. Just my opinion

I wouldn't be against only using some sort of team of 'trusted' managers. The only issue is how do new users get on there and how do we divide work between them? Some new managers do actually do their job properly but the overwhelming majority don't. Most new campaign managers are just completely oblivious to how the forum operates or how much work managing a campaign is and that is a huge issue. At least if there's a trusted team of known users then they will know what to do and the standards to keep. I think I suggested before you could make the 'trusted' sig managers mods or some sort of staff rank and only those users are allowed to run them. At least we could guarantee some quality control then.

I am not a huge fan of enforcing the “signature campaign guidelines” for managers because it will lead to campaigns being run(managed) off the site when advertisers are banned. This is also why forcing campaigns to pay in bitcoin will not work.

That's why we need signature blacklists otherwise this wouldn't work.

[o_e_l_e_o]

To follow on from what hilarious has said:

Take DdmrDdmr's data from this thread.

The board with the highest merit/post ratio is Technical Discussion. Go to Technical Discussion, click on any thread, and see which signatures are popping up - ChipMixer, CryptoGames, Bitvest, etc. Campaigns which pay in BTC. The board with the lowest ratios are all the Altcoin boards. Go to Altcoin Discussion, click on any thread, and you are met with 20 different signatures for 20 different coins/tokens, none of which you have ever heard of, and all of which probably won't still be around in 6 months.

We don't need the data to tell us that, however. Anyone who has been here for more than a month knows that the spam problem is because of these altcoin campaigns. When they can create the payment out of thin air with no cost to themselves, they are happy to pay for any old trash. It's not signatures per se that are the issue, it is that there is an infinite amount of trash coins which can be given away in exchange for signature space. If we forced all campaigns to pay in BTC, they would quickly become much more selective about who they let in - the incentive for spamming would disappear and the incentive for making good posts would increase.

I also agree with the points made regarding the Guildelines sticky. What's the point in it even being there when it is completely ignored.

[Kavelj22]

As a non-experiment user, this is how i see things:

The problem is not limited to sig campaigns, when to look for new improvement ideas, but with Bounty Campaigns in general. [Let's mention signatures/translation/moderation campaigns, as the other bounty parts haven't so much importance]

Problems that need to be solved:
- Spammy posts.
- Thread Boost.
- ICOs/Projects run by scammers.
- Fake managers.
- Fake translators/moderators.

So let's admit that this is basically fundamental and should be set long time ago, typically for both managers and participants:

I think enforcing Signature Campaign Guidelines will do the forum more good.

Absolutely, 100% agree.

I can't understand why this is, completely, ignored since set.

And as the forum will never take part of the money involved in bounties, here some suggestion that can be, if ever, taken into consideration:
- Like "Copper Membership", users have to pay some fees in order to start new threads in Bounties board (Let's say something between 200 and 500 dollars) as not-fake projects can pay this small amount or to hire a good rated manager who already paid that fee to properly start monetizing his services. Forum users can only comment in existing threads of Bounties board. Collected funds can be used to hire more stuff to moderate the Bounties board.
- Only signature campaigns for Btc can be posted in the Services board and managers don't have to pay the fee like in the Bounties board.
- Managers can't edit their bounty threads or remove links to spreadsheets, they can reserve first comments for updates or change of the rules.
- Participants of the signature bounties (announced out of this forum) are responsible about their posts/signatures/translations and some restrictions can be set to reduce spam boost and fake translators.
- Merit requirement for translators/moderators.
- Merit requirement for participants of signatures campaigns that paid Btc.

If we forced all campaigns to pay in BTC, they would quickly become much more selective about who they let in - the incentive for spamming would disappear and the incentive for making good posts would increase.

Totally agree.

[cryptohunter]

What is the problem we're trying to solve with this?

Increase the forum's usefulness for its members.

If that is really true, and your primary concern, then ban all sig and take away all financial motivation for posting much as it is possible.

Do not fear shrinkage of users, those that leave were not real enthusiasts and would have no issue diluting useful collisions here to gain some btc dust. Get rid of the bulk of financially driven posters and the forums usefulness will jump ahead.

If you are a true enthusiast and want to help build an end to end trustless decentralised arena you will put effort into helping build it regardless of whether your post will earn you money.

I just got chipmixer burn in on my oled screen reading this thread. Do you really expect to get an objective view here? be sensible.

May as well go ask which alt is best on the alt board and expect objective helpful advice.

Whilst there is financial incentive to post and whilst you have people controlling peoples ability to get paid to post (and their rates) whilst themselves being part of "high rate paid to post" campaigns ..then you will always have motive, and means for abuse. That will end up being a big problem.

You will have a system that is encouraging gaming the systems from both ends the top and the bottom. To prevent this gaming you have a huge problem on an anonymous forum like this. I say to me it looks impossible to set up some decentralised self governing control as it seems you are attempting. In addition to that you must accept these mechanisms are influencing free speech.

Your idea in the OP does have some merit. It would take out some of the possible gaming and manipulation regardless of what people are telling you (you need to look at the motivation for them telling you that). I mean if we could thrash out some real criteria for merit so it was not open to wide abuse and then we only showed sigs under those posts that were merit worthy that could actually work. It would be a good start to a real meritocracy and something all people should support.

If we could

1. drill down on criteria that defines a post of positive value
2. drill down on how to ensure only posts of positive value receive merit
3. drill down on how only those merited posts were rewarded financially

that would be excellent and a true meritocracy

those top 2 things alone seem quite impossible on an anonymous forum

Until you can create a fair meritocracy you will have a war, gaming and create more destructive issues on board than what you realise.

My advice remains as it was many weeks ago. Until there is a sure and tested way to allow the board to be used as a financial reward structure that strongly represents contributions given that is reasonably fair and impossible to game then ban all sigs.

I would strongly recommend that you read this thread again

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5088852.0

Although it may be rather long, boring, and in quite horrific english that does not at all render the truths you will find there invalid.

I see you as a person that wants satoshis principles took forward and applied when and where possible. I see that you are trying to decentralise control here and find ways to make things better for the entire board. I do not think it will be possible whilst financial motive is there and any room to abuse your systems still exists.

To create a real meritocracy you will need to drill down and down to define the smallest units upon which you will then build. There can be no room for abuse else you will always have successful selfish actors and wars.

For now ban all sigs and take time to develop a system that can cope with them in the background. Then later perhaps release into the wild. Until you can ensure all systems guarantee to treat all persons actions and behaviours the same and equally then you will always have a big issue here.








 

[coolcoinz]

3. drill down on how only those merited posts were rewarded financially

Do by this you mean tipping? The money has to be coming from somewhere. If not from the campaigns then I doubt a typical user of this forum will feel the need to spend money on posts he finds entertaining. We're not on twitch.

For now ban all sigs and take time to develop a system that can cope with them in the background.

This would mean not only censorship (which most of us don't like) but also trying to regulate a decentralized economy that has managed to grow out of nothing. There was a demand for people to promote projects and there was a supply of people willing to participate. What's wrong with that?
Banning is the worst way. It's always better to reward people for following the rules, and for that reason I like the idea below.

For example the forum could track how many users in each campaign got banned or had their posts deleted by mods and adjust certain privileges based on that, e.g. limit the number of users they can hire. But that would basically require EVERY signature to be approved by the forum, which I guess goes against the "no screening" stance.

Publish statistics, make the managers responsible. They are the ones with the most to lose (high ranked, well trusted accounts, lots of merit, better deals than normal campaign members). If your participants are spamming and you get the highest number of:
members with negative trust
deleted posts
nuked spammers
(list up for discussion)
You lose the right to run a campaign, or get some other form of punishment, like some bench time for your account.


There are very well moderated campaigns out there, so the signatures by themselves are not responsible for the spam.
Banning signatures is comparable to banning guns because some people happen to be killing other people each year.

[OgNasty]

However: the forum will never intermediate these transactions. We will not touch the money involved or perform any sort of "screening", etc. Also, I have no particular desire for the forum to take a cut of sig-ad transactions.

This is a shame.  While I understand you don't want the liability, I think it would be a boon to the forum's revenue and could be a cool way to reward users here. 

If signature advertisements were as simple as clicking a box in your profile settings to activate it once you've reached the designated member level, and you received payouts based on views/clicks, that would be a pretty cool system.  No more signature campaign managers.  No more favoritism to alt accounts.  No more war on newbie accounts.  No more shit-posting. 

[pugman]

Give mods the ability to whitelist/blacklist signatures? This could help so much, I can't even elaborate enough. Dedicate a few mods only for this, hell, you could even improvise the report to mod button in such way, where users can report different users for different things. Like have options to report the whole post history, to request to ban sig due to continual shitposting, to ban the user due to actual breaking of more serious rules.

[alanst]

Give mods the ability to whitelist/blacklist signatures? This could help so much, I can't even elaborate enough. Dedicate a few mods only for this, hell, you could even improvise the report to mod button in such way, where users can report different users for different things. Like have options to report the whole post history, to request to ban sig due to continual shitposting, to ban the user due to actual breaking of more serious rules.

Would mods really want such responsibility? The forum staff should NOT be in the position to separate the good ones from the bad ones. Why? Because 1.People are corruptible 2.Anyone can be easily misled by a seemingly good campaign at start which could turn out...let's say not what it was expected. Who would be to blame if people get scammed? Obviously the mods..

The "Signature Membership" similar to the "Copper Membership" idea was probably the best one so far alongside with the one where 20-30 earned Merit is needed to unlock signature-wearing privileges.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Give mods the ability to whitelist/blacklist signatures? This could help so much, I can't even elaborate enough. Dedicate a few mods only for this, hell, you could even improvise the report to mod button in such way, where users can report different users for different things. Like have options to report the whole post history, to request to ban sig due to continual shitposting, to ban the user due to actual breaking of more serious rules.

The forum staff should NOT be in the position to separate the good ones from the bad ones. Why? Because 1.People are corruptible 2.Anyone can be easily misled by a seemingly good campaign at start which could turn out...let's say not what it was expected.

You mean good posts from bad ones, or do you mean good campaigns from bad ones?  If you mean the former, I don't see a problem with mods having to judge post quality, which is something they basically do anyway when they agree with a report or not.  Pugman's suggestion of nuking someone's signature space based on a "report post history" isn't a bad one, either.  You have no idea how many individual reports I've made against single users, one by one, for shitposting.  Usually someone is either a chronic shitposter or someone who may have occasional low-quality posts. 

If you mean the latter, I'd tend to agree with that except I don't think mods would be judging the merits of any given project but instead the quality of the campaigners' posts and/or how poorly the campaign manager is running the campaign with respect to that post quality.

The "Signature Membership" similar to the "Copper Membership" idea was probably the best one so far alongside with the one where 20-30 earned Merit is needed to unlock signature-wearing privileges.

I like the idea of a merit requirement in such a case, though I think 30 merits might be too easily obtainable.  50 merits or so might be in the ballpark.  And yes, I do realize that a lot of shitposters aren't even getting 30 merits, but we all know that if they had to in order to be able to wear a signature, they'd be able to get them from friends/alts/buying them.  50 merits might seem like a high bar to clear, but it really ought to be--for the forum's sake.

[Cashi]

Another idea could be to disable setting a new signature if someone hasn't earned x Merit during the last 120 days. They can still delete their old signature or leave the old signature as it is, but can't set up a new one. That will prevent shitposters to join the next campaign so that they are stuck on their old signature and would run out of paid signatures just by shitposting sooner or later. There would be no problem for inactive members, their signature would stay as it is.

We can do this automated or manually (for the benefit that people can still wear personal signatures for their own business even if they haven't earned x Merit during the last 120 days). Manually means: tagging them by DT for wearing a paid signature without receiving enough Merit during the last 120 days.
Reports can be made by easy proof of their Merit history (120 days) and providing a proof, that the signature is paid and active.

I think it's very easy to judge compared to judging if someone is a shitposter.

[alanst]

If you mean the latter, I'd tend to agree with that except I don't think mods would be judging the merits of any given project but instead the quality of the campaigners' posts and/or how poorly the campaign manager is running the campaign with respect to that post quality.

Definitely the latter. Well, you can't possibly know the quality of the campaigner's posts and how the manager runs it before you pass the sentence on a campaign. What if a mod makes a mistake in judgement, and refuses something that can become a fairly "good project" (hate these words btw as I've reported quite a few one liners like these myself) but passes something that would scam the users or have massive shitposing? One mistake is all it takes for the fuse to be lit. It's hard to determine which are the good ones and which are the bad ones beforehand...I can't really see what the outcome would be in such a situation but I don't see how someone would want to be a judge and pass a sentence before knowing "the criminal's" entire story

[The Sceptical Chymist]

<snip>

I guess there's a miscommunication here.  I wasn't suggesting that a judgement be made beforehand, but only after a manager has proven his incompetence as far as regulating the participants or a participant has proven to be a chronic shitposter.  There are some altcoin/token bounty managers who will accept anyone with two thumbs, and who obviously don't care about post quality (don't ask me for names.  I know they exist because of how many bounties I've seen with obvious alts enrolled and how many shitposters are accepted into their bounties). 

There's no perfect solution to these problems, not even the ones I've supported or suggested myself.  Every possible solution is going to have drawbacks and I know this.  One thing I will say is that it's fortunate that Theymos doesn't make changes on a whim, and if he does attempt to curb this issue with lousy bounty managers and bounty hunters, it'll most likely be effective because he'll have thought about it a great deal.  I'm just hoping he does make some sort of restrictions on the campaigns that don't pay in bitcoin, since those seem to be the main problem.

[alanst]

I guess there's a miscommunication here.  I wasn't suggesting that a judgement be made beforehand, but only after a manager has proven his incompetence as far as regulating the participants or a participant has proven to be a chronic shitposter

My apologies than, I might have missunderstood. However, it seems that we’ve come to a healthy conclusion which is that it’s not really the campaigns that need separating, but the managers, which is kind of easy to do as, from what I’ve read above, we already have a list with the good ones. Maybe I’ve oversimplified it a bit  

Anyway, wichever path is to be followed, as you said, theymos will most likely choose the right one.

[vit05]

I believe that most of the comments are about increasing moderation or restricting the actions of users in order to reduce spam. I do not think the intention of the topic is to increase the attributions of the moderators and administrators of the forum. I believe the intention is to improve the quality of the campaigns and provide better tools so that more companies can use this marketing service.

Signature campaigns is a great "use case" of Bitcoin. It simply demonstrates how Bitcoin and other currencies can be used for payments, invoices and are easily verified.

So the two suggestions I liked the most were these:

• DdmrDdmr: CMS dashboard for managers. This could even be an outsourced and paid service. With more accurate statistics, campaign managers and funders would probably avoid spammers and users who post only on MEGA topics.
• MadZ: separate campaigns that pay in coins that are already traded in well-known exchanges from projects that pay a% of an ICO, which does not yet exist. And my suggestion, separate the signature campaigns from the service area in the Bitcoin section. This would allow a greater organization of the campaigns and eventually accept other means of payments that are also accepted by the forum as Grin and maybe others.
• I would also suggest giving a discount on the forum's ad auction for the project that had a good signature campaign among users. This suggestion is likely to be widely rejected, but... If a certain campaign had a good number of users and they received a good number of merits without users with negative trust, they would have an advantage in the Auction. If they won, they would receive a discount of 5% or 10%.

[r1s2g3]

What about following the same guideline that forum follows for the advertisement policy:

1. No ICO signatures are allowed.
2. Campaign that can be accepted in forum for signature advertisement can buy/acquire permission for specific number of signatures for their campaign. (Should not be like stake system and you can enroll any number of participants for stake.)

Few additional suggestion.
3. Individual not having gained a single merit in last 120 days will get signature disabled.
4. If users 3 post got reported in a week for spam (obviously good reports) user will get 1 month signature ban + punishment currently decided by forum.
5. Paid option if somebody do not have merit.

[TheNewAnon135246]

However: the forum will never intermediate these transactions. We will not touch the money involved or perform any sort of "screening", etc. Also, I have no particular desire for the forum to take a cut of sig-ad transactions.

This is a shame.  While I understand you don't want the liability, I think it would be a boon to the forum's revenue and could be a cool way to reward users here. 

If signature advertisements were as simple as clicking a box in your profile settings to activate it once you've reached the designated member level, and you received payouts based on views/clicks, that would be a pretty cool system.  No more signature campaign managers.  No more favoritism to alt accounts.  No more war on newbie accounts.  No more shit-posting. 

I second this. I have no idea how much work it would be to integrate this into the current forum software but it sounds like a solid idea to weed out all of the low quality posts.