Stake.com (SteveStake) is encouraging spam.

[LoyceV]

I just noticed there's an increase in users with many posts per week.

From all Hero Members with most posts in the past week, the 15 most active ones all have a Stake signature and 14 out of those 15 are old accounts with barely any earned Merit. If they would have had to start their accounts from scratch, 1 of them would be Jr. Member and 10 of them would have had a Member Rank.

From all the Legendary Members with most post (ignoring Chart Buddy), 13 out of the 20 most actives ones have a Stake signature. Again, most of them are old accounts, and if they'd have to rank up through the Merit system, 7 out of 13 would now only have a Member Rank.

Why is Stake still paying shitposters to spam massive amounts of posts on Bitcointalk? It's a rhetorical question, their campaign manager would have been Member Rank too if it didn't reach a higher Rank before the Merit system.

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[n0nce]

Interesting, indeed. With their current pay rates and limits, you need to write 95 posts per week to get the max. payout as a Legendary member and 125 as a Hero member. That's quite a lot. I personally find it hard to even find just 50 interesting topics per week where I can post a constructive answer / new thread or guide.
I guess at least it's gone down a bit from the 200 posts per week cap in OP..

♦️ The payment limit is $125/week (+$35 if win the bonus) per member of this campaign
[...]
Payrates:
HERO:
♦️ Up to 25 posts: $2.00 per post
♦️ From 26 posts on: $0.75 per post + 20% extra for posts at Gambling Section (including Stake & Primedice main threads)
LEGENDARY:
♦️ Up to 25 posts: $2.50 per post
♦️ From 26 posts on: $0.90 per post + 20% extra for posts at Gambling Section (including Stake & Primedice main threads)

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

I just noticed there's an increase in users with many posts per week.

You are number 15 and I am number 102 😂

Anyway, If anyone wants a good deal from them and if they are a good poster then they will get better deal from them. They pay good. I think it's a campaign where both shitposters and good posters can benefit from it. Let the moderators do their job, they get paid for it too.

[hilariousetc]

Why is Stake still paying shitposters to spam massive amounts of posts on Bitcointalk? It's a rhetorical question, their campaign manager would have been Member Rank too if it didn't reach a higher Rank before the Merit system.

Isn't that person just a Stake employee?

I just noticed there's an increase in users with many posts per week.

You are number 15 and I am number 102 😂

Anyway, If anyone wants a good deal from them and if they are a good poster then they will get better deal from them. They pay good. I think it's a campaign where both shitposters and good posters can benefit from it. Let the moderators do their job, they get paid for it too.

I think this would be akin to saying janitors get paid so you might as well piss all over the floor and smear shit on the walls because that's what they get paid to deal with. In fact, I would look at it like someone is actively paying people to go around flinging shit and piss everywhere which obviously shouldn't be allowed. Sig spam should be the campaign managers job not left for mods to clean up the mess for free. Mods don't get paid unless the posts are reported and there's plenty of reports to handle without having to deal with sig spam and most sig spam isn't reported in the first place because there's so much of it and there's not much benefit to people reporting in the first place. IT would be a full time job in of itself if you were to take on the task of reporting the sig spam.

[Welsh]

Interesting, indeed. With their current pay rates and limits, you need to write 95 posts per week to get the max. payout as a Legendary member and 125 as a Hero member. That's quite a lot. I personally find it hard to even find just 50 interesting topics per week where I can post a constructive answer / new thread or guide.
I guess at least it's gone down a bit from the 200 posts per week cap in OP..

I wouldn't doubt that you can churn out around 100 posts a week, and keep them substantial enough though. Only a few select users can do that though, and I'd prefer if Stake only hired some of the best users, and got rid of the ones which clearly aren't up to standard. Not just Stake though, I wish more signature campaigns had a higher threshold. You know, something akin to what companies do today with sustainability, they use it as a way of marketing themselves. Now, it kind of does my heading in, but I'll be honest seeing a signature campaign actually trying to look after the forum; I'd have respect for that. Especially, since campaign managers check every post, supposedly. I kind of wish they reported the one's they think aren't up to standard.

Alright, I know sometimes you can get that in between where they won't pay for it, and technically it doesn't break the forum rules as it might be substantial enough. However, I know there's cases where they are breaking forum rules, since I've seen it myself, and I'm not the poor sod that has to clean it up. Hilarious, globals, and those that moderate the main sections are.

I think this would be akin to saying janitors get paid so you might as well piss all over the floor and smear shit on the walls because that's what they get paid to deal with. In fact, I would look at it like someone is actively paying people to go around flinging shit and piss everywhere which obviously shouldn't be allowed. Sig spam should be the campaign managers job not left for mods to clean up the mess for free. Mods don't get paid unless the posts are reported and there's plenty of reports to handle without having to deal with sig spam and most sig spam isn't reported in the first place because there's so much of it and there's not much benefit to people reporting in the first place. IT would be a full time job in of itself if you were to take on the task of reporting the sig spam.

Right. Absolutely, spot on. I'd love to fix the current reporting issue. I've said it before, but I'm really hoping the badges get implemented, but in such a way that users don't just max out their reports in a week or month or even a year to get them.

[Findingnemo]

Why is Stake still paying shitposters to spam massive amounts of posts on Bitcointalk? It's a rhetorical question, their campaign manager would have been Member Rank too if it didn't reach a higher Rank before the Merit system.

They gave opportunity to expose about their brand name as much as they can all over the gambling board with negligible pay rate compared to any other signature campaign so its a kind of business at the end.
But stake is relatively one of the highly wagered sportbook still they are not concentrating on their quality of advertising which plays a hige role when it comes to building their reputation.

[Poker Player]

I've got mixed feelings about that campaign. On the one hand I think indeed incentivizes participants to make a lot of low quality posts, and I have seen some who write poor posts. But on the other hand, I have seen some pretty decent participants. The other day I checked that one I see quite a bit had written about 70 posts over the week and to me they are of decent quality.

We don't know if that person doesn't have a main job, for example. If I didn't have a main job I think I could easily write 100 posts or more a week.

In any case, most of them write in the gambling section which is what it is. Many of you don't like it and it is not a paradigm of quality but it has been and is very important in the history of this forum even though most people write low quality posts there.

[Welsh]

I've got mixed feelings about that campaign. On the one hand I think indeed incentivizes participants to make a lot of low quality posts, and I have seen some who write poor posts. But on the other hand, I have seen some pretty decent participants. The other day I checked that one I see quite a bit had written about 70 posts over the week and to me they are of decent quality.

We don't know if that person doesn't have a main job, for example. If I didn't have a main job I think I could easily write 100 posts or more a week.

I don't necessarily have any issues with the guidelines that they've put out, since most of those users shouldn't be reaching that amount of posts every week. However, the problem is that there's some pretty poor quality users in the campaign, as there's in a lot of the signature campaigns. So, I don't think it's specifically a Stake problem, except that their guidelines do encourage low quality spammers, but it's up to the manager to actually vet the applications, and get those types of users out of the campaign, and reject any future low quality posters.

One hundred posts isn't all that much, and if you haven't got a traditional job then you probably would find that easy, and I imagine there's a few users in that position. As I said, as long as their posts are constructive I don't really have a problem with it.

[virasog]

They gave opportunity to expose about their brand name as much as they can all over the gambling board with negligible pay rate compared to any other signature campaign so its a kind of business at the end.

At the end of the day, signature campaign is actually a way to do marketing of their casino and there is no harm if they want that their signature should be shown more than any other signatures in the forum. If they have a spam check mechanism in their campaign management, i don't think quantity should be a problem.

I've got mixed feelings about that campaign. On the one hand I think indeed incentivizes participants to make a lot of low quality posts, and I have seen some who write poor posts. But on the other hand, I have seen some pretty decent participants. The other day I checked that one I see quite a bit had written about 70 posts over the week and to me they are of decent quality.

Well, lets have an example if a person posts few posts a week and they are mostly spam posts and then there is another person who post 50+ posts in a week but all of them are good ones, then whom we will think is spam poster?
I think the quantity of posts have nothing to do with the quality of posts. Some persons may have a lot of time to write a lot of constructive posts throughout the week.

[Welsh]

Well, lets have an example if a person posts few posts a week and they are mostly spam posts and then there is another person who post 50+ posts in a week but all of them are good ones, then whom we will think is spam poster?
I think the quantity of posts have nothing to do with the quality of posts. Some persons may have a lot of time to write a lot of constructive posts throughout the week.

You're right, don't get me wrong. However, the more a user is posting, generally means that each post will be of less quality, especially if they're looking to meet a target. However, that's not always the case. I remember quite a few users that were massively active in posting, and one of them is a global moderator now; hilariousandco. While, I don't know how much they were posting at their peak, they were posting quite frequently compared to others, and their quality didn't really dip as a result. So, it can be done.

There's a few examples of this though, even to this present day. I've also gone through periods where I'm much more active, for example the last few years have been absolutely crazy in terms of sucking up my time, and I think it was the back of Covid. Only now, I've starting to get my free time again.

I use this from time to time just to monitor certain things from a moderation stand point. However, that'll give you an idea of the posters that are posting a rather large amount, and their quality. For the most part, I'd say it's pretty decent, and there's some recognisable names there.

Obviously, thanks for Loyce for creating these things for the community, probably something they think of; but, these sorts of tools can be useful for moderation from time to time.

[n0nce]

Especially, since campaign managers check every post, supposedly. I kind of wish they reported the one's they think aren't up to standard.

This actually kind of sparked an idea.. What about a script that monitors the posts of signature campaign participants (or all Bitcointalk accounts, for that matter) and immediately throws them into some sort of AI which has been trained with labeled datasets of shitposts and good posts.
If a post matches the 'shitpost' category with some high probability, it is going to be logged on a webpage. Whoever wants to, can browse through there and quickly report posts - maybe with a checkbox-type user interface. You could then even easily mark a whole set of e.g. 100 posts and only uncheck the ones that the AI mistakenly flagged.

Bonus points if this software only shows the content, no usernames and avatars or signatures. Judge purely based on post quality.

Would something like this sound helpful to our dear SpamBusters in the forum?

[LoyceV]

I didn't have a main job I think I could easily write 100 posts or more a week.

And if "generic posts" are enough for the campaign you're in, you could do that on several accounts. That's a very decent salary in most countries.

However, the problem is that there's some pretty poor quality users in the campaign, as there's in a lot of the signature campaigns. So, I don't think it's specifically a Stake problem, except that their guidelines do encourage low quality spammers

The difference with other campaigns that hire shitposters is that Stake actually pays quite good, and in Bitcoin instead of some made-up token.

but it's up to the manager to actually vet the applications, and get those types of users out of the campaign, and reject any future low quality posters.

This topic was created 4 years ago, and they're still paying spammers. I don't get it though: with their long-term budget and a bit more effort, they could hire users who's posts people actually read.

What about a script that monitors the posts of signature campaign participants (or all Bitcointalk accounts, for that matter) and immediately throws them into some sort of AI which has been trained with labeled datasets of shitposts and good posts.

MindlessElectron removes spam from Newbies based on keywords.
An "AI" sounds a lot like an "algorithm" that decides what you see, like any social media nowadays.

If a post matches the 'shitpost' category with some high probability, it is going to be logged on a webpage. Whoever wants to, can browse through there and quickly report posts

I've created Finding spam and scams by keyword.

Bonus points if this software only shows the content, no usernames and avatars or signatures. Judge purely based on post quality.

That won't work: in many cases you can't judge a post without context. Depending on who posts it, a simple "Yes" or "No" can be a valuable post.

[Poker Player]

Well, lets have an example if a person posts few posts a week and they are mostly spam posts and then there is another person who post 50+ posts in a week but all of them are good ones, then whom we will think is spam poster?
I think the quantity of posts have nothing to do with the quality of posts.

What I believe is that the conclusion you express does not follow from the premise.

At least in some cases, the quantity of posts does affect the quality. Someone who is a decent poster making 25 posts a week, if he enters a campaign like the one we are talking about and wants to reach the maximum payout, it is normal that on average his posts have less quality than when he makes 25.

I didn't have a main job I think I could easily write 100 posts or more a week.

And if "generic posts" are enough for the campaign you're in, you could do that on several accounts. That's a very decent salary in most countries.

Generic posts? I don't know for sure but I guess you do other things apart from writing in the forum, I don't know if it's a main job or what, but if you had no other job than writing in the forum couldn't you write more than 100 posts with decent quality? Normally you write more than 50, although some of them are updates of your threads.

This topic was created 4 years ago, and they're still paying spammers. I don't get it though: with their long-term budget and a bit more effort, they could hire users who's posts people actually read.

You are right: you don't get it. Do you think that the target audience of that campaign needs quality to drive them to gamble in the casino?

What is said is not nearly as important as how many times advertising appears on the forum. I know you don't go there as much as I do, but I can assure you that the average user is quite mathematically illiterate, something you can check in threads that the same people who wear casino signatures, who are also customers of the casinos, open. Like:

1) They have tried the umpteenth variant of martingale and think it is bad luck that they have lost their money.
2) They create a thread regretting having lost too much money.
3) They naively believe that with bonuses and promos, the house gives them an RTP over 100, lol.

And things like that.

[T3PR00T]

Well, lets have an example if a person posts few posts a week and they are mostly spam posts and then there is another person who post 50+ posts in a week but all of them are good ones, then whom we will think is spam poster?
I think the quantity of posts have nothing to do with the quality of posts.

What I believe is that the conclusion you express does not follow from the premise.

At least in some cases, the quantity of posts does affect the quality. Someone who is a decent poster making 25 posts a week, if he enters a campaign like the one we are talking about and wants to reach the maximum payout, it is normal that on average his posts have less quality than when he makes 25.

I didn't have a main job I think I could easily write 100 posts or more a week.

And if "generic posts" are enough for the campaign you're in, you could do that on several accounts. That's a very decent salary in most countries.

Generic posts? I don't know for sure but I guess you do other things apart from writing in the forum, I don't know if it's a main job or what, but if you had no other job than writing in the forum couldn't you write more than 100 posts with decent quality? Normally you write more than 50, although some of them are updates of your threads.

This topic was created 4 years ago, and they're still paying spammers. I don't get it though: with their long-term budget and a bit more effort, they could hire users who's posts people actually read.

You are right: you don't get it. Do you think that the target audience of that campaign needs quality to drive them to gamble in the casino?

What is said is not nearly as important as how many times advertising appears on the forum. I know you don't go there as much as I do, but I can assure you that the average user is quite mathematically illiterate, something you can check in threads that the same people who wear casino signatures, who are also customers of the casinos, open. Like:

1) They have tried the umpteenth variant of martingale and think it is bad luck that they have lost their money.
2) They create a thread regretting having lost too much money.
3) They naively believe that with bonuses and promos, the house gives them an RTP over 100, lol.

And things like that.

Talking about generic post and spam, this is the best example I found https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1980983;sa=showPosts;start=0

I understand stake have many participants to check but why best_change is paying such brilliant posters? These days you need to find something to earn merit, best way is to become a scam reported and report everything you find on the web, be in touch with other DT members and merit sources. One day you will be a legendary and the goal achieved to get paid $100 per week. Easy money, fake care for the forum.

[Poker Player]

Talking about generic post and spam, this is the best example I found https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1980983;sa=showPosts;start=0

You haven't been looking very hard, then.

I understand stake have many participants to check but why best_change is paying such brilliant posters? These days you need to find something to earn merit, best way is to become a scam reported and report everything you find on the web, be in touch with other DT members and merit sources. One day you will be a legendary and the goal achieved to get paid $100 per week. Easy money, fake care for the forum.

Oh, OK. Conspiracy theory about the DT system and stuff. Whatever.

[LoyceV]

Generic posts? I don't know for sure but I guess you do other things apart from writing in the forum, I don't know if it's a main job or what, but if you had no other job than writing in the forum couldn't you write more than 100 posts with decent quality? Normally you write more than 50, although some of them are updates of your threads.

Let's put it this way: writing generic BS posts without reading anything can be done a lot faster than writing good posts. And if the campaign manager doesn't care, why would you? ("you" not being you personally in case that wasn't clear)

You are right: you don't get it. Do you think that the target audience of that campaign needs quality to drive them to gamble in the casino?

You may be right. Spam pays.

I know you don't go there as much as I do, but I can assure you that the average user is quite mathematically illiterate

One could argue that anyone who understands basic math won't be gambling for weeks or even years in a row.

[n0nce]

What about a script that monitors the posts of signature campaign participants (or all Bitcointalk accounts, for that matter) and immediately throws them into some sort of AI which has been trained with labeled datasets of shitposts and good posts.

MindlessElectron removes spam from Newbies based on keywords.
An "AI" sounds a lot like an "algorithm" that decides what you see, like any social media nowadays.

I understand what you mean, but that's not how it would be supposed to work. The idea is pre-filtering by that AI, such that it only shows you posts that are most likely shitposts and / or spam. We recognize those at first glance, so a computer program trained with enough data should be able to roughly categorize posts, as well. Only the ones most likely to be useless to the forum would be displayed, and even then, a human will still need to decide whether to report them or not.

It is not meant to 'decide what we see' algorithmically, rather just be a software to facilitate people's job to find posts that are to be considered report-'worthy'.

If a post matches the 'shitpost' category with some high probability, it is going to be logged on a webpage. Whoever wants to, can browse through there and quickly report posts

I've created Finding spam and scams by keyword.

Exactly like that, just a bit... 'smarter'? But maybe that's not needed, after all. I'm all about keeping things simple and stupid, so if your method works fine (low false positive rate), that's great!

Generic posts? I don't know for sure but I guess you do other things apart from writing in the forum, I don't know if it's a main job or what, but if you had no other job than writing in the forum couldn't you write more than 100 posts with decent quality? Normally you write more than 50, although some of them are updates of your threads.

I must admit that while I spend a lot of time in this forum, I mostly visit and post in a handful of categories. Sometimes there is honestly nothing to write about, because since my last visit people either just posted interesting updates that I simply give merit to, or people didn't write any new posts or threads about a topic I'm interested or knowledgeable in at all. There are sometimes such 'quieter days' and even weeks, and sometimes there is much more discussion happening.
When I don't visit the forum for one or two days, my watch list is much fuller and I could easily spend a few hours just writing replies (although as mentioned, I avoid it if there's nothing I can really add to the discussion).

So I agree that even with unlimited time, there is a certain limit where you'll be waiting for people to reply to your posts / replies or you'd be looking at creating tons of new threads about generic things (there is only so much stuff you can actually research, play around with and become knowledgeable about in a certain timeframe). For many people, it will be most likely that they'll start visiting subforums that they got no knowledge about and just write generic threads and replies..

[LoyceV]

I must admit that while I spend a lot of time in this forum, I mostly visit and post in a handful of categories. Sometimes there is honestly nothing to write about
~
For many people, it will be most likely that they'll start visiting subforums that they got no knowledge about and just write generic threads and replies..

And that's where the magic of shitposting comes in Let's take the most active Stake worker for example: Legendary slapper made 102 posts in the last week. His last post in Gambling Discussion was #29252 on page 1463. There are endless pages of "people" talking to each other, or their own alt accounts. Nobody reads it, nobody cares.
This guy also gives me a chat AI spam vibe.

[Poker Player]

Let's take the most active Stake worker for example: Legendary slapper made 102 posts in the last week. His last post in Gambling Discussion was #29252 on page 1463.

Leaving aside whether he is a shitposter or not, what page do you want him to post on in that thread? Those kind of threads, like in this case of the German soccer league, have many pages It wouldn't make sense to open a new thread every week.

There are endless pages of "people" talking to each other, or their own alt accounts.

How do you know they are alts?

I have never applied for this campaign but I do not rule it out in the future, so I expect a scrupulous scrutiny from you if I apply and get in. 

I didn't want to start focusing on specific cases, but in that campaign for example we also have your friend, who sometimes writes quite interesting things and other times has also given me the impression that he hasn't read the thread very well and writes the answer to complete the quota.

Apart from that, the member of that campaign I named before, who I think writes pretty decent, constructive posts, despite writing many posts throughout the week is this one:

Hispo

[LoyceV]

Leaving aside whether he is a shitposter or not, what page do you want him to post on in that thread? Those kind of threads, like in this case of the German soccer league, have many pages It wouldn't make sense to open a new thread every week.

Considering the lack of Merit in that thread, I can't imagine people actually read what's being posted. So it's better not to post there, or not pay for it.

How do you know they are alts?

I don't, but from experience it seems likely some of them are alts.

I have never applied for this campaign but I do not rule it out in the future, so I expect a scrupulous scrutiny from you if I apply and get in.  

I specifically mentioned most of campaign mambers with many weekly posts would have had only Member Rank if not for their airdropped Merits. That doesn't apply to you, you're a "self-made Legendary" and I don't think anyone considers you a shitposter.
Not everyone in the Stake campaign is a shitposter, so if the campaign manager would be a bit tougher on them, the campaign could be cleaned up.
See:

RULES
♦️ Posts must be constructive and on topic

This rule causes more spam:

♦️ If the minimum posts requirements are not fulfilled the payrates will be half