[Experiment] Do shitposters care if someone replies to their posts?

[mikeywith]

Well you don't directly get an email, the bot posts in your thread but i guess if you want emails you can simply turn on forum notifications, or you can use telegram if you want instant notifications, i use non of these since i am not so obsessed yet  , i just bookmark my mention topic and view it from time to time.

Anyhow this is the thread that you should read https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5023605

[hilariousetc]

I've always called these sorts of users 'hit and runners'. They write a generic reply in a sentence or two usually having only read the title of the thread then move on to the next thread to rinse and repeat. It really kills the idea of a discussion board because they're not really engaging at all and they will rarely stay around long enough to see if someone has replied directly to them because it's irrelevant and that's why the board is full of spam. The amount of times I've engaged with people here and I never get a response is staggering. Basically the only people that tend to have discussions here are the 'big' or noticeable names.

Stake campaign has a really silly rule in that worsens this issue:

3 posts per thread maximum (you can of course do more but they won't count towards the campaign)

I think it was made with good intentions but it only exacerbates the problem. One thing I've noticed is that Stake spam is everywhere and I think this rule is partly why. Rather than sticking to threads they can have a conversation in they aren't going to get paid for any more than three posts in there so they naturally are unlikely to make any more than that. Imagine you're an expert in something or are very knowledgeable about a particular topic, well, once you've made your three posts in that thread there's no financial benefit for you to continue so off to another thread you might no little or nothing about. I'd much rather a person stick to talking about football in a football thread if he's very knowledgeable about that rather than leave and go find another thread to posts some generic nonsense in because he needs to get paid. Things like this just cause more harm than good whilst complicating the issue for everyone. If someone is spamming or making poor quality posts then they shouldn't be on the campaign or getting paid in the first place.

[mikeywith]

If someone is spamming or making poor quality posts then they shouldn't be on the campaign or getting paid in the first place.

From our perspective this is a valid statement, however i do not really think it makes a lot of difference in terms of their campaign goals, someone might argue that people tend to read quality posts more , which is both right and false, quality members probably do, but what about the rest? The last fact can be discarded anyway since you don't need to read a post before seeing the signature, so why would they care about quality posts anyway?

Some campaigns do actually care about the forum quality and carefully chose their members and also keeping an eye on them all the time, that is great and all, but how many good members are left out there? There will always be more spots available than what the a few quality members can handle, most members here know nothing about anything so probably it is not that their goal is to spam but that is pretty much all they can actually do anyway.

[stompix]

Conclusion: out of 11 users 10 didn’t reply. I know, the result is not very representative but if someone is interested to do a similar experiment, feel free to do it.
And the recently launched YoShitShow is almost a guarantee that the issues won't get better...

Surprised you got one! Nice experiment but as the other said, the result was not that unexpected.

I never got feedback or a thumbs up for telling people that surprising as it might sound Africa is not a country, neither is Europe and Japan is in Asia!!!! Let's not even go to more advanced stuff like bitcoin mining not being done with excavators....

And you expect to have a meaningful conversion or even a reply each time you post something? Get real!

But, if you want to get replies, I'll give you a hint
Go to the alt section and look for topics that have very low views/post ratio, the bumping bots there would love some fresh blood

[1miau]

In my experience, most threads that are titled with a question, especially those that can be answered "yes or no" will not have a lot of meaningful discussion. Looking at the other threads you (I assume 0xmiau is you) posted in, I am not especially surprised you didn't receive a response.  

I've chosen the replies where I can ask a good question that someone would reply (normally) and where it's not likely that while I'm typing another user submits a new comment. 0xmiau is me, I didn't want to confuse them if I make comments with 1miau there.

I had always assumed most signature spammers have at least a very basic understanding of bitcoin, but this is perhaps not true (anymore). Ever since I saw this thread, I have suspected some of the bounty hunter spammers are being paid by a third party, and the same forum account may not even be used by the same spammer from day to day. If someone does not even have a basic understanding of bitcoin/crypto currencies, they are not going to be able to engage in a conversation with you -- if they try they will look (more) stupid.

That's awesome, Nobel Prize for shitposting.  

Again looking at these users post history you can easy identify those shitposters (mainly posting because they are paid to) even though their post have some little sense to it, they just move around the forum replying in any board they find discussion they can contribute to but the average none shitposters post history are always similar in regards to boards and sometimes threads he/she posts in.

how does what they chose to post on an indication of being a "shitposter"? wouldnt it be more of the content of what they post? and isnt that what we are doing? moving the forum finding something we feel we can contribute to? and im a little confused are we speaking of the author being a shitposter or the commenter?

(sorry for the so many questions just trying to contribute  )

I think CryptopreneurBrainboss means that they are searching threads where they can submit their low-quality posts without any effort, there are several topics like "will BTC die?", "when will the bear market end?", "when should I buy BTC?", "is gambling risky?" or similar.

Stake campaign has a really silly rule in that worsens this issue:

3 posts per thread maximum (you can of course do more but they won't count towards the campaign)

Yeah, that's when the campaign is managed by the project itself and they didn't bother to hire a professional manager.  

Surprised you got one!

I was also surprised and thought of giving him a Merit  

And you expect to have a meaningful conversion or even a reply each time you post something? Get real!

Of course not, in most cases that's not possible and I'm only going to respond if there is really need to do it. Same like if I start a new topic and ask for opinions, it's impossible to reply to all of them.

But, if you want to get replies, I'll give you a hint
Go to the alt section and look for topics that have very low views/post ratio, the bumping bots there would love some fresh blood

Yes maybe I will ask them "when moon?". xD
There are indeed some spammer services offering "real" questions (most likely because the "great project" spam posts are deleted immediately.)
http://archive.is/Herr1

BitcoinTalk Bump

$4.50

(max: 8/day)

Buy as many bitcointalk.org comments (bumps) as you wish, and provide us with the link to the ANN thread and the amount that we should do per day. No need to send the texts as well, but if you wish you can do that. A big advantage of these is that we usually ask questions. So if you’re answering them, each bump will actually transform into two bumps.

Please don’t buy less than 15 BitcoinTalk bumps. We waste a lot of time informing ourselves of the projects in order to formulate good texts.

[oixh]

I think CryptopreneurBrainboss means that they are searching threads where they can submit their low-quality posts without any effort, there are several topics like "will BTC die?", "when will the bear market end?", "when should I buy BTC?", "is gambling risky?" or similar.

with that being clarified then another variable that was not addressed in this experiment would be the commentor who shit posts. the should should have been comments on theirs as well not only the author of the shitpost. with the parameters set  with this addition as well as taking your rank into consideration as well i think the results may differ slightly. higher would probably achieve more replies from the author. and if commenting was also on the shit commentators boost to the replies. keep in mind peoples underlying urge to feel important, or liked... or hell the fact that ego drives most peoples actions

[DarkStar_]

Stake campaign has a really silly rule in that worsens this issue:

3 posts per thread maximum (you can of course do more but they won't count towards the campaign)

There's quite a few people that like to post in certain spam megathreads multiple times, as they run out of new threads and need to recycle content again. I'm assuming that's what they want to prevent - now you can only recycle your points thrice. (though I highly doubt it's actually enforced in that manner, as it's a huge pain if the thread isn't large enough to "print")

[btcsmlcmnr]

I'm assuming that's what they want to prevent - now you can only recycle your points thrice. (though I highly doubt it's actually enforced in that manner, as it's a huge pain if the thread isn't large enough to "print")

Forum already has rule on this issue, the rule #12. However, the issue is by now, there is no specific fixed amount of time of content duplications to call it is violation. By now, in my opinion, it is hands-by-hands identification on content duplications, but in long term, I think the rule should add fixed amount of duplication time. Moreover, what if topic creators changed their contents just a little bit, even not paraphrasing violations. I guess this is reasons why by now there is no fixed figure of minimum of duplications for this rule.

12. No duplicate posting in multiple boards (except for re-posting it in the local language boards if it's translated).