Signature spam threads. Should there be any punishment?

[Chlotide]

While reading around I saw lost of stupid threads (mainly just a dumb question like "why is bit[Suspicious link removed]d") and then a tsunami of pseudo-pertinent replies to maybe the dumbest question. I would just report to nuke, but others try, or at lest pretend to try to explain cryptography to what seems to be a zoo gorilla.
I would rate this as fraud.
1. Make new acc
2. Ask stupud question (but not that stupid so it will not be trashed)
3. Spam your sig few times

I know this is old news, but should there be any sort of punishment? Not suggesting heavy research but if a certain user is definitely the one who made the alt especially for sig spam... are there any repercussions? Sigban, temp-ban?

I understand it would be hard to prove (or not) but just got very annoyed about this and think would be good to have a punishment that fits the crime. If they know there is a 5-10% chance they would get caught, maybe we'll see less of these stupid threads.

Thoughts?

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[Findingnemo]

Already there is a punishment for spamming with or without signature called temporary ban.For the first offence they may get 7 or 14 day ban and if they keep doing it again and again then they might get temporary ban as per the rules of bitcointalk.

But I never saw anyone got perma ban just for spamming.

[Tytanowy Janusz]

In fact, you can get perma ban for low-efford spam posts. I can't an find example at this moment but I saw it multiple times. Mostly newbies. Temporary bans are more common for higher rank members in this situation as penalty for breaking first bitcointalk rule:

Forum rules

1. No zero or low value, pointless or uninteresting posts or threads. [1][e]

Merit system was invented to improve post quality. You will not earn even a penny with signature campaigns if you won't rank up at least to member which is impossible without 10 merits. So issue you are talking about is BTT members registered before 01.2018. Sooner or later no one will hire spammers that ranked up before merit system was implemented and didn't earn even a single merit since then because there are many unemployed quality posters with 50 merits+ earned in last 120 day. Spammers will be hired only by scam ICO that won't pay. So cheaters will work with cheaters.

If that's a big issue for you can use BTT scripts and hide them:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5098306

[Chlotide]

It's not low effort spam I was talking about, but mainly pretty well constructed replies to idiotic questions. Some times it is hard (at lest for me) to distinguish between an user who actually wants to educate someone or just writes smth just for one more paid post. (or even both, who knows).
Also threads where many users keep posting the same reply over ond over.
I'll check and try to give some exact examples a bit later.

Also starting to wonder if I am paranoid or this issue really bothers others too 

[LTU_btc]

I had replied to such topics so many times and I had similar thoughts. I was wondering, is it legitimate newbie or just alt account of someone who decided to make paradise for sig spammers.
But I think there is no other punishment other than bans. Mods don't even have access to information like IP address of user and etc. So, they can't identify who exactly are making such threads. But I doubt that individual spammers are doing these. Probably such dumb spam threads are made by people who have whole farms of accounts.

[Thirdspace]

Not suggesting heavy research but if a certain user is definitely the one who made the alt especially for sig spam... are there any repercussions? Sigban, temp-ban?

I understand it would be hard to prove ...

as you said, it is pretty hard to prove. what indicators are used to prove it?
even if they have same IP, that's not enough proof to say the accounts are owned by one person

It's not low effort spam I was talking about, but mainly pretty well constructed replies to idiotic questions.

to mitigate the issue, you can report the thread and ask mod to lock it,
but mod needs to post reply and put a link to a good thread for a solution
without it they will just start another thread asking why the old thread was locked

[Chlotide]

... I was wondering, is it legitimate newbie or just alt account of someone who decided to make paradise for sig spammers.

Thank you for that! Started to think I fell off the crazy wagon with this

as you said, it is pretty hard to prove. what indicators are used to prove it?
even if they have same IP, that's not enough proof to say the accounts are owned by one person

You have a point there mate! Didn't give this enough thought tbh. Agree, just IP may not be enough in most cases.
At least a bit of attention was raised... When I stumble across similar threads I'll just use the report option. Sure those guys know what to do.

[tranthidung]

I don't know which link you gave in OP, but forum corrected as

"why is bit[Suspicious link removed]d")

You have no more thing to do with them, rather than report them and their bad posts.
If you find spammers, report their plagiarised posts with a note "This post is plagiarism. Source: link to original post". The rests will be handled by forum staffs when they receive allocated reports by admin.
If you still don't know how to do report effectively, please read:
Signature Campaign Guidelines (read this before starting or joining a campaign)
Guide] Reporting effectively
Do you often use report button? There are guides to more effectively report
Since 2018, what did you contribute to prevent signature ads removed globally?
Cleaning up the house in Bitcoin/ Altcoin/ Gambling Discussion boards

Just report them, with a note that "spam to bump thread, more in this thread". Moderator who is responsible for that board will receive reports and handle them later. That note above will help them to know what generally happens in that thread.

[mk4]

There are definitely some shady questions like "is ExPertBiTcOinTraDeRlul.com legit?" even though the website is obviously a scam, but how do we really know for sure if the poster is a secondary account(for their main accounts to gain postcount by replying to the topic), a not-so-subtle promoter of the website, or a person that's asking a genuine question? While topics like this are most likely people advertising their scams, there's still really not way to know for sure, so the best solution(in my opinion) is to simply give the website negative feedback by replying to the topic, so other readers wouldn't think about opening the advertised website. Topics like this should just be locked immediately after a few good-enough replies to prevent unnecessary spamming.

[pooya87]

There are definitely some shady questions like "is ExPertBiTcOinTraDeRlul.com legit?" even though the website is obviously a scam, but how do we really know for sure if the poster is a secondary account(for their main accounts to gain postcount by replying to the topic), a not-so-subtle promoter of the website, or a person that's asking a genuine question?

i think it is pretty obvious in most cases though. there are "symptoms"! for example when the starter goes out of his way to make sure the link is there using BBCode url tags, specially when they do it more than once. and also they always disappear after starting the topic never coming back to read the replies or answer them.
and i believe the purpose of these topics is always "traffic", they don't care if you post a bad feedback on that topic, all they want is people to open their link and give them some traffic.

[mk4]

i think it is pretty obvious in most cases though. there are "symptoms"! for example when the starter goes out of his way to make sure the link is there using BBCode url tags, specially when they do it more than once. and also they always disappear after starting the topic never coming back to read the replies or answer them.

Oh definitely. Most are far more obvious than others. Especially if the poster has only registered his/her account on the same day of posting, and the account having only 1 post in total. I believe there are a few that are actual legitimate questions though, so I'm mostly not going to take any chances if no one has given a decent answer/response yet.