Merit source and signaturetalk.org

[Vadi2323]

The introduction of Merit was declared as deterring new users with bad posts. And if you think about it - what is the ultimate goal of modern beginners at bitcointalk? Of course, one way or another to get into subscription campaigns. And where are the subscription campaigns? That's right, in an anglo board. I used to think that the Americans with the British are here, but it turns out that it is rabble from all over the world.

And so it turns out the following: we in Russian locale on the first line of defense do the main dirty work for free, and on the English board campaign managers comfortably manage their factories of shitposters, already filtered by suckers like us, they monetize themselves and have no problems with the influx of new hunters to argue for a long time in Meta in a circle about the same thing.

bitcointalk.org became signaturetalk.org

I do not want to participate in that and ask to transfer my merit source functions to someone else.

If you want high-quality posts, remove the signatures campaigns from the forum.

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[TheNewAnon135246]

The introduction of Merit was declared as deterring new users with bad posts. And if you think about it - what is the ultimate goal of modern beginners at bitcointalk? Of course, one way or another get into subscription campaigns. And where are the subscription campaigns? That's right, in an anglo board. I used to think that here the Americans are with the British, but here it turns out that there is  rabble from all over the world here.

And so it turns out the following: we in Russian locale on the first line of defense do the main dirty work for free, and on the English board campaign managers comfortably manage their factories of shitposters, already filtered by suckers like us, they monetize themselves and have no problems with the influx of new hunters for a long time argue in Meta in a circle the same thing.

bitcointalk.org became signaturetalk.org

I do not want to participate in that and ask to transfer my merit source functions to someone else.

If you want high-quality posts, remove the signatures campaigns from the forum.

Did you forget to remove your own signature before making this post?

[FIFA worldcup]

Did you forget to remove your own signature before making this post?

He is not wearing any paid signature. Its just a plagiarism signature for the chip mixer.
You should have seen this before posting ?

[Jet Cash]

Its just a plagiarism signature for the chip mixer.

It seems to link to the fbi.gov site.

[The Cryptovator]

Remove signature and bounty would clean spam from forum. But most likely forum will return back to 2009. Only couple of members you will find that who are active here only for discussion. There is few good poster as well who didn't wear signature, but they are not much active. Merit requirements on the campaign to evaluate quality. I can't see anything wrong with it. Spammers are unable to participate on btc campaign due to merit requirements. Most of spam posts are coming from altcoin bounty section and this is a big opportunity for spammer. That's why need ban altcoin bounty if you like clean forum. On the other hand you might say, signature campaign helping forum to keep emphatic. Every action have a positive and negative effect. So depends on you how will you take regarding signature campaign.

[Jet Cash]

There is an important difference between use of signatures for personal sites and projects, and their use for paid signature campaigns. Signatures are an important privilege - it's their abuse that is the problem.

[Coyster]

Enough of the remove signature from the forum entirely! If you're tired of seeing paid signatures you can post more on the IT or SD boards, there you do not get to see the signatures that users have on.

This discussion has been going on for too long now, and honestly I do not think the effect of signature spam is so much on the forum right now, altcoins are so low right now unlike in the past, this has reduced participants of the altcoin signature campaigns and their spammy nature. And in the BTC campaigns most managers are strict with what their participants posts, checkmating their contents weekly. In addition to this the implementation of the new merit system also did it's bit.

Signature campaigns could also have it's good sides, for those who are not so good posters, if they get into campaigns, they try to increase their quality and make their posts sensible, so they do not get removed.
Now you cannot tell me that's not s little bit of an advantage.

[Deathwing]

You can always choose to not to show user signatures.



https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=399366;sa=theme


Here is the direct link for you. Then, if you can see anyone writing shitty posts, just report them.

[Mr. Spasybo]

You can always choose to not to show user signatures.

https://deathwing.me/i/r4jly.png

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=399366;sa=theme


Here is the direct link for you. Then, if you can see anyone writing shitty posts, just report them.

This is not a question of whether to see a member's signature or not, but the quality of the article is declining because most members only post for the required number of signatures in the signature campaign (?)
I don't think removing the signature campaign would make the forum more quality & clean, I don't have any idea, just wait for the initiative from the community.

[LoyceV]

There is an important difference between use of signatures for personal sites and projects, and their use for paid signature campaigns. Signatures are an important privilege - it's their abuse that is the problem.

OP has a different agenda than what he posts here. He tried to have a user removed from a signature campaign, only because he doesn't like him. When that didn't work, he left negative feedback to yahoo62278.

In the past week, OP saw 9 (modlog archived) of his 42 posts deleted by Mods. Not many high ranking users can top that!

[tranthidung]

Remove signature and bounty would clean spam from forum. But most likely forum will return back to 2009. Only couple of members you will find that who are active here only for discussion. There is few good poster as well who didn't wear signature, but they are not much active. Merit requirements on the campaign to evaluate quality. I can't see anything wrong with it.

The forum will become purer (significant less spam or spam-free) if signature disabled at all. In contrast, there are some adverse effects that the admin and we all don't expect (in my opinion, and I could be wrong). If it happens, most of projects will move to other forums, that usually have looser rules which in turn will trigger more scams. Generally, I only see bad things for crypto ecosystem, not only for the forum.

Massive scams (I don't mention about spams) over many low-quality, loosely managed forums will destroy reputation of crypto ecosystem and somehow will play as barriers for future growth of crypto ecosystem. Low-quality forums are abundantly around us, and they will do fastly take any chances to destroy general reputation of crypto currencies.

Merit system has denifitely worked (as it initially created for), so I think the left-over problems for now depends on managers of campaigns.
The forum is designed for text-based talk, so let's talk.
Talk does not equal to spam.

[JohnBitCo]

Everyone has their views on it but theymos decision will be final.
The purpose is to keep the signature and reduce the spamming caused by it.

Yeah, I'm thinking that a good response to sig spam might be to ban the person for ~5 days and disable all but the most basic styling in their signature for 60+ days. (With times increasing for repeat offenders.)

[hugeblack]

It has been discussed many times, you can promote signaturetalk.org instead of FBI.

If you want high-quality posts, remove the signatures campaigns from the forum.

I think we saw the impact of this on the forum "check the serious discussions board," the problem will not end but will reduce the number of posts.
Check better idea:

Also, forum systems can be designed to encourage good behavior. For example, if I got everyone involved in sig ads to use a forum-provided signature management system / stats tracker, then I could show only a "modified impressions" value which takes the real impressions value and subtracts from it if the person is getting posts deleted by mods (or something like that).

Generally, if the merit system does not work and the problem of low-quality posts is not resolved, signatures will be deleted.

[JohnBitCo]

It has been discussed many times, you can promote signaturetalk.org instead of FBI.

Cryptotalk is the new signature talk.  

By the way there is so much focus on "signaturetalk.org" so I decided to check whom does it belong and it is still available for anyone to register.
Not a bad name though  

[mu_enrico]

If you want high-quality posts, remove the signatures campaigns from the forum.

I disagree, "if you want high-quality posts" :
- remove the low-quality posts;
- remove the low-quality users;
- educate instead of complaining.

By the way, low-quality or high-quality post is highly subjective.

[Stack23]

If you want high-quality posts, remove the signatures campaigns from the forum.

I disagree, "if you want high-quality posts" :
- remove the low-quality posts;
- remove the low-quality users;
- educate instead of complaining.

By the way, low-quality or high-quality post is highly subjective.

If we remove all the signatures then the ranks will become irrelevant because the newbie and hero members, both cannot have the
signatures.

[ABCbits]

If you want high-quality posts, remove the signatures campaigns from the forum.

While it works, it certainly not best solution and theymos most likely won't stop it. There are other ways such as signature only enabled if you received x merit within last y days.

Besides, newbie account still can be used to bump threads (on few boards), shill certain altcoin/ICO and report bounty hunting activity.

If we remove all the signatures then the ranks will become irrelevant because the newbie and hero members, both cannot have the
signatures.

Avatar? Shorter interval between posting? No PM limitation?

[TheNewAnon135246]

Did you forget to remove your own signature before making this post?

He is not wearing any paid signature. Its just a plagiarism signature for the chip mixer.
You should have seen this before posting ?

It was very early and I didn't have coffee yet , shows that his signature design does it's job.

Regarding to the signatures, it's up to the campaign manager to set a high standard. People will stop applying for signature campaigns if they can't meet the demands.

[1miau]

@Vadi2323

While I agree that bad managed (mostly altcoin) signatures are causing also problems, I think your arguments are too short sighted:

I guess you didn't consider the other issues a removal of signature campaigns would have. Bitcointalk is still a very important place to advertise (new) services, including ANN, ads and signature campaign. If you want Bitcointalk losing ground on it's importance for new services / projects in the crypto space, removing signature campaigns would be a good start.
Managing the forum isn't for free; moderators and hosting need to be paid, implementing the new forum software is costly and the forum needs some funds for unexpected issues. The main revenues are coming from ads and their ad impressions. If there are less ad impressions, the advertised services will pay less for a slot or maybe stop advertising completely on Bitcointalk if services lose relevance here.

So, if you want to risk Bitcointalk's position as important place for services to advertise and hereby a lack of funds, go ahead and remove signatures campaigns from the forum.

Finally it's your bias again, that you have something against users collecting additional BTC here, not everyone had the opportunity to buy cheap BTC ages ago and for people from poor countries it's not a bad deal (if they are decent posters). If you don't want to be a Merit source anymore, I suggest Alex_Sr, he's waiting for more than a year now and would be much more grateful.

[libert19]

I have a question, does bitcointalk earn money from ads? If so, by removing signature campaigns you might get a high quailty board but then it will decrease the user visits and rewards which is helping run the forum, might not last.

I just mean we should keep a balance, than going a berserk.

[JohnBitCo]

I have a question, does bitcointalk earn money from ads? If so, by removing signature campaigns you might get a high quailty board but then it will decrease the user visits and rewards which is helping run the forum, might not last.

I just mean we should keep a balance, than going a berserk.

Yes, Bitcoin talk generates revenue from ads too as you can see from  Advertise on this forum - Round 289.
The Revenue from signature campaigns does not go directly to the forum admins. It only generates the traffic. The direct beneficiary from the signature campaigns are Managers and the ones who are selected and paid.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

I have a question, does bitcointalk earn money from ads? If so, by removing signature campaigns you might get a high quailty board but then it will decrease the user visits and rewards which is helping run the forum, might not last.

For a start, the ad slots aren't free, it's been auctioned to the highest bidder with some few compromises where other projects are given a slot so yes the forum does benefit from ads although they don't benefits (monetary value) from signature apart from the fact, signatures sometimes are the reason the forum is very active due to the motivation to earn some bitcoin while you egage in discussion on the forum. Understand though, the forum can operate without signatures and also operates entirely without ads and still function properly since it isn't broke but this won't be fair to most crypto related project since the forum is still a very vital factor in the growth of the industry.

The forum can also remove signature but still offer ads slot which might even bring in more revenue to the forum since any project interested in adverting on the forum would be forced to advertise directly with the forum ads slots although this won't be fair to the members. The current way the forum operates favour everyone's since the forum users benefits, advertisers benefits and the forum benefits too guess that's why theymos haven't made a discussion yet to remove signature although if this privilege gets out of control without any system to control the negative effective of the privilege on the forum then there won't ba an hesitate to remove signature ads entirely.

[Lafu]

@OP

If you dont want anymore an Merit Source write a pm to theymos and tell him that he should remove you as an Source !
And your behavior about giving Feedback for things that are not true or wrong to user because you have a personal problem leaves much to be desired !
Write the pm to theymos and move on ! 

[Stack23]

Yes, Merit sources should be given to more positive nature persons rather than people with negative thoughts.

[johhnyUA]

So, if you want to risk Bitcointalk's position as important place for services to advertise and hereby a lack of funds, go ahead and remove signatures campaigns from the forum.

In fact, this forum is any longer a "important place" for cryptocurrencies. All new information is mostly published on reddit, bitcoin wiki, bitcoinstackexchange and other more specific places. For me, this forum still valuable mostly for its old posts (2011-2015). All new infromation i found on another places  

I doubt that removing of signatures will help, and this is real problem  

I have a question, does bitcointalk earn money from ads? If so, by removing signature campaigns you might get a high quailty board but then it will decrease the user visits and rewards which is helping run the forum, might not last.

As i know, Theymos has around 1000 btc of forum funds. I don't think this is problem with such amounts of money to lost some money from ads 

[suchmoon]

I do not want to participate in that and ask to transfer my merit source functions to someone else.

Sounds like a private matter between you and theymos but you prefer to stir up a bit of drama and show off your own signature. Speaking of which, you didn't have such grievances when you promoted Yobit and tried to apply to other campaigns, did you?

[Deathwing]

So, if you want to risk Bitcointalk's position as important place for services to advertise and hereby a lack of funds, go ahead and remove signatures campaigns from the forum.

In fact, this forum is any longer a "important place" for cryptocurrencies. All new information is mostly published on reddit, bitcoin wiki, bitcoinstackexchange and other more specific places. For me, this forum still valuable mostly for its old posts (2011-2015). All new infromation i found on another places  

I doubt that removing of signatures will help, and this is real problem  

I have a question, does bitcointalk earn money from ads? If so, by removing signature campaigns you might get a high quailty board but then it will decrease the user visits and rewards which is helping run the forum, might not last.

As i know, Theymos has around 1000 btc of forum funds. I don't think this is problem with such amounts of money to lost some money from ads  

Bitcointalk's wallet is mostly public. As far as I can remember that the public wallet does not really have 1000 BTC. Not even close. However, the main income of the forum is obviously the ads. Donations do help but I don't think they are the main source of income. More like side-thing considering the BTC price not many will actually donate.

I do not want to participate in that and ask to transfer my merit source functions to someone else.

Sounds like a private matter between you and theymos but you prefer to stir up a bit of drama and show off your own signature. Speaking of which, you didn't have such grievances when you promoted Yobit and tried to apply to other campaigns, did you?

Hypocrisy.

[malevolent]

Bitcointalk's wallet is mostly public. As far as I can remember that the public wallet does not really have 1000 BTC. Not even close. However, the main income of the forum is obviously the ads. Donations do help but I don't think they are the main source of income.

More than that, >1250 bitcoins according to the forum funds thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155000.0

And that's after spending a lot on the development for epochtalk.

[SM23031997]

Not sure how much impact it will cause to the community. Most of the people don't buy bitcoins and here come the signature campaigns. They keep people involve and in a way or another they learn about the technology. Shares it with friends and family and creates awareness unknowingly or knowingly(I don't know).

Although, Signature campaigns are causing the floods of spam but look at the bigger picture. Disabling signature campaigns will surely cut off that advertising part of crypto for sure.


Note: We are dealing with the spam by reporting it. I have a 97% success rate in reporting and increasing day by day.

Bitcointalk's wallet is mostly public. As far as I can remember that the public wallet does not really have 1000 BTC. Not even close. However, the main income of the forum is obviously the ads. Donations do help but I don't think they are the main source of income.

More than that, >1250 bitcoins according to the forum funds thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155000.0

And that's after spending a lot on the development for epochtalk.

What? 1250+ Bitcoins
Seriously...  
Here am I thinking all the time to donate 50 BTC one day. Just Kidding, but I was thinking to donate some amount someday.  

[UmerIdrees]

I do not want to participate in that and ask to transfer my merit source functions to someone else.

Sounds like a private matter between you and theymos but you prefer to stir up a bit of drama and show off your own signature. Speaking of which, you didn't have such grievances when you promoted Yobit and tried to apply to other campaigns, did you?

At that time he did not have red tag and hence he liked the campaigns. Now that he can't be selected in campaigns, he began to dislike the signatures.
Seems logical. 

[chaoscoinz]

The introduction of Merit was declared as deterring new users with bad posts. And if you think about it - what is the ultimate goal of modern beginners at bitcointalk? Of course, one way or another to get into subscription campaigns. And where are the subscription campaigns? That's right, in an anglo board. I used to think that the Americans with the British are here, but it turns out that it is rabble from all over the world.

And so it turns out the following: we in Russian locale on the first line of defense do the main dirty work for free, and on the English board campaign managers comfortably manage their factories of shitposters, already filtered by suckers like us, they monetize themselves and have no problems with the influx of new hunters to argue for a long time in Meta in a circle about the same thing.

bitcointalk.org became signaturetalk.org

I do not want to participate in that and ask to transfer my merit source functions to someone else.

If you want high-quality posts, remove the signatures campaigns from the forum.

  I mean no disrespect in the following words but I'm here just to voice my opinion.

 This is ignorance and selfishness, you've been on this forum almost as long as me, way before there were many signature campaigns as there are now (if there were any). A lot of the "Rabble" that you call people here hail from various parts of the world including third world countries. Some of these campaigns are feeding peoples families with what they earn. People are making more here within the forum than they could working a regular job within their own country.
   You've been fortunate to haven been here before the merit system was installed meaning you're rank was able to prestige naturally with active posts. I agree people come here to earn income and yes there are many shit posters within the forum, but to ban signature campaigns and other means of honest monetary compensations would hurt a lot of people. I agree that we need some reform on the forum.

[Bightening]

Signatures are most probably the reason you’re going to get replied on this thread from forum members and not just the moderators. It’s one selling point of this forum, and just like you said the forum has turned to be signaturetalk.org. Ending Signatures isn’t a good option, containing spamming is. I’ll suggest a voting system on each post, that could be upvoted and downvoted, and not just a merit system.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

Ending Signatures isn’t a good option, containing spamming is. I’ll suggest a voting system on each post, that could be upvoted and downvoted, and not just a merit system.

Although I second your opinion on the signature discussion but that of the merit system I oppose, you aren't the first individual to make such suggestion and probably you won't be last but still, the disadvantage associate with a voting system is the reason the merit system is far superior to all voting/emotional related suggestions. They can easily be manipulate, and the used of those features will be based on just emotions and not giving to users that deserve it due to their post credibility like how the merit is mostly based used.

Another's reason the merit system is better is due to the fact, to have smerits to send out, one needs to earn merits (excluding source smerits) but with the upvoting system such privilege will be giving to everyone without any effort which will definitely lead to abusing of the system.

[The-One-Above-All]

If you want high-quality posts, remove the signatures campaigns from the forum.

I disagree, "if you want high-quality posts" :
- remove the low-quality posts;
- remove the low-quality users;
- educate instead of complaining.

By the way, low-quality or high-quality post is highly subjective.

Well you said it yourself. With everyone having subjective notions on what is "high quality" and " low quality" the merit metric is meaningless and since that is a basis for the paid2post entitlement and rates then it all collapses into a festering pile of abused shit.

Once you accept merit is subjective and therefore almost impossible to prove abuse as well as being meaningless , then you accept abusing it is highly financially rewarding then there can be no argument it will and is being greatly abused.

The insight from the initial poster is clear and undeniable.  Merit is dangerous and ensures the best abusers get to cream off all the best sig spots.

I mean the results speak for themselves. The correlation between merit sources, DT and chipmixer et al banners is there in your face LOL

Ban sigs from meta, and get rid of merit except to initially power up to perhaps member after that make it redundant and prevent the free speech crushing revenue rape that the abusers are inflicting here.

Not to mention the fact merit is now trust for some unknown reason LOL

If you must keep sigs, then just allow it on the shit boards where shit posts are the norm. The real enthusiasts are not going to demand payment for contributing in the main bitcoin board or meta are they now?

@ cryptobrainboss

Your post makes a specious argument that is only not fully transparent as bogus to the very most foolish.

Merit is totally abused to the point it is impossible to prove abuse, and in many cases very emotionally driven.

Merit is clearly dangerous in many ways and provides small value and of course is net negative. This has been clearly demonstrated and no person can debunk these statements.

It is only the most dim, ass kissers, and the beneficiaries of this garbage that claim merit has any "merit" at all.

For instance you could find people that have earned 100's or 1000's of merits and have not even put out one original thought provoking post EVER that would stand up to scrutiny. Then I can show you many legends that have earned hardly 20 merits that could destroy their minds and have made posts that would be far beyond these top merit holders level of comprehension and made contributions to this movement that are groundbreaking and more than the top 200 merit holders (with perhaps 5 exceptions) will ever make combined.

They keep the merit circle tight because there are not that many highly paid sig spots to go around. Soon the ass lickers will be biting the merit sugar daddies hands off because they will find even with enough merit and "trust" there is not enough sugar for them too.

Then the fun will start up a bit.

More people manning up and rejecting the farce of the merit merry go round is needed. Make every legend a source and spice things up if you have to keep this nonsense going a bit longer.

[AicecreaME]

I just mean we should keep a balance, than going a berserk.

This is the part where it goes berserk, lots of users are abusing this forum especially when the signature campaign managers are not that strict (mostly in altcoins), where spammers do have guts to post a low quality post because it is going to be counted anyways, no matter how nonsense it is, to make the story short, we lack of legit campaign managers who never allowed anyone to spam this forum.

[mu_enrico]

@The-One-Above-All there is no perfect recipe for forum decentralization. I've spoken about merit in the past, how it will favor sucking-up attitudes, therefore prone to "groupthink." However, there are some merit sources and high merited members who distribute the merit objectively. I don't really care about the forum's "power struggle" though, so I'm not the right guy to discuss this topic (my major isn't politics).

I only disagree with the rationale of signature campaign removal. I think the reason is invalid. Just because some members misused the privilege, you punish all members. If campaign X causing problems, you punish campaign X, not all campaigns.

[TheBeardedBaby]

To the OP, why do you have the chipmixer onion link in your signature which should be opposing mixers?
Free advertisement, or it is suppose to link the "narcotraffic" with this particular mixer?
I don't get it sorry.

https://i.imgur.com/4FgS0V5.png

[UserU]

I have a question, does bitcointalk earn money from ads? If so, by removing signature campaigns you might get a high quailty board but then it will decrease the user visits and rewards which is helping run the forum, might not last.

I just mean we should keep a balance, than going a berserk.

Definitely, and if you noticed, there's an ad after the first post too.

If I were theymos, I'd not kill the golden goose.

[izooomrud]

The introduction of Merit was declared as deterring new users with bad posts.

And so it turns out the following: we in Russian locale on the first line of defense do the main dirty work for free

How prosaic that this is said by someone who helps crooks, such as livecoin, to evade responsibility in all possible ways. In particular, using the Merit, which he is talking about here in order to support the lies of scammers whom he covers.

[Gyfts]

I'm not sure why you believe you can't have signature campaigns quality discussions. Posting quality has gone up with there being a few centralized campaign managers that manage a lot of the signature campaigns who check posting quality diligently. On top of that, people are more willing to report shit posters. I don't think merit is representative of posting quality, though. If you post on meta/reputation, you're bound to boost your merit score because that's where the merit sources and upper level users with tons of sMerit tend to be active. People also use Meta to merit farm which is also blatantly obvious.