Bitcoin talk could fix the spam in one move....REMOVE SIGNATURE...Right??

[dkbit98]

Just my two satoshi cents here.
There are different levels of spam and it is true that some of that is produced by farmers with many accounts that spam forum with 'empty' posts without any meaning, but majority of spam is produced by trolls aka altaccounts from mental patients, scammers with fake ann and malicious files, fake newbies asking fake questions, merit hunters, etc.

What can I do about it?
- First I will NOT complain like some old boring granma.
- I will report to moderators all posts I consider a spam.
- I can propose changes in forum that will reduce spam.
- I can write in Serious discussion.
- I can work more on making my Local board better and cleaner (WE NEED NEW MODERATOR).

What can moderators do?
- Better manager Ban and Unban  (I see some geniune members being banned for 1 mistake, and others with proven multiple ban evasions receive Unban gifts  )

What if members want to speak without ads and signatures?
- Use Telegram, Discord, private messages  (or any other dead forum)

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[wooI_Ioow]

Oh, how many times have I heard these opinions that if you remove the signatures, the amount of spam will decrease. And the main source of forum spam is signature carriers.

NO, they are not.

And I don't write from the point of view of signature carriers (I only wear signatures for 3 months), but from the point of view of a reporter, having already sent more than 30000 reports. Most of the garbage is left here by bots-bumpers, newbies.

Hundreds and thousands of garbage useless messages like: good project, good luck, Thank you, etc., endless stream, and those who leave them do not wear signatures. Here you have to fight against bumpers and newbies bots, not those who wear signatures, that's where the real garbage message problem is.

Having forbidden signatures, the bumpers will also stay here and will continue to flood the forum with spam and off-top, only without signatures at all it will bend.

Com-coming from the functional  shitposter who spammed up  the forum with copypaste content.

[zasad@]

The forum has enough opportunities to combat spam and shitposting.
We need to develop the community and do more projects that bring people together.
If spammers and unscrupulous advertisers attack the forum, then the forum is still alive and popular.

[erikoy]

The forum has enough opportunities to combat spam and shitposting.
We need to develop the community and do more projects that bring people together.
If spammers and unscrupulous advertisers attack the forum, then the forum is still alive and popular.

I agree this is not all about signature campaigns or project promoted instead this is all about the orientation of what a certain member should do. We can change by re-orienting other users to act as a member of the forum should be and to reprimand users that are not following or obeying the rules and regulations. It could be done because there are many members here wanting some change especially in spamming, shitposting and doing fraud activities. I think this will be manage over a period of time by doing campaign and awareness here in the forum.

[contraband]

So funny.  Merit was the last try...and banning sigs are next on the chopping block

Sig spam is worse the ever

And no, we don't need to pay people to post... in order to keep this forum alive.

[suchmoon]

So funny.  Merit was the last try...and banning sigs are next on the chopping block

Sig spam is worse the ever

And no, we don't need to pay people to post... in order to keep this forum alive.

If the forum is popular it will attract spammers - if not via signature campaigns then by shitbumping and other activities. Arguably the cost of entry into the hallowed ground of signature spamming is already quite high - you need 100 merits to be able to carry a signature that's worth something. At one point a lot more high-rank users were being banned than new ones were ranking up. Not sure if that's still true but there was and still is a lot of effort being put into cleaning it up so calling signature spam "worse the [sic] ever" is probably incorrect.
 

[tranthidung]

What if members want to speak without ads and signatures?
- Use Telegram, Discord, private messages  (or any other dead forum)

Telegram and Discords are more spammy. I can not catch flows of discussion on Telegram or Discord especially if I am in a big community. Messages are flooded in a matter of seconds.

If you see spam and scam on the forum, I don't argue with you about it. However, spam and scam are more popular on Telegram, Discords, it is the point.

If you want to have secret and self-destroyed conversation, it is ok to use Telegram. Remember it is a risky method because you rely on Telegram's responsibility to protect your privacy. In terms of serious private information, it is best if you keep them offline, talk in person is better than talk in secret chats on any platform.

Dead forums: They are dead so where a place to have meaningful discussion to learn from and to discuss with others. No benefit to join any dead signature-, avatar-free forums.

[cryptoaddictchie]

You want a real talk? This forum will die if no signature campaign available.

Sig campaign means a progressive forum if there are many advertiser comes the more the forum survives and get traffic.

Technically will drive out some traffics if the signature removed. This is surely will happened. But spam will not be gone IMO. This is happening already everywhere and I think theymos would not be waive by this suggestion. This is a forum which is for discussion but lets be real here. Everyone would agree that if signature would be removed something will definitely change here.

Likewise, this is a forum. If theymos decides to remove all signature activities for the better of thus then I will support. Anyway I doubt it will happened. All of those who are in signature are benefiting from it. Im not sure if this ever happened they will be likely the same as they are providing posts. I bet 80% would slow down and put such effort.

[peloso]

I think this forum would be pretty dead without them though.

If the forum would be dead without signatures, it deserves to die. Forums are supposed to be about discussion, not advertising.

absolutely agree
it will living test without signature and if forum will stay ( i sure it will stay ) thats good

[friends1980]

Everything is there to avoid and decrease spam. We have the Merit system in place since 2018 and there's a report button. We have rules and these rules also count for campaign managers.

However:
- Many people who are complaining about spam, seem to believe the report button is only there for decoration. Stop complaining and start reporting.
- I'm still in favor of a system that rewards spam reporters with Merit and that could let those Merit begging Newbies work for the community in order to get Merits.
- Campaign managers need to apply their own rules about "constructive" posts and kick spammers out. They have to stop rewarding people for spamming.

Let's not act as if being paid to post is not great. It's being paid to spam that is unacceptable.

[Findingnemo]

So funny.  Merit was the last try...and banning sigs are next on the chopping block

Sig spam is worse the ever

And no, we don't need to pay people to post... in order to keep this forum alive.

Forum is not paying the people!

Of course the next will be remove of signature ban if the spam getting out of the hand but for now it seems we see far less spam compared to previous years so its really a success for the merit system.

[Darkelf11]

What if members want to speak without ads and signatures?
- Use Telegram, Discord, private messages  (or any other dead forum)

Telegram and Discords are more spammy. I can not catch flows of discussion on Telegram or Discord especially if I am in a big community. Messages are flooded in a matter of seconds.
~

I agree, replies here in bitcointalk are mostly related to the topic, less spams, less annoying and off-topic posts. I always surf the internet, facebook is one of the most spam social media platform for me, lots of  not related things about the topic. Lots of humors that makes the OP sometimes almost forgotten. But Facebook is still fun to use. The atmosphere  here is much different probably because of the rules of bitciontalk overall and also because of the rules of every sig campaigns. Most signature campaigns avoid spams so sig camps are fine.

[posi]

So funny.  Merit was the last try...and banning sigs are next on the chopping block

Sig spam is worse the ever

And no, we don't need to pay people to post... in order to keep this forum alive.

You make your point but lets see what Theymos said about signature advertisement removal.

What are everyone's ideas for improving post quality?

I have mostly ruled out:

 - Removing signatures or sig ads globally.
 - Requiring payment to wear sig ads.

• More advertisement slots. This forum is badly under-monetised in my opinion and we likely lose hundreds of thousands in lost revenue to signatures and lack of ad slots and visibility.

Second, let look into the purpose of signature advertisement and why crypto related company will continue signature advertisement.
Signature advertisement improve site domain authority and visibility. It also increase site stats through any backlinks tools.

[contraband]

Also from the forum founder,  theymos

It's too early to get a clear picture, but my thoughts so far:

If the merit system completely fails and I can't think of anything else to replace it, then my next step will probably be to completely remove all ways for forum users to make money from posting (eg. removing signatures entirely).

Maybe there are ways for people who were making money by posting garbage on the forum to make money on other sites with easy bounties, etc. (For example, I don't know if they're actually any good, but https://bountyhive.io is currently advertising on the forum.) But people should use the forum to talk about these money-making ideas, not as a way of making money itself. Once you spend a lot of time here, you may be able to make some money here (which is great!), but you should consider this a far-off hope, not your primary objective.

BTW, if anyone has any ideas for simple things that these ex-nonsense-posters could usefully do to make money, I think that this'd be a good project right now. There are apparently quite a few people who were making money on the forum and could use guidance. Even though their past activities were not good for this forum, I doubt that they are useless in general.

I think after 3 years, and with the PAID POST spam still being a major problem....its time to revisit banning signatures

Like he said, this can be a place to talk about how to make money,  but not the actual place you make it. I agree 100%

BIGGER DOES NOT ALWAYS MEAN BETTER

[hilariousandco]

So funny.  Merit was the last try...and banning sigs are next on the chopping block

Sig spam is worse the ever

And no, we don't need to pay people to post... in order to keep this forum alive.

It's really not worse than ever. It's quietened down a lot from a couple of years ago or so when the ICO boom was in full swing and there were also a couple of bitcoin-paying campaigns like Yobit that literally accepted anyone without any sort of verification. Their payouts were even automatic so that obviously lead to a lot of abuse. I still think we should enforce the guidelines and dish out punishments for poorly run campaigns though. With some minimum standards on how campaigns should operate the forum would be a much better place and people can still get paid for doing something they would anyway.

[friends1980]

(...)
It's really not worse than ever. It's quietened down a lot from a couple of years ago or so when the ICO boom was in full swing and there were also a couple of bitcoin-paying campaigns like Yobit that literally accepted anyone without any sort of verification. Their payouts were even automatic so that obviously lead to a lot of abuse. I still think we should enforce the guidelines and dish out punishments for poorly run campaigns though. With some minimum standards on how campaigns should operate the forum would be a much better place and people can still get paid for doing something they would anyway.

I'm not going to necrobump all of my threads but I agree 100% and wrote about it over 2 years ago and actively contacted bounty managers since then.

Campaign managers (as well as bounty hunters) earn money thanks to these boards. Demanding that they show respect for this forum in return and stop spamming (or kick spammers out of their campaign) is completely normal and logical and imho a simple matter of honor: start your own forum if you want to invent your own rules.

[ScamViruS]

So funny.  Merit was the last try...and banning sigs are next on the chopping block

Sig spam is worse the ever

And no, we don't need to pay people to post... in order to keep this forum alive.

The merit system has reduced a lot of spam, those who used to rank up by posting spam now they have no chance. So if they want to stay in this forum now and rank up, they have no choice but to post good. Without signature, forum traffic will drive in the other direction, because signature makes members more interested in discussing in the forum and prefers to find and share new things.

And if you think a post is spam, you can direct report it to the moderator, so the moderator can take appropriate action on that post.

However, it seems to me that the newbie account spams several times more than the spam from the signature account, whose job is to shilling about a project and bumping ann. So now how to control those spammer accounts?

[Lucius]

contraband, it would be really polite to respond constructively to some posts, rather than persistently going in only one direction and advocating some kind of ban. Spam on this forum may be 20% or even less than 3-5 years ago, and if you think someone is a spammer use the report to moderator button or report it directly to his campaign manager.

Merit is a really successful filtering tool, maybe even too aggressive when it comes to ranking progress. So all of your claims are pretty baseless - and I've already written to you that the part of the forum you're in is the most problematic, and maybe signatures should really be banned there.

[friends1980]

Just out of curiosity OP, could you tell us how many spam reports you've made in the last 3 months?

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

When the merit system was introduced it got attack with the reason that only the 'so called elite' will control the system, meriting only those they want to progress on the forum in regards to ranking up but I guess the story today is different. Time changed that mindset, with time too and some little adjustment that of the signature feature could change too. Today we act as if the signature ad feature has been so bad, only taking away from the forum instead of contributing but I can proved to you that campaigs have also had their moment in bettering the forum in some way, it might be small but it does have its impact.

Apart from the fact of gaining merit, you can see users improving their quality of conversation to make their account worth hiring for promotion. They keep up this act to the extent that even when they're not promoting any campaign they still contribute quality posts. Remember the old saying 'fake it until you make it. Well I have seen users done so successfully and today you could point them out as one of those putting in effort into their post making.

The forum banning signature campaigns would be a wrong moved, not saying this just based on the fact that I'm a beneficiary to this feature. They should step in to govern it instead of letting spammers take ownership of the feature. Making campaign owners take responsibility of their participants and suffer any nuisance they cause on the forum would be a great start.