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

[hilariousetc]

~~~~~

I don't know if anyone has asked this before, but what do you, or the moderation team think of solving the spam issue(other than the remove signature option which has been the goto-reply for years). Like why not make signatures restrictive for full members, or above? Or make some boards for full member and above(like Serious Discussion), but with signatures ON instead? How about hosting some sort of contests every week, or some games(like how Among Us is getting insanely popular, forum members could get invited to play).  Or how about expanding bitcointalk more than just as a forum, and exploring the idea of having courses related to bitcoin launched on this forum, or other platforms, and also maybe having a youtube channel as such? I can go on about recommending things, that might potentially increase forum discussions, if said things are implemented right.

Well it's been discussed many a time before and threads like this always pop up every once in a while and I as well others usually offer the same suggestions over and over. You could of course restrict signatures to certain ranks and that would help a bit, but it wouldn't be a solution to the problem as there are thousands of highly ranked accounts that do make low quality posts and will continue to do so. I also think it would be harsh to blanket ban lower-ranked members when there will be great posters among them and to get a high rank is hard and also very time consuming (unless we offered more donator ranks which some with the benefits of higher ranks). I think a much fairer solution would be just to enforce the signature campaign guidelines and punish poorly run campaigns and the problem would likely solve itself. Do you ban roads because there's a minority of idiots who want to joyride and go 150MPH everywhere?  No, you punish the idiots who are causing the problem. The forum is in a bad way because there's absolutely no ramifications for doing a bad job but once there is people will quickly learn that it's not acceptable to do a shoddy job.

[UserU]

While I agree with you partially, I don't think it will likely prevent spam. Spammers gonna spam. Ads are a part of the life now, you see ads everywhere. Be it on YouTube, Spotify, streets etc. It's annoying to have them but at the same time they make platforms free and smooth.

It becomes more of a norm on paid-to platforms. BMF, Mylot, Steemit. Can't avoid that since everyone wants to earn easily.

I think if Bitcoin Signature campaigns have to pay a small fee for running their campaigns to bitcointalk forum (I think they already do, but not sure) that will generate revenue for the site to be well maintained. There are already rules for spamming, and it gets you suspended or banned. And spammers are also kicked from sig campaigns as well by managers

They are already paying members to join and if they're via the ad spot, to theymos.

It's a win-win on both sides. More traffic to the site means higher exposure to the ad moneh.

[Furious 7]

While I agree with you partially, I don't think it will likely prevent spam. Spammers gonna spam. Ads are a part of the life now, you see ads everywhere. Be it on YouTube, Spotify, streets etc. It's annoying to have them but at the same time they make platforms free and smooth. I think if Bitcoin Signature campaigns have to pay a small fee for running their campaigns to bitcointalk forum (I think they already do, but not sure) that will generate revenue for the site to be well maintained. There are already rules for spamming, and it gets you suspended or banned. And spammers are also kicked from sig campaigns as well by managers

Spamer will not disappear from this forum they will continue to exist but if caught breaking the rules then they will be banned from this forum or even in the signature campaign being promoted, I see the manager is now getting tougher in selecting participants for part of the campaign therefore spamer will never participate in any advertisement because it is considered bad for everyone.

Now the campaign is growing with you, the promotion in this forum may be due to a pretty good increase so that many platforms are willing to open opportunities for those who want to join the campaign.

[hilariousetc]

They are already paying members to join and if they're via the ad spot, to theymos.

It's a win-win on both sides. More traffic to the site means higher exposure to the ad moneh.

Sure, more traffic usually means more revenue but I'm not sure it would drop that much because this is still the number one place for bitcoin discussion even if all the spammers left. Also, theymos doesn't seem to care that much about the ads or money and has said before that he has thought about removing adverts and also that the forum doesn't need any more money. Personally I think it would be silly to forgo the ad spot but it's still there at least.

While I agree with you partially, I don't think it will likely prevent spam. Spammers gonna spam. Ads are a part of the life now, you see ads everywhere. Be it on YouTube, Spotify, streets etc. It's annoying to have them but at the same time they make platforms free and smooth. I think if Bitcoin Signature campaigns have to pay a small fee for running their campaigns to bitcointalk forum (I think they already do, but not sure) that will generate revenue for the site to be well maintained. There are already rules for spamming, and it gets you suspended or banned. And spammers are also kicked from sig campaigns as well by managers

Spamer will not disappear from this forum they will continue to exist but if caught breaking the rules then they will be banned from this forum or even in the signature campaign being promoted, I see the manager is now getting tougher in selecting participants for part of the campaign therefore spamer will never participate in any advertisement because it is considered bad for everyone.

Now the campaign is growing with you, the promotion in this forum may be due to a pretty good increase so that many platforms are willing to open opportunities for those who want to join the campaign.

A handful of campaign managers might be strict and are doing their job adequately, but it wouldn't matter if 99% of them were doing so as if one campaign comes along and does nothing and causes 99% of the spam then it drowns out everything else. I don't think a lot of the campaign managers are doing a great job either. Even some of the 'reputable' ones seem to be doing a poor job and don't really care how many campaigns they take on as long as they're getting paid and that of course means the quality of posts deteriorates when they don't really have enough time to run them properly.

[friends1980]

(...)
A handful of campaign managers might be strict and are doing their job adequately, but it wouldn't matter if 99% of them were doing so as if one campaign comes along and does nothing and causes 99% of the spam then it drowns out everything else. I don't think a lot of the campaign managers are doing a great job either. Even some of the 'reputable' ones seem to be doing a poor job and don't really care how many campaigns they take on as long as they're getting paid and that of course means the quality of posts deteriorates when they don't really have enough time to run them properly.

Exactly. People are proposing a thousand new ideas to fight spam, but we don't need more rules. All necessary rules are there, but they aren't applied. Should we apply them, we could probably even decrease the number of rules, as long as people are complying with the remaining ones.

If I understand well, some of these campaign managers' only task is counting posts once a week. If that's the case, I'm not quite sure why people are writing down stuff like this, as if keeping the boards clean would be such a horrible task in return for their income:

I guess they just get disheartened by looking at the number of spammy posts, they just give up.

(...) Also cleaning up hundreds of post will be an impossible task for the bounty manager as he is only one person. (...)

Well, if it's indeed such a hard job for one person, I invite all campaign managers to contact me and make a proposition for me to work as a spam manager for their campaign. I'm not expensive, but I'll only work after payment of an advance.

[madnessteat]

I think this question will be open for a very long time. But in my opinion, banning signatures is not a solution to the problem of shitposting and spam because the advertiser can pay the same money to spammers and you will still get the advertising information only a little differently. Today there are forums where signatures are banned, but on them the problem of shitposting and spam is still relevant.

[friends1980]

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

Looks like OP has left the building. No answer to my question whatsoever, but I wouldn't have expected anything else tbh...

[hilariousetc]

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

Looks like OP has left the building. No answer to my question whatsoever, but I wouldn't have expected anything else tbh...

He's been offline 3 days. Not everyone is on the forum everyday. Why should he or anyone else have to spend their time reporting thousands of shitposts for absolutely nothing it return? I'd argue that staff shouldn't have to deal with it anyway as there's already a shitload of stuff to deal with without being unpaid campaign managers as well. What you're saying is like asking someone who's complaining about people littering in their area then asking that person how much time they spend picking it up. People shouldn't have to clean up others shit, and especially when other people are getting paid to shit all over the place.

[friends1980]

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

Looks like OP has left the building. No answer to my question whatsoever, but I wouldn't have expected anything else tbh...

He's been offline 3 days. Not everyone is on the forum everyday. Why should he or anyone else have to spend their time reporting thousands of shitposts for absolutely nothing it return? I'd argue that staff shouldn't have to deal with it anyway as there's already a shitload of stuff to deal with without being unpaid campaign managers as well. What you're saying is like asking someone who's complaining about people littering in their area then asking that person how much time they spend picking it up. People shouldn't have to clean up others shit, and especially when other people are getting paid to shit all over the place.

Point taken.

[UserU]

Sure, more traffic usually means more revenue but I'm not sure it would drop that much because this is still the number one place for bitcoin discussion even if all the spammers left. Also, theymos doesn't seem to care that much about the ads or money and has said before that he has thought about removing adverts and also that the forum doesn't need any more money. Personally I think it would be silly to forgo the ad spot but it's still there at least.

I agree. Best to capitalize on ad spots because they would never run out of style.

That's why we see millionaires always finding ways to get richer

[contraband]

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

Looks like OP has left the building. No answer to my question whatsoever, but I wouldn't have expected anything else tbh...

Oh, Hey..... BItvest.... I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess you want to keep making post and receiving money for them.... And without people like yourself being paid to post.... Then the forum would die


..... How am I doing?

[suzanne5223]

Spammer operates in different ways and removing the signature campaign won't stop that. However, the campaign manager doesn't support spam, they have reduced the number of weekly posts and if we're to talk about the campaign that encourages spammer I will say it the bounty campaign 

[freedomgo]

I don't think that's a good solution, what made the forum popular is the number of visitors and members going in the forum and signature campaign has a good contribution to that, maybe if you see there's still a lot of spam, adding more mods could be a solution.

If cryptotalk are dying to get forum members by paying people to post in their forum, I guess there's no way bitcointalk would remove the signature, otherwise there will be a drastic change of the number of visitors. I maybe bias as I am currently wearing a signature now, but I believe there's another solution to that, which is a win-win for the forum and the members.

[pugman]

Well it's been discussed many a time before and threads like this always pop up every once in a while and I as well others usually offer the same suggestions over and over. You could of course restrict signatures to certain ranks and that would help a bit, but it wouldn't be a solution to the problem as there are thousands of highly ranked accounts that do make low quality posts and will continue to do so. I also think it would be harsh to blanket ban lower-ranked members when there will be great posters among them and to get a high rank is hard and also very time consuming (unless we offered more donator ranks which some with the benefits of higher ranks). I think a much fairer solution would be just to enforce the signature campaign guidelines and punish poorly run campaigns and the problem would likely solve itself. Do you ban roads because there's a minority of idiots who want to joyride and go 150MPH everywhere?  No, you punish the idiots who are causing the problem. The forum is in a bad way because there's absolutely no ramifications for doing a bad job but once there is people will quickly learn that it's not acceptable to do a shoddy job.

I understand what you mean, but am just trying to out suggestions out there.

I think, maybe, instead of waiting for admins to enforce signature guidelines, why don't you update your thread in the services board? If any manager is personally responsible for spreading more span, he should be banned for a day first, then 3, then a week, etc.

I know it won't curb down spam, and its hard to find each and every single manager that allows their campaign participants to spam, but this is still a possibility considering the options available out here which isn't alot.

[hilariousetc]

Well it's been discussed many a time before and threads like this always pop up every once in a while and I as well others usually offer the same suggestions over and over. You could of course restrict signatures to certain ranks and that would help a bit, but it wouldn't be a solution to the problem as there are thousands of highly ranked accounts that do make low quality posts and will continue to do so. I also think it would be harsh to blanket ban lower-ranked members when there will be great posters among them and to get a high rank is hard and also very time consuming (unless we offered more donator ranks which some with the benefits of higher ranks). I think a much fairer solution would be just to enforce the signature campaign guidelines and punish poorly run campaigns and the problem would likely solve itself. Do you ban roads because there's a minority of idiots who want to joyride and go 150MPH everywhere?  No, you punish the idiots who are causing the problem. The forum is in a bad way because there's absolutely no ramifications for doing a bad job but once there is people will quickly learn that it's not acceptable to do a shoddy job.

I understand what you mean, but am just trying to out suggestions out there.

I think, maybe, instead of waiting for admins to enforce signature guidelines, why don't you update your thread in the services board? If any manager is personally responsible for spreading more span, he should be banned for a day first, then 3, then a week, etc.

I know it won't curb down spam, and its hard to find each and every single manager that allows their campaign participants to spam, but this is still a possibility considering the options available out here which isn't alot.

Well, it's not my job and if theymos doesn't care to do anything about it I'm not going to waste time trying to stop a sinking ship as it's futile and only going to cause me stress and headaches and waste time and money for me. We actually need his involvement to enforce the guidelines because signatures need to be blacklisted if campaigns and/or their managers are banned because the campaigns will continue on without them as they can just as easily run them off site. Bans might only make them do less to clean their campaign up as well so it could be counter-productive and this is why we need theymos's input unless he can delegate signature blacklists to others.

[ice18]

You are definitely right OP great idea as usual "BUT" do you think removing signature in this forum will not affect traffic? Im afraid this will be a huge impact like 50% or more this will drop exponentially and Its not good in every website less traffic, less visitor and noise means less revenue for a website like this you know what Im sayin? Just like some social media websites for example facebook if this website will remove fake accounts, pages, etc because they generate huge amount of traffic, Im sure big loss in revenue of Facebook.     

[Upgrade00]

<...>

This is true, less traffic would lead to less revenue, but unlike Facebook and some other medias, this platform is not primarily geared towards generating revenue as it has a pretty decent reserve. The forum provides a platform for Bitcoin enthusiasts to discuss useful topics, so revenue (while significant) is probably not the reason why the admins still allow signature campaigns to be run.
Theymos has also hinted that other means of generating revenue can be devised in the event that it becomes necessary.

[Lordhermes]

After all, its not necessary for every one to join signature campaigns and get paid, truthfully, it causes shit posting by users just to be on a payment quota, but that's true. Come to look at the advantage of noise making on the forum, have you ever thought of that? Do you really think the product being advertise would get their traffic? That's Why theymos welcome newbies at all times because it keeps the forum going.
Before the merit system was implemented, almost 70% of those users are shit posters, right? so you can observe that merit system filters them out gradually, therefore posting for getting paid is a win win situation also for the product promoting.

[contraband]

But wait.... I should get paid to post lol

Clearly we are going to have millions of useless posts if we pay people to make posts.

If you have to get paid to post here........ LMFAO

Go play Axie Infinity... You can make $20-$30 a day