Signature spam - how to force users to read before replying?

[Lucius]

Most of us know that there are members who don't read anything but OP or maybe just the title and base their posts on that - I think we can call them signature spammers without any hesitation (in case they have signatures, of course). Realistically, such posts should be reported, but it has taken on such a large scale that I think I could report at least 100 such posts every day.

Specifically, I will cite examples that emerged after my post in which I (at least I hope) gave a concrete and unambiguous answer to the question posed - and take a look at the posts that follow after that.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2555754.msg57252709#msg57252709 (archived)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5344087.msg57244718#msg57244718 (archived)

I wonder if anyone reports posts like this on a daily basis and if those reports are marked as "good" - and if we can otherwise force people to finally start reading posts and give some meaningful answers.

[1714713808]

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[The Sceptical Chymist]

I've been guilty of this myself, but it's usually in threads with multiple pages that I don't feel like reading--and most of the time I don't feel like reading because of all the shitposts present or that I anticipate being present (it's never a bad assumption that they're going to be there).  Usually if I find that I've suggested the same thing as someone else in the thread when I go back and read, as I often do, I edit my post to acknowledge that fact.

That's me, though, and I know exactly what you're talking about, Lucius.  But no, I don't report posts that duplicate suggestions or information unless they're absolute garbage shitposts.  I probably should do more reporting than I currently do, but frankly I don't see a lot of one-line nonsense posts now that I stay away from Bitcoin/Altcoin Discussion.

I wonder if anyone reports posts like this on a daily basis and if those reports are marked as "good" - and if we can otherwise force people to finally start reading posts and give some meaningful answers.

I seriously doubt any amount of reporting is going to force anyone to do anything--certainly not force sig spammers to start reading, which most of them probably can't anyway because their English is so bad.  I don't know how bad the situation is on the local boards, but there's always been a language barrier problem for bounty hunters/sig spammers in the English section. 

You can certainly report those posts and they might even be marked good, but I don't think it'll change much overall.  There will always be a new batch of no-reading signature campaign spammers to take the place of those who probably wouldn't have gotten the message anyway.

[BlackHatCoiner]

You can't force anyone to do anything. It's a free discussion board and if you feel that they're shitposts report them. I'm afraid, though, that the problem is that you have nothing to gain from this procedure. These people don't even pretend to be interested in the topic and they want to get it done so they can get paid. If you report them, you're firstly losing your valuable time and secondly, you're just making it harder for them, but they'll keep repeating it.

I believe that if we wanted to get rid of the signature spam, we should look at the issue from its root, which is IMHO, low paying signature campaigns. A forum rule could be desired; campaign managers should be a little more responsible for those who hire. You can't run a campaign whereas lots of your participants get their posts deleted due to report accuracy and you aren't even accounted to it.

[hilariousandco]

Spending time doing anything other than the minimum amount of reading that is necessary to squeeze out a post is antithetical to their objectives. They want to churn out as many posts as possible with the minimal amount of effort so they're not going to waste time reading all the other posts. Unless there's bans issued or campaign mangers are cracking down on low quality posts then they'll continue to do it. Best thing you can do right now is just report them.

[stompix]

There is no way to force people to read all the posts in the topic and far more important there is no way to actually make them read even the first post completely and not only the title. I have a worse example

Bitcoin should be taxed

Lazy OP, one line of text and that it, the problem is that he cut the last part which I mentioned in my post 10 replies below :

Former presidential candidate and congressman Ron Paul has renewed calls for Bitcoin to be legalized as money and not taxed.

Of course who reads all the replies and with most reading just the title we ended up with a six pages topic about nothing.
Too many times I have posted in the first page additional info or correcting what the OP said with a source and I realized that after page two the amount of people who read it all decreases a lot, probably closing on zero once the fifth page is reached.

I wonder if anyone reports posts like this on a daily basis and if those reports are marked as "good" - and if we can otherwise force people to finally start reading posts and give some meaningful answers.

Personal opinion, I don't think you will get all of those deleted, it's not really spam, he did post his opinion regarding the topic, it can be stupid it can be not well informed, it is useless and it adds nothing but I'm not sure the mods will take action against all posts of this kind, have a feeling Theymos will not want this either.

[LeGaulois]

I report such messages from time to time. I add a note saying something like "The user repeats exactly what has already been said in the post <number x>". It has always been effective, but sometimes I'm so frustrated that I am so lazy to report the post concerned.
They're smart, they repeat 90% and add 1 unique sentence, just to look "original"

These guys who are just parroting are very annoying. When you're reading a 10-pages thread, by the 9th page you don't even remember what the original topic was about. LOL.

Just to add, I've realized also that if you have users you've clicked on "Ignore", you can easily find yourself doing the same thing, i.e. parroting what has already been said

[FatFork]

No, I don't report these posts, I just ignore them and move on to the next post in the thread. I don't know how the mods think so I don't know if a report like that will be market as 'good'. From their perspective, it may appear that my opinion of low quality post is subjective. As a general rule, what I report as zero or low value are mostly one-liners that add nothing to the quality of discussion.

This problem will remain evident as long as there are campaigns that favor quantity over quality. A way to address this would be to introduce stricter rules for signature campaigns. And, I agree with BlackHatCoiner, campaign managers should bear more responsibility.

[lovesmayfamilis]

More recently, I created a similar thread about the fact that users do not read at all, what kind of conversation is developing on the topic. After the responses were received, I realized that it is possible to send reports to moderators from time to time, and from experience, I was convinced that many posts are successfully deleted. In addition, you can write and ask the moderators to close the topic, due to monotonous responses.
I think if we do not keep order on the forum, the moderators simply will not master the volume of messages that regularly appear on the forum.

[UserU]

More recently, I created a similar thread about the fact that users do not read at all, what kind of conversation is developing on the topic. After the responses were received, I realized that it is possible to send reports to moderators from time to time, and from experience, I was convinced that many posts are successfully deleted. In addition, you can write and ask the moderators to close the topic, due to monotonous responses.
I think if we do not keep order on the forum, the moderators simply will not master the volume of messages that regularly appear on the forum.

I feel it's kind of a cat-and-mouse game. The mods delete the posts, the users notice them (via PM) and proceedsto churn out even more to compensate the removal.

Unless there's some consequence involved, which I'm not sure if the mods are willing to enforce them themselves.

[DaveF]

Spending time doing anything other than the minimum amount of reading that is necessary to squeeze out a post is antithetical to their objectives. They want to churn out as many posts as possible with the minimal amount of effort so they're not going to waste time reading all the other posts. Unless there's bans issued or campaign mangers are cracking down on low quality posts then they'll continue to do it. Best thing you can do right now is just report them.

Interesting thought:

At the moment I am wearing a signature that is managed by Hhampuz. He is somewhat strict with his "quality control" of posts.
If he was not and allowed crap posts, would it be better to remove the posts or to ban the manager.

Cut off the head of the issue so to speak. If you allow your posters to post crap, you get banned.
Eventually the problem would sole itself. OR the problem would become 1000x worse as everyone just registered new accounts to manage campaigns and it all went to hell.

-Dave

[nakamura12]

I feel it's kind of a cat-and-mouse game. The mods delete the posts, the users notice them (via PM) and proceedsto churn out even more to compensate the removal.

Unless there's some consequence involved, which I'm not sure if the mods are willing to enforce them themselves.

It will surely get deleted later on if no one reported the post yet. We really can't stop them to post more when they notice that some of their post got deleted if that person is only joining signature campaigns to earn some crypto. I even experienced before that when I created a thread which my purpose/goal is to help and find other solution (more like a back up solution) for other people to know but still only few people are into the discussions which proves that they only post and go. It's good that the post that is shit or spam are deleted by mod either mod found it or got reported.

[OgNasty]

The only ways to stop signature spam is for the forum to take control of signature advertising, or for campaign managers to start being held accountable.  If campaign managers have more strict standards of entry, these spammers would find that after a while they aren't getting any kind of return on their time spent.  That's the only way they'll ever stop.  Some of these spammers are probably happy to make less than a dollar a day.  You can't fight that sort of thing with moderation.

I would suggest campaign managers stop accepting new users based on who posts on their [OPEN] threads and start actually seeking out real established members of the community to advertise signature campaigns.  It's ridiculous the way it's currently being done.  It is crystal clear that entire process has been setup so that advertisers don't have to be involved and campaign managers can spend the least amount of time possible finding participants and making payments.  I'm not out to get campaign managers, but the source of this problem is easily identifiable and nothing is going to change until they start being held accountable, as I doubt they're going to take it among themselves to start spending more time actually finding decent participants that post here for legitimate reasons.  Even the way that campaigns are paid by posts and not by views is clearly an invite for spam.  Not a lot of thought was put into how signature campaigns are run here and it shows.

[LTU_btc]

I think there is no way to force people to read. Well, maybe unless campaign managers will stop accepting people who leave such replies. Personally, I'm trying to avoid discussion topics longer than 1-2 pages. In early stage of thread you can see some people who actually read all posts. But what's going then, it's mostly spam. Though, I don't report such generic shitposts, unless it's unbeleavable terrible.
But I think it's problem not on Bitcointalk. On social media I often see people leaving comments after reading just title. They don't bother to read whole article. On Bitcointalk there is another factor - money. Why to put effort and waste time when you still can get paid in more easy way.

[UserU]

It will surely get deleted later on if no one reported the post yet. We really can't stop them to post more when they notice that some of their post got deleted if that person is only joining signature campaigns to earn some crypto. I even experienced before that when I created a thread which my purpose/goal is to help and find other solution (more like a back up solution) for other people to know but still only few people are into the discussions which proves that they only post and go. It's good that the post that is shit or spam are deleted by mod either mod found it or got reported.

That's almost like a trend on every thread out there, unless the OP closely monitors it

Unless we go post @ Serious Discussion/ Ivory Tower, rest assured the discussion quality would be top-notch, albeit a ghost town

[libert19]

People do same thing on Reddit when there are no signatures, as previously suggested (you see what I did there?) it would be better idea to have some rules with campaign managers that make them hire quality posters. Shitposts will decline naturally.

[pooya87]

Unless we go post @ Serious Discussion/ Ivory Tower, rest assured the discussion quality would be top-notch, albeit a ghost town

That's probably because the serious discussion boards don't have a particular subject so there are a lot of topics in these boards that if posted elsewhere for example they would be moved to off-topic right away and we know off-topic discussion on a bitcoin forum doesn't really get that much discussion.

P.S. There are other places on this forum that have high quality discussions such as the "technical" boards and you can also always self-moderate your topic and keep it clean.

[Rikafip]

I believe that if we wanted to get rid of the signature spam, we should look at the issue from its root, which is IMHO, low paying signature campaigns.

First of all, what exactly is considered to be low paying signature campaign? Is 50 USD per week low, for 15-20 posts per week, as majority of signature campaigns pay that, or even more ? As someone who writes few thousands posts on few other (non paying) forums, and doing that for ~20 years, if someone told me few years ago that I will get paid that amount of money for forum posts, I would tell him that he is crazy. Of course, that number is low when compared to few best campaigns, but realistically? I don't think so. I have a feeling that people here lost the perspective a little bit, when it comes to that.

There are simply way too many campaigns currently, and lack of quality members leads to managers having to lower their standards. I am also not surprised that advertisers are not willing to increase the payment considering the fact that forum ain't as active as it used to be.



@OP I suggest that you report few such posts just to try it out, and if its marked good, then continue doing so. Maybe we need some coordinated action against that, that could be done via Spambusters club.

[FIFA worldcup]

You can't force anyone to do anything.

This is more true when those poster don't want to change themselves, then only way to stop them is to make some rules which is not possible in this case.

You can give  glasses to a person who is blind so that he may read but there is no pill developed for spammers.

[Little Mouse]

I believe that if we wanted to get rid of the signature spam, we should look at the issue from its root, which is IMHO, low paying signature campaigns.

You can't. When you have a budget of $1000 each week, you are unlikely to have $200 or any amount unspent each week. At the end of the day, you have to pick the best from applicants. Now, since we have a lot of signature campaign available, can you fill all the quota if you look for high quality users? I believe it's not possible because there will never be such huge amount of high quality users.
Moreover, bounty payment with native token has no value almost. Can you stop that? Well, forum can. Forum can simply say, BTC, USDT or any other coin which have value is the option but that's not going to happen I think.
I can't see any good option without interfere from the admin.

[Igebotz]

@OP I suggest that you report few such posts just to try it out, and if it's marked good, then continue doing so. Maybe we need some coordinated action against that, that could be done via Spambusters club.

Reporting a thousand post to moderators only make it harder for them to focus on another area of the forum. We need to understand and know that people see things in different ways, as an Agricultural and food processing engineer I was taught that in every chemical processing there is always negative or positive reactions, the way people read and understand differs, the way people write also differs.

I've seen someone write 8 sentences without making a single meaning just to avoid their post being deleted or reported because the generation we have now caught a glimpse of a two-liner post as spam.

Does the forum have another meaning of what spam is?