What do you think of the Bitcoin Discussion section? Does he need to change?

[Stalker22]

For a change I'll suggest the spam busters over there should be a little more strick. More reporting should be encouraged and not just replies but also threads having similar contact. A glance at the board and you can identify two to three thread having similar content. In summary more attention should be given to the board as it's the most vital of all other boards.

Totally agree. But not just spam busters. Everybody who visits these boards should be more engaged in preventing spam and keeping them clean. Also, bounty managers can be extremely useful here, since most spammers post purely to meet signature campaigns quotas. While I understand that it can sometimes take a lot of time when there are many participants and a lot of posts, but every bounty manager should plan their campaign so that quality control is a part of their process, not just weekly counting of posts. After all, a campaign won't be much of a success if most of its participants and their pots end up on the ignore lists of a large number of forum members, right?

[UserU]

I'm not sure what the mods do if you report a post as being of zero-value (which I've done a number of times).  Most of my reports have been marked "good" but that doesn't mean a mod deleted anything.  But if a post is complete garbage, it technically is going against the rules, so reporting them is a good thing to do.  However, once you report a post you think is crap, it all comes down to whether the mod handling the report agrees with you or not, and if anything is done about it.

Thanks for your input. If we all were to report those zero-valued posts, that would be like taking away over 80% of the discussion volumes. And that's after discounting those "complete garbage" as gibberish or spambots.

Too much unnecessary work to deal with those I guess.

[AverageGlabella]

Bitcoin Discussion should be the sub forum that has the most attention we are a Bitcoin forum and there should at least be a dedicated mod in that sub forum. Members would report more if there was a dedicated mod there.

For a change I'll suggest the spam busters over there should be a little more strick. More reporting should be encouraged and not just replies but also threads having similar contact. A glance at the board and you can identify two to three thread having similar content. In summary more attention should be given to the board as it's the most vital of all other boards.

It is the bounties in the altcoin sub forums that are promoting low quality replies in the Bitcoin Discussion forum. I think the spammers and the bounty managers there should be banned if they cannot control their members in their campaign.

[Lucius]

Do we need to make any changes?

We have tried to do something, but instead of any result, we are labeled as those who constantly complain about something and those who waste their time in that board. Consequently, I have decided that I will not waste my time cleaning that board if some prominent members already think that it is a lost cause.

The BD board is just a reflection of the whole forum, and obviously, we have enough boards to write off one board at a time.

Edit:

Still, it's hard to watch all that spam and not report anything - so I decided to hit spammers and shitposters even harder.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

It is the bounties in the altcoin sub forums that are promoting low quality replies in the Bitcoin Discussion forum. I think the spammers and the bounty managers there should be banned if they cannot control their members in their campaign.

Spammers sure, bounty mangers that would be too harsh since they're not the ones producing the spams but some punishment can be introduced although that'll mean signature/bounty are now been moderated and that'll be against the forum principle of not moderating this campaigns.

Managers can play a role here and I'm sure some of us are already doing so but there'll always be bad eggs. If we can denied posts that aren't worth rewarding constantly then the campaign promoters will get the hint of zero tolerance to low quality posts. Majorly alts are the reason behind this low quality contributions as they'll want to maximize the time they have on their hands to post as many posts as possible so as to get paid with their multiple alts.

If we can win the fight against abuses ongoing on the forum with alts spamming meriting themselves and cheating then we're a step closer to eradicating spam from not just the Bitcoin/altcoin discussion board but the forum as a whole.

[o_e_l_e_o]

For a change I'll suggest the spam busters over there should be a little more strick. More reporting should be encouraged and not just replies but also threads having similar contact. A glance at the board and you can identify two to three thread having similar content. In summary more attention should be given to the board as it's the most vital of all other boards.

I did all that for months. Reported thousands of spam posts, reported hundreds of threads to be locked due to them being spam megathreads, reported hundreds of threads to be trashed entirely because they were low quality or a duplicate of an already existing thread. Even after my busiest days of many hundred reports, only the first page would be cleaned up, and by the time I woke up in the morning, it was complete mess again. We can report individual posts and threads until hell freezes over, but without either real action taken against the spammers and the campaigns which pay them, or maybe a couple of dedicated sub-board mods who can monitor the board near-constantly and delete/lock spam threads before they even get started, then nothing will change.

Also, bounty managers can be extremely useful here, since most spammers post purely to meet signature campaigns quotas. While I understand that it can sometimes take a lot of time when there are many participants and a lot of posts, but every bounty manager should plan their campaign so that quality control is a part of their process, not just weekly counting of posts.

This is the crux of the matter. The spammers spam because they get paid for it. They get paid for it because of shitty campaign managers who don't care about the quality of their participants, and it is the rest of the forum which has to deal with the consequences. I've caught a couple of signature spammers who delete their own posts and then repost the exact same posts the following week to get paid, and the manager did not pick up on it. This is not an isolated incident, and is proof that many managers do not even read the posts of their campaign participants.

Why should the managers get paid for doing nothing, while it is the forum users who have to sacrifice their own time (with no reward) to clean up the mess? We need to start banning managers who don't manage their campaigns properly, or even better, banning the campaigns altogether to incentivize future campaigns to choose reliable managers.

[Coyster]

It is the bounties in the altcoin sub forums that are promoting low quality replies in the Bitcoin Discussion forum. I think the spammers and the bounty managers there should be banned if they cannot control their members in their campaign.

I second that as well, Bitcoin paying signature campaigns on the forum are more or less run by the best and reliable managers, thus I don't think we actually have too much of a problem with them, they (the managers) are open to take reports of wrongdoing from any of their participants and action would be taken subsequently against such user, these campaigns actually have the desire to promote their establishment here, I think that's why they more often than not go for the best managers so they don't get into trouble.

Having said that, the altcoin bounties is an entirely different thing all together, their managers are most times even newbies that wouldn't mind if you ban their account or not, neither would they spend an extra minute going through posts made by participants of their signature campaign, thus banning them may actually not be productive, what could work is outrightly putting a stop to such campaigns, if that's even possible, cause more often than not, what they even advertise is either BS or even a scam.

[hosseinimr93]

Having said that, the altcoin bounties is an entirely different thing all together, their managers are most times even newbies that wouldn't mind if you ban their account or not,

The other big difference of those bounties with bitcoin paying signature campaigns is that, altcoin bounties don't have any limit for maximum number of participants and they accept any user who apply for the bounty.
In altcoin bounties, the budget is fixed and the total money shitcoins they pay doesn't depend on number of participants. This makes them to not reject anyone. They think that if they accept more users, they can have a more successful bounty. 

[Stalker22]

Having said that, the altcoin bounties is an entirely different thing all together, their managers are most times even newbies that wouldn't mind if you ban their account or not,

The other big difference of those bounties with bitcoin paying signature campaigns is that, altcoin bounties don't have any limit for maximum number of participants and they accept any user who apply for the bounty.
In altcoin bounties, the budget is fixed and the total money shitcoins they pay doesn't depend on number of participants. This makes them to not reject anyone. They think that if they accept more users, they can have a more successful bounty. 

That is true, they prefer quantity over quality, and that is the problem. These campaigns risk no funds at all. If the project fails (which is the case with most of them) they will simply distribute worthless tokens to bounty participants, so they will not lose anything. As a result, we have to deal with a huge amount of low quality and spam posts on our forum. Also, the number of reports moderators receive is on the rise, so I am assuming it is becoming more difficult for them to stay in the loop with everything that is going on.

[ChiBitCTy]

What I’ve always found difficult is knowing who to trust, especially with semi-technical stuff that doesn’t quite fit in the dev & tech board. I love when I have a post for Gmax’s section because many who are often hanging out there know their shit and the board is run by a legit cypherpunk/former dev who’s typically engaged in everything I post there and of course is a slower board and isn’t bogged down as much as some other mods.

I don’t know if there is any way to do this but it would be awesome if theymos / Hilarious could give users who they know are knowledgeable a marking of sorts, like I believe Hal Finney and Gavin have, and other early day contributors (like Theymos,).. I have mostly learned about btc from Andreas, Szabo and my buddies in collectibles who I know I can trust since we are a close group and I’ve gotten to know who knows what they’re talking about but I wish I could be more confident posting in general discussion.. Merit helps some of course. Maybe this is a silly idea ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[actmyname]

and by the time I woke up in the morning, it was complete mess again.

This is why I am taken to reporting egregious users' post histories as opposed to hunting for shitty threads. Merit was an improvement but any improvements come with a time lag: you can conflate a similar analogy of sticky prices with post quality because spammers need to be "shook out" of the forum. My goal at the time was not necessarily to ban users, but to wipe a significant chunk of posts to point toward their behavior as a wake-up call. I could only imagine the impact if, for your deleted posts, you also had the merit removed!^*

In contrast, when you're peering through boards and threads themselves, you could very well participate in a shit thread and contribute some substance, although the likelihood exponentially decays against the increasing post count. Another scenario too would be the constant answering of simple, generic, and vague questions in threads posed by "Newbies". I liken this behavior to that of stalking the Lending, Scam Accusations, or Investor-games board and posting your typical no collateral/no evidence/warning ponzi reply which takes minimal effort beyond being the fastest.

Given all the amazing benefits that scammers, trolls, and spammers have on the forum, a smart account farmer could use any combination of tactics: creating Newbie accounts to ask idiotic questions with premade answers, creating troll accounts to post in the previously-mentioned copy-paste reply boards (like the style of this user), making obvious ponzis or scams to call them out, or participating in fake discussions (which is probably part of the megathread problem). What can't scammers do? They have all the privilege on the forum. Seriously.

_{*it really shows when you're able to pick out a user that posted a one-liner and see that their entire post history is the same, for multiple consecutive pages of consecutive posts.}

[Coyster]

I don’t know if there is any way to do this but it would be awesome if theymos / Hilarious could give users who they know are knowledgeable a marking of sorts...

If I understood your suggestion correctly (if I didn't, correct me), are you postulating that Theymos should appoint mods from users who are knowledgeable in what the content of the particular section is all about. I think that is the case already, I don't think there is any mod currently who is not knowledgeable on what is acceptable or what it not, there is also the Global mods whose duty covers all the sections of the forum; thus I don't think is the solution to the problem.

The problem is the enormous amount of shitposts, for example, it's just like when two people are handling a job in a company that's meant for ten people, sooner or later this two individuals are either going to be inundated with duties and their input would gradually deteriorate as they would be unable to handle the task at their disposal. That is somewhat the case here, if the shitposts in some sections of the forum is pretty small, then it would be easy to pick them out and delete, but as things stand now, even with the mods and the assistance of users who report LQ posts, it is like the situation gets worse everyday.

[ChiBitCTy]

I don’t know if there is any way to do this but it would be awesome if theymos / Hilarious could give users who they know are knowledgeable a marking of sorts...

If I understood your suggestion correctly (if I didn't, correct me), are you postulating that Theymos should appoint mods from users who are knowledgeable in what the content of the particular section is all about. I think that is the case already, I don't think there is any mod currently who is not knowledgeable on what is acceptable or what it not, there is also the Global mods whose duty covers all the sections of the forum; thus I don't think is the solution to the problem.

The problem is the enormous amount of shitposts, for example, it's just like when two people are handling a job in a company that's meant for ten people, sooner or later this two individuals are either going to be inundated with duties and their input would gradually deteriorate as they would be unable to handle the task at their disposal. That is somewhat the case here, if the shitposts in some sections of the forum is pretty small, then it would be easy to pick them out and delete, but as things stand now, even with the mods and the assistance of users who report LQ posts, it is like the situation gets worse everyday.

Negative …I meant just simply give people like Loyce / Nullis etc who we all know are very knowledgeable some sort of different colored moon, or a badge (like the art contest winners got) that could show they are well versed in cryptography, the forum etc.  I’ve been around for a long time now and still mostly don’t know who I can trust when given feedback /replies etc..even people I interact with often. If you’re a tech dummy like me it would be nice to know members who actually do know their stuff ..because I sure don’t, and with a lot of stuff I ask I may get 10 different replies ..who do I believe?  I dunno, this may be too hard to implement and maybe get too political ..but would be cool even if there were only like 10-20 users who are pretty active given it just to start and go from there. Merit doesn’t mean much to me if being honest and of course rank doesn’t either.

[actmyname]

No, the forum doesn't like intervening by telling you to trust (or not trust) others. You are granted the privilege of ignorance and the opportunity to learn: quit trying to bring about these crazy socialist policies. Just let the scammers do their own thing - they have rights like you and I.

Next, you'll ask for guests to see default trust ratings or be warned about scams being unpunished! Or maybe you'll ask, "why do we have a literal ponzi section?"

[BITCOIN4X]

I might agree that bitcoin discussion board have a much bigger role for users to discuss about bitcoin and other thing related to it than just keeping a fair amount of junk and unqualified post from the sheer number of active poster there every day. I don't completely ignore the board but I'm not very active on it either although I know there are some interesting discussion I missed. So far, I've only been actively posting 65 time this year, even though there may be 1-5 (don't remember) posts that may have been deleted due to the low quality of the threads created. There's only one thread I've ever created a bitcoin discussion board "Am I the Only One Who Forget The Innovation of Bitcoin ?" for during my time on the forum, but I don't see many poster interested in getting involved in the discussion.

Applicable rule may not be very effective in preventing poster from posting spam and trash on bitcoin discussion board or this forum as a whole. I have to understand it in a different way due to the fact not all users of this forum care about a forum environment that is clean of low value post. Agree to get stricter moderation from moderator on board that have lot of posters and daily post, deletion and reporting are possible and recommended rather than ignoring board. As of August 16 since 2021, there have been 106,997 created on bitcoin discussion board including child board. If in July 2011 sirius said more than 50% of existing post had become junk, then by 2021 I believe 90% of them may not be as expected.

[Pmalek]

I've been getting fat because of the doughnuts I'm eating instead of handling reports.

You can always get a stationary bike and exercise in between two reports. Try to get your heart rate up to 140-160 BPM and feel those doughnuts going to waste.

Jokes aside, wouldn't a temporary mute feature work nicely? e.g. if a certain user has like 10 of his/her posts deleted in a day, he/she is muted and unable to post for like 24 hours or so. Haven't thought of this deeply, but yea.

That's an excellent idea. It's like when Bitcoin nodes ban and stop communicating with other nodes who aren't behaving properly. Question is, can something like that be automated in this forum where mods get a notification when X number of posts have been deleted from user A, or would they have to perform manual checks? If its the latter, I don't see it happening.

They think that if they accept more users, they can have a more successful bounty. 

They care only about the quantity of the posts and the visibility of their signature. Maybe the admins should consider a pilot program of some sorts. Don't allow altcoin signature participants to post in the Bitcoin Discussion boards for a week or two and see what will happen in terms of spam, reported and deleted posts, etc. It might be too restrictive and controversial though.
 

[Rikafip]

They care only about the quantity of the posts and the visibility of their signature. Maybe the admins should consider a pilot program of some sorts. Don't allow altcoin signature participants to post in the Bitcoin Discussion boards for a week or two and see what will happen in terms of spam, reported and deleted posts, etc. It might be too restrictive and controversial though.

Looking at Bitcoin discussion board, it doesn't seem to me that it's dominated by altcoin signatures and that they are the main cause of the issues. On the contrary, seems to me that majority of posts are written by those that are in Bitcoin signature campaigns. Current bar set to enter one of the signature campaigns paid in BTC is very low due high amount of campaigns and lack of quality members, so even a  shitposter  with 5-10 merits in the last 120 will be capable to secure a spot.

Now that signature campaigns are mentioned, I wish managers remove subpar participants more often but then again, I understand why they don't do that as they probably won't find adequate replacements so they just go on as it is.

[actmyname]

Now that signature campaigns are mentioned, I wish managers remove subpar participants more often but then again, I understand why they don't do that as they probably won't find adequate replacements so they just go on as it is.

Chicken or the egg: did poor campaign management cause quality members to leave (from increased spam), or did the shift into poor post quality lead to respectively poor management?

The existence of zero/extremely-low entry fees for altcoin campaigns made it so that low quality could easily seep into any board. Bad money drives out good, and the same could be said about posts. Why would people bother with high quality when they could farm with 20+ altcoin campaign accounts, spewing shit into the air to get paid? Sad state of the forum.

[playyamy]

This is what I expected, I now read in the BD section every day...most of people still choose to read this section.
Although the quality of the posts inside is really different.

There is almost anything about Bitcoin. That's why there will be a variety of posts with different qualities.

Just like the two posts listed by OP. Both of them are good posts but the types are completely different.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5354038.msg57675388#msg57675388
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5351702.msg57569855#msg57569855

[Zedpastin]

They care only about the quantity of the posts and the visibility of their signature. Maybe the admins should consider a pilot program of some sorts. Don't allow altcoin signature participants to post in the Bitcoin Discussion boards for a week or two and see what will happen in terms of spam, reported and deleted posts, etc. It might be too restrictive and controversial though.

Looking at Bitcoin discussion board, it doesn't seem to me that it's dominated by altcoin signatures and that they are the main cause of the issues. On the contrary, seems to me that majority of posts are written by those that are in Bitcoin signature campaigns. Current bar set to enter one of the signature campaigns paid in BTC is very low due high amount of campaigns and lack of quality members, so even a  shitposter  with 5-10 merits in the last 120 will be capable to secure a spot.

Now that signature campaigns are mentioned, I wish managers remove subpar participants more often but then again, I understand why they don't do that as they probably won't find adequate replacements so they just go on as it is.

Bitcoin Discussion should be the one sub forum which has the most moderators instead it has the least it does not make sense to me? There will always be more members wanting to join a signature campaign that there will be spaces this is obvious if you look at the open signature campaigns and how many members apply for them how quick they fill the position. Bitcoin